20140828

Machu Picchu

In Machu Picchu, acts of desecration are forbidden. It is considered to have been a sacred place to the Incans, and thus, a sacred place to the modern people of Perú.

To visit this place, I paid four hundred and fifty soles in train tickets, sixty soles for bus tickets, and a hundred and forty soles in order to get in the gates. In total, six hundred and fifty soles. The average Peruano earns one thousand five hundred soles per month.

The UN estimates that Machu Picchu can sustain up to five hundred visitors a day. The Peruano government has agreed to limit access to two thousand five hundred people a day. Two thousand five hundred tickets to Machu Picchu.

However, they also sell four hundred tickets to Machu Picchu mountain and four hundred to Huanu Picchu mountain. Both tickets also include the right to visit Machu Picchu.

Finally, if you purchase your train tickets before your ticket to Machu Picchu, the Oficina de la Cultura will sell you a ticket for a later date, stamp the ticket, and then scratch it out, writing in a date to match the one on your train ticket.

A local conservationist, he estimated to me that there are approximately five thousand visitors a day during high season. Ten times as many people as Machu Picchu can support without risking its future.

Originally, I wrote a humorous piece about how to get some alone time with Machu Picchu when it attracts more visitors every day than Disney World. How to take pictures without hordes of picture snapping tourists in each one of them.

But, I suppose, one desecration from me is enough.

20140827

Cuzco

Perú is not Bolivia. Cuzco is not La Paz.

Someone I travelled with in Perú, we held a conversation about places that really affected us. That even though they aren't where we live, we feel a connection to them. This because of my reaction to hearing the news that Valpairiso partially burnt down.

My reaction being that I said I was devastated. I was devastated because a place I saw once, that I may never see again, that, for me, exists as a memory, changed in a negative fashion. For me, my memory was affected, and I felt devastated. Meanwhile, people who actually live there, well, many of them lost their homes. And I was devastated.

When I arrived in Cusco, I felt comfortable. At first glance, it looked like La Paz, Bolivia. But then, where is all the street food? Why is it so expensive? Why am I being hounded by young women offering massages? Why are there so many tourists around? Where is the api?

Yes, it's Andean. Yes, they can speak Quechua in the region. Yes, even the souvenirs are pretty much the same thing. But, I am not in La Paz.

Here, I can eat cuy. Drink chicha morada. Get a masaje for veinte soles. There's a parrillada up the calle from la plaza de armas with great anticuchos. And, let us not forget, one of the wonders of the world located a train ride away.

My last night there, I finally took a picture of the beautiful night skyline, when the casas running up the mountainside are illuminated.

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Photographic evidence of Cuzco is located on facebook in the album entitled Cuzco.

20140824

Aguas Calientes

Make no mistake. Aguas Calientes, now officially known as Machu Picchu Pueblo, is one if the most beautiful little towns I've ever seen.

It is nestled into a little valley in the Andes, surrounded on all sides by giant green mountains. It has a river the runs through the centre of it, joining a river that runs along its eastern side.

The town has lovely fountains along its main roads, and interesting stonework along its walls. There are no cars. No taxis. No honking.

It is beautiful.

However, the town is completely unnatural. Almost every person who lives there works to feed us, shelter us, or sell mass produced artisanal works to us.

The first sight you are greeted with upon exiting the train (the only way in or out of Aguas Calientes, other than walking), is the Artisans Market, where you can buy the same t-shirts, jewelery, Incan vs. Conquistador chess sets, "real" alpaca sweaters and toques, that they sell in the stall next door. Or even the stall in the next city over. Or the next country over.

When you stay, you'll pay more for less whether it's hostel or hotel. My hostel featured no wifi, screaming kids who played with your belongings if you leave them unattended on the bed in your room, and a bar open late with loud music when most people want to wake up early to go to Machu Picchu.

And eventually, you're hungry, so you step into a restaurant. You'll have plenty of options, each street is littered with restaurants. All more expensive than anywhere else in Perú.

And that's just from the menu. When you receive your bill, you'll likely get hit with either a servicio charge, or an imaginary tax of anywhere from ten to thirty percent.

And it is all thanks to us.

Rich tourists who want to see Machu Picchu.

Prior to our desire to see one of the wonders of the world, there was no Aguas Calientes.

Just a beautiful valley surrounded on all sides by giant green mountains.

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Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled Aguas Calientes.

20140821

The camera

Normally, the camera was kept in the left front pocket of my jeans. However, as we descended into the canyon, the temperature rose. That, and the physical exertion, meant that I needed to change out of jeans into my shorts.

At first, I tried the camera in the pocket of the shorts, but every step would cause it to slap heavily against my thigh.

My rucksack would be a potential location, but I was snapping so many pictures that it would have meant removing my rucksack as frequently as every twenty steps.

However, the rucksack's shoulder straps have space between the strap and the padding. Space enough to tuck the camera into.

For the next twenty four hours, every time I took off my rucksack, I would forget the camera was there, and without being pressed against me, the straps would go slack and the camera would fall out. Fall out and hit the ground.

As we neared the Oasis, our second pit stop in our hike through the Cañon del Colca, we crossed a bridge and some of the people in our group wanted their picture taken.

The bridge is rather narrow, and in order to get both them and some of the scenery into the same picture, I needed to lean back over the railing. Lean baaaaaacccck and snap the photo.

The railing, pressing against my rucksack, lifted it, slackening the straps, and right after the picture clicks, the camera slipped out of its nestle.

Turning my head downwards, I followed it onto the wall of the canyon, where it bounced off and into the river below.

!!!!!!!!!

Photographic evidence of the trip into the Cañon del Colca is on facebook in the folder named Cañon del Colca.

20140820

Cuy

When it arrived at my table, I started sawing away with my knife on his back. Nothing happened. I really leaned into it for the second attempt. Not much better.

I called over the waiter and asked him for a sharper knife. He said they have some, but cuy is not eaten with a knife and fork, too bony, it is eaten with the hands.

The hands? And I mimed picking up the cuy and eating it like it was corn on the cob.

He said, yes, the hands.

After some hesitation, I picked up the front half with my right hand, the back with my left, and brought my hands together as if I were bending a steel bar. The bones inside the cuy cracked, but the body remained intact.

I moved my left hand to a hind leg, my right grabbed the torso in the centre, and I twisted with my left hand until the leg came off.

And I began to eat.

The skin was thick and rubbery, not my favourite part, I ended up leaving most of it intact, instead peeling the cuy like a banana.

The meat was white and either they used very interesting spices or it is the tastiest meat God placed on this Earth. There is, however, very little of it. So you pick up the leg, or the back half, or the front half, and you gnaw. You gnaw to get as much meat as you can from it.

In the centre, underneath, there was a huge hole with a green paste that would be dripping out of it were it more liquid. It looked just like tomali does from a lobster.

Inside the hole, I saw the two little kidney's just hanging out. The only organs visible.

Now, I hate offal. From any animal I've eaten, I've hated offal. So I ripped one out of his inside and take the tiniest bite. Not bad. Soft. Tender. And, like the body, it absorbed the spices quite well.

In the end, I don't think I did a very good job of eating cuy. I'm sure there were little hidden caches of meat that I was missing.

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Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled Cuy.

20140819

Massages on the streets of Cusco

On every street corner leading off of the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, you can hear them. Young women holding out a card as you pass by saying, "masage, masage."

For those who can't speak español, that's "ma-sa-hey." But the h isn't silent. It's muy fuerte.

Young attractive women, offering massages on the streets of Cusco, to tourists.

Today, I am limping. Not due to the soreness in my neck or upper back, but due to the pain in my left calf and my middle toes on my right foot. That, and it feels like the muscle in front of my left shin has been torn off. I step slowly. I take stairs one at a time.

