Did you know....

Lima, Peru is the second largest desert city in the world? Wild! What is the first largest?

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! :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

So we´re a little late. Actually, it´s a wonder that we celebrated on the correct day because the not-so-famous, famous columbian musicians told us Thanksgiving was the 20th of November. We thought we missed it altogether!

We celebrated Thanksgiving with some new American friends, Paul and Dan from Long Island. These guys are our heros. They were visiting Peru because one day they were talking nonsense and said "Let´s go to Peru!" and eachone was waiting for the other person to say the trip was a crazy idea and couldn´t happen. But as the weeks passed, neither one did. So they bought plane tickets and came for a month. Paul, to get a month off from his job, actually had to quit his job and concequently move back in with his parents. Talk about a life decision. Paul and Dan made our Thanksgiving very happy with their Long Island accents, lack of pick-up lines (there were a few bad ones when we visited the Love Park in Lima, but mostly from all the pressure of the romantic poems written beautifully on the walls) and frequent beer-pong references. We´d forgotten about these days.

We went to a restaurant owned by Americans and ordered Philly-cheese steaks and other American joys. After our meal, the owners surprised us with a plate of turkey (with which we immediately thought "Is someone robbing us?" :P)

Later that night, again with our blotation devices, we went to, see Cyndi Lauper in concert. Some friends of ours in Lima told us she´d be in concert, they invited us. What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving Day than by singing Time After Time with good ol´ Cyndi!

We celebrated the day of thanks in the most American, South American way possible... in Lima, Peru with Cyndi Lauper and Philly Cheese steaks :)

Feliz Cumpleaños

No more cold showers! What a way to celebrate turning 26 on the 26th of November!

Hostel Friend´s House 368 Capac y Colon, 24 soles per night, includes a breakfast of eggs, bread, butter and jelly! (This is rare in South America.) We´re in heaven!

Here we are in Lima, Peru. The first question we asked the woman at our hostel before agreeing to a room was, are there hot showers? We quietly endured about 5 days of the ol´ ice-cube shower in Trujillo.

Lima turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Most people don´t even bat an eye at our presence, which is amazing (or maybe we´ve gotten less beautiful since Trujillo...) We´re in Miraflores, the nicest part of this huge, 8-millon-person city. We´re basically between downtown Lima and Barranco, the night life-bar district.

We arrived on my birthday and celebrated with our most expensive meal yet, $20 a person, in a beautiful Italian restaurant known for it´s homemade pasta (honestly, nothing compared to my dad's, but it was good for South American Italian food.) From there we walked with our bloatation devices (expanded stomachs... we coined the phrase after the eating effects on my birthday and Thanksgiving) to eat Italian ice-cream which was well worth the $6 and by far the best ice cream we've eaten in 2 years.

We then checked out a part of town called "Pizza Street" (there was a lot of pizza and also annoying people jumping out of each and every door, trying to convince us to enter their restaurant bar). We were tried and full and really just wanted a drink or two, so we didn't feel like old fogies going home at 10:00 on my birthday. Everything was going smoothly until a group of Colombian guys started dancing with us. They told us they're in a famous band (not impressed), they sing vallenatos, which is romantic music from Columbia (still not impressed), and that the minute we walked in the door, they knew they had found their future wives (hmm even less impressed). One of them asked Laura if anyone had ever been so forward with her before. Only 95% of the men she's met in the last 2.5 years, she told him. They invited us to their show the next night. We didn't go.

Little did I know, this was only the beginning of my birthday celebration that would last for 2 more nights...

Chao Trujillo!!!

We left Trujillo Tuesday night (November 25) to go to Lima. I must say... we were happy to leave. Trujillo was definitely not our favorite place so far, but it did have one saving grace; art, specifically street art. Every time we passed through the main plaza something was happening: a play with a crazy drunk man as the main character, a humorous reenactment of the history of Peru, a small musical group involving several men wearing tights, some drummers and a dramatic portrayal of slavery, an art exhibit about the flooding over the recent years in Peru... (perhaps an Arabic dancer?) It seemed the government was doing everything possible to promote the arts. Laura and I did have a taste of fame when we were asked to perform at Thursday Cultural Night and Friday Neighborhood Cultural Night. They even paid us (not exactly a hefty sum, we prefer to think of it in soles, the currency of Peru, than in dollars.)

