Oh Lima. What a city you are. After travels through Arequipa (which included a visit to the infamous “Ice Maiden”—a mummy which was frozen up in the Andes after being a human sacrifice), we made our way up to Lima. And what a city Lima is. We stayed in a glorious little hotel in Miraflores, one of the nicer districts in Lima. We had a great set-up and it was awesome to spend a week living the hotel life… Glorious.
After a dinner of Chifa and some of the best ice cream ever, we crashed and awoke early in the morn for a workshop with a local social activist theater group in Lima. It was phenomenal. The group is called Yuyachaki and they focus on everything related to social justice in Peru. We got to watch a performance of theirs about the Shining Path (the terrorist group in Peru between 1980-2000) and it was unbelievable. They do all these amazing performances on the international day for women’s rights since so many women were abused during this time in Peru’s history. After a brief lunch break, some of the actors taught us all a traditional dance, which we absolutely adored. We got to dress up in these outrageous costumes (see below) and put on a performance for ourselves. It’s so great to have these sorts of interactions here and actually feel like I’m connecting with this culture in a deeper way than I could have on my own. So great!
We had a good chunk of free time in Lima. We spent all of Sunday exploring Miraflores, which is right on the ocean. It was fantastic to see the Pacific Ocean… I haven’t seen it for years and it was even cooler to see it this South. It’s also another one of those amazing things about Peru—who knew a country could have jungle, mountains and ocean? Perfect. We also checked out the notorious love park, which was built in Miraflores solely for couples to have a spot to make out in. Another great thing about Lima was the food. We explored SO many different kinds of food—Arab food, vegetarian food, Ceviche, etc.
Throughout the week we had presentations from various speakers. We heard from speakers regarding the Sendero Luminoso, mining in Northern Peru, and even from Hernando de Soto’s development company ILD (Instituto Libertad y Democracia) (which I was pretty stoked about since I’d learned about his theories in a class at CC). It was great to get even more exposure to interesting Peruvian topics, although it was all a bit overwhelming since we spent all of our free time prepping for our ISPs.
We got to get into the center of Lima for one afternoon and man, it is crazy. The colors in Lima are nuts. Seriously. The buildings are bright yellow, blue and pink. It’s awesome. We went down to the catacombs, which was really freaking cool. I enjoyed exploring Lima, but I’m really glad that Cusco has been my home base thus far. Lima’s really interesting, but big and polluted and a bit overwhelming. As annoying as Cusco has gotten at times, I’m really grateful to have been in such an unbelievable city in the Andes for so long.
We got back to Cusco last Friday and got to experience the craziness of the weekend of the Day of the Dead/Halloween. There were major celebrations in the Plaza on Saturday night with fireworks and close to 10,000 people. We all went out to the discotecas on Halloween night, but it was definitely a gringo Halloween night. I was pretty amped because one of my closest friends from CC came to Cusco for a few days so I got to spend some quality time with her.
The rest of the week was spent agonizing over our ISPs and all the logistics behind them. Basically, SIT gives us like $600 and tells us to study something in Peru for a month and write a 40 page paper on it. I’ve had my heart set on this part of Peru since the beginning, and I somehow managed to pull it all together. I’m headed to Huaraz, a city 8 hours north of Lima, which is right outside two of the biggest mountain ranges in Peru. I’m studying the trekking guides that work for the tourist agencies in Huaraz and how their perceptions of nature have changed due to the tourism industry. Basically, I’m hanging out with amazing wilderness people in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ll be out of Cusco for 20 days and then I’ll return to crank out 40 pages before my program ends. What a life!
I’ll update as soon as I get to Huaraz and get settled. I’m currently in the Lima airport waiting for a friend before the next leg of this adventure begins. Ciao!
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