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The whole concept of time in Peru is very different than western standards. There really is no “on time” or “late.” Things just sort of happen, and they happen much slower than I am used to. Luckily, it’s not as slow as Spain, where you can barely accomplish one errand a day. There is no 4-hour siesta here, but stores do randomly close during the day and I have yet to see any posted hours. Matt and I tried to go to a bar last night and on the door read a sign: If the outside light is on, come inside. The light was off, so we headed to another place. We just wanted a burrito so we returned to the place we had our anniversary margarita in. The same 8-year-old kid was serving us and we ordered a drink and a burrito to share. Well, he must have made the drink himself because the cook wasn’t even home (the restaurant kitchen is the house kitchen). We finished our coco loco and waited…and waited. The restaurant is also a surf shop and a group of people came back from a surf trip while we were waiting. One of the guys happened to be the cook’s son and we started talking and realized that his mother wasn’t home and he had no idea where she was. The kid didn’t tell us any of this and just assumed if he waited she would show up and he wouldn’t have to tell us anything. In the US this would be unheard of, a cook missing and a little boy taking in orders like she’s there. We must have waited a half hour before she finally showed up to make us a burrito.

But in Peru, no worries. Time does not matter like I think it does. Hopefully I can adjust.

Another interesting thing is that most houses and restaurants (which are really people’s homes) are open-air. There’s usually a roof over the kitchen and bedrooms, but our whole hallway in our house has no roof. I find this amazing because everything here is painted with water-soluble paint. Huanchaco does not rain and people have faith in that because if it did, anything that was painted would melt right off.

I had my first day of work today and I showed up and sat down to speak with Marilyn, the head of the restaurant (who I think is just a few years older than me). We talked for a bit and then she told me she didn’t need me today. So I have another day off (the restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday), but I shouldn’t be frustrated because it’s on the Peruvian timetable. Hopefully I’ll work tomorrow and today I’m just going to rest because I’ve had a nasty head cold for the past few days. Sra. Wilma cut a giant stalk of her aloe plant in the garaje and soaked it in water. I’ve been chewing up the pulp and gargling it. She swears by it. I still feel sick, but I’ll keep trying.

Today we settled into our new home and walked around the town. We will live with Wilma for the next month, who is an older woman who lives alone in a nice house one block from the beach, and about a 5 minute walk to both our volunteer sites. She has a nice garaje, which is more of a courtyard filled with chairs and a garden that I saw a hummingbird visit this afternoon. We have our own room and a kitchen (yay!). The only other lodger (from Pittsburgh) left this morning. Wilma’s getting her kitchen painted because somehow salt water rises from the ground and marks up the walls, at least that’s what I understood. So for now, we are sharing the kitchen with her, which is fine. She made us breakfast this morning (toast and jam and tea) since we didn’t go shopping yet. When we walked out the door there was a produce cart, so we bought enough produce for the next few days. apparently it’s cheaper to buy produce from the cart than the mercado. I would think it’s fresher, too. Wilma watched us pick out what we wanted and when I grabbed a head of lettuce she yelled at me not to get it. When we were ready to pay, she came over and inspected our purchases and yelled at the guy that our spinach was limp and he shouldn’t sell it. Once the quality and price was approved by our new Senora, we brought our stuff inside.

It’s nice to already know the language. I may not be fluent, but I know enough to ask questions and understand her. No more going without hot water for a week like I did in Spain. (her water is heated by electricity but we only get water from the town from 7am-3pm. After that there’s a reserve tank on the roof but we are encouraged to not use it). We walked through and around and through town again, trying to find the lavanderia to wash our clothes. The girl who left this morning gave us some helpful tips about a lot of stuff, one of them being the lavanderia. There’s really only one in town with a sign, that charges sl. 5 to wash and sl. 6 to dry (Mr. Phil’s). But on the other side of town there’s a place called Chill Out that will do a bundle of laundry (wash and dry) for sl. 5. Chill Out also has a swimming pool (which is an in ground tub about the size of 4 bathtubs, but deeper), free wi-fi (hooray for Matt), food and happy hour from 6pm-12am (3 beers for sl. 10). We tried to bring our laundry there, but their dryer was broken and we couldn’t get our clothes until tomorrow. So we had to go to Mr. Phil’s for now, but we can hang our clothes to dry in our garaje.