The first time I get offered a "masage, masage" today, I can't look over at her. Too many other tourists around. Half a block up the road, another "masage, masage"

¿Cuanta cuesta?

"Treinta soles, mister"

I could swear I remember offers of twenty and even fifteen over the last week.

She tells me to follow her, she'll show me the massage parlor. I tell her maybe later and I hobble back over to the first woman down at the bottom of the road.

She again offers the masage. I ask her how much, and she says, "veinte." ¿Veinte? "Si, veinte." Veinte esta bien.

She tells me to follow her to the parlor and I do. I follow this young attractive woman offering masages up the road. The whole time I'm hobbling after her, I'm carefully avoiding meeting the gaze of any the other tourists. Looking down. Away from their faces.

20140818

Moray

It is not easy to get to Moray from Ollantaytambo. First you have to find the collectivos. Unlike what your Lonely Planet guidebook claims, they are hidden off of the plaza de armas. The collectivo that you take here will take you to Urubamba for un Sol.

From there, you take a bus bound for Chinchero (dos Soles). But, you don't go to Chinchero. Halfway there, you get off on the side of the highway at the turn-off for Maras.

Don't panic. There will be others getting off at the same spot.

Every five minutes or so an unofficial taxi will show up, a regular four seater, to drive six passengers to Maras for only un Sol. You will become very intimate with someone you've seen for the first time only five minutes ago. You will not exchange names or awkward glances.

Once at Maras, the taxi driver will let everyone out and inform you that there is a dearth of taxis today due to a festival in a neighbouring town, but that he can drive you to Moray and back for cincuenta Soles.

Now you can panic. Now you can stumble over your español as you tell the driver you need to check your book before deciding.

And there it is. In the book. You can either take a taxi, or walk seven kilometers to the site.

OOOOOOOOO

Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled Moray.

20140817

The Incan Fortress at Ollantaytambo

Today I was blown away. The impact of seeing the enormous fortress at Ollantaytambo can be conveyed with neither words nor pictures. Its size is staggering. Its presence overpowering. It easily vanquished my cyninism regarding Incan ruins.

Having stood before it and within it, it isn't difficult to imagine that this would be one of the few places that the Incans would emerge victorious over the Conquistadors. Repelling them with a barrage of arrows, spears, and boulders. And a well timed flood to reduce the maneuverability of their horses.

Of course, since Suramérica isn't a collection of countries all speaking Quechua, it can be deduced that the Conquistadors returned, historians claim with a force four times greater than the first time, and won, forcing the Incan army to retreat further into the mountains.

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Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled The Incan Fortress at Ollantaytambo.

20140816

Skewered

It's a distinctive feeling someone lifting up your jacket from behind.

I'm eating meat on a stick brochette style when I feel it. It's the most common street food I've found. Beef skewered with a potato stabbed at the end as they hand it over. This one is the cheapest I've found yet. One sol. Forty cents. Less than half the price of a hot dog back home.

Obviously, I have been the only white person for a few blocks now.

When I arrived to buy one, there were quite a few kids standing around the hibachi, but they all left when I ordered. All but one. Who I figured as the seller's child.

The kid, unfortunately, had three obstacles to success. One, I suspect it's harder to lift from a pocket that is hidden under a rather tight jacket (the jacket in question being my cycling jacket, long enough to cover my backside in case of rain). Two, I don't think he was very good. And three, I keep my money in my front pocket, not my back.

20140815

Walking

You step out of your overnight bus and the sun is just coming up. The day beginning. The first thing you need to do is get this really heavy sack off your back by going to the hostel.

You could take a taxi. It would be quite fast.

And easier. After all, the bus stations are never in the centre of town. Never on the tourist maps you have in your travel books.

Regardless, you've taken to walking; you get to see a different city.

The homes are regular people homes, not the expensive ones near the pricey tourist areas. The businesses are for regular needs, not for people who want another sweater with alpacas on it.