Although our experiences with the people of Trujillo were not the best, we did meet two quirky, old ladies (sisters) that were kind enough to invite us to lunch one day and entertain us with their funny, but odd stories and their ability to eat A LOT of food (more than Laura!) This was our introduction to Lomo Saltado; a Peruvian favorite (beef with onions and tomatoes, rice and a heap of french fries), not exactly a lite meal, but in Peru and Ecuador you can never really eat too many carbs. They explained to us that they had decided to never get married, because they have seen that it only results in pain. (Oh and one of them is allergic to... cold; meaning she can't drink, eat or touch anything cold... hmmm interesting...) The other lady, Maria Ester, was so impressed with Laura`s dancing that she called it a dream. I would agree.

We did visit a few sites while we were there. A strange toy museum (we accidentally stumbled upon) that housed old toys and dolls dating back to 1900. We found the first room with dolls of all sizes and colors hanging from the ceiling to be a little disturbing, but not as weird as the odd puppets which we found later.

We spent one day visiting Chan Chan, the largest adobe brick city in the world, built in the year 1300 AD by the Chimus (before the Incas). We were able to visit one of the temples which has been restored. There are practically no remaining treasures from the temples, because it was looted and everything was stolen years ago. The structure itself was really impressive however and we met two nice French Canadian girls who we spent the day with. (We knew we would be friends immediately, because they were the only two other people who opted to take the cheap city bus to the site, get out and walk down the loooong dirt road to Chan Chan, rather than get in a nice tour van like the rest of the tourists.)

The next day we met up with our new Canadian friends again and went to visit the Huacas de la Luna y del Sol (where we had un up-close encounter with the famous "Peruvian Dog." A dog which is completely furless/hairless, besides a little tuff on the head and tail- not pretty!) The Huacas de la Luna y del Sol, built during the Moche period are 700 years older than the Chan Chan temples. We were able to enter the Huaca de la Luna which has been preserved in a much more natural state than Chan Chan. While Chan Chan has received several touch ups, La Luna still contains the original paintings and designs on the walls. It's diffcult to explain the feeling of being inside, but it's really incredible to think that almost 1500 years ago a completely different civilization inhabited that space and people stood and even died right where we were standing! We saw the exact place where they did human scrafices and years later found the decapitated remains of many people. We also learned that in most of these cultures when the leader died, his wife and all his other women (usually much younger than him, in their 20s) were also scraficed. (Now that doesn`t sound very fair.) Due to the position in which the remains were found (the women appeared to be trying to sit up), they have concluded that they were usually buried alive.

On Tuesday, after a visit to Huanchaco, the local beach, we said goodbye to our Canadian friends, rushed back to the hotel, grabbed our things, and in the chaos of almost missing our bus to Lima left our towels behind. We happily waved goodbye to Trujillo, more than ready for the next stop.

Trujillo Day 3

So the other day I said to Lori (and her infinite stomach problems) "You know... I´m carrying around about 5lbs of stomach medicine for you and you haven´t even had one problem yet... I mean, I was counting on you to have at least 2 or 3 by now and really lighten my load of pepto, immodium, etc." Well, she really took it to heart. I think she licked the sidewalk... yesterday we lightened my load of stomach medicine (honestly... I think she could have done better than one dose of Pepto and a few pills).

Trujillo, Peru: Day 2

1:00 a.m. - Loud knocking at our door. Two girls from Piura who we had never met, want to invite us to their room to drink wine....(ummm... what??)

10:00 a.m. - Shower in ice cold water

11:00 a.m. - Guy stops us on the streets to warn us about 2 guys known as "Gringa Hunters" who try to take advantage of foreigners. We had already met them the night before. (Good eye, chicas!)

11:30 a.m. - Run from one municipal office to another trying to get permission to do a show in the plaza. Everyone seems to have a different answer and interpretaion of our question... permission for what? where? are we speaking german?

12:00 p.m. - A taxi cab driver has fallen asleep while at a stoplight. Everyone else is beeping.

12:12 p.m. - Mom teaches her young son to pee on the open road. This site, although not a first, will never cease to amaze us.

12:15 p.m. - Loud screaming out of a car window (while waiting for taxi driver to wake up). Yes, that was directed at us.

3:30 p.m. - Trying to think positively about this city...