Wear jeans.
Woke up, cold, grey skies. Breakfast is scrambled eggs plus interesting little brioche-esque baps with caraway seeds through them. Lots of coffee too. I figure I'm safe in denim today. Big mistake.
The sun comes out as we exit the hostel and stays nice and high the whole day through. We have dedicated ourselves to Miraflores today, exploring the sights and sounds of our neighbourhood. I treat myself to some over-the-counter anti-inflammatories first, as my shoulder injury is back and tormenting me. I know not what I have done, but it bloody hurts. Same old stupid thing, hadn't even looked at a guitar or a book the wrong way!
It's a lovely safe area too. When you aren't accidentally stumbling over gothic homes for sale, or apartment blocks with juxtaposed balconies, you find delightful little eateries or expensive boutiques. It's about as 'nice' as 'nice' gets. Lovely, safe, nice. Not in a bad way, either.
All this done with a slightly grumpy eye on my part. At 2am our hostel dorm, ground floor, is awoken by a drunken man guldering 'Let me in! Let me in!'. Turns out he stays here, but the receptionist has gone to bed. We let him in. I fall asleep again, to awaken an unspecified amount of time later to the girl in the bed above Sarah snoring. She sounds like a broken machine in a factory begging for help. Even I cannot sleep through this, and it isn't funny either. I grab my blanket and head for the common area when I get to sleep on the sofa. When I wake and return to bed, around 6am, the room is silent. Sarah tells me the girl in the other bed got up and berated the snoring chick for ruining everyones' sleep, and made her lie on her side. She checked out the next morning.
Sarah has mapped out our time in Lima to the minute. We head first to Huaca Pucllana, the ruins of the ceremonial pyramid, sprawling on the edge of Miraflores. The edifice grows as we approach, you can see the little adobe blocks stacked on their ends, spaced out, as the indigenous people know that would help diffuse the shock from earthquakes. The ruins date for 500 - 700AD, built by the Lima people (who gave their name to the city), predating the Incas by a millenium. We get a whistlestop tour of the site in English, over the street noise, but it fills in a few historical blanks. Miraflores is less than 100 years old, built on the site of a private plantation which also owned the ground of the Huaca Pucllana. The site was for human sacrifice, tribute to the goddess of the sea, who defeated the sun god every day by swallowing him in the evening. The sacrificial victims were girls between 12 and 24 years of age from well-to-do families, princesses of their time. Every time a social epoch passed, as further level was built onto the pyramid. All went ok until the Wasi tribe came along, invaded, and desecrated all the Lima graves. Of the 60 or so on the site, only four have been found undisturbed.
Its all fascinating, nonetheless for being in the middle of towerblocks and a McDonalds 'M' in site a couple of hundred metres away. The tour lasts about an hour. Sarah and I also finally get to meet some llamas and alpacas (albeit rather docile and boring), kept in a mini-zoo to show what people eat for protein. We also saw some guinea pigs. Sarah has finally lost her obsession with people eating guinea pigs. Ever since I got her to eat battered octopus in Bahia Inglesa she has been a little more adventurous, in theory if not practice.
Enough of the ruins. We go searching for artisian markets on Av Petit Thouars and find walled enclosures of pruck. They are typical tourist markets, no cows' heads or gore, and a lot less mobile phone covers, but plenty of tidy shelves of the exact same alpaca scarves and blankets and ponchos and shot glasses and cushion covers and bobble hats and cheesecloth trousers and llama print jumpers and so on forever. Every single story. We browse but fail miserably to find anything that we specifically want, although Sarah is charmed by some incredibly fake Inca-style mirrors which are mold-pressed polystyrene. By now it is lunchtime. A walk down Avenida La Paz, right turn down San Martin, and we find Cafe Barcelona, where a two course lunch including drink is PNS$25. Bargain. More ceviche for me (excellent), spaghetti bolognese for Sarah. I eat it slowly, enormous portion of hot, limey fish, plus a starter of papa a la huancaina, which are similar to papas a la canarias, spuds in yellow sauce on the Canary Islands. Somehow, during all this, Barcelona get beaten by Athletico Madrid.
Thursday is a bitty sort of day. I, as per usual, want to catch the Sevilla v Porto Europa League game at 2pm. Apart from that, no preference whatsoever. Gonzalo, owner of our hostel, has overheard me complaining to home that Peru is a desert for coffee aficionados. He points us towards three excellent locales; Cafe Verde, Arabica, and Cafe Bicetti. He also recommends Murphys Irish Bar as a destination to watch the football.
Seems so simple. We have excellent coffee at Arabica (not to mention their carrot cake! Now there's something I didn't expect to eat in Peru! But then that's exactly what I should have expected...), and find Murphys Irish Bar closed, ten minutes before kick off. I remember passing a sports bar the previous day and, power-walk underway, we discover The Corner Sports Bar towards the end of Avenida Larco. A bit expensive, but their chicken wings were excellent, and I had a face-on view of the game, to which I whooped and yelled for 90 glorious minutes, watching Sevilla (ten-men Sevilla) batter Porto 4-1. Next up, Valencia in the semi-finals. Gulp.
We go out and walk a bit more but Sarah is still feeling dodgy, and we meander back towards the hostel just in case. The weather was a little more overcast today, which suited us fine, and I think the anti-inflammatories might just be helping my back. With a big chunk of blog written, I satisfy my hunger with a dirty burrito and a big mug of mate de coca tea. 'Trinity' is finally done, and all I have left in my bag to read are books in Spanish...
Woke up, cold, grey skies. Breakfast is scrambled eggs plus interesting little brioche-esque baps with caraway seeds through them. Lots of coffee too. I figure I'm safe in denim today. Big mistake.
The sun comes out as we exit the hostel and stays nice and high the whole day through. We have dedicated ourselves to Miraflores today, exploring the sights and sounds of our neighbourhood. I treat myself to some over-the-counter anti-inflammatories first, as my shoulder injury is back and tormenting me. I know not what I have done, but it bloody hurts. Same old stupid thing, hadn't even looked at a guitar or a book the wrong way!
It's a lovely safe area too. When you aren't accidentally stumbling over gothic homes for sale, or apartment blocks with juxtaposed balconies, you find delightful little eateries or expensive boutiques. It's about as 'nice' as 'nice' gets. Lovely, safe, nice. Not in a bad way, either.
All this done with a slightly grumpy eye on my part. At 2am our hostel dorm, ground floor, is awoken by a drunken man guldering 'Let me in! Let me in!'. Turns out he stays here, but the receptionist has gone to bed. We let him in. I fall asleep again, to awaken an unspecified amount of time later to the girl in the bed above Sarah snoring. She sounds like a broken machine in a factory begging for help. Even I cannot sleep through this, and it isn't funny either. I grab my blanket and head for the common area when I get to sleep on the sofa. When I wake and return to bed, around 6am, the room is silent. Sarah tells me the girl in the other bed got up and berated the snoring chick for ruining everyones' sleep, and made her lie on her side. She checked out the next morning.
Sarah has mapped out our time in Lima to the minute. We head first to Huaca Pucllana, the ruins of the ceremonial pyramid, sprawling on the edge of Miraflores. The edifice grows as we approach, you can see the little adobe blocks stacked on their ends, spaced out, as the indigenous people know that would help diffuse the shock from earthquakes. The ruins date for 500 - 700AD, built by the Lima people (who gave their name to the city), predating the Incas by a millenium. We get a whistlestop tour of the site in English, over the street noise, but it fills in a few historical blanks. Miraflores is less than 100 years old, built on the site of a private plantation which also owned the ground of the Huaca Pucllana. The site was for human sacrifice, tribute to the goddess of the sea, who defeated the sun god every day by swallowing him in the evening. The sacrificial victims were girls between 12 and 24 years of age from well-to-do families, princesses of their time. Every time a social epoch passed, as further level was built onto the pyramid. All went ok until the Wasi tribe came along, invaded, and desecrated all the Lima graves. Of the 60 or so on the site, only four have been found undisturbed.
Enough of the ruins. We go searching for artisian markets on Av Petit Thouars and find walled enclosures of pruck. They are typical tourist markets, no cows' heads or gore, and a lot less mobile phone covers, but plenty of tidy shelves of the exact same alpaca scarves and blankets and ponchos and shot glasses and cushion covers and bobble hats and cheesecloth trousers and llama print jumpers and so on forever. Every single story. We browse but fail miserably to find anything that we specifically want, although Sarah is charmed by some incredibly fake Inca-style mirrors which are mold-pressed polystyrene. By now it is lunchtime. A walk down Avenida La Paz, right turn down San Martin, and we find Cafe Barcelona, where a two course lunch including drink is PNS$25. Bargain. More ceviche for me (excellent), spaghetti bolognese for Sarah. I eat it slowly, enormous portion of hot, limey fish, plus a starter of papa a la huancaina, which are similar to papas a la canarias, spuds in yellow sauce on the Canary Islands. Somehow, during all this, Barcelona get beaten by Athletico Madrid.
We continue to wander about, pass through a few more alpaca shops, and eventually end up at the bottom of Avenida Larco at the Larcomar shopping centre again. We get some daylight photos of the Costa Verde before wandering back towards the hostel. Sarah, not exactly feeling the best, gets into bed and rests. I spend four hours sorting out our photos since Santiago and burning them to DVD. Some things never change.
Thursday is a bitty sort of day. I, as per usual, want to catch the Sevilla v Porto Europa League game at 2pm. Apart from that, no preference whatsoever. Gonzalo, owner of our hostel, has overheard me complaining to home that Peru is a desert for coffee aficionados. He points us towards three excellent locales; Cafe Verde, Arabica, and Cafe Bicetti. He also recommends Murphys Irish Bar as a destination to watch the football.
Seems so simple. We have excellent coffee at Arabica (not to mention their carrot cake! Now there's something I didn't expect to eat in Peru! But then that's exactly what I should have expected...), and find Murphys Irish Bar closed, ten minutes before kick off. I remember passing a sports bar the previous day and, power-walk underway, we discover The Corner Sports Bar towards the end of Avenida Larco. A bit expensive, but their chicken wings were excellent, and I had a face-on view of the game, to which I whooped and yelled for 90 glorious minutes, watching Sevilla (ten-men Sevilla) batter Porto 4-1. Next up, Valencia in the semi-finals. Gulp.
We go out and walk a bit more but Sarah is still feeling dodgy, and we meander back towards the hostel just in case. The weather was a little more overcast today, which suited us fine, and I think the anti-inflammatories might just be helping my back. With a big chunk of blog written, I satisfy my hunger with a dirty burrito and a big mug of mate de coca tea. 'Trinity' is finally done, and all I have left in my bag to read are books in Spanish...
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