The title was supposed to be 'Customs?' but it made more sense without the question mark.
One thing we dislike about Peru is the quality of beer is very low. Pisco is excellent, can't deny it, and for Peru it has reached the logical conclusion that Poteen would have in Ireland had it not been illegal. But the beer is weak, the craft beer market is tiny and difficult to access. It is acknowledged that Peruanos themselves go in for getting drunk and going dancing, which sounds a lot similar to the British culture, but these guys stay out til 7am, come home and sleep for four hours, then wake up at 11am and eat the spiciest ceviche they can get. Allegedly its the greatest hangover cure in the world. Anyone back home who feels like a bucket of fish and seafood in lime / coriander / hot as hell fresh sliced chile marinade might sort out a Saturday evening in the Duke of York, please let me know.
They do, however, enjoy a good fondue.
On Friday we received word that Sarah's medical parcel from home had arrived in Lima. However, what none of us had thought of, its not just quite that easy to send a bunch of vials of medicine to someone in Peru and they just get through customs just like that! We would have to go to the Fedex offices and collect the parcel in person with our passports. The downside of this is that the office was over near the airport, but further away. The airport ain't exactly close to Miraflores, and its in the cruddy side of town, over the Callao district. Not much fun. It has to be a taxi journey there and back.
Saturday morning we get up, Sarah still feeling grumbly in the tumbly, and about 10.30am we head out in our taxi. All feels pretty positive. Traffic is heavy but not too bad. Our lady driver takes the Costa Verde, a good excuse to get a look at the coast close up, and sure enough the view is as dramatic from the bottom of the cliffs as it is from the top. Getting to the airport takes about 40 minutes from our hostel. A little more detective work in her roadmap and we pull up outside Fedex's offices. So far so good.
But it couldn't be that easy. The chap inside tells us that Peruvian Customs ('aduante') must authorise the importation of the parcel before we can take it. They aren't open 'til Monday, and then they may want to come and verify the contents of the parcel before we can have it. Not only that, but then we will pay Fedex a holding fee for keeping the parcel til customs clears it. Sarah is screaming blue murder inside her head, swearing never to deal with Fedex again. There's nothing to be done however, and back out to the taxi we go. At least we have some concept of where things are.
Where the traffic had been reasonable on our way here, the sudden blue skies of Lima have prompted an outpouring of people to the Costa Verde. Oh God. Everyone in Lima is on the streets, horns blaring, and no one is acknowledging the road markings or traffic lights. Our driver gulders at a policeman 'QUE PASA???' but nothing doing. We try several roads before eventually heading back via Lima Central. The whole journey takes three and a half hours. Sarah and I sleep a lot of the way back. We are out PNS$70, about sixteen quid. We might as well have driven to Dublin and back (almost).
Saturday is a bit of a write off after that. Sarah has a lie down, I phone home and rant, we both feel better in our own way.
Fast forward to Monday. 8am. The same taxi driver lady is supposed to be collecting us as she knows where we're going. She's a no-show. By 8.30am we're getting Gonzalo, our host, to phone round trying to get a replacement driver. By 9.20am Juan shows up, ready to take (what I feel) is a very reasonable PNS$30 off us per hour. Sarah doesn't like the deal. I remind her that its about 7 quid an hour. We get going.
Traffic could be worse. Lima has a little of its grey fog swirling around the coast today. The big marquee on the beach for Lima Fashion Week is being dismantled. Juan is a good driver, and we are at the big Customs Commercial Centre in double quick time, about half an hour.
This place is not what I expected. Dodgy looking humans are hanging around trying to make money out of everyone. My tenuous grasp of the Spanish language is not enough to deal with difficult situations like this. We get directed into some office, where some child starts filling in our paperwork. Sarah correctly decides that this isn't right. There are people trying to point you in the direction of various offices, all there to make money out of people. We end up in another office after excusing ourselves from the first. These guys point us towards the enormous customs house at the end of the block. In Spanish, the expression is 'es una locura'. Its mental.
So we go to one window, then another, and get the perfect girl to solve our problem. She speaks perfect English, gives us step-by-step instructions, and then accompanies us in our taxi to Fedex. There, clad in hard hats (for some reason), we open our parcel and account for the contents. She is serious but helpful. All done, back to the taxi and back to the customs house. A wait, I eat a muffin from breakfast, we get our clearance, back to Fedex, pay $35, receive parcel, return to hostel.
