As promised, below are accounts of the rest of my weekend. Enjoy!
Saturday I toured around Centro Lima, the historical part of the city, with the assistance of a coworker's husband, who is a taxi driver. It was beautiful--there were barroque buildings, cathedrals, the state house, etc. Unfortunately, some of the buildings had been transformed into something 'real mahden' (crazy Bostonian lady for 'really modern'*), and by real mahden, I mean that they tore down buildings and facades that were hundreds of years old and replaced them with less historic ones.
The first place I visited, other than the central plaza, was the Centro Lima Catedral, which was morbidly fascinated with death. See pictures below:
The Catedral de Lima looks normal from the outside.
And, at first glace, from the inside, too:
(Albeit excessively ornate, a frustration of mine about the church, but that's not the point.)
There's even a nun polishing some silver!
And this!
And a graphic depiction of a martyred saint!
And then it gets weird.
See the horse-ghost?
The saint holding a skull?
This guy standing on someone's head and holding his heart?
What about these baby coffins in the basement?
Oh, and, ya know, just a cabinet of human skulls.
One interesting thing about it, though, is that the remains of Francisco Pizzaro (conquistador of the Incas--not a great guy) are there in a small chapel.
Box where Pizarro's skull was found, walled in beneath the altar, in 1977 by some guys doing construction. (The wrong body/head combination had been on display since the 1890's. Oops.)
Pizarro's tomb--his remains reunited at last! (Allegedly)
Mosaic above Pizarro's remains
Mosaic on the opposite wall
We also went to the Catedral de San Francisco, which has catacombs beneath it! Those who know me know I can't stand horror and gore, but catacombs are actually pretty interesting. (For those who don't know, they're like mass graves beneath churches and cathedrals, primarily in Italy, Spain, and various Latin American/Catholic countries. They aren't meant to be morbid--it's like any cemetery mausoleum, just with less. . .discretion?) Photos weren't allowed, but basically the catacombs are tunnels, maybe five feet tall, lined with bones. There are a couple of giant wells that are meant to absorb earthquakes, which are also filled with bones. I found a picture on Google Images (viewer discretion advised):
When we went to leave after our touring, the car wouldn't start and we spent an hour or so trying to fix it.**
And that pretty much concluded my Saturday touring! Afterwards I had a delicious cheap lunch for about $1.70 at a cafe down the street. I have pictures, but, well, okay, here they are:
Don't be too jealous of this coffee. (Thought it looks awesome.) I had mega high expectations of the coffee, again courtesy of the Dominican Republic. (Thanks a lot, DR.) However, most of the coffee here is Nestle Instant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are few times in my life I have been so disappointed as I have been by this discovery. I didn't even know I was looking forward to it so much! Ay carumba, I hope that Puno has something to offer me, or I may just swim over to Bolivia.
Empanada--not especially Peruvian, but definitely delicious.
That's 5 soles, a.k.a. cheap as rocks. (The non-precious kind.) Actually, here's a funny story: After I sat down, ordered, and started drinking my coffee, I realized I only had 9 soles in my pocket and I could not remember, for the life of me, how much my empanada and coffee were going to cost. I was almost sure they were 6 and 5, each, so I started taking inventory of what things in my purse or on my person I could leave as collateral while I ran home to get the rest of the money. I decided that my camera would be the sacrificial lamb because I like my scarf too much and they would be idiots to trade my watch for 2 soles. In fact, I decided that if I were to leave my watch, I wouldn't even bother going back for it. It used to be the color 'white', but it's sports watch material (that's a technical term) and now is just the color 'dirty'. Anyways, turns out my empanada and coffee were cheap and cheaper, so I had plenty of funds for cuenta and tip!
Sunday morning I woke up at 7 a.m. to head to Gloria's house for breakfast with her family. (Remember from yesterday's post I'd gotten home from the discoteca at 3 a.m. Needless to say, I was sufficiently tired.) I ate with Gloria, her two daughters, and husband--we had some sort of delicious, fatty, fried pork and bread. Mmmmm.
(I'd like to mention here how incredibly kind and accommodating it was for Gloria to invite me over to her own house for breakfast Sunday morning, and then for her and her family to show me around the city. I was reminded a little bit of the beginning of The Godfather, Part I at the house in Hollywood because that's the best I know of wining and dining a business associate. I was a little nervous I would wake up with a horse head in my bead if the survey methodology didn't go exactly her way, but then I remembered that in this scenario I'd be the Robert Duvall, and it'd be an alpaca, not a horse.)
