Last Day in Lima for a While!!!!

Instead of wondering about tomorrow's introduction to the Amazon rain forest, I will tell you about my low-key day. Following some confusion about my room number --Say what? MY room number??--I'll clear this up before I go on, then, just so you're not confused. So, it was like this--No wi-fi in my room, so I sat in a downstairs lounge near reception to write my blog. When I finished, I phoned Mary Anne and Jim-no answer. After a few minutes, I tried again--still no answer. Confusing. So I went for a brisk walk to the cliff walk, passed the mall and looped back to the hotel. It was then, when I opened my door with the room key, that I realized I had phoned my own room! No wonder they didn't respond! I did feel a little sheepish, but all was well. They went for a walk too, when they didn't find me in the downstairs lounge! 

Anyway this is the area on the clifftops where there is a shopping mall built into the cliffs! I didn't enter the mall, it seemed like a regular upscale shopping center with this grassy plaza in front. The tall, shiny buildings are bright and attractive, it's a very pleasant area. Then back down a a busy street to 28 July Street, a few blocks ot the hotel. I moved quickly, and it felt good.

We convened at 11:00 to meet our local guide Dante, who gave us an orientation walk similar to what I'd just done. Politely, I didn't say so, besides he gave history and geography lessons, always fascinating. Lunch followed where we tasted Chica morada (or something like that), which Jenn, Jeff, and I had tried in Reno, and which Mary Anne and I had enjoyed the day before. That put me at an advantage in the contest to guess the main ingredient! Mary Anne didn't know, so I must've learned it in Reno--the main ingredient is purple corn! No berries or anything else purple, though there are herbs and sometimes apples in diced chunks at the bottom of the glass.

We continued our walking along the busy street, through a pedestrian street to the back side of City Hall, where cats are cared for, apparently by the city! Here are just a few, as there were dozens wandering around.

Here is the front side of City Hall and an adjacent church 

beside this lovely park

where painters were selling their work. It seemed a very slow day for them, alas. Maybe midday is not the best time.

The last few days caught up with me, and I declined to accompany Mary Anne and Jim to a major museum and dinner, choosing instead to nap and read.

I am feeling anxious about the rain forest, as I have all along.  What was I thinking???!!!!! I will be relieved to actually see what it looks like there. We fly to Iquitos then travel on the Amazon 25 miles downstream to our lodge. The river is two miles wide there, I cannot conceive of that! I need to see it, and tomorrow I will!

Until then!

Take it easy, take it slow

A lovely lazy day yesterday. Changed hotels, walked along the cliffs above the sea, ate our way through a gourmet food tour. The pace will pick up significantly tomorrow as we fly to Iquitos and the Amazon; today will be leisurely; we'll meet our fellow travelers for lunch and tour the Miraflores neighborhood. Dinner on our own one final time.

But let's begin with yesterday morning--Here's the view from the top floor of our previous hotel, THe Dazzler, looking toward the sea:

 

You can see, among the tall buildings, typical flat box architecture ubiquitous to this place. Indeed, from the window of my new room is this house.

built on the roof of a building. These are not slums. 

These are buildings from our trip to Nazca Lines, the same flat-box architecture. I find them fascinating visually. They would be a good subject for studying cubism because the lines are simple, yet there are several layers. Anyway, enough musing about  these stacked up boxes!

After transferring to our new hotel, Jose Antonio Lima,

we walked the cliffs above the sea.

Several small parks line the area; this particular one in the Park of Love--

Lunch followed in yet another recommended cafe--La Paz, which means 'Peace,' with Picasso's dove as a logo. Fine food again! Following lunch we wandered to relax in our new digs until our evening Gourmet Tour!

Could it be??? A Pisco Sour?!!!

Three more restaurants followed--and more drinks! My favorite was pisco/passionfruit. The second restaurant, specializing in food from the Amazon, is known for its decorations, and our private room (There were twelve of us.) was decorated with large beads, creating a mosaic of jaguars and snakes.  The woman in the center is our lovely guide, Lourdes.

The bar upstairs, with a canopy of flowers!

The third restaurant was adjacent to an ancient pyramid, and the fourth, where we just strolled and had a lucema milkshake was in the Barranca, a rejuvenated neighborhood adjacent to Miraflores, where we're staying--until tomorrow when we fly to the Amazon!

From our companions on the Gourmet Tour, we heard about mosquitoes in the Amazon--LARGE! and at Machu Picchu--small and hard to see. We feel well-prepared with our pesticide infused clothes, our DEET and sunscreen. Plus we've begun taking anti-malarial drugs. I'm eager to meet our fellow travelers and begin the next stage of our grand adventure!

Just found a note slid under the door--the local guide arrives at 11:00, less than two hours from now! I'd better publish, post, and be on my way!

One more image for today, since I didn't capture them all myself...

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are all the Naazca Lines, including a few we didn't see.

Hummingbird, Don't Fly Away!

There she is--one of two hummingbirds!

Quite amazing, don't you think?

The Nazca Lines were created by ancient peoples well before the Inca civilization. Some say aliens assisted them...

An Other--World-ly Day

Okay, I've already attempted to tell this tale once and lost it all into cyberspace, so here goes again.  

It was strange from start to finish, though it grew bizarre as the day went on, becoming normal only after a Pisco Sour! That's just the kind of day it was! Now Lima is a big city and we know about cities, but the land around Lima is desert, stark desert that makes Reno look verdant.

So--planning for this day began about a year ago. I'd heard of the Nazca Lines, drawings, often miles long, on the desert floor some distance south of Lima. We contracted with a company for a day tour: four hours south on a bus, then a 90 minute flight to see the lines, reverse and we're back in Lima! Simple, right? Wrong again. Oh, those rose-colored glasses of mine; they just cannot imagine the complications. Now we did see the lines, and they were incredible, but let me share the day with you.

Up at 5:00--before breakfast is available, pre-arranged cab doesn't show, 30 minute ride to bus station, then a four-hour ride on a bus like this:

Let me show you what we saw en route: lots of desert, some of the driest country in the world is the Atacama Desert just south of here in Chile. It's arid strip of land continuing into Peru, caused by the strong rain shadow of the high Andes since the jet stream in the southern hemisphere blows from east to west.

Sometimes I saw waves crashing on the beach, sometimes clusters of houses, sometimes a small hotel with struggling palm trees, but the land was ceaselessly arid and totally barren.

Passing through a town we saw tuk-tuks: small, three-wheeled vehicles with barely room for a driver in front and two passengers crowded in the rear. They look like this:

And in action, they zoom through traffic like this:

Apparently fearless and amazing!

So after four hours-that's really kind of a long drive, you know, especially with a movie blaring in front of you as you sit in the front street of the upper story of a mega-bus, then zooming traffic accompanied by a crack in my windshield! Where has this bus been?

So we made it, transferred to a car for the drive to the local airport. Our driver, named either Cecil or Cesar, probably the latter, was gregarious and energetic, passing cars while gesticulating eagerly to Jim in the front seat. Mary Anne asked several times if we thought he was on cocaine--there's an indication for you!

Anyway we made it safely to the airport (and all the way back to Lima as you can tell by this blog!)

Here is the inside of our plane, a twelve-seater.

Note the GPS-type thing on the dashboard; that was  important to me later.

I said the land was arid--

but there were beautiful landforms--

though there were some areas of agriculture, still dry-looking,

and even a rather green valley--

Meanwhile the wind is increasing--significantly! Although when I took the above pictures we were heading into the wind and pictures were simple to take, as we began navigating across the wind to see the Nazca Lines, turbulance increased a hundred-fold at least! VERY rough! I saw most of the  drawings, but looking at my unstable iPad and at the moving ground from a bouncing aircraft, I was not able to get more than one photo, but it's good--

Oops! I can't locate it in my files, this blog program doesn't let me examine photos closely before inserting them, so I'll make a separate issue of it! It is one of the two hummingbirds, quite elaborate and dramatic. Mary Anne and I both have the following image, which seems to be Nazca graffiti or perhaps modern-day attempts.

Struggling through the winds on our return trip was a bit of a relief because at least I wasn't attempting to locate and photograph images on the ground. It was a rough ride, and I think almost everyone was struggling to focus and not succumb to sickness. Remember the GPS thingy? That was my focal point.  Not all succeeded, but we did.

Fortunately we had time to recover before Cecil Cesar picked us up. He and Jim negotiated a tour of Parracas National Park nearby. Although initially put off it by his erratic driving (every been off-roading in Toyota sedan?) We grew to appreciate the desert landscape extolled by Cecil Cesar

and enjoyed an excellent lunch at the cluster of buildings on the right. Fresh seafood, REALLY fresh! Then a bit of time to wander and look at widlife: cormorants, perhaps some small penguins, vultures and pelicans. Have you ever seen pelican beaks so colorful?

plus colorful boats and gulls. It was a lovely and relaxing spot!

Towards town (Parracas, not Lima unfortunately) we saw flamingoes! Take my word for it, they were a distance away, always a greater distance in a photograph.

So we made it back to the bus, said good-bye to Cecil Cesar, and sighed, ready to return to our comfy hotel in Lima, totally unaware of what was yet to come. This go-round, we were seated downstairs, which was fine as we were tired and had seen what there was to see for four hours on the way south, BUT Mary Anne and Jim were in what would be called bulkhead seats on a plane, and directly in front of them was a large tv monitor running action movies. The first was of the car chase-beat 'em up genre, but it soon ended, followed by Brad Pitt in World War Z. Though I was a row back and in a single seat across the aisle, the movie was unavoidable! Visual stimulation won out though I attempted to read until the lights went out. Even looking out the window was a failure because of reflections, it was an inescapable, terrible movie! Much like Alexander's Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day, we suffered through zombies! Yes! Zombies! Fortunately Brad saved the world for us just as we arrived in Lima, so we were able to sleep through the night without fearing catastrophe!

As a final little complication, none of us had the address of our lovely Hotel Dazzler! Jim saved the day by remembering that the Brazilian Embassy is just across the street. We had a lovely, calm, safe but effective driver. Perfect. Dinner at the hotel with a Pisco Sour and bedtime at 11:30.  A very long, other-worldly day. Fortunately we can laugh, and we did see the Nazca Lines!

After months of waiting and imagining, I am really here--in Lima, Peru!!!

Years ago I realized that people are more alike than different, and it follows then, that where they live is similar too. So it is with Lima. Our hotel, though it has a rather silly name--

is comfortable and modern and within walking distance of many things--including the Brazilian embassy right across the street!  Cars rush by honk-honk-honking as they do in any large city. People scurry, dogs dawdle, and an occasional bicycle bell chimes a warning.  We walked down the wide sidewalk on the median of a major boulevard:

and found our way handily to a supermarket with an amazing assortment of potatoes:

Artisan shops and a fabulous restaurant followed. Mary Anne and Jim are superb planners, and our first meal out was a feast of flavors, beginning with the Pisco Sour!

It did pack a punch--great fun! We look forward to many more!

Lunch was appetizers and desserts, more than ample for everyone and providing many novel flavors:

 

In spite of ample appetizers, never, never skip dessert! Sharing dessert is a good practice; it's just enough sweetness to end the meal.

Returning to the hotel, we all crashed and slept for three hours, which we ascribed totally to not having slept for two nights and not at all to the strong Pisco Sour!

Although Jamie says it doesn't rain in Lima, it's all semantics--it 'mists!' Fine, very fine water falls from the sky. But it wasn't cold and didn't inhibit our evening plans. We sought out an evening market, though most was covered with plastic because of the non-rain. Dinner was once again fabulous--a variety of grilled appetizers including mussels, scallops, big ole shrimp, incredible grilled octopus (Boil it first, the waiter said.) Then a single amazing entree 'Tacu, tacu.' Followed, of course, by two desserts. Sadly, there is no photographic record of that wonderful meal. We just ate it, every speck!

Tomorrow will be another early day as we take an excursion to see the Nazca Lines, more about that tomorrow. For now, Good night from Lima, I'm finally here!

While you were sleeping

Early, early this morning, before even a hint of morning sun, Mary Ann, Jim and I climbed into Jean's car (Bless you, Jean!) and drove to the Reno airport. Through two unanticipated detours--two!--because, we decided, construction contractors do not anticipate traffic at 4 a.m!

The hour before our flight passed quickly, as did the flight on the small plane to LAX--in the dark, I might add:

     

Change of terminals at LAX, an adequate breakfast, walking, reading, a little texting, lunch, and we boarded this plane:

I am seated in the very last row and was given the very last meal, but I am on the aisle with an empty seat beside me, so I opted not to move, Lights are off now, so I can't read (Yes, I could turn on my light, but the lights are obtrusive, so I'm writing to you instead.) I did doze some, but it's a noisy and bumpy ride--normal bumpy, not scary.

About three hours until we arrive in Lima, retrieve our bags, pass through Customs, and find the driver holding a sign with our names on it. After the drive to Hotel Dazzler Lima, we'll be off to bed--Ahhhhhh! Tomorrow I'll begin taking pictures you really want to see. Until then!