There are people on their way to work. Or people who's day began hours ago, their jobs being to sell things to people on their way to work.

This is real life. Something that's hard to find in the carefully designated tourist zones.

And those people you see? Those are the people who happily provide directions into the centre of town when you ask.

20140814

A tale of two monasteries

There are two major tourist attractions within the city of Arequipa. One is the museo dedicated to "Juanita" a young woman murdered on a mountain top that froze over and preserved her body for hundreds of years. The other is a monastery. One is a one trick pony with an hour worth of fluff to explain why you paid so much money. The other is a photography fans paradise rivalling Valparaiso.

El monasterio de Santa Catalina de Siena is actually two monasteries, separated not by space, but by time.

For, in space, it is more or less how it has always been. Enormous. Within it's high sillar walls, there are the homes of the up to four hundred and fifty nuns and slaves that have lived there at one time, communal dining, cooking, and storage areas. An upper choir and a lower choir. Plazas. A cemetery.

Originally, it was a convent for rich noble second daughters who, traditionally, were destined to a life of religious devotion. They would show up at the convent, with their dowry, a sizable dowry, the type of dowry only the rich could afford, and any slaves or servants they required to continue living in the manner they were accustomed to.

There are rumours of fornication, wild parties, and debauchery not normally seen outside of a Marquis de Sade tale. But, all of that is apocryphal. It is more likely that they simply continued to live the good life of the wealthy. However, none of this can be known for sure as hardly anyone other than the nuns and their slaves were ever allowed within the walls of the convent.

Their only contact with the outside world was speaking to someone through a darkened portal. With a tiny swing door that could only be open on either the inside or the outside, allowing items to be moved one way or the other.

Later, the church decided that the nuns in this convent weren't suffering enough. They sent in a new head nun. An ascetic, she brought many changes to the convent. No more slaves. All slaves were given the option to leave or become nuns themselves. No more living in your own rooms doing your own thing. Life was communal. Religion was brought to the fore; at meal times, now that they all ate together, one nun would give up eating for the day to read the bible out loud from a pulpit in the corner of the dining area.

Today, I suppose one could argue that we are living in the times of the third monastery, that of museum. Very little of the monastery is devoted to the few nuns who remain, with the majority being open to the public, our entry fees being used to restore the monastery to it's once former glory. And to provide a stable income to those same very few nuns.

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Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled Monasterio de Santa Catalina.

20140813

Vino

This bottle is almost finished. The hostel doesn't have wine glasses, so I'm drinking from a regular cup. It's my third bottle in Perú, drinking solely Peruano wine.

As I told my brother, I'm drinking Peruano wine so that you don't have to.

The first bottle was a red. The cheapest I could find that had a date on it. I simply don't trust wines that can't tell me what year the grapes were cultivated. The varietal was new to me, but it seemed to be the most common one listed in the bottles in the shop (borgoña, which, translated, is a wine region in France).

It tasted like a cocktail. Like a fruity drink. Enormously sweet. In the colder regions of the country, this is their varietal of choice to serve heated.

The second was a slightly more expensive bottle. With a varietal I recognized. A cabernet sauvignon, the easiest red to grow. It tasted like a cross between pears and a well used jock strap. Interesting.

Figuring that maybe their climate isn't the best for reds, like ours, I went for a white for my third bottle. And, wanting to give them their best shot, I paid a bit more. A bit more is relative of course. Wine here isn't cheap. This isn't Argentina. Their prices are just slightly lower than Montréal. If we pay nine for the cheapest bottles, they pay seven.

This bottle is acceptable. It's simple, not complex. Not particularly fruity. More on the flowery herbic side.

But if I paid this price in Montréal, I would be very disappointed.

I look forward to my next peruano bottle.