We also (finally) found the grocery store that has the best deals- El Hornito on the street La Ficus. It’s a tiny jam-packed store full of almost anything you want, except nuts. They were almost out of fresh bread, so we grabbed a few rolls and now know to get there earlier in the day. We bought TP, soy milk, jam, quinoa cereal (the photo looks like oatmeal, we’ll see tomorrow), maca cereal, rice, quinoa, beans I’ve never seen before, the giant corn called chocle, spaghetti, sauce and swiss cheese that tastes more like cheese curds-it’s high in water content and tastes a little sour. The holes in the cheese are very small. I like it better than Swiss cheese. Tonight we meet with Peter and Juany, who run the show, to take care of our schedule.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been married a year now. It feels like our wedding wasn’t that long ago, but we did accomplish a lot in that year and here we are now in Peru. What a nice way to spend our anniversary. We spent the morning looking at the Sechin ruins. I tried to bargain for a taxi ride there, the lady that runs the hostal said we should pay no more than sl. 3 for a mototaxi to the ruins. Mototaxis are quite bad-ass. It’s a motorcycle that ends at the driver’s seat, then a sort of rickshaw contraption is attached to it with two wheels. The rickshaw barely fits three people and is covered in vinyl that is personalized by the driver. On the way there, they tried to charge us sl. 5 to the ruins but I insisted that we were told no more than 3. Then the taxi drivers banded together and explained it was Sunday, blah blah blah. I didn’t believe them and luckily someone came from across the street and said they’d take us for sl. 3. Ha! I worked hard to save that 60 cents

Anyways, the ruins were really interesting. We were the first to arrive and it looked like a ghost town. I thought for sure the taxi driver was going to murder us for bargaining the price and dump us in the ruins, but luckily all went well. The ruins had a dated museum with a lot of artifacts recovered from Sechin and other sites as well. There was a mummy from the Wari tribe which freaked me out a bit. She was a sacrifice and most of her skin remained on her body—so it was strange not to see a skeleton. She had her upper lip still attached to her mouth…it was unnerving. The ruins themselves were interesting, especially since it’s still in the process of being unearthed. They ran out of funding in 1999 so it’s been abandoned until some rich old dude wants to pay for archaeologists to come back. The whole front wall and main steps were exposed. On the walls where detailed petroglyphs of warriors and lots of decapitated heads and eviscerations. There was a hiking trail that went up the mountain the ruins were on, so we could see from above. There’s supposed to be a bunch of warriors buried in the earth that haven’t been discovered yet.

That afternoon, we caught a bus to Trujillo, which is the city closest to Huanchaco. It made a lot of stops but the drive was really beautiful. It’s mostly sand dunes, dotted with shanty towns and lush agricultural fields. I don’t know where the water comes from for the farming, because the desert looks pretty dry. I saw a lot of corn fields and a few rice paddies. When we arrived in Trujillo, we bartered for a taxi straight to Huanchacho and settled into our new place. We took a walk along the beach, checked out the boardwalk and there were about 4 guys fishing off the pier (in the dark at 8pm). We found a little surf shop/restaurant called The Wave and had some yummy Mexican food. Veggie quesadillas and taquenos, which are like mini burritos that are deep fried. It tasted like mozzarella sticks if the breading was a wonton wrapper. We shared a margarita, watched the waves and was entertained by our 10 year old waiter.

We decided to stay in a hostal in the centro district of Lima (where
it was almost 1/3 the price and a little shabbier) and we visited the Museo de la Inquisicion. Lima was the seat of the Inquisition and people were sent from other South American countries to be tried and persecuted. Luckily, people were given many chances before the torture to confess and only 40 people (I think) were killed there. Not that that was good, but compared to Spain, much more were spared. We got to see the rooms and go underground to see some tunnels and pits. It was creepy but not as much as the catacombs of San Francisco. At that church we took a tour and saw an amazing library (with spiral staircases and dust-covered, rotting books) straight out of Harry Potter, according to our guide. The catacombs were really strange. I think 35,000 people were buried there, regardless of class or wealth. In the past it used to be the burial grounds. Only until later on was it for just patrons and the monks of the cathedral. We went into one room on the main floor that had some beautiful gigantic paintings and a big hole in the floor with a staircase. We didn’t go down it because immediately at the bottom was a skull on top of a grave. Off to the side was an entire human skeleton. I thought at first how disrespectful it was to have a tourist viewing of a dead guy, but then I realized he paid big bucks to be buried in the cathedral. Maybe he was very proud to be show off his body as well, so we know he was buried there. Maybe.

The catacombs are three levels underneath the church filled with bodies. We only visited the first level, which archaeologists had been to as well. The archaeologists categorized the bones, so one room was just a pit of femurs. There were some intact skeletons, but not much because their method of burial was to put the body into a pit, cover with lime, layer with up to 4 more bodies. When they had decayed to just bones, they were moved to another pit. There was a large stone well under the center of the cathedral that was 30 meters deep, filled with bones. The top layer was arranged in an artistic swirling design of bones. Not my kind of art.

We enjoyed walking around the plazas and at one we made friends with two artisans. One of them wanted to talk politics with Matt and we must have been there for at least an hour and a half, talking about government systems. The quiet guy was a 17 year old boy from the Amazon who is learning the trade from his mother. I think we had our Spanish immersion of the day chatting with them. Everyone we meet has been so friendly and interested in why we’re here and how we like Peru.