Four hours of our lives we shall not get back.
Sitting on our beds we were too stunned to cry with relief. Its not that the process was overly complicated, because it wasn't, but that the sheer mental force required to get through a process like this in your own country, let alone another, is immense. Utter concentration the whole time. If anything goes wrong, BOOM!, your mind begins to leak from your ears. We were the lucky ones. Some of the people wandering round the customs building looked like they had been there overnight. No wonder a pharmacy was across the road.
We had arrived back after our trip to / from Callao to the sound of familiar accents. Turns out a load of Donegal hallions had descended upon Lima. I don't understand why only Donegal folk have the stones to travel the expensive wastelands of Latin America, but maybe they feel at home here. Ha Ha. Smiley Face. A fine bunch they were, all kids but with Father in tow, celebrating his 60th birthday we a trip to Peru and, inevitably, Machu Picchu. I was reminded of those po-faced hipster articles, berating things that are popular as being 'crap' by definition, and usurping them with 'much better' alternatives (eg the Amazon is crap, Brazil's Pantanal is brilliant, which it is, but let's have some perspective, you horrible hipster world-destroying bastards. Ah, the grief and the grudge).
One thing we dislike about Peru is the quality of beer is very low. Pisco is excellent, can't deny it, and for Peru it has reached the logical conclusion that Poteen would have in Ireland had it not been illegal. But the beer is weak, the craft beer market is tiny and difficult to access. It is acknowledged that Peruanos themselves go in for getting drunk and going dancing, which sounds a lot similar to the British culture, but these guys stay out til 7am, come home and sleep for four hours, then wake up at 11am and eat the spiciest ceviche they can get. Allegedly its the greatest hangover cure in the world. Anyone back home who feels like a bucket of fish and seafood in lime / coriander / hot as hell fresh sliced chile marinade might sort out a Saturday evening in the Duke of York, please let me know.
They do, however, enjoy a good fondue.
On Friday we received word that Sarah's medical parcel from home had arrived in Lima. However, what none of us had thought of, its not just quite that easy to send a bunch of vials of medicine to someone in Peru and they just get through customs just like that! We would have to go to the Fedex offices and collect the parcel in person with our passports. The downside of this is that the office was over near the airport, but further away. The airport ain't exactly close to Miraflores, and its in the cruddy side of town, over the Callao district. Not much fun. It has to be a taxi journey there and back.
Saturday morning we get up, Sarah still feeling grumbly in the tumbly, and about 10.30am we head out in our taxi. All feels pretty positive. Traffic is heavy but not too bad. Our lady driver takes the Costa Verde, a good excuse to get a look at the coast close up, and sure enough the view is as dramatic from the bottom of the cliffs as it is from the top. Getting to the airport takes about 40 minutes from our hostel. A little more detective work in her roadmap and we pull up outside Fedex's offices. So far so good.
But it couldn't be that easy. The chap inside tells us that Peruvian Customs ('aduante') must authorise the importation of the parcel before we can take it. They aren't open 'til Monday, and then they may want to come and verify the contents of the parcel before we can have it. Not only that, but then we will pay Fedex a holding fee for keeping the parcel til customs clears it. Sarah is screaming blue murder inside her head, swearing never to deal with Fedex again. There's nothing to be done however, and back out to the taxi we go. At least we have some concept of where things are.
Where the traffic had been reasonable on our way here, the sudden blue skies of Lima have prompted an outpouring of people to the Costa Verde. Oh God. Everyone in Lima is on the streets, horns blaring, and no one is acknowledging the road markings or traffic lights. Our driver gulders at a policeman 'QUE PASA???' but nothing doing. We try several roads before eventually heading back via Lima Central. The whole journey takes three and a half hours. Sarah and I sleep a lot of the way back. We are out PNS$70, about sixteen quid. We might as well have driven to Dublin and back (almost).
Saturday is a bit of a write off after that. Sarah has a lie down, I phone home and rant, we both feel better in our own way.