20140812

Cañon del Colca

The weirdest thing about buying my tickets Tuesday, and getting in the plane Thursday, is that I didn't have any time to read anything about my destination before leaving. And now, I'm just reading about every place right before booking my bus ticket and my hostel room.

So, when I land somewhere, I have no real idea why I've come to this place. I have a vague idea of what there is to do in Arequipa, for example, but no real knowledge of what I will be doing. I certainly didn't think I'd go for a three day hike in the Cañon del Colca.

I got very lucky with the group I was assigned to. There was two Brasilenos who spoke extremely accented español (one of which was missing a large chunk of her left lung due to surgery; her ability to do the hike was massively impressive), two elderly Canadians who only spoke English, a Kiwi who's name I never managed to remember and so ended up calling him Kiwi all three days, an Australian, both her and the Kiwi only spoke English (although they both had enough classes under their belts to moderately understand the guide when he spoke in español), three friends from Europe, two Luxembourgians and an Austrian, who could all speak français, so that was our go to language (although their go to language was deutschen for the three of them, and luxenbourgish when it was just the two luxembourgians), and me, the Québecois.

The two couples spent a lot of time together, and I spent a lot of time with the others. Talking while hiking. Playing cards at the rest stops. Learning about their homes. Their lives. Talking culture and feminism with the Australian on our way back to Arequipa when all was said and done (a three hour ride that felt like five minutes).

The guide, Markos, was fantastic. Oh sure, sometimes I wondered if he was just inventing answers to some of the questions, but his values were quite interesting, and highlights, very well, a lot of my racism, because if he were a white Australian, for example, I would never remark on these values. He was anti-capitalist (this came out in our conversation regarding fútbol, of which he is not a fan), anti-religious (more than once he referred to religious people as crazy), environmentalist, and open to gay marriage.

He was, however, very attracted to tall white women (a big fan of Argentinas, he told me), and flirted heavily with the two tall thin Luxembourgians. I suspect, from their facial expressions, much more than they felt comfortable with.

His greatest moment, for me, was, shortly after an explanation of how the mule is born from a horse and a donkey, he spoke about gay marriage. He said that he and many in Perú were fine with it. It didn't matter to them. That gay marriage is like the horse and the donkey, normal is horse and horse, or donkey and donkey, but horse and donkey can work as well.

The first stop on the cañon tour is a mirador to view the condors. We had, if I recall, thirty minutes to watch them and take pictures. So, I get out of the bus and start snapping away before I remembered, that I don't really care about condors. That I will never look at these pictures some time in the future and remember fondly the majestic condor.

After that I took pictures of the Andes and cacti, trying to juxtapose them to create a pleasing composition.

The walk down into the canyon was rough for me. A combination of never having done this before, eating a tiny breakfast of one egg and three slices of bread, and being the only one wearing running shoes as opposed to hiking boots. Halfway down, my knees would shake with every foot placement. Which made me nervous, at times, as there is no barrier between me and a four or five hundred meter drop into the cañon.

On the plus side the views were fantastic, I doubled the number of photos I had taken so far on this trip.

The second day is walking along the cañon, through some of the towns that live down there, and, my favourite, seeing all the aqueducts along the way to get water to them. Ever since Mendoza I have been in love with open air aqueducts.

That day ends in a very resortish hostel with a bar and a pool. And thus an afternoon of cerveza, mojitos, cards, and swimming.

On the third day we wake up before the sunlight to ascend. I learn to appreciate the flashlight feature on my iPod. It's strange because it starts off cold, due to it being nighttime. Then you warm up because you're climbing. And then you freeze at the top due to the altitude.

I far prefer ascending to descending. It's like cycling, you just maintain a constant output level and continue on. Up. Up. Up. Up. Stopping only to drink water, eat an energy bar, or snap some photos.

When I got to the top, I wished there was more up to go. That it wasn't over.

20140811

Lost in Arequipa

If I were in Montréal, it would be trivial to find myself some new shoelaces. I would know exactly where to find some, go there, and buy them.

