Starting our journey & Lima, Perú

We started out the trip with lots of airport time. After meeting my parents in Denver and cramming into a Spirit Airlines flight (So tight!), we had a 12-hour layover in Fort Lauderdale until our departure to Lima. Because our layover was so long and during the day, we left the airport, and took a city bus to the edge of Miami. We walked around for a bit before realizing that we couldn’t get to the nearby beach on foot, ate at the Aventura Mall food court, and then returned to the airport. It wasn’t a very crazy adventure, but it got us out and about. We might have to do something similar on the way back home, when we have a 15-hour layover in the same place.

So after two days of engaging in transportation to get to Peru, we finally arrived in Lima on Friday evening. Our hostel room was small for the four of us, but the showers had hot water, which may not be the case for the rest of our journey. Technically, the hostel is in Miraflores. It’s a district of Lima, but seems to be treated like a suburb or an entirely different (fun, safe, expensive) city.

We started out our exploration of Miraflores at the Parque de Amor. It’s on a cliff along the beach, and has park benches inspired by Gaudí’s Park Güell (with the addition of love quotes on the park benches).There were so many people exercising in this area of town! Below us, novice surfers were practicing getting onto their boards in the small waves.

El Parque de Amor in Miraflores

Trying to fit in.

Walking down from to the beach from the high-up parks in Miraflores

Limeños (and tourists) getting their surf on

Walking north, we went into the Inka Market (artisan/touristy stuff, with lots of alpaca wool products, all supposedly handmade, even though each stall had identical items), and went on to Huaca Pucllana. It is a pre-Incan ruin in the middle of the city. We had a nice guided tour, learning about the Huaca woman- baby- and toad-sacrificing habits. We also saw our first of many native Peruvian hairless dogs. They're so ugly, and require sunscreen in the summer. This particular one was named Munay, the same name as our hostel. We learned that it means beloved in Quechua.

See how the bricks are vertical? That’s to help with earthquake damage. Smarties!

Ruins, smack dab in the middle of the city.

Munay. Petting him was like petting a chalkboard.

Now that we’d seen quite a bit of non-residential Miraflores, it was time to check out Lima. We taxied in with a crazy driver to the main plaza. We wandered around the nearby neighborhoods, and popped in at St. Francis of Assisi church. The monastery was still in use, but a fraction of the size it had been in the past. The courtyard walls were covered with tiles that were styled like Seville, Spain, but the faces of the cherubs were more Peruvian. Likewise, a Última Cena (Last Supper) painting in one of the galleries contained Peruvian elements: facial structure, food served, the second Peruvian hairless dog of our trip). We were guided through the catacombs, the bones of which had been separated and sorted into the different parts, rather than remaining with the bodies of those in Lima’s first graveyard.

Before calling it a night, we stopped in for the all-time Peruvian drink: a pisco sour. Pisco is a hard alcohol distilled from grapes, and it is made only in Peru. We then experienced some traditional Peruvian foods: anticuchos (skewered cow hearts) and pollo a la brasa (rotisserie chicken). Can you guess who ate the anticuchos?

Pisco sours

Pisco sours and concha, Peru’s solution to bar peanuts. They’re fried corn kernals – crunchy, but not tooth-breakinly so. Think corn nuts. But more delicious and addicting.

Anticuchos