Fast forward to Monday. 8am. The same taxi driver lady is supposed to be collecting us as she knows where we're going. She's a no-show. By 8.30am we're getting Gonzalo, our host, to phone round trying to get a replacement driver. By 9.20am Juan shows up, ready to take (what I feel) is a very reasonable PNS$30 off us per hour. Sarah doesn't like the deal. I remind her that its about 7 quid an hour. We get going.
Traffic could be worse. Lima has a little of its grey fog swirling around the coast today. The big marquee on the beach for Lima Fashion Week is being dismantled. Juan is a good driver, and we are at the big Customs Commercial Centre in double quick time, about half an hour.
This place is not what I expected. Dodgy looking humans are hanging around trying to make money out of everyone. My tenuous grasp of the Spanish language is not enough to deal with difficult situations like this. We get directed into some office, where some child starts filling in our paperwork. Sarah correctly decides that this isn't right. There are people trying to point you in the direction of various offices, all there to make money out of people. We end up in another office after excusing ourselves from the first. These guys point us towards the enormous customs house at the end of the block. In Spanish, the expression is 'es una locura'. Its mental.
So we go to one window, then another, and get the perfect girl to solve our problem. She speaks perfect English, gives us step-by-step instructions, and then accompanies us in our taxi to Fedex. There, clad in hard hats (for some reason), we open our parcel and account for the contents. She is serious but helpful. All done, back to the taxi and back to the customs house. A wait, I eat a muffin from breakfast, we get our clearance, back to Fedex, pay $35, receive parcel, return to hostel.
Four hours of our lives we shall not get back.
Sitting on our beds we were too stunned to cry with relief. Its not that the process was overly complicated, because it wasn't, but that the sheer mental force required to get through a process like this in your own country, let alone another, is immense. Utter concentration the whole time. If anything goes wrong, BOOM!, your mind begins to leak from your ears. We were the lucky ones. Some of the people wandering round the customs building looked like they had been there overnight. No wonder a pharmacy was across the road.
Time is going fast now. When we left it was 22 weeks or so of trip. We are down, with an extension, to less than seven. With deadlines in there for receipt of passports, application for ESTA passes for the US, getting from one enormous city to another, 60 hours away, this little adventure was one I could have lived without. Yet we did it. The box was glorious when it was opened; Tayto Cheese And Onion, Galaxy chocolate, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and of course medicines for Sarah. I didn't even need to open the Tayto to know how they smelled, it was all stored in my head.
We found lunch, post-showers, in a small Italian restaurant, where we again pondered the Peruvian love of sweet pasta dishes. Sarah's Spaghetti Bolognese (real spaghetti for a change, normally its 'tallarines', or spaghetti-esque noodles) tasted of a dusting of icing sugar, whilst my penne al alfredo definitely had a spoonful of sugar in its creamy white sauce. Not the greatest lunch ever. Dessert was 'Keke De Cafe', literally a slice of sponge cake with a shot of espresso poured over it.
We searched desperately for the chocolate museum as a distraction, but it was not forthcoming, and back at the hostel we sorted out another 4 days accommodation, this time up in Lima Central, within walking distance of all the nice museums. We already booked our flights to Cusco for the coming Saturday. Its Semana Santa here, and everything is getting booked up rather quickly. We had a choice between a 21.5 hr bus journey, via a lot of places we had already been, or pay an extra tenner and fly to Cusco in a hour. Easy decision.
Our hostel has inherited some German boys who snort a lot. It drives Sarah mental. That hacking / snorting noise of people who cannot clear their sinuses is probably the most disgusting noise in the world. We ran away, otherwise Sarah would have killed them stone dead with a big knife and we would not be coming home soon.
Only funny because I know a family called 'Bruce'.
We went to Houlihan's Irish Bar. They didn't sell any draught beer. I was very upset and we left. If an 'Irish' Bar back home didn't sell draught beer, the world would end. We walked to Murphy's Irish Pub and they sold draught Cusqueña and Pilsen. PNS$10 a pint. It was better than bottled. We ate Tayto Cheese N Onion. Thanks Rosemary!
Sadly the bar was terrible and we were the only people there. They played German digital radio (including the news) and advanced onto some horrid mixing of disco greats. We ran away from there too and went to the Cat Park. There I petted about a dozen different cats, a lot like the Kinkaid house in 1999. Sadly then we had to go home and pack.
We had finished our Friday night with a beer or two.