I do not know where to buy them in Arequipa. But, when I left Montréal with laces that were already fraying in the centre, it never occurred to me to bring some replacements in case they snap in Perú.

So I asked the woman at the front desk where I could find shoelaces. I asked in español, but I had to point at my remaining shoelace as I didn't know the word (hilera, in case you're wondering). She sent me to a certain street where I found shoe shops, but they didn't seem to have any hileras. Not surprising as, same as back home, they mostly catered to women's shoes, and here, women mostly where platform wedges, often without laces.

Desperate, I walked into a Bata (and cringed at the idea of being in Perú and giving my tourist dollars to an American outfit), and asked them if they had any hileras. No. None. No hay. "¿Sabes donde puedo comprar?" She tells me in the market in front.

I went to that market last week. Had a delicious stuffed pepper and amazing papas au gratin (much cheesier than what you find in Norte America). We walked through the entire thing but I never saw anything that looked like it might sell shoelaces.

Inside, I walked around until I saw a stand that could possibly maybe sell them. No. Nada. No hay. I ask the same question and she points outside and say that I'll find some at the next corner.

The next block doesn't have anything shoe related, but after there are some more shoe shops. Not the Bata kind, but the local kind.

It is at this point that I become the only white person on the road.

I am very grateful for my month of classes in español.

Inside, I ask again. No. Nada. No hay. And, once again, I am directed further down the road.

Walking, I am looking around, both sides of the street, trying my best not to look like a tourist. Even though I am only the white person on the street. The only person wearing shorts. The only person with a rucksack. At least, I tell myself, my map is hidden in my pocket.

A few blocks later, I see a guy repairing shoes. Inside, I ask about laces. Hay. She pulls out a ball of laces all wrapped together, and starts to untangle them. She pulls out one. "Demasiado larga." Another one. "Demasiado pequeña. ¿Hay una entre los dos?" And, much like Goldilocks, the third one is perfect. "¿Cuanto cuesta?" One soles. Forty cents.

After lacing up, for the first time in a day, I buy a second one in case the other shoe has a wardrobe malfunction as well.

Now, this isn't complicated, I could simply backtrack to where I came from and find my way back to the hostel from there. My legs could use the break after three days hiking through the cañon de colca. But, I know that, even though I am no longer on the map given to tourists when they arrive, my navigational skills can direct me back the hostel quicker. I just have to go south. Or the direction that I'm calling south (I come from Montréal, the only city where the sun sets in the north).

I recognize nothing. I am still the only white person, and I'm getting stared at more than usual. But, even were I the type to feel threatened, it's hard to when you're in a neighbourhood with fancy houses and private schools.

I'm on the lookout for Lima calle, I know it runs diagonally and leads to my hostel.

But, it never shows. Instead I find myself at a drop point. You know, where the road ends and there's a ten metre drop before the city continues. So I turn right. This will obviously lead to my hostel.

If it were dark outside, I would jump into one of the taxis that make their way through the streets at all times, outnumbering the personal cars at least two to one (as always in Arequipa), but it's sunny. And hot. And, even being stared at, I feel perfectly safe.

I pass by restaurants. Corner stores. People waiting for the micro. Electronic shops. Places to fix your computadora. No sweaters made with alpaca. No magnets with googly eyed llamas. No money changers. No tour guides offering to send me up the Misti volcano. Life. Like I know it. Except where everyone is shorter than me.

After a while I realize that, perhaps, my navigational skills aren't what I thought. I could be a street away from my hostel, or kilometers away. I can see the sun, but I have no idea if I'm nearing sunset or am still midday.

So I turn right. Knowing that the plaza de armas, the centre of town, must be in that direction. And I walk, and walk, and walk, until I see another white person. In shorts.

20140808

Escaped

Grey is the colour of Lima. Cold is the feel. The temperature isn't that low, but with the sun hidden at all times, it feels cold. You wear a toque. You wear a sweatshirt. You do not wear shorts or a tee. You don't sweat you shiver. You wrap your arms around yourself unconsciously.

