Well, traffic on Javier Prado was absolutely ridiculous. We were on the street for well over an hour, mostly in stop and go traffic. It took us over two hours to get to the temple itself. Along the route, we saw various sights, such as a the Lima Metro, Banco GNB ("Goliath National Bank!"), and a Furby billboard (they still exist!). Yeah, there really wasn't much to look at along the way.
The temple itself was nice, though. The ordinance rooms are very tiny - we were basically sitting next to each other. It felt no larger than a typical classroom in a meetinghouse. I had no trouble understanding most of the session, but I struggled a little bit for the speaking parts. Overall, it was a lovely experience.
Outside, we took a few pictures of the temple and had lunch in the adjacent cafeteria. The cafeteria was in a new building which also included housing for those traveling to the temple, a new addition since Liz was last here. The lunch was fairly typical Peruvian food, with a soup and a simple main course with lots of rice and potatoes. It wasn't the most delicious food of our trip, but it was probably the least expensive. The dessert they served was really disgusting, though. Across the street is a store that sells LDS-related goods. I got an alpaca tie, and one for dad.
The return trip took a while but wasn't quite as long as the way out. We took a break when we got back, then hopped onto a different micro to get to Miraflores.
Miraflores is probably the most posh section of Lima, with fancy high rises and nice restaurants. This was Liz's first trip to Miraflores as it was part of a different mission. Most of the tourists except us tend to stay here. We wanted to be able to rent bikes and pedal around the area, but time was not on our side for that. It was here that we met up with a former mission companion of Liz's, Nathaly, along with her boyfriend (now husband) Daniel. We first went to a restaurant where I tried the famed Peruvian dish ceviche. I thought it tasted great - Liz wasn't supposed to eat it on account of her pregnancy, but she did take a small sample.
Nathaly and Daniel then gave us the grand walking tour of Miraflores (he works at the Marriot there so is very familiar with the area). We started at Larcomar, a very large and upscale outdoor shopping mall situated at the top of a hill giving a great overlook of the Pacific ocean.
We then walked away from the coast to Parque Kennedy at the center of Miraflores. It is a well cared-for park next to a church with lots of food vendors (unfortunately we were too full to even consider that!). This park is a cat lover's dream. Lots of "domestic"cats live in this park. According to Daniel, the neighboring church had a rat problem so they decided to let the cats run free to take care of the rats. Some cats were sitting in people's laps; others were just observing or roaming around. It was dark and none of our photos turned out well so we just stole photos from the interwebs.
Our final stop for the evening was the Circuito Mágico del Agua, in the Parque de la Reserva. Liz had the opportunity to visit this park when she was in the CCM as a Christmas present from Presidente and Hermana Groberg. This park has crazy large and colorful lighted fountain displays, one of the largest fountain displays in the world. They are quite mesmerizing and the largest fountains are set to music. Erick had planned to join us there but unfortunately he had to work late and was unable to. Liz was happy to be able to share this little gem with me. We took a lot of photos. You can google it if you want to see more that are of a better quality, but they won't have us in them! Nathaly and Daniel helped us obtain a taxi back to Erick and Carmen's house at a reasonable rate and we called it a night.
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