Sierra & Alan See the World!: Lima, Round Two: Barranco

On Tuesday morning, Alan and I had some time to kill before we headed to the airport for a flight to Lima. We walked around the lake to see the Yavari, a 19^th-century boat with a crazy story. It was constructed in England, and shipped to southern Peru. In pieces, the ship was loaded onto a train for several days, and then carried on the backs of animals through the Andes for SIX YEARS before arriving at Lake Titicaca. It was then used for about a century as the main cargo ship between Perú and Bolivia. The amazing history is the best part about this thing, though. Touring it was less than interesting. You know, it’s a ship.

The Yavari

We spent the rest of our day reading on park benches and eating food.

Alan finally found chicha for sale! Remember, corn beer that's been fermented by saliva?

Even kids drink chicha. Even police officers on duty drink chicha. EVERYONE drinks chicha.

It tasted sweet. It also required chugging, as these glasses were not part of the sale.

We got into Lima late in the evening, and with the help of a taxi driver’s entire team found our way to the road of our hostel. That wasn’t the end of it, though. Our hostel is on a pedestrian-only street that’s under construction, and once we finally found the place we were told that our room was actually several blocks away. So lots of stairs and another taxi ride later we found ourselves in a room with three bunk beds. It’s a strange set-up; even though we were told that this is a private room we kept packing our things up before we leave, so as not to annoy our roommates who surely are coming. On the flip side, we have a SHOWER with HOT WATER. Considering that we hadn’t bathed for almost a week, this is blog-worthy.

We’re staying in Barranco, a Lima district just south of the one we stayed in last time we were there. It’s supposed to be the more hip, bohemian district. It has some charm, but there isn’t much to do. We took our last couple of days in Perú pretty slowly, for this reason. We walked around (A LOT. Alan is on a mission to find a microbrewery called Cumbres. Despite our HOURS of searching, it's just not happening.), mastered the public transportation system, stumbled upon a food festival, went to a couple of museums, and read books in plazas. I love giggling to David Sedaris’ descriptions of his North Carolina childhood, and when I look up, BAM: There’s an Inca woman spinning thread.

I'll just skim over these last few days with some pictures:

Our first day in Barranco, we were walking along a cliff overlooking a beach. I commented that the view was almost exactly like the one we’d experienced in Miraflores. We turned around and noticed that we were almost exactly where we had been while walking in Miraflores. There was the dock that blocked us from entering because the restaurant was closed! There were some new surfers practicing their skill! So we went to Miraflores for the day, walking around and reading in plazas over there