Just when I thought my exchange was winding down, I got a nice surprise. I was supposed to go on a trip to Brazil with my class in January, but was unable to go. Since the travel agency still had my money, my host mom and I decided to use that money to go to Peru!! I have always wanted to go to Peru, especially this year, being so close.
We left last Tuesday for Santiago. On Wednesday morning, at 6am, the plane was supposed to leave, but seeing as we were in Chile, it did not leave until 6:45. The plane ride was under three hours and went really quickly. We got breakfast (I ate waffles mmmmm) and a snack. We arrived at around 10:30 at Lima. The first thing I noticed was that while Chile is technically a third world country but it is hard to tell, you can tell that Peru is one. It was a lot more crowded in the city and kind of dirty. I still love it, although I think I almost died about 10 times just driving from the airport to our hotel in the newer area of Lima, Miraflores. In Peru they say the drive by "La ley de la selva" or the law of the jungle, and it sure seemed like it. For such a big city, it had very few traffic lights, and the ones that existed were basically ignored 80% of the time. I got used to it by the 3rd day, but it really scared me at first, and my host mom hated it.
The first day we had lunch at the mall right on the coast, Larcomar, at a Tony Roma's overlooking the beach. After lunch, we had a city tour. There were 15 other people on the tour with us, most of them from English speaking countries. It was so strange after so much time surrounded by Spanish to suddenly be in a group of all Enlish speakers. The tour took us through the area of Miraflores and then down the main highway to Old Lima. It reminded me a lot of old European cities. It was beautiful. We went to the central plaza, the oldest in Lima, and saw the old government building and the oldest church in Lima. After that, we walked to the oldest pub in Lima, El Cordeno, which has been open sincs 1905. There, we tried a popular Peruvian drink, Chicha Morada, a juice made of purple corn, sugar and lemon juice among other things. I really didn't like it the first time, but when I had it after that, it started the grow on me. After the pub, we went to the first monastery of Lima. We got to see all the wall murals that have been around for a hundred years or more. Then, we went underground to the catacombs of the monastery. Here, the priests and wealthy families of Lima were burried, over43000 of them. Because of earthquakes, none of the bodies were still intact, but arqueologists found the bones and they are all still underground in the tunnels. That night, we went to the restaurant Junios, where they had a live show of all the traditional Peruvian dances. It was also an all you can eat buffet of Peruvian food, so all around a good night. I love Peruvian food, because it is spicy and in Chile there is really no spicy food, and I have missed it a lot. There were a lot of dances, the show lasted over 2 hours, but I really liked it.
The next day, we had another tour, this time to the pyramids of the Incas outside Lima, called Pachacamac. They actually also belonged to three other native groups years before the Incas, but were expanded and rebuilt by the Incas most recently. They were about 15 minutes outside Lima, on the edges of the Atacama desert, the same desert in the north of Chile where Iquique and Arica are located. We saw a palace, and two temples, the temple of the sun and the temple of the moon. The moon temple is where all the Incan women live until they are chosen by the Incan king to be one of his brides, or to be a sacrifice. The women thought being chosen as a sacrifice was the highest honor, which I thought was strange. The sacrifices took place on the top of the sun temple. We got back from the tour in the afternoon. I had a nap and at night went with my mom to a restaurant, another buffet that had a dance show. We didn't stay long, though, because we had to get on a plane the next morning to go to Cuzco at 9 the next morning.
