More Lima

So Chile beat Perú yesterday.  4-2.  For the first 20 minutes or so, Perú hadn't even shown up to play yet, so Chile was in easy control of the game.  Once Perú started to fight back, the game got more interesting, and throughout the course of the match Peruvian strikers managed to hit all 3 sides of the goal posts, inches away from scoring each time.  Carlos and I watched the game in a discoteca, surrounded by shrieking girls, on la Calle de las Pizzas (literally, it's the Pizza Street, lined with restaurant after bar after restaurant that serves pizza).  The Calle's 4 or 5 blocks were packed with people sporting their national red and white, crowding in and around the bars, whose TVs were tuned to the game.  Some establishments even set up big screens with projectors for their customers' viewing pleasure.  Throwback to Spain last summer during the World Cup.  What a blast.

Last night I was feeling pretty worn out, so after the game, I called it a night.  I was asleep by 10 or so, and got some much needed rest.  This was interrupted, however, by a rather hilarious situation starting at 3:45 in the morning.  Last night, I shared our 10-bed room with Felipe (Brasil), Natalie (California) and Brandee (Minnesota).  Earlier in the evening, before I had gone to bed, all 3 were in the room getting ready to go out, and Natalie told us that it was her last night in the country after traveling around for 3 weeks with her bestie Brandee, and therefore she was going to make the most of it.  I certainly believe that she did, because when her alarm went off at 3:45 am, both girls were asleep enough not to hear it for the several minutes of its sounding.  Partly for the sake of sleeping, and partly for concern that Natalie would miss her flight if she didn't get up, I shook both girls awake and told them that their alarm was going off.  Brandee acknowledged what I said, and in the course of the next 45 minutes, slowly rose to the task of rousing her still-drunk friend, collecting her belongings, and pouring her into a cab to the airport (but not before Felipe got up and turned off their alarm and a hostel employee came into the room to tell the girls that Natalie's taxi had already arrived).  Natalie, in her hazy sleep-and-alcohol-crossed mind, didn't believe Brandee when she was informed of her taxi being downstairs, and groaned instead, calling her friend a liar in two languages.  With a little more coaxing, Natalie got out of bed and started rounding up her last-minute items to pack, which included her shoes, "the pink and white ones..." as she insistently grumbled.  I'm sure she mumbled even more drunk gems, but I was in between paying attention to their funny exchange and trying to fall back asleep.  Ah, hostels...

Brandee and I ended up having breakfast together, which our hostel serves for free, and it turns out that she's a really cool person.  She's a nurse who quit her job in the hospital stroke unit a year ago and has been traveling through Central and South America ever since.  She's got lots of stories about people that she's met along the way, and they all involve some sort of unwritten traveler's trust that comes with hostel-hopping around various countries.  I love the way this happens...in some ways, travelers are more trusting and open than people normally tend to be in their day-to-day lives.  Think about it.  In a hostel, if you meet someone you happen to get along with decently (which is pretty frequent if you're willing to talk to people), more often than not you'll either extend or receive an invitation to travel together, if you're planning on going the same way.  When you've been traveling for as long as Brandee has, then it seems that you also start running into people you met in other places, because as she puts it, "we're all going in pretty much the same direction, right?"  I just think the sense of camaraderie is so cool, and it's welcome to find a sense of community in a place where you left home for.

But sometimes being solitary is nice too, which is essentially what I did for most of the day.  After breakfast, I decided to wander around more of Miraflores on foot.  Since I wasn't really sure where to go, I decided to first head in the direction of the Love Park, fashioned after Parque Güell in Barcelona.  It's a relatively small area, delineated with tiled walls that draw a scalloped half moon around a gigantic statue of the Lovers.  The walls are decorated in flowers, moons, suns, and amorous quotes, all projected against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.  It's a rather beautiful place, a nice bit of color on an otherwise cloudy and gloomy day.  In this park, as I'm walking around taking pictures, I hear someone say "You know how you can tell that she's American?  Chacos.  The sandals she's wearing."  I smile and turn around to find a fellow US-ian girl with her Peruvian friend.  And guess what she's wearing.  Chacos.  They walk up and introduce themselves to me as Emily and Roberto.  She's from Texas but has been living in Santiago for the past year working on a project that she describes as "toilets for poor people."  Roberto is from Perú and is showing Emily around on her vacation.  They invited me to go for some ceviche with them, but since I wasn't hungry, and since ceviche, delicious though it may be, is a fish dish, I thanked them for their invitation and went on my merry way.

I walked along the cliffs overlooking the ocean for quite a while, until the path naturally turned away from the waves and back to the concrete jungle.  I wandered around on various streets, heading in what my internal compass told me was the general direction of my hostel, until I found a street I recognized and made my way back to Pariwana.  Just as I come in the door, I run into Brandee, who invites me to have lunch with her at a delicious vegetarian restaurant.  This time, I am very hungry, so we head off in the direction of Govinda, an Indian-inspired place that serves pretty tasty food.  We have some veggie soup, lentils and rice with tofu, and pineapples in some kind of sweet jam sauce.  YUM.

I'm about to head off to see the Magic Fountains with a group from the hostel, so more stories and pictures will come later.  Sending love from Lima.