¡¡AMIGOS!! ¿Como esta? ¡Bien! Anna and Mark coming at you from South of the boarder, way south. We had a great time our first week we spent in the Barranco District of Lima. Our next little leg of our journey is to move to Miraflores District of Lima. We had walked there some days ago when Mark got sandals but we didn´t go to check out our next hostel, so we weren´t sure what to expect. We whooped it up the night before in a super sweaty dance off, so the humid next morning was a little slow. The Barranco hostel has a laundry service that we took advantage of. Anna inched out of bed as Mark brought a giant plastic bag full of wet socks, unders, and clothes to Betty, the hostel caretaker. He handed it to her and she said it would be done by 7pm, we should have thought it through considering check out was at 10:30am.
So the packing of bags began and the tossing out of junk did too. When we finished, we didn´t want to lug three cumbersome bags around, so Betty tossed our stuff in a closet next to the kitchen. We then strapped on our swimsuits and headed to the beach for the day. Mark finally learned something and doused himself in an extra thick layer of SPF 55 infant edition sunblock. Ready to take on one of his favorite orbs in the sky. Anna picked a spot at the beach and threw a towel down on the rocky shore, while Mark paid S/.10 (10 soles) to rent a chair with a matching umbrella. Do you worst sun!!! He then headed into the water to compare California´s Pacific to Peru´s. Both salty. Peru´s is murkier, warmer, and the waves crash right on the shore. The surfer wait for waves out further than the California surfers would go, but they wouldn´t ride the waves very long. Maybe because the beach wasn´t sand but rocks the size of golf balls to foot wide cobble stones.
Since the waves were crashing twenty feet in front of our umbrella, it was hard to judge the tides. After and hour of Anna lying on her towel bronzing, a quick wave blasted up her torso soaking her precious towel. It took the whole beach by surprise, knocking chairs, umbrellas, bags, even clumsy red tourist over. The chair rental guys went into panic mode, sprinting up the shore yanking umbrellas out of the awesome Pacific that she swallowed whole.
A bit disoriented and peeved that our calm day at the beach was washed away, we decided to go to Rustica restaurant, right there, and get some Pisco Sours. Turns out you can´t just get drinks during their buffet. We stood there, looking touristy, staring, thinking...looking. Then walked about twenty feet away. Stopped. Looked. Thought some more... then like typical tourist, we turned around, pulled out our cash, super tucked our tails between our legs and headed in.
Wow there was too much food to process. Different kinds of ceviches, tomales, steaks, pollos, rice dishes, noodles, lasagna, pizza, Asian dishes, wontons, sushi, stir fry, soups, soups, soups... Anna went and loaded up on ceviche, while Mark strategically put a scoop of everything he could fit on one plate at a time... And went back six times. Damn good food!
Feeling full, we went up the long staircase (!) covered in good graffiti to wait for our laundry in a small park with sloping grassy hills surrounded by flowers, where we´ve seen local old, homeless or both lying down for a siesta. Mark wasn´t as red as he could have been, but he did get sun plus the huge lunch and beers and the partying the night before meant lose the shirt and enjoy a siesta. Anna pulled out a ridiculously big edition of Vogue magazine while Mark felt the tranquility of watching hoards of parrots fly by while cloud watching under Peruvian skies (© Dream Theater, 1996.) What felt like ten seconds later, Anna said was thirty minutes of snoring, a city landscaper was yelling in Spanish and making gestures to find the shirt. What´s the deal with Peru and ugly guys losing their shirts?
After we got another sign to book it we decided to write some post cards then check on our laundry. Betty wasn´t too thrilled to see us at 5:30. She reminded us that it was 7pm for pickup. We said we had nowhere to go and asked to sit on the couches to wait. That´s when we met another employee there how spoke good English and was from the Bay Area. This super talkative guy and Mark somehow started discussing the whole 2012 end of the Mayan calendar. He is a Peruvian and said that it´s funny how Americans are taking this whole thing to a level of morbidity that the Bible talks about and making it into a conglomerate religious corporation style of money making, that doesn´t have anything to do with the numerical equation of the Baktun. Very smart and nice guy. Betty gave us the laundry and we headed to Miraflores.
We boarded a taxi and the driver knew the exact address of Kokopelli hostel. As we passed by the Barranco locals, the Policia were wearing full riot gear and stopping cars for random checks. The cops were blowing whistles and just as Mark made eye contact with the head whistle blower, our taxi driver gunned it and we flew through the check point. Random.
We got to Kokopelli at twilight and saw that the bottom story of our building was an Irish pub called Houghlihan´s. One, it was incredibly random to find an Irish pub in Lima, two, we had a room above it, three, Kokopelli has it´s own bar up on the fourth story, four, it was St. Patty´s Day. We couldn´t have planned it any better. So we showered and threw on our greens and started to get our drink on. At the upstairs bar, we got a free shot with everyone else, that was incredibly weak but still free. There were thirty shot glasses lined up, ten of each color making the Irish flag. The bartender yelled out a short speech, "To St. Patrick for kickin´the snakes out of Ireland and making room for the rats to bring in the Black Plague!" Drank some beers then headed to the pub. There were about twenty people standing on the sidewalk in front that looked like they were just smoking cigs. Mark heard there was a beer drinking competition inside, so he wiggled through the masses, only to get provocatively grabbed around the midsection and told the bar was full and that all the smokers were waiting to get in. Makes sense as Irish pub in Lima would have lines on St. Patty´s Day.
We decided to walk the streets since night time in Miraflores is sort of like a festival. We got around one block to find out exactly where we are. It was the park full of little cats that we stopped at days earlier to switch the sandals and eat pbj. We felt a little more comfortable recognizing this section of the city now. The park wasn´t full of just cats this night. There were booths set up with live bands playing and hundreds of people. We danced a little then started back a different route than before. We found something that looked like an alley that turned out being twenty restaurants with hustlers trying their hardest to get customers into their place, not the place next to them or next to them. They were waving menus in our face, shouting drink offers at us and almost pulling us to a table. One place move their tables out of the way and set up spotlights with music bumping with guys and girls doing a high energy syncronized dance. the girls weren´t wearing much. The customers that were sitting there looked really awkward while trying to eat their dinner with booties shaking over their food.
We went back to our hostel to drink beers at the Kokopelli bar. Mark bought a bottle of Pisco and chugged it and almost threw up. Not the same without the Sour. Shortly after, it was lights out. Our first Peruvian St. Patrick´s Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment