We (Me, Dana, Kristin, Tara, Cynthia, Alexandra) had a GREAT flight to Lima on May 19th. They served a hot meal of meat ravioli, free drinks, and each seat had a personal screen to watch movies or play games. I watched "El libro de los secretos" with Denzel Washington. Known in the states as "The Book of Eli". We landed around 11pm in Lima. We were immediately met at the airport by Alexandra's aunt, uncle, and cousin. The people in Peru were just great. The culture in Peru is very warm and inviting to everyone. They drove us back to the apartment for a little meal and a few drinks. After a nice evening with the family we all had a bed ready for us to deposit a little in the sleep bank before the adventures started the next day.
I woke up to the smell of breakfast, rolled out of bed, and did a zombie walk out to the table. We were served some great Peruvian food. We had a pork sandwich, some juice, coffee, bread, and some kind of ham spread. I will not hesitate to say that Peruvian food is the greatest food I have ever had. I am not a food connoisseur in any sense, but there was something about the food that was very unique and flavorful. I ate until the ham spread was practically squirting out of my ears and plopped back on my bed for a few minutes to digest a little so I could function.
I really wanted to go swimming with the sea lions off the coast of Lima. It was something I found online and really tried to sell to the girls. I pushed the idea on them really hard, did all the research on price, location, times, even water temperature...but shopping won the popular vote. I moped around for a while, with some passive aggressive and sarcastic remarks, but decided not to let it ruin my day so I got ready to go out with them.
We went to a little string of stores with "hand made" Peruvian crafts. It seemed to me that 95% of the stuff was cranked out in an assembly line considering every store had matching inventory. I bought a few little gifts (VERY little...don't get your hopes up). I really liked bartering with the store owners, and I was amused by the games they would play with me.
I started browsing through a pile of shirts and I asked "how much are the shirts" and the owner responded "$5 each". After a nice search, I found a shirt that I wanted to buy, so I pulled it out of the pile. The shop keeper said "That shirt is $9, that is not part of our regular selection". I smiled to myself, amused with her techniques. We went back and forth for a while and I ended up getting the shirt for $3. I was happy that I proved to myself I could successfully barter, but later decided that these shopkeepers really needed the money more than I did, so I tuned down the bartering and bought things at a fair price.
After shopping we went to a Peruvian buffet. I was not at all hungry, still stuffed from breakfast a few hours back, but with Peruvian food there is no stopping. All the food was amazing...my stomach kept saying "no" but my taste buds kept saying "more". Very sleepy from my food coma, we got in the car and went over to Alexandra's grandma's house. Alexandra's cousins were there too. A girl about 13 years old, a boy about 8 years old, and a little 3 year old girl. Once again everyone was so kind and generous. We hung out with the family there for a few hours until we were picked up for our city tour.
We went around the city in a little bus, and stopped at the Plaza de Armas. It was really beautiful. There are some pics of the plaza, and Alexandra with her aunt as well. We went back to the house to get some sleep because the girls had to wake up at 3:00am to catch their flight in the morning. I was on a later flight so I slept until about 6:30am, and got up to hang out with Angie.
Sidenote: I chose different flights than the girls to save money ($250). I also thought that Cynthia and Tara were going to be staying in Lima, so I would be able to hang out with them and not be alone, but they changed their minds and decided to go to Machu Picchu with the girls leaving me in Lima.
Anyway, I went to Angie's house with her to meet her family. They offered me lunch with some kind of pepper filled with meat and onion and heaven...it was great as usual, I had multiple servings. Angie had class at 3pm so her uncle picked me up and took me over to his house where I would spend the night. Right when I got there she rushed me into the prepared room to "rest". She was overly hospitable. I called the cousins in the room and hung out with them and watched TV. We talked for hours. We went to the shore to hang out, met some other family members for tea, came back to some dinner, went out to some stores, a very full day. I went to bed around 10pm because I knew I had to get up at 3:30am for my flight!
My flight was at 5:45am so I was ready to go at 4:00am, assuming my taxi would get there at his scheduled time of 4:15am. I waited, and waited, and waited. It was 4:45am and he still wasn't there. I started to panic a little bit, my flight was scheduled to arrive at 7am in Cuzco, just in time to catch catch a taxi to the train station for my 8am train to Machu Picchu...everything would be ruined if I missed my flight. More minutes ticked off, until FINALLY he pulled up nonchalantly at 5:00am. I rushed into the cab, and we got to the airport at 5:15am. I ran through the airport, and got to my gate while we were boarding...great success!
No comments:
Post a Comment