Getting into and the hell out of Lima

Well, I made it to Peru with all of my faculties and belongings intact. This despite spending 12 hours in the Miami airport and realizing that my Spanish is even worse than I feared. Okay, onto the update which will flat out skip the many sordid tales that I have from my brief stay in Miam. Hint: Au Bon Pain, which used to be myfallback airport food stop completely let me down, including but not limited to being served powdered and shaped scrambled eggs. Gross.

So, I arrived in Lima at 9:30 last night. I decided to take one of the rather expensive official cabs from the airport to avoid the embarassment of being robbed and/or violated in some uncomfortable way during my first night in Lima. Anyway, the cab ride was interesting. First of all, I will never under any circumstances drive in this country, and in fact I am now avoiding any street crossings that are not absolutely necessary. Case in point: the driver, who was a very nice guy and well dressed to boot, came upon a group of teenagers crossing the street doing their best pimp strolls and honked his horn. The normal order of events as far as I´m concerned would be for him to then slow down a wee bit while the teenagers got out of his way. But no, this is Lima! Instead, he gunned it and SWERVED at the teenagers! The last three of the group ended up diving onto the sidewalk (we´re talking full on, headfirst, the endzone is half a yard away type dive) before hurling some choice vulgarities into the night air. So there I am, half an hour in Peru and I´ve already shit my pants and been rendered completely speechless. Then the driver calmy turns his head to the back seat and asks me about night clubs and whether I like girls. I gathered myself and told him that I prefer dark bars and older women, which he did not find amusing. Anyway, he kept pounding me on the girl subject, to the point where I was a tad on the uncomfortable side. Finally, I realized what he was getting at, he wanted to take me to a brothel, from which he must get some kind of finders fee. Needless to say, I calmly told him that I hoped I was still young and attractive enough not to have to pay for sex. Still, he gave me his card and his cell phone number in case I needed ANYTHING during my stay in Lima. Wow, what an introduction.

I picked a random hostel from lonely planet in a crappy part of town that had the upside of being very close to the bus station. The hostel was nondescript and I was late enough in arriving that I didn´t have the chance to meet any other fellow travelers. So, my first night was spent unpacking and repacking my bag, somewhat compulsively I must admit, and watching cable TV in spanish with english subtitles. While this may sound boring, it was right up my alley and provided the added benifit of helping me out with my Spanish.

Speaking of my Spanish, I know that I´ve mentioned this several times already, but I am awful. Basically I can speak 12 words that people understand and then must listen for any of those 12 in return. When this fails, which it almost always has so far, I simply start gesturing, which works surprisingly well. I am determined to become at least semi-passable in horribly spoken Spanish by the time I come back to the states. Thankfully, every Peruvian that I have met so far is more than understanding. In fact, when most realize that I can´t understand what the fuck they´re saying they simply figure out what I need or where I´m going and then proceed to to talk to me in Spanish as if I can. In this way, several people have already related to me many of what are undoubtedly interesting stories and anectdotes, none of which I can pass on to you.

Sticking to my plans, I woke up relatively early, grabbed a quick bite and a cup of instant coffee and then caught the first bus to Huaraz. As luck would have it, I ended up sitting next to a young Mexican woman named Julianna who spoke excellent English and was more than happy to indulge conversation starved me with hours of talking. Originally from Mexico City, she had worked as a health and safety consultant all over South and Central America and had plenty of travel tips and stories. The bus ride itself was actually quite enjoyable with quality movies (¨Dance with me¨ anyone?) a bus-wide bingo game for free tickets and amazing scenery. The first hour of the ride was spent simply getting out of Lima and the miles of shanty towns that surround it. We then crawled along the coast with steep, crumbling sandstone on one side and sheer cliffs dropping down to the ocean on the other. As we began to travel inland the terrain became more mountainous and more agricultural. I saw sugar cane, potato and banana fields all right next to one another, which I thought was pretty damn cool. Then came the mountain passes, which were amazing. The mountains were absolutley barren save for the occassional very large cactus with craggy rock outcroppings and caves dotting the hillside. In no way am I doing it justice with my words here, and I didn´t take any pictures from the bus, but trust me it was beautiful.

So, after 4 hours of switchbacks and a 5000m(!!) pass, the bus descended into Huaraz. The city is surrounded by mountains on all sides as it is located at the juntion of the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Huayash ranges. It is much prettier than Lima, which I was somewhat surpised by considering that 90% of the city was demolished by a massive earthquake in 1970 and so all of the construction is relatively new. Thankfully the city is also relatively compact and safe, so I´ve been able to walk around without much worry.

Unfortunately that´s really all I´ve got right now, as I basically arrived in town, found a hostel and walked around a bit before sitting down to email and let everyone know that I´d arrived safely. I plan on spending the next few days exploring the city and getting everything ready for a trip into the mountains. I´m also going to find a new hostel tomorrow, although the one I´m in is perfectly clean and friendly. However, since I´m traveling by myself I´d really like to find one with more of a social atmosphere so that I can have some people to talk to and hopefully go on some adventures with. I´ll be posting what is (hopefully) a more exciting entry after a couple of days once I figure things out a bit more. Until then..........