Monday, September 29, 2008

24 Hours in Lima

We have officially been in Lima for 24 hours. This will be short and sweet as I'm dying to find us a place to live, but some of our first impressions follow.
  • Lima is HUGE! It has the same population as all of Bolivia-roughly 9 million people-in it's city limits.
  • Lima is clean-at least where we have been, which admittedly is the rather she-she part of town. But I could learn something from the street sweepers-they are more vigilant than I am with floors in my house (oh wait-I don't have a house yet...)
  • Everything is regulated here: in the airport, there are neither "official" nor unofficial helpful baggage handlers and their ayudante handlers ready to help you carry your bags. Meaning Matt and I handled them all. Not surprisingly, the people from customs didn't believe that we weren't smuggling something in with the amount of bags we had, so we "randomly" got the red light going thru customs. Even the money changers who lurk in corners are regulated-with bright yellow vests, municipal permits, and photo ids!
  • The coffee tastes like hot donkey milk-not a good thing. There is a tendency here to have your coffee VERYwhite, so even as I sit and write this from STARBUCKS (see why I'm having culture shock here!!!), I cannot finish my vanilla latte because it tastes like HDM and not a VSL.
  • Lima is $$$expensive. In Bolivia, we could not spend more than $15-$20 on a really nice dinner if we tried. Meaning ordering the most expensive things on menus, in the nicest restaturants in town, and drinking until we were fall down drunk. Here, it is very easy-or it was last night anyways-to spend $50 on dinner!
  • The pisco sours are delicous and strong...I watched a hazy sunset last night while drinking a passionfruit pisco sour-Peru's answer to the crantini.
  • I miss the sun-I think there were 2 cloudy days in Bolivia in 2 months and I haven't seen the sun yet here. Supposedly in summertime, December-March, the sun shines all the time, so we will see.
  • The potatoes are golden yellow and delicious and so is the seafood...delicous anyways.

Okay, off to do something about the tiny and expensive room we are calling home for hopefully just a few more days....

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