When the bus pulled out of Lima, I watched all the grey buildings with the graffiti scrawled on them. Tags. No messages political or otherwise, just tags. The hidden sun went below the horizon shortly after the bus escaped the city limits. I know this because it was now too dark to see outside.

I awoke to the sun on my face, the bus nearing Arequipa.

20140807

La escuela

You lose a lot of a language when you go two years hardly ever speaking it. So much so that they put me in class level that, for the most part, was subjects I had already learnt (and one important verb tense that I never had). This time I'll be sure to find a way to practice back home (cue the quick cuts of every time I said I'd keep up on something or keep in touch with someone).

My teacher is of the opinion that they put me in a level that was too low. "From your test scores it was the right level," she says, "but speaking to you it's obvious that you should have been placed higher." Certainly, the level they placed me at was more revision than learning. And, I didn't struggle, but picked everything up quickly.

The most difficult aspect was letting go of Argentina. Letting go of vos. Letting go of the L L. Learning tú. Learning the more common L L.

The most interesting part was our conversations. Which took up more time than the lesson plans. We spoke of our recently ended relationships, me with Audray, and her, her marriage. My health. Her son. Our complicated relationship with alcohol. Her hometown. My hometown. Her parents.

The most amusing topic was probably when we spoke about what we couldn't do in our home cities. Legally. And realistically. The most disturbing would be when she asked me who I admired and the only person I could think of was Audray. My teacher was of the opinion that I was still in love with her.

At the end of the week's classes, they sprung a test on me. Our conversations were not on it. I finished it quickly. Scored near perfect.

20140806

La calle

For my profesora de español and some of the others in the hostel, I am infamous for having eaten cebiche en la calle. They seem to be of the opinion that eating raw fish is something that should be done in a restaurant, not in a small stand on the street where the person preparing the food doesn't have access to basics like washing their hands every once in a while.

But, eating in the streets is one of the aspects of travelling that I love. Hot dogs in New York City. Anticuchos (cow hearts), api (a hot purple corn drink), and hamburguesas in La Paz. Sopaipillas in Valpairiso.

Even the foods that didn't make their way to my heart through my stomach, like that drink with the dried peach floating in it and some mote (grain) on the bottom in Santiago, are an experience.

But Lima, it seems, isn't really a street food town There was picarones in the parque in front of the hostel. Donut shaped fried dough (like beaver tails in every way except shape) with a honey syrup poured over it. Sandwiches with fried meat, turkey being the most popular. Allegedly there were anticuchos available, but I never encountered any.

So, what people rave about in Lima is the restaurant food. The chifa (which to my palate tastes like the Chinese food found in Montréal outside of Chinatown), the seafood, the cebiche, the criolla.

When my digestive problems disappeared, along with 800 soles in medical bills, let's hope my insurance covers that, I wanted to give cebiche another chance. This time without inspiring groans from the other people in the hostel. I chose the most talked about cebicheria in the area. One with enough success that they are spreading the joys of cebiche internationally.

Being alone, and the place being popular enough that every table is taken, I am seated at the bar. I order a cebiche mixto, which includes the obligatory raw fish as well as a mix of other seafoods, much like I had in the calle.

The woman seated next to me, a representative for an American high end tour organizer, starts talking to me. The usual where you from. What you doing here. ASL. She tells me that she's here to evaluate the food as this is where they send their clients while they are in Lima.

Now, the best place that I have found to eat in Miraflores is Miguel's, a sangwicheria. I order the middle of the road burgers, the ones without too many ingredients, and I can't imagine how big someone's head would have to be to eat one of the larger ones. My favourite was the one with egg, cheese, burger, fried plantain, and more grease than in a week's worth of unwashed hair. Simply delicious.

