The Tale of the Three Ana´s

Yesterday was the big day, the day that I left Los Angeles for Peru. It´s been two years since my last big adventure and I was just yearning to exploring new countries and cultures. Being couped up in Los Angeles can´t be too healthy for anyone. So Robby and I made it to Miami with ease. Our adventure really started as we waited for our plane to Lima. We were delayed by 35 minutes because the cleaning crew could not be found to clean our plane and therefore no one could board. Eventually we were allowed on our plane and we got the two seats next to the window, so we didn´t have to strain our necks trying to sleep in a four person row with a fat guy leaning on us (guy in the row next to me).

Unfortunately though, we had the fortune of having grandparents behind us that insisted on taking their two grand children (both about 1 and a half years old) from their parents and entertaining them. But of course, the babies were not at all thrilled to be away from their parents, who were 10 rows in front of us, and so they insisted on kicking our seats while screaming, "Daddy, Daddy.". After about 20 minutes the grandparents realized that they sucked at comforting their grandkids and thankfully gave them back to their parents. This happened about three times during the five hour flight. ON top of that enjoyment, i had a shitty set of headphones where the left ear was loud static and the right ear was barely audible. It was lovely watching "21". Luckily I´ve already seen the movie.

Ok, Sorry about the plane prattle. None of you care, i know. So, 11 hours after we left Los Angeles, we stepped foot in Lima and took our first whiffs of Peruvian air. Ah the lovely smell of, cough, diesel? Apparently there are a lot of cars here that don´t have to pass a smog check. most of them look like they are on their last legs, but everyone is riding around in them like they are not going to drop to the ground with the engine coughing up black smoke, any second. I think this country could give "Pimp your ride" a run for it´s money. There would be too many cars for the show to fix that the show could be on for about 30 years.

We picked our Hostel taxi driver out of the horde of sign waving taxi people at the airport and hoped in his car. We had about 30 minutes to admire the Lima traffic system as we sat in a traffic crawl while approaching a no-stoplighted intersection that had six lanes of traffic up and back and four lanes of cross traffic along with pedestrians all trying to get about without hitting anyone. I would never, ever drive here. Half the streets have no lanes and the ones that do are useless because the people just drive in the middle of the lanes to begin with. No one signals, they all tail gate and flash their brights, but everyone uses their horns. People DO NOT have right of way. IT´s more like, right to move out of the way... quickly.

Ok, finally we made it to our hostel and put our bags in our 8 person dorm room. We ended up waking a poor guy who decided to go to bed before 10:30pm, when we´d arrived. What a loser, this was Lima, the city that parties. After realizing that out hostel receptionist didnn´t speak a word of english and didn´t understand our very broken spanish, we head out into the night in search of food and exploration. We didn´t really have an idea where to go or what to do in Lima, but we gathered from the receptionist that if we went left we would hit the square with "International Food" and if we went right we would find the supermarket. We asked if there were any vegetarian places and the receptionist said "supermarket". I guess we will be eating alot of fish and chicken.

We decided to go left and see what "international" meant. Apparently it meant American Fast food. After wandering for a bit while my stomach growled, I was almost set on eating McDonalds. We started our Israeli journey at McDonalds and that turned out great, so why not start our Peruvian trip the same. Well, maybe because Robby said that she would kill me and partly because we really wanted to try some Peruvian food. We ended up staying in Miraflores, which is the safe, touristy part of town and also one of the most expensive districts. Every thing was about 20-30 Sol´s per dish. (1 US dollar = 2.9 Sol) We knew there had to be something cheaper.

luck would have it that when i finally got annoyed with wandering, we came upon a random restaurant stand that sold tacos for 6 Sol. we ordered and sat down. i don´t think there were many tourist in Miraflores that night and for sure we were the only white people eating at that place. The taco turned out to be delicious. It was like a Mexican soft taco with a dressing that taste like egg salad. This restaurant also happened to be where we met Oreana, Ana Lu, and their two other friends that I don´t remember the names of (yes, i know, bad, but they said them fast). We ended up talking because Oreana spoke English, as she was studying in New York. The rest of the people spoke little to no English. Oreana invited us to go to a dance club with them. SInce we were exhausted and decided earlier that we didn´t want to go dancing the first night, we naturally said "sure." When else are you going to have someone from Peru (Ana Lu and friends)show you the best dance clubs?

