Brett and Emily in South America: Lima...eh, not that great of a city...BUT WE GOT TO HANG OUT WITH JENN!

On the 9^th we were suppose to fly from Puerto Maldanado back to Cusco and then take an overnight bus from Cusco to Lima, arriving on the 10^th. Well, needless to say we kind of misread the plane tickets and assuming our flight was at 11:45 we showed up at the airport at 10:45 only to see our flight taking off as we arrived. So after talking to our airline, StarPeru, and to LAN Peru we figured out it would be not much more expensive to just fly to Lima that day instead of having to pay the rebooking fee on StarPeru. So we hopped on a flight to Lima arriving in the late afternoon and frantically trying to find a phone to call our friend Jenn, who is currently working in Lima, who thought we were coming in the next day. We caught a taxi to get to one of the main tourist areas of the city, Miraflores. Our cab driver even though he told us he knew exactly where we were going to meet up with Jenn was in reality had no idea. He first took us to a hotel that was no where near the Miraflores neighborhood. He then once we got to Miraflores and still couldn't find the Marriott Hotel we told him to just drop us off in the main square. We then got in to an argument about the fare which he quoted me at the beginning of the ride. I told him I would have given him the whole fare if he would have gotten us to the hotel but tending he didn't succeed in that I gave him less. I ended up just walking away and tending he didn't follow me I assume he was at least content with what I gave him so. However, if you are working the airport shift in a taxi you should at least know where the main hotels in the city are. We had to walk a good 12 blocks to the Marriott right on the Pacific to meet up with Jenn. We finally found her and after talking for a little bit caught a taxi to her neighborhood, Barranco. The rest of the night we just went out for dinner and checked in to a hostel right near Jenn's apartment.

Church in Barranco

Another church in Barranco that they redid the front but the rest of the church is basically falling apart (and creepy blackbirds hang out on it)

One of the gardens along the Pacific Coast

Jenn and Em overlooking the Pacific

The next day we met up with Jenn in the morning and stopped by her office. She is in charge of accounting for a film being shot down in Lima but she managed to get a day off from her usual 7 day week schedule to chill with us. We began the day by walking from Barranco north to Miraflores along the Pacific coast. Zig-zagging through different garden terraces built on the cliffs. By the time we ended up in Miraflores we had to catch a cab back to her office (work was always calling) so we could go run an errand at the set of the movie. The movie was being shot in an old building on a campus of a military school in Lima. After dropping off some petty cash to random people on set we took a cab to downtown Lima. Lima is kind of like Los Angeles, in the fact that it is really spread out. A lot of the cities we have been in through South America tend to be built in valleys and as the cities have expanded on to the mountain sides. However, because Lima is not in the mountains and along the coast, the city has kind of just spread out. On one side it did not seem as cramped as a lot of the other major cities we have been in but it also took us 30 minutes to get from one side of the city to the city center and we had no traffic (which I guess is one difference from LA). When we got downtown, to Plaza de Armas (also known as Plaza Mayor), we decided after eating another traditionally cheap South American set menu meal, to head to San Francisco Church which besides being a large Franciscan monastery also use to serve as a mass burial area for the entire city of Lima. We went on a tour throughout the monastery finishing in the catacombs which they have found thousands of bones and have estimated 25,000 bodies on the first level alone. They told us they couldn't excavate the rest of the layers because it wasn't stable for the building. They don't even know how many more layers there are, they estimate anywhere from 2-10 more layers. Before we went in Emily and Jenn both thought that the catacombs were going to be kind of creepy. But in reality they were pretty interesting. Most of the bones have been sorted during the archaeological excavations and placed with other like bones. But it is kind of interesting finding out how Lima use to use this as their main burial ground. After coming back up to ground level and rejoining the real world we went to meet up with some of Jenn's friends, two actors from the movie (Taylor Lautner from Twilight and Johnny Lewis from the short-lived but Fox TV show Quintuplets, which I use to watch religiously during Sophomore year of college). We headed over to the Inquisition Museum and received a tour of what use to be the Inquisition Court and Prison (and later became the Peruvian Parliament building). The tour was pretty informative about the Inquisition in Peru and throughout South America. Which they told us only about 30 or so people (according to documents, even though they are sure others were killed without trials) were actually killed. They also showed us some of the unearthed prison chambers and had pretty gruesome reenactment models of the torturing techniques. After we left the Inquisition museum we walked around the downtown area some more checking out a pedestrian mall and Plaza San Martin. Later in the day we met up with Jenn's mom who also happened to be in town while we were in Lima (by coincidence her mom months ago planned a trip around Peru and then a few months later Jenn got this job in Peru and the times overlapped). After a nice dinner courtesy of Jenn's mom we helped Jenn's mom move her belongings to her friend's (who was also Jenn's boss) apartment which was being rented in the house of a famous Peruvian artist, Victor Delfín. It was kind of dark and at night so we didn't get to look around to much but the house which he uses as a studio was full of his art.

The Monastery of San Fransisco

Presidential Palace

Plaza de Armas (the same fountain has been in place since the Inquisition period)

San Martin Plaza (all these countries love San Martin)

Next is a series of photos from the Inquisition Museum (real sized models of torture techniques)...

Inquisition Tribunal

A condemned inmate

Making people sit upright for hours (he has been waiting awhile to get out of that)

This is one way to get taller

Yeah dislocated joints ain't cool

Kunta Kinte anyone?

This was evidently the only method used in the new world to kill people during the inquisition (30+ people were sentenced to murder by the Peruvian Court. They Basically choked you to death.

Not really sure what type of dominatrix stuff is going on there?

Water boarding anyone? Now we know where Bush got the idea.

Our next day we took it more relaxed...no hanging out with movie stars. We decided to take a walk along the Pacific Coast in Lima walking through parks above the cliffs and also down to the ocean side rocks. Two cool things we did see was first a park which is designed by Victor Delfín. The park, named 'Love Park' was beautifully decorated with a long sitting area which was designed with broken tiles. In the middle Delfin also designed a large sculpture known as 'El Beso' (The Kiss). Secondly, in one of the random parks we passed through along the Pacific Coast was an amazing wire framed head statue of Yitzhak Rabin. After enjoying one last dinner and a few drinks with Jenn we headed off to the hostel (surprisingly walking along the coast all day can get tiring). The final morning we woke up and had a chance to meet up with our friends Sophie and Dean before they flew later that night to Las Vegas (they were doing the West Coast of the US before returning to Australia).

Down on a little jetty on the Pacific

Yitzhak Rabin z"l

Love Park

Peeka-boo

The Kiss

Jenn in her apartment

Out to drinks (Pisco Sour, national drink of Peru) with Jenn and her mom

Missing Jason :(

Overall, we really didn't like Lima. It was probably the worst city we had been to in South America. Everything in the city is really Americanized with American fast food chains (KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks), sit down restaurants (TGI Fridays, Applebees), and chain stores (Payless). It was also just an extremely polluted city. We probably would have never stayed more then a day or two there if it wasn't for our friend Jenn. The touristy areas in the city were nice but a place like Miraflores you can find anywhere in a major city in the US. The part of town we stayed in, Barranco, was much nicer and a bit more funky (I guess I would call it) with older style architecture but still overall the city just seemed bland. We caught an afternoon bus to Mancora, finally some time to chill on the beach!