LimaLimon

So we´ve been trying our best to put on our tourist shoes.

On Friday, we visited the noisy, bustling, smelly, interesting center of Lima. Here we visited the Museum of the Inquisition, which explained all the things that happened to heretics, rebels and non-catholics in the 1900s in Lima... creepy, but interesting.

We also visited a church which has an altar with a famous painting of the crucified Christ. It was painted 350 years ago by a Peruvian slave. Soon after being painted, there was a huge earthquake and basically everything in Lima was leveled. This wall was the only thing left standing. A church was built around this wall. It is an impressive, miraculous painting (from afar at least).

At night, we went to a Peña, a live, Afro-Peruvian music show at a fancy bar. With Lori´s cajon interest (a cajon is an Afro-Peruvian drum, more on that later) and my dance interest, we were totally wowed by De Rompe Yoraja´s show. The music was amazing, the dancers were stupendous and the show in general was reeeeally funny (and we only understand about 20% of all jokes in spanish). Definitely worth the $10 cover. I did sign Lori up for something. (Three days of birthday celebration isn´t too much is it?) Come to find out, she had to go on stage with all the other birthday girls. I thought she would kill me as the singer sang to the group. But then, I thought maybe she´d kill me using the torture methods from the Museum of the Inquisition when they made her dance in front of everyone. I could see her sending me the look of death. At the end, she recieved a small cajon for her participation and at that moment I saw her hatred for me instantly disappear. Thank God. No seriously, I was (and still am) literally thanking God.

The next day (Saturday) we took an Israeli friend from our hostal to the hospital. She got star treatment at the hospital where her doctor was also Israeli. She even got to speak in Hebrew to him.

From there we went to some classes that we heard about for the cajon (the drum, for Lori) and for Festejo (an Afro-Peruvian dance, for me). We left 3 hours later with swollen fingers and an aching back (Lori) and jello legs that could hardly walk (me). They were impressed with these talented gringas! Lori asked intelligent cajon questions (women don´t usually play the cajon and definitely not gringas) and I, thanks to the other two, left-footed students in my dance class, learned quickly how to shake my money maker. (the other two people were completely lost, i think they were actually country line dancing...)

Anyways, we stumbled back to the hostal... tired, smelly and with swollen fingers but forced ourselves to take advantage of the last opportunity to see live Afro-Peruvian music and went to another Peña with our eyes sleepily, half open. We did one more cheers to Lori for her birthday and decided we are not cut out for this party life.

Sunday we visited our friend in the hospital and thought about asking the doctor if maybe he could check out our blotation devices. Is it normal to seem like you have an orchestra in your stomach? Our friend was much better.

We went to the quiet but impressive museum of Pedro Osma. He collected colonial art, furniture and silver stuff. It was beautiful. At approximately 7pm we called it a night.

That´s LimaLimon in a nutshell my friends! :)