We walked to the dance section of town and went into one club, but made it about ten feet into the door before we got stopped. It was very pàcked, very loud, and very smoky. I think i will probably jump my percentage of getting lung cancer by 20% by being here. Everyone smokes everywhere. My clothes and hair reek. I might not need to even wash my clothes because you wont be able to smell my BO over the smoke. Anyhow, we decided to go to "Downtown", a gay club. The girls liked it because it wasn´t too crowded. On our way to Downtown we met up with Ricardo, Oreana´s friend. He wasn´t too happy about going to the gay club as he was straight, but he agreed to come anyhow. We got our bags searched at the door and told that no cameras were allowed in the club because people tended to get "naked" and do weird things. They locked them away for us and after paying 15 Sol each to enter we experienced our first dance club in Peru.

There were a fair amount of people at the club, but most of them we gay guys. They listened to bad Peruvian Pop music that was kind of of low volume and no one really danced except the two drag queens who were being paid to show off. We talked for about an hour with our new friends and then agreed to meet them the following day for a free guided tour of Lima. Oreana and Ana Lu were free, but everyone else had to work. Robby and I figured that it was easier to have locals take us about then us try and figure out the taxis and look like dumbasses as we used the spanish to english dictionary and read the Peru guide book. We arrived back at our hostel, well worn down by the flight, the time change and just plain weariness. We hoped into bed and went to sleep about 3 in the morning.

I awoke about 6 am to the some very noisy backpackers in the bunk over packing their gears and getting ready to ship out. I know that hostel dorms our community rooms, but there is usually a certain respect that other backpackers are supposed to have for the remaining sleeping people in the dorm room. Mainly they are suppose to attempt to be quiet, but no, they were loud as hell. Robby eventually rolled out of bed and grabbed the shower. I had called next, but the girl a bed over didn´t hear me and Robby told her she could have the shower after her. The girl´s name turned out to be Ana Paula. She was from Mexico, she spoke great English, and was traveling by herself. I invited her on Robby and I´s field trip around the city with the other "Ana´s". She agreed to come.

After Ana Paula translated our plans to get a bus ticket to Trujillo for this evening organized through our hostel, we headed to Oreana´s hostel to meet her. Oreana and Ana Lu had had a long night and didn´t get to bed until about when we woke up. They were a little tired, but still agreed to show us the sites. We headed to the main square of Lima, a place where all the government buildings are and someone important people live, I think the Governor, but I´m not sure. The buildings looked very European with the steeples and archways to the doors. Ana Paula was saying that Peru was influenced by the Spanish when they invaded during the war.

First stop was to get real Cerviche from a restaurant that Oreana said wouldn´t make us sick. She said that if we ate at the cheaper stores on the side streets we would save money, but pay for it later in the bathroom. The place we went was ironically called "tourista", but only locals went there. It was off the main path and a tourist, if lucky, would stumble across it, but might not go in. The food was really good. Ceviches tastes like sashimi with lime juice. It´s accompanied with lima beans and corn. Yummy.

Next stop was the Church of Saint San Francisco and the Catacombs. We decided to take the English tour because 4 of us five spoke English. It turned out that Robby and I couldn´t understand half of what was being said because of the docents thick accent and the Ana´s were all completely confused. Robby and I tried to translate what we understood, but mostly we looked at the statues and giggled about stupid stuff in the corner. There was no photo taking inside the Church, so of course we all wanted to sneak pictures. Robby and Oreana usually lagged behind us to snap off a few shots while the rest of us entertained the docent. I told them not to get caught before the Catacombs because i really wanted to see the bones.

YOU could smell the Catacombs before you entered them. Kind of like a morgue mixed with moth balls. Ana Lu didn´t like it. She was slightly squeamish. Robby managed to get caught using the camera and scoulded by some random lady. It was kind of funny, but it didn´t stop her from taking mopre snap shots of the heads and femurs further into the tombs. About 17,000 people were bured in the Church and only a handful were religious people. It was a Public Cemetery. When you died, your body was thrown on top of the last person who died. The docent said that a monk had died two weeks ago and was bured at the church, so i guess if you wanted, you could be buried there today.

