2007-01-23T13:00:00.001-08:00

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And now finally we arrive at Lima... The taxi driver story of part Lima is an excellent example for standing behind your beliefs and importance of information for not getting ripped of by asshole tourist rateros... You can check it from my kaziks page.

Personally my experience with Lima was that it was another boring after visiting for 3 days.. For the things that one should not miss here I can only count a Pená (a local folkloric bar with dances (the peruvian version of Fasil with dances)). Other than that it is another big boring city.. But it has an excellent huge market called Polvos Azules (blue sand?) in which you can find nearly anything you are looking for. (It is where I bought my new backpack and extra batteries for my camera before machu Picchu, and also where I tried to have my camera fixed (was only a temporary fix unfortunately).. More on this later..

Now let´s go with touristy stuff. The first picture is La Catedral in the central plaza of lima (Plaza armas or plaza mayor). The second picture is Catedral San Francisco, which is another central cathedral with bones from the spanish conquistadors collected and rearrange in a disturbing manner (imagine skulls forming concentric circles!!!). The 4th picture is from Plaza San Martin, another central Plaza. The last one is the court of justice..

The second highlight of Lima in my guidebook was Museo de La Nacion, which contains different potteries and 3D models of different inca and pre-inca sites around Peru.. It helps you understand that it would take at least 3 months to visit all the sites that are around Peru, and a good portion of those sites are visited by less than 0.5% of the tourists (I didn´t visit either)... The museum is hardly impressive especially for a person who has been to Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Still there was some interesting pottery there which belonged to the playboy magazine in early times, and also showing that moches at least were as good as india in terms of different positions =). I don´t know where those other pieces belonged to, as there are rarely good explanations in the museum. If I am not wrong they should be inca, but you are welcome to correct me. (Honestly it is really hard to get a lot of concentration with a museum which is huge, only contains pottery and jewelry, and no serious english explanations...)

Now I come to my most exciting night in Lima... "Las brisas Del Titicaca" (Breezes of the lake titicaca), which is the most famous Pená in Lima. A Pená is a local bar where the locals watch folkloric dances of Peru and sometimes do the dances themselves with folkloric music played by professional bands. It is like a fasil where you get your drinks and enjoy the show, sometimes sing and sometimes hold rythm with the group, or even go up for an Erzurum Havasi =)... The performers were of top level and totally professional and the night was an amazing recreation of local Peruvian dances..

The last two pictures are from a dance which is famous in Trujillo called Marinéra, which is a dance performed with handkerchiefs and for me it was simply one of the best folkloric dances that I have ever seen.. It is full of energy and the switches from fast to slow to fast parts are breathtaking.. The main idea is love as usual, and the caballero (guy) walks to the lady and they play cat and mouse game, sometimes the lady gets closer (the music slows down), they are really in teasing distance to each other, but when the music gets faster they immediately move away with sharp moves which suddenly fills the air with energy... It is one of the "dances to be seen at least once in a lifetime" at least for me!!

Remember those two guys? If no, check the marinera dancers in the pictures before.. Those kids know how to dance... After the Pená night I hang out with locals I met from there and hit on to local discos of Lima.. (Throughout my stay in Lima, I was always in Bars with a lot of locals as I hanged out with the locals I met from the Pená)

And this is the end of another love story.. My bro, I know you will not be happy about it, but I screwed your bag =).. On the border from Ecuador to Peru, it was torn, and I had to had it sewed temporarily in Trujillo... I found another one in Lima, which is probably of not the same quality but still will keep me for 2 months more.. So our good old bag which took my brother to 2 trips in Europe and through half of my trip to South America.. Thank you and farewell..

Side story: How do you know that a place is dangerous when you are walking around =)... Let me tell you a beyond instincts no doubt indication.. If the street sellers are selling nunchakus, knives, masks, fake (or real!!) guns in the middle of the street instead of food or drinks, then you know that this street is not the most secure street in the world =)... Yes to get my bag, I had to go to this huge market called polvos azules in Lima, which is in the middle of those streets!!! I am glad that other than the afternoons I was only out there once during the night, and was able to take a taxi for the night time...

The next day, I spend my morning in Miraflores, which is one of the more elegant and luxury neighborhoods in Lima. I take a few interesting pictures around this "intellectual and complicated" area. Second picture here is my favorite, please take a careful look before fastly skipping the picture...

But besides the artistic picture stuff, it is especially interesting for me to be able to see the huge difference between different levels of a country... There is simply no word other than "unbelievable" that can compare the difference of here with the Belen in Iquitos...

This also is an important indicator of advance of a country. The larger the difference gets (and always the richer portion is much smaller compared to the poorer portion), the less of the intellectual power of its people the country is using. A further discussion of this I will be adding to the philosophical part of my blog whenever I have time..

Yes going more with the route of the rich... This is the seaside of the miraflores, which is dominated by people running with their luxury dogs on the park while talking to their cell phones and thinking about the meeting time with the guy that will do their nailpolish if they will reach on time or not,, they are not sure how long the sauna will take because... And one more thing that got my attention is the popularity of slot machines in Peru.. As I said in iquitos too, no matter what the level of wealth is there is always room for gambling. The richer people do it as they have it in their instincts as an addiction, the poorer do because they can´t see a better path of hope..

This is called the park of love (Parque Amor) as the statue also suggests... I was tempted to go on top of the statue for a pose, but even I sometimes know when not to exaggerate too much =).. The other two pictures are from other parks on the way with the themes, me getting wet and me drying myself...

And of course what else better to do in the middle of a boring city in south america than going to the zoo =))).. Especially after that ""amazing"" zoo they sold us in Iquitos... I decide to go to zoo in here and Rio, which are the two biggest cities I will see and will probably give me a good enough range about the creatures that live in this far continent. I am really happy that I spent some time here too. Although not in the wild, I saw my first condor up close here.. And they really are interesting strong and beautiful for me.. I don´t know if you guys agree or not.. =)

Obviously a visit to a zoo in Lima would not be a visit without a llama or a wild cat =)

I go ahead with the birdies, macaws and toucans are very distinctive birds of amazonas. And I see my second RIB (really interesting bird) in the zoo, which is a king vulture...
I complete with the regular guys who were also totally available in the iquitos zoo, croco, tapir and the monkey...

This is another view at the wild cats with our jaguars down there... Please look at the second picture carefully to see the second black baby jaguar racing with the big one to get the meat from the other side...

And I finish my zoo trip with a huge tortuga from Galapagos, a sea lion and some penguens with a pelican...

Before I leave my boring city, I decide to take a few more pictures in the plaza mayor... The second and third pictures are from a guard change ceremony...

I focus a little bit more on the ceremony part here in those pictures.

I focus a little bit more on the central plaza armas, which is beautiful to be honest, but also way too artificial for me.. Why do I think so? Just look at the third picture and see if you will be able to count 12 historic street signs that I counted only in one picture!!!!=).. And the last picture is a more upclose view of San Francisco Church, the one with the skulls of spanish... It is not allowed to take pictures inside, so you will have to be happy with that pose....

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