After breakfast her family took me to Miraflores (ritzy part of Lima) and Pachacamac (outskirts of southern Lima). I had lomo saltado (salty beef) for lunch, a traditional Peruvian dish, and it was yummy! Had enough left over for dinner. I tried a sweet tamale--it's like our Texican tamale, but without beef and sweet like corn. (Duh, b/c it is corn.) It was soooo gooood. I also had some of the best juice I've ever had in my life--jugo de lúcuma--a native Peruvian fruit. I'm going buy some at the end of the week as a special treat! I can't wait.
Anyways, here are some photos from Miraflores and Pachacamac:
Gloria's daughter, me, Gloria in Miraflores
Traditional dance at the restaurant (not sure if this is the real deal)
Precious little kids doing another traditional dance--they were AWESOME. It reminded me a little bit of Toddlers & Tiaras, but I'm giving Peru the benefit of the doubt and saying that if a little girl puts on makeup to honor her ancestors' culture, it's not the same as giving your six year old fake teeth and mascara so she looks like a baby stripper.
So cute!
Gloria thought those on the right were al alpaca and a llama...until the alpaca started nursing on the llama. We are *hoping* it's really a mama llama and her baby.
Plaza Pachacamac. There was a Catholic procession going on around the city--I'd read they happen all the time, and they really do! At first I thought their fireworks were either guns or cars backfiring. Surprise, just some Catholics walking around shooting off fireworks in some narrow streets.
Monkey that tried to attack us, Outbreak style, at the fancy restaurant where we ate lunch. Gloria was playing tug-o-war with the monkey and a water bottle, and when she won, the monkey (who has legit fangs, by the way) sauntered casually to a branch in the back of its cage and turned to face us, who were standing at the front of his cage wondering at his cuteness. Then, all at once, Outbreak monkey hurled its fierce, hairy little body at us, monkey-screaming, and crashed violently into the cage two feet from our faces. It was like it was trying to launch itself, ebola-covered teeth and opposable thumbs and all, through the wire and onto our throats. The monkey was screaming, I was screaming. . .I'd like to think that Gloria and her children were screaming, too, but I'm pretty sure the monkey and I were the only ones. We were all scared out of our pants, though, and Gloria just kept saying, "I didn't realize it was going to do that! I didn't know!"
Today in my meeting with Gloria, when I started to get nervous because I can err on the side of 'easily intimidated', I would remind myself of our shared experience, and think, "Gloria played tug-o-war with a monkey."
Until next time--
Audrey
*In Boston last year, two friends and I were marveling at a church that was built in 1667 when a lady from Boston, passing by with her husband, said to us, "You should see the inside--it's real mahden!" So we went around to the side, peaked in the windows, and were horrified to see that the inside had been gutted and looked like a 1970s Dunkin' Donuts/carpet warehouse. It was Pepto Bismol pink and magenta everywhere (not unlike my bedroom in the late 1990s) with geometric patterns and shapes anywhere possible. I'm still not sure if this lack of appreciation for history is exclusive to this one North Eastern woman, or is pervasive among Bostonians who live in a city saturated with it.
(I couldn't take a picture of the inside, but trust me.)
**The story of the car breaking down
Manuel looks like the beloved pre-cal teacher, Mr. Grabman, but Peruvian and with a mullet. His mullet wasn't a Billy Ray Cyrus, but there was definitely a party in the back. Unfortunately, the business in the front wasn't Yelp! approved. Safe and nice (the most important), his taxi left something to be desired. In that it didn't function.
Red Flag#1: It took Manuel six tries to shift the taxi into reverse Saturday morning when he picked me up.
The older gentlemen in the photo above is a mechanic who worked in the garage in which we broke down. I barely know car maintenance in English, so it would've been a true miracle if I'd understood what they were saying about the car in Spanish, but I was able to note that the engine seemed to have fewer parts than those in the U.S. Hm.
Señor Grabman explained to me that when the car is left parked--for example, every night--that the gas (propane, not gasoline) evaporates, so for this reason the car also has a little gasoline in a separate system. (This is Red Flag#2, but by this time it was too late.) Señor Grabman Ray Cyrus said there was indeed gasoline and gas in there, and if we just sit and wait and pump the gas pedal 4,000 times it will eventually start. Again, though I don't know much about car maintenance, this didn't sound quite right to me. I suggested we have the car jumped, but I was told the pumping would be sufficient.
Long story short, it wasn't, and after about an hour I left to find sustenance; I'd seen a lot of human skeletons that day. When I came back ten minutes later to let Manuel know that I'd be at the bread shop a couple doors down, the car had been jumped and was ready to go.
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