After we finish eating (I had my food and some of hers as the waiter, who knew we didn't order or get seated at the same time, gave us two plates for her dish), she asks me what I thought of the cebiche. I told her the ingredients were obviously of high quality, it was definitely good. But I preferred my cebiche from la calle.

20140803

Flash


Cameras are not my strong suit. I know to point and click. I know that even though your phone claims to take enormous pictures of like fourteen terabytes, the lens is too tiny to take a picture with a level of detail that would require that sort of capacity. That when it comes to lenses, bigger is often better.

One other thing I know, that I always forget, is that this camera that I'm using defaults to using a flash when it's dark outside. Even though that flash often results in very ugly pictures where the colours are all wrong. Consequently, many of my first pictures are taken with the flash, before changing the settings to no flash.

Which is how I've learned something else about cameras, apparently when you take a flash picture, the shutter speed increases.

20140802

El centro

Most of the activities that seemed interesting from the guidebook were in centro Lima. El museo del arte, el museo de la inquisición, eating chiffa in chinatown (chiffa, I am told, is chinese food with a peruano influence), and then, after dark, the circuito mágico del agua.
El museo del arte, it turns out, is under renovation, so the second floor is inaccessible. The first floor features an artist who did a lot of street work during the most recent military dictatorship in Argentina, some pre-Incan artefacts from a dig somewhere near Lima, and artwork inspired by children's educational material. The time you spent reading that sentence is about how much time I should have devoted to the museo.
El museo de la inquisición is about the Peruano experience with the Spanish Inquisition. Weren't expecting that were you? It never occurred to me that the Spanish Inquisition was anything other than a European event. It's by guided tour only, and, if you understand español, you learn about how the court system was organized, the techniques used to get you to confess, the punishments for the guilty, and how, when independence was achieved, the system was abolished.
The most interesting aspect of the tour is definitely the techniques to acquire a confession. It starts with water boarding, moves on to the rack, and, if you still haven't confessed (they claim that most women confess during the water boarding, and most men while being stretched out on the rack), they tie your hands together behind your back, and then tie your hands to a pulley above you with a length of rope. Then they lift. Do your best to imagine that experience. Stand up, hold your hands, palms together, behind your back and start to lift them, arms straight, towards the sky. You'll stop at some point or another. But they didn't. They keep pulling until you leave the ground. What would you confess to in order to come back down?
Just recounting my visit makes it sound so very interesting, but the guide delivers all of this monotonously, skips over rooms completely, and yells at visitors who take pictures while she is talking. The yelling is the only part where her voice displays any emotion.
To eat, I head over to Lima's Chinatown, which looks astonishingly like Montréal's Chinatown. except that the second language you see on signs and menus is español. But, the buildings, the archways, the signs, the restaurant names, all the same. Similarly, chiffa tastes close enough to Canadian Chinese food that, had I received this plate at a non-traditional restaurant in Montréal, it would have been totally normal.
As the sun begins to set, I head south out of centro Lima, into, what it turns out is a very poorly lit neighbourhood. And my map, which clearly shows where the circuito is located, doesn't use street names, and it quickly becomes clear that this part of the map is not representative of reality. The map shows that I need to walk two blocks from the centro to get where I'm going, but now I'm far enough south that I can no longer see the lights of the centro and still no circuito.
It's dark. My map is useless. I don't know this neighbourhood at all. There are few people in this area, and those that are it's too dark to see their faces as they walk by me. And I know that if I turn to the left and walk a couple of blocks I'll be on Arequipa, I can take a bus back to Miraflores, and forget this whole magical circuit completely.
I stood and watched the fuenta magíca as it went through its many permutations. Growing to eighty metres. Widening to the point where it would splash people standing on the pavement around it. Lighting itself to give the water the appearance of fire. I circled it and watched it from every possible angle. I took more pictures of it than I did of all of Lima.
It is the first of a sequence of fountains, but I watched it for nearly as long as I watched the rest of them combined.