A Brief Peru-sal
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
34
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Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
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Lima,
Peru
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The taxi to the hostel was a touch scary; based on the way they use the road, it would seem that the average Peruvian learns to drive in a dodgem. We arrived unscathed and checked in, downed a couple of bottles of water and hit the hay. In the morning, we went for the breakfast provided by the hostel, which was served in a nearby cafe. It was nothing special but it was nice to sit outside the cafe, watching the world go by and having our breakfast. We then decided to head in to the centre of Lima and explore the centre. We walked to the area from which we had read that we would be able to get buses, stopping to look at a little arts and crafts market en route. We arrived at Avenida Arequipa, the main road to the centre of Lima and tried to figure out which buses were going where. We established that the people leaning out of the side doors of the buses shouting things like "Arequiparequiparequipabarancabaranca" were in fact giving some sort of hint as to their intended route and destination, but when they pass you yelling this at 40mph, it's a bit tricky to hail a relevent one. We needed "Arequiparequiparequipatacnatacna". We found one that got us almost to the right place ("Arequiparequiparequipaveinteocho"), but it suddenly veered off left, so we jumped off and walked the rest of the way.
We found a tourist information office who gave us some information on getting to Cusco, our next intended destination, and also on the central Lima area. We wandered a bit and sat in the Plaza de Armas (main square) for a while watching the pigeons and refusing the various offers of narcotics. The offers of narcotics in plain sight of the armed coppers in a tank, guarding the Presidential Palace. We're not that daft. After some time in Peru, we worked out that we would be offered drugs if Jacob wore his hair down and wouldn't if he tied it back. Honestly. It's like an on-off switch.
The square has a very old bronze fountain in the middle of it and is surrounded by impressive buildings such as the Palacio de Gobierno where the president lives and the cathederal, which houses the remains of Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and founder of Lima. We spent a while just enjoying these surroundings, then eventually, driven by both hunger and irritation at the drug-offers, we wandered back into the pedestrian area and went to "Norky's", whose nomenclature amused Jacob, and shared fried chicken and chips.
Still weary from our recent journeys, we then made our way back to the hostel and headed out later in the evening to what our guidebook described as the nightly handicraft fair, held in Kennedy Park opposite our hostel. The descriptions found in guidebooks, yet again, proved somewhat misleading, implying that this was a fantastic display of various Peruvian handicrafts. In reality, it was more akin to a jumble sale. We spent some time looking through a folder of old money on one stall, which showed two Peruvian currencies spiralling out of control over the course of a few years.
Peru used to have a currency called the Sol de Oro or Sol. This had been the currency since 1863, but due to hyperinflation it was replaced in 1985 by the Inti, at a rate of one thousand Soles to one Into. However, the hyperinflation carried on unabated, and six years later, in 1991, the Inti was replaced by the Nuevo Sol at a rate of one million to one. The Nuevo Sol is therefore worth 1,000,000,000 Soles de Oro. The Nuevo Sol is still the unit of currency today and seems to be far more stable at present.
We went out for food in a street known locally as 'Pizza Street'. We decided on a place and had some fairly typical Peruvian fare; Ceviche, which is seafood marinated in citrus juice (usually lime), which pickles or 'cooks' the fish without heat. We ended up talking to the waiter, José, who was learning various languages by talking to tourists. He started to get a little bit strange, asking us to write down phrases in English (and any other languages we knew) for him to seranade his girlfriend with. Things like "even though we are apart, our hearts are together", which he communicated to us in a charades like fashion as he didn't know the English. Ultimately, he asked us to take a note to his girlfriend's house, which it turned out he couldn't do himself because her family didn't like him. We did feel sorry for the guy, but didn't exactly feel comfortable wandering around Lima, knocking on the door of a Spanish speaking stranger in order to deliver a note from somebody that the family don't like, so we apologetically refused and soon made our exit.
The following day, whilst walking around Miraflores (our little bit of Lima), we saw Paddington outside a bookshop. Must have popped back for a quick visit. Marmalade in Peru is fairly questionable (in fact, when breakfast menus claim to involve it, jam is always infuriatingly produced instead), so maybe that's why he left in the first place.
We headed back to central Lima and went to the tourist information place to buy tickets for the bus to Cusco. We then headed towards the Convento de San Francisco. En route, we passed some markety areas, where Kirsty bought a stripy jumper with llamas on: very Peruvian and not as tacky as it sounds. The Convento de San Francisco or Saint Francis Monastery is a large church built in the 17th century and renowned for its library and the catacombs underneath it. We went on a tour, which was pretty interesting, but we were both most interested in the fantastic old library and the catacombs. The library is a beautiful room, filled from floor to ceiling with over 20,000 books dating back to the 13th century. The catacombs are also really interesting. They served as Lima's first cemetery and housed the bones of benefactors of the church, dignitaries and other significant people, who were rewarded with a burial place close to important altars in the church, which meant that they would be 'closer to God'. Later, they became a public burial place, although these bones were not so close to God. It's thought that the remains of more than 70,000 people are here. The bodies were stacked and covered in lime. After they had decomposed, the bones were stacked elsewhere. The weirdest part is in one area where the archeologists who unearthed these catacombs decided to artistically arrange the bones into a pretty 'clock' pattern, with circles of skulls and spokes of femurs. Tasteful.
From the monastery, we wandered to a nearby park, where we witnessed a Peruvian pop video being created. At least, we can only assume that is what was going on. A hamster-faced young bloke in scraggy jeans loped about like an ape in front of a camera for a while, miming to some generic South-American pop as a middle aged woman in a grey tracksuit (his mum?) looked on and bopped about in the way only middle aged women can. We watched in bemused amusement for a while, took photos and laughed. We also took some photos of San Cristobal, a great big hill dotted with multi-coloured houses and crowned with an enormous crucifix, which is pretty to look at but is apparently quite a dangerous shanty town area, so we didn't bother visiting.
That evening, we went out for Chinese food, which is apparently a big thing in South America. We had soup and noodles, which were both reasonable and very cheap, and washed down with Peru's very own Inka Cola, a lurid neon yellow beverage which tastes like a cross between Irn Bru, Tizer and industrial waste, which Jacob consumed in prodigous quantities but about which Kirsty is less convinced. We headed back to the hostel through the park, where there was some sort of concert taking place, which we stopped and listened to for a while. When we got back to the hostel, we discovered that there were problems with our booking for a place to stay in Cusco, so we tried to sort that out for an irritatingly long time, eventually giving up and going to bed.
The following morning, we got up early and continued to try and sort out our booking problem: basically, the people we had booked with had double booked the room, so despite having confirmed our reservation, they were trying to persuade us to stay with them for one night and then move to somewhere else that they would organise for the other two nights. Cusco is high altitude and we wanted to be in one place for a few days to acclimatise, plus we had a confirmed booking, so we weren't too impressed with this. Eventually, we got an email from the hostel, who had sorted things out so that we could stay for the three days. Sorted, but a headache we didn't need.
We spent the day doing very little: we found a bookshop and bought a guidebook for Chile, packed ready for our journey to Cusco and sat reading in the park, had lunch of salchipapas (sausage and chips) then got picked up at around 1pm, taken to the bus station and got on our bus to Cusco.