We left the gloomy underworld for the brisk air of the Lima shopping district. We wandered around a few market stalls looking at numerous trinkets, but nothing really caught our eyes. Robby really wanted Hot Chocolate because she thinks that it will be spicy like Mexican Hot Chocolate, so we kept our eyes out for it, but Oreana kept telling us not to buy it from the small stores because it wouldn´t taste good. So instead we ended up taking a taxi to the expensive part of Miraflores to get Starbucks. I had also said i wanted real Peruvian coffee. Ana Paula, Robby and i didn´t want to pay tourist prices and we didn´t want to drink Star-crap. We decided to head back to our hostel and find something around there because there were cheaper shops on the side streets.

I have to back up a second to tell you the mischief that i made Oreana do. She had bought a sheet of small colorful dolls attached to horoscopes. She gave all of us a doll, but still had seven of them. i told her to start handing them out to random people on the street. She looked at me and asked if it was an "American fun" thing to do. I said sure. I just think it is funny to give people random things and see what happens. Most of the time people are scare to take anything offered because they think there is a catch. the Peruvians looked a little bewildered, but some laughed. Most because we gave them a horoscope that was probably not theirs. Ana Lu ended up handing out the remaining 4 dolls and got practically attacked when she gave one to a small child selling gum. The kid had a few siblings that wanted a doll as well and so Ana Lu, who is about 4´9" and weights all of 90 pounds, was surrounded by 8-10 kids yelling "give me" and grabbing all over for the dolls. We all stood to the side and laughed. It was awesome. Oreana enjoyed the mischief. Not so sure about Ana Lu.

Ok, back to the hostel. Ana Paula, Robby and i were tired and ready to just call it a night. Ana Paula wanted to relax a bit and Robby and I had about two hours to kill before our Trujillo bus. So we said goodbye to Ana Lu and Oreana, thanking them immensely for all their help and taking the time to give us a tour and be our friends. It was extremely nice.

So that ends this portion of the blog. i have to mentally prepare myself to sit on my ass for the next 8 hours to trujillo and hopefully not get a creak in my neck from trying to sleep in teh seat. I´m also sick of typing as you are no doubt sick of reading. Have a lovely evening or morning and come back to this blog in a few days. Audios!!

Peruvian Adventure Intro

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my Peruvian Adventure blog. I know there are probably about three people right now reading this, but that is three less people I have to personally send an email to explaining that, no, I am not dying of malaria, and yes, I majority am going to be in a Tour group, so no worries on me being kidnapped or lost in the Amazon. I figure, since I made it through the Middle East relatively unscathed, Peru should be a breeze. I will have about 8 days to wander around the Northern region of Peru with just Robby, my backpack and my sense of direction before meeting up with the Tour group. Pretty much, I plan to see where the wind blows me. For our Tour free 8 days, Robby and I have a basic plan to visit Trujillo and Cajarmarca, but we will probably ask the first backpackers we see if there is any interesting place we should visit that we don't know about. I find it exhilarating to just follow other people's advice and go where they were because you end up seeing some of the most amazing sights.

After Northern Peru, we will be meeting up with our Tour group for a 14 days adventure covering Lima, The Amazon, Cuzco, Puno, and La Paz. We figured that since Peru is very spread out and plane tickets to get from one side of the country to the other are expensive, we'd have a tour group set up the hotel and travel arrangements for us. Our tour takes us to most of the places we want to see anyhow and with out the hassle of finding descent hostels and dealing with the crazy taxi hagglers. So, this is just the intro to let everyone know the plan of action for Robby and myself. Please check back in about 4 days for an update on the first leg of the trip. Hopefully I will be able to add some pictures as well. Once again, thank you to everyone who is reading. I appreciate you taking the time to see what I've been up to.

PS. to all my film people out there, I will be available for work in October, so if you hear of anything, please keep me in mind. :)