Late December 2007: Lima

Having left Chile veeeeeeeeery early on the 26th Dec, Jenny and I started the first leg of our trip with a stop-over in Lima, capital of Peru, before continuing the trip proper, which really started in Caracas, Venezuela.

In order to not to spend 12 hours in transit in Lima, staring at institutional walls until we decided to climb up them in delirious boredom, we decided to stopover for two days and see what the city had to offer.

As turns out, it was a brilliant idea. From the off, Lima grabbed us and took us with her- we were both sad to leave and venture into far scarier Caracas.

Lima. Well, Lima, where you don't hail buses, buses hail you.
Where the trees sing: tinny Xmas songs that must drive all those working nearby to the brink of nervous exhaustion and beyond.
Where the plums taste of caipirinha (no, really). Home to amazing ceviche, friendly locals and as much colour and music as you can deal with.

So far, so guidebook. Where to start really?

For us, 'Lima' started right at the airport : no taxi, no tourist bus, but straight out onto the motorway with our "worlds" on our backs and 'hidden' (sort of...) bound round our waists.

We were promptly hailed into a noxious gases and reggaton spewing mini-bus and spirited right into the centre. For all the Espanol going on, we, suffice to say, stood out. Jenny is very blonde by South-American standards (as am I, coppery brown hair notwithstanding), and apparently person-sized backpack wielding, blond(ish) girls aren't quite de rigour in Lima, as it soon became quite apparent.

Yet there was such a "beginning" feel to the whole ride, sitting sandwiched, balancing the precious camera-case on the bag tower and trying to hold on for dear life using my abs, as I had no holding hands left.

This was more a tourist than a traveller stop: Miraflores is quite a gentle introduction to Lima.
We hadn't the time to do more than just skim the surface, and decided that our first two days should ease us in, not leave us staggered by the culture and poverty gap. This doesn't mean however that we didn't see the "real" Lima, or "real" Peru. Or at least, I don't agree with such concepts. We saw how a certain, reduced slice of the population lives: and that sometimes sheds interesting light on a country, when reading between the lines.

Miraflores is a calm, residential area on the sea, with nice bars, cheap 'almuerzo' shacks, good restaurants (for a westerner, anyways) and a few "too cool for you" size zero fashion shops.

We had a great time in said shops gasping at the prices, ranting at the ridiculous body-shape ideals propagated by the designers and, in my case, being convinced out of spending £2 on cute, if pointless and DIY-able strawberry earrings. As far as the prices were concerned, they were still at least less than a third of London prices in similar shops, but wages are... significantly lower-- it seems that it's around £80 a month minimum wage - and often in the informal sector the legal minimum wage is but a distant dream.
[ Funnily enough i recently spent £2 on a pair of cute, if pointless and DIY-able strawberry earrings in one of the bricklane markets here in London.]

Miraflores also has a 'conveniently located' Inca relic: the Inca pyramid for city-dwellers too time poor to leave the city walls. perhaps?

Our themed dwellings- the Inca lodge, no less- were a pleasant base surrounded by cheap cevicherias and a nice walk from the sea.

The Miraflores seafront really brought home the difference between poor and middle/upper class South America. A far cry from the inner city trade area we'd just visited (although walking distance we'd been advised, nay begged, to take a taxi, rather than cross the invisible line between affluence and poverty unprotected), the sea-front felt like we'd walked into an "exotic" family sitcom on a day trip to the beach.
This Miraflores isn't the Peru I had been told of, it isn't the Peru one expects to see: it was sleek modern architecture, and groomed open spaces. Sculptures and a mosiaced wall covered in love poetry. Caucasians in high class sports gear running along the cliff front as radiant expectant mothers waddled and exercised the bump, with babies and toddlers playing on the lawn and riding along on brand new Christmas tricycles.
It was powder-puff-pink sundown over the ocean, with adrenalin junkies paragliding and europeanate Peruvians and tourists alike wondering what restaurant to have dinner in.
It was the glittery facade of dusk's lights, recorded for posterity by hundreds of identically whirring, shiny, automatic, walking, talking, singing and dancing brand new Christmas cameras.
And although calming, and soothing, and interesting in its own way, It isn't what I travel to experience.

Indeed, the inner-city trade area we'd seen that day, full of bargain markets and the kind of shops that are seen as bric 'n brac in poor neighbourhoods, and called retro or antique when wishing to sell to higher bidders, gave us an example of those fuzzy feel-good chance encounters that one does travel the world to feel, if only to experience them all the more when they happen at home.

part II pending