We got to spend a few hours with Effie’s cousin one day, which was nice. She took us to the mall, which she really liked (it IS beautiful, an open air mall on a cliff overlooking the ocean). We walked around the mall a bit, got to see her condo (which is beautiful. You can have a maid for $1 a day in Lima, but she doesn’t have one, at least not right now. She does have her own personal carpenter who made all her furniture in her apartment. She says it’s cheaper to design it yourself and hire someone to make it than go to the store. That sounds good to me!) She also took us to a restaurant about a block from her condo, where Effie’s aunts like to go to when they visit. It was a good restaurant, but it had American prices for the food and very attentive service. It was very different than how we had been eating, but we wanted Ana Maria to show us her favorite things to do, and I won’t complain about good food. I got to try chicha morada, which is a juice made from purple corn. It’s really good and is good for you as well. We have been eating great non stop in Lima. There’s a street in the centro that has 3 vegetarian restaurants, which we have visited them all. I was worried that it would be hard to be vegetarian in Peru, but the main concern is getting to try everything there is.

The photo is a a random dance we saw in Lima Centro. There was a live brass band and marinera dancing, which involves “much romatic handkerchief waving.” It was fun to watch because the dancers were young and really seemed to enjoy what they were doing. There’s going to be a big marinera competition coming up, but I’m not sure exactly where or when. There was also a horse demonstration nearby as well, but they just trotted in circles. The kids loved it.

After 2 short flights and a loong layover in Costa Rica, we are in Lima, Peru.

We spent our first two nights in Miraflores, a suburb of Lima where there’s apparently more going on. We walked around our new neighborhood, which has a bunch of casinos, churros and money changers on almost every corner, they supposedly give you a better deal. I changed my dinero at the casaac de cambio, which is sort of in between a bank and a guy on the street. I’m not ready to haggle for changing money yet.

On our first real day, we walked almost the entire day. Hooray for my new sneakers, Saucony Jazz lo-pro. My feet don’t hurt yet and I don’t feel jet lagged. We walked along the cliffs, where it was basically a well maintained park friendly to walkers, bikers, runners and dog-owners. It is nice to see people walking everywhere or on crowded buses. We visited the Parque de Amor, which is along the ocean side cliffs and has a giant sculpture of people making out. There’s also a handful of couples at the park, also making out. There’s a beautiful Gaudi tiled bench system in the park that reminded me of Parque Guell, designed by Gaudi in Barcelona. We wandered around town, ate at a Hare Krishna place where we had a 3 course lunch for about $3. We took an afternoon siesta and then saw La Borgia at the movies. While buying the tickets, the woman made sure we knew it was in Spanish, she seemed worried about us going in there. It wasn’t easy to understand–not only Castellano spanish, but more like Spanish Inquisition Castellano. I know we got the plot and some of the dialogue. Not bad for Day 1. It was all about the Borgia family and their rise to power. It’s amazing how the Catholic Church can be seen as so conservative now, usually with history it’s the past that was puritanical. This guy, Rodrigo Borgia became the pope, had lots of sex with young girls, his daughter and he encouraged his sons to basically rape and pillage people all the time. Maybe my Spanish isn’t up to par yet, but that’s what I got from the film.At night we took a taxi to Barranco, another suburb of Lima on the cliffs. It has more colonial architecture and is more of a party scene than Miraflores (which didn’t seem like much of a party scene). Within 5 minutes of us getting out of the taxi, we were offered weed, coke, and free pisco sours. Instead, we walked around the plaza, looked in at the bars and settled on Outre Mama bar, with live Afro-Peruvian music. I’m not totally familiar with the money here yet, basically one us dollar is about 3 nuevo soles. Only they writes the money like this sl. 15 equals 15 soles. I went to order some wine, the menu said sl.55 and my eyes tell me it’s 1.55 soles for a glass of wine (it didn’t say it was by the bottle, every thing else on the menu was by the drink) so i ordered TWO things of wine….me thinking I’m getting this great deal for a glass of wine (50 cents a glass!) Ha, ha. Luckily I figured my mistake while they were corking the bottle and was able to talk them into letting me just buy a glass. I’m sure they were disappointed to find out I was a cheap gringa. Oh, well. It was Peruvian wine and I didn’t really like it. It was very alcoholic and high in sugar, not too much depth or tannins.

Now we are in central Lima, which feels more like Madrid than anything. Lots of old buildings with great colonial architecture and plaza everywhere. We had a 3 course vegetarian lunch today for $2. We were stuffed. Corn (the biggest kernels in the world) stew, emoliente (a sweet herbal tea which I’m sure has aloe vera juice in it. it’s quite viscous), fake meat stewed with rice, corn, and more ingredients than I can remember. Dessert was strawberry yogurt. The side we ordered was mushroom ceviche which was amazing. Lots of lime juice, salt, cilantro and mushrooms and some soy protein on top of a bed of sweet potatoes. I think I’ll be full for a long time.

Now we are off to see more of Lima and hopefully meet up with Effie’s cousin, who lives here. By the way, soft serve ice cream cones here are one nuevo sole. Oh, how it tempts me!