Miraflores

After spending a full days cooped up in airplanes flying to Asia, the 8 hour trip from LA to Lima was a piece of cake. As always, I used a good chunk of the time to catch up on movies from the past year (since movie night at the Roberts house typically revolves around such blockbusters as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2), while Sam refused to waste a single minute of being in total control of his own TV. Angela slept (shocking, I know).

One of the particularly nice things about traveling South instead of East, is that the time zones aren’t a whole lot different. We will be on Central Time, so when we arrive in Lima at midnight, thankfully we’re tired and can go straight to bed, instead of staring at the ceiling, wide awake, for hours.

Given the late night, it is no surprise that we start of a bit slow the next morning. I’m a little antsy, as usual, but nothing here seems to open before 10am anyway, so that keeps me from annoying my travel companions too much (at least for today). After a quiet breakfast and a few hours at the cell phone store trying to buy a SIM card in broken Spanish, the high point of my day thus far has to be this exchange:

Angela; “Sam, get