Down Memory Lane

Trip Start Jun 14, 2007

Trip End Aug 04, 2007

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of Peru Lima, Peru
Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Driving north from Nazca began a trip of remembering the forgotten. I had forgotten how many miles of sand there were along the highway. I had forgotten about the scraggly, struggling, dust-covered palm tree "forestations." I had forgotten the deep blue of the ocean even under the gray winter skies. I had forgotten the rocks, dust and junk collect on the flat cement roofs. I had forgotten the roadside straw mat shanties that sell two of everything and not much of anything. I had forgotten the tangle of telephone wires over houses and across streets. I had forgotten the Peruvian flags flying from every straw house hoping to gain legal title for the property they were squatting on. I had forgotten that there was any land in Peru that wasn't parceled off, packaged in sagging barbed wire fences. Jim had forgotten how many old cars there are-1964 Chevys abound. He had forgotten the gas stations in the medians of divided roads. We had forgotten just how the sun disappears behind Lima's gray winter sky

Bakery Near Our Second House

.

Although we sat in the second floor in the front, panoramic seats of the bus, I had to search for recognizable points of reference as we neared Lima. Because of darkness, and 15 years of modernization, there wasn't much but street names that were familiar. The next morning we got a gray and late start on a typical overcast Lima winter morning-you can really hardly believe that the whole sky could be the seamless color of nothing unless you've seen it. We took a taxi to the neighborhood where we lived for 8 years. Getting out at the bread shop ("where I used to bring you and Samuel in the double stroller to watch the bakers making the bread") we decided to go in for old times sake. It was a sparkling bakery cum coffee shop, complete with Gaggio espresso machine, so we ordered a whole Paneton and coffees.

Around the corner we came to the second house we'd lived in and took a picture of the walled off house. Rosana looked in through the grated opening and said, "Christina! Look! You can see it just like the videos we have!" Christina had never seen inside the yard except in our home videos and was excited to see where "Daniel rode his bike and he and Karleen (Hallock) hunted Easter eggs." We crossed the street into what used to be a grocery store with a row of flour, a row of cornflakes and a row, of evaporated milk and instead found a store with wooden shelves, sparkling tiled floor, and displays of almost anything you would want to buy

Emmaus and Jim's Office in Lince

! We walked around with our mouths hanging open and our eyes growing bigger by the minute.

We went to the house that used to be the Wong grocery store and found that a whole block of houses had been torn down and a new building constructed to make another state of the art grocery store. My goodness! From there we walked around to the open market where I had done the majority of my shopping. Some things never change. Same bright fruits and vegetables. Same fish staring. Same lines of stalls. Same smells. Same pleas made by sellers hoping you'll buy.

After passing the old Emmaus office where Jim worked, we crossed the park (now with a paddle boat pond and merry-go-round in it) to the first house we lived in. A man was getting out of a red VW Gol and going inside. "He's going in our house!" I exclaimed. "He's going in his house, Mom," Rosana corrected.

If you've read my reminiscences this far, you must have visited Lima at some point in your life! I won't keep you further because I have to go rearrange the laundry on the line. I had forgotten that it takes 36 hours to dry clothes in Lima in the winter.