We finished our Saturday in a much more civilised manner. Our hostel has a big tv. We had some nice Knorr Cream of Asparagus soup. The tv has TCM. We had Gandhi with Sir Ben Kingsley. I'm not sure everyone in the hostel really understood that sometimes, even when you're travelling around South America, you need a movie night with some basic food. In our local, very fancy, Waitrose-type supermarket, I got some nice pepperoni snacks and nice brown baps. I declined the expensive pisco. I fell asleep before Mahatma was assassinated.
We had arrived back after our trip to / from Callao to the sound of familiar accents. Turns out a load of Donegal hallions had descended upon Lima. I don't understand why only Donegal folk have the stones to travel the expensive wastelands of Latin America, but maybe they feel at home here. Ha Ha. Smiley Face. A fine bunch they were, all kids but with Father in tow, celebrating his 60th birthday we a trip to Peru and, inevitably, Machu Picchu. I was reminded of those po-faced hipster articles, berating things that are popular as being 'crap' by definition, and usurping them with 'much better' alternatives (eg the Amazon is crap, Brazil's Pantanal is brilliant, which it is, but let's have some perspective, you horrible hipster world-destroying bastards. Ah, the grief and the grudge).
Anyway.
Somewhere in the middle of the night I awake to the sound of voices. I battle back to sleep quickly. Sarah remembers it differently; as a drunken, very very drunken, domestic taking place, and a man repeatedly declaring "Jesus says NO to tea". I know someone turned a light on a one point, but that didn't last very long.
By 9am the room stinks of pure alcohol. We get up and, slowly but surely, the hallions are roused from their beds. Dearbhla is violently sick. This does not interfere with my enjoyment of the triple-chocolate-orange muffin that is my breakfast. The little bakery across the road is clearly run by Mary Berry herself.
It takes a while but everyone is alive. Dearbhla takes altitude sickness tablets in case they work whilst she and everyone else is stuck on a seven hour bus ride to Ica. I am glad I'm not on that bus. Sarah and I strike out for Barranco, the next neighbourhood down from Miraflores, and the most Bohemian district in Lima.
Its a brief 60 minute walk away via the coast. Miraflores' apartment blocks never seem to give up, nor do the middle-aged men with the small dogs. Its creepy in a David Lynch sort of way. A shame that everyone is so civilised and pleasant, and meets your eye with a nod of the head in salutation. Otherwise this could be Blue Velvet.
Barranco isn't as grand scale as most bohemian neighbourhoods we've encountered, but that works in its favour. Its effectively two main roads with connecting roads along the way. Halfway along is the path leading you to Lima's Bridge Of Sighs, which takes you past a bunch of overpriced restaurants, a lookout point, and final winds down to the Costa Verde. It's all very picturesque. We don't buy any bracelets at all, and wander past some skinny model doing a photoshoot. There's also plenty of cats around here. The view from the walkway at the end of the path is simply glorious. It's not hard to believe Lima has inspired some great literature, like Melville's Moby Dick, because it is a dramatic looking city. What's hard to believe is that hard time it gets from those who visit it. I really want to send everyone to Pisco to give them something to really complain about.
We catch a taxi after discovering Barranco's big attraction, its brewpub, closes at 6pm, about 5 minutes after we discover that fact. Miraflores is quiet on Sunday evening. We sit down with our big tubs of salad and soup for dinner, intending to watch Red Sonja, a movie I had erroneously mis-remembered as a Cold War flick, not a dodgy fantasy tale. Still, Arnie movies are generally ok. But we had the company of Ali and her mother, who regaled us with tales of life in Miami and Lima, where and how crimes are committed in Peru, recipes for ceviche, and why exactly Sarah has been suffering a bad tummy for a week now (its something in the air, according to Ali, but more specifically its a bug that all travellers pick up in Peru with the bad water and different hygiene standards). Its great to get a local's input on things, even if they are (apparently) 4th-generation Irish. My iPod was 3rd generation. It didn't even have a passport.
So we don't watch Red Sonja, nor Dick Tracy, and In And Out is way out. Its nice talking with normal folk about things we're interested in. Somehow we end up stuck to our seats at 1am, trying to find out who sings this song we've been addicted to the whole time we've been here. That information is not forthcoming at 1am.
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