In order to get to Lima on the cheep I had to fly through Bogota, Columbia (not the cheapest option…that was to go through Miami but I thought that was a little excessive) which was an interesting experience. While travelling through Columbia I was expecting that there would be a lot of security, issues being a North American in Columbia and issues coming from Ecuador given the skirmish that transpired between the two countries. But in the airport I had no problems with security at all and didn’t even have my passport reviewed by anyone but airline personnel. The only hiccup I had was carrying a bottle of water (same in any airport) that caused the security guard to frisk me (but I’ve been frisked at other airports, so that was no big deal).
When I arrived in Lima I had to wait a bit for Susy to come and pick me up before heading to her place to meet everyone in her family, my home for the next week. That evening and rest of the day was very uneventful as all I did was hang out and get to know the family with which I was going to live and go for a walk with Diego (Susy’s oldest son) around the area. The next day though was a different story and I got to explore the city of Lima. From what Fernando (Susy’s husband) told me when I first arrived, Lima is a great city to live in as there are lots of things to do if you live there, but for tourists, there’s nothing to do, and as I found out on Sunday, he was right.
In the morning I headed out with Diego to visit the historic centre of the city. The main place Susy felt we should visit was the Plaza de Armas, the main square in the historic centre where the President lives. After we wandered around the square we headed over to the Plaza San Francisco which has monastery set up by the San Franciscan order. The highlight of this monastery are the catacombs below the church that house a couple thousand bodies, but when the archeologists went through, one of them decided to arrange the bones in interesting patterns of spirals and sticking skulls in the holes around the catacombs. It was more than creepy and confined since I couldn’t stand up anywhere in the entire network of catacombs. After Diego and I finished the tour there we headed off to the museum of the Spanish Inquisition, a museum detailing the inquisition’s activities in South America located in the building that housed the inquisition’s headquarters in Latin America. I spent the afternoon with Susy going down to the “tourist” are in Lima known as Miraflores. As this wasn’t Susy’s favorite place in the city, we just walked very quickly around the streets before heading back to the house.
Monday was a pretty uneventful day. I had my two hours of classes in the morning, then went for a walk around the house looking for an internet café and stopped at a coffee shop to relax and read a book (and search for AC….Lima is hot), and followed that up with another two hours of Spanish classes. Tuesday ran pretty much the same way (well, I did say there wasn’t much to do in Lima) but instead I headed down to Miraflores to explore Larcomar. While I was there I had to take out some money only to find out that I couldn’t use my card. With only $3 I had to do something quick or else I wouldn’t even be able to make it home that night. I called Canada to look for help and visited four different banks before I finally found one that would allow me to take money out, and from then on I only used that bank….but it was quite nerve-racking not being allowed to take out money.
Wednesday went much the same, but I opted to head down to the historic centre again which was pretty uneventful and I didn’t see anything new or different, I just thought that if I went without Diego I would spend more time exploring the area, but alas I didn’t, mainly because I didn’t feel 100% safe taking my camera out while I was down there. I was also quite harassed walking down one of the pedestrian streets. But luckily, instead of having class in the afternoon I went with Diego to the market to look at all the different fruits they have in Peru so I could try them all. I was fascinated with the number of different types of fruit they had (less than Ecuador though) but more entertained by Diego who was shocked that we had some of the fruit they had (like apples and bananas….although they did have 13 different kinds of bananas and entire fruit stands dedicated to only bananas).
That evening though I had a problem with Volunteer Visions in that they wanted to charge me for the bus ticket down to Pisco and the first two days I had with Susy and her family. I was irate that they wanted to charge me so much money (had I done it all on my own I would have paid less than a third of the cost) for something that I had already paid for in my volunteer fees (it included airport pickup and transportation to and from the volunteer project, it also required that I arrive two days ahead of the start of my project…ie. Arrive on Saturday). I was more than irate and didn’t feel that I should pay this and after all the issues I had with volunteer visions it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
On Thursday I headed to the National Museum which took a little more than a bit of guessing game of which bus to take as it was located in an area that I didn’t know. But by the time I made it there I had another problem….the museum was closed until I headed back to Canada, so instead I decided to head back downtown to Miraflores to spend the afternoon. That evening though we had a special treat as it was Diego’s birthday. As part of the birthday celebrations, Susy takes the boys to the local grocery store to go shopping for the birthday cake they want. A different but great way to celebrate your birthday.
Friday I went back to Miraflores to relax before I went off to Pisco. I also decided to look for the Canadian embassy to see if I could get any tourist information that I could use to show Diego pictures of Canada and some information about what life is like in Canada as he was quite interested about the differences between Canada and Peru. That evening I said goodnight and goodbye to the family.
Friday, March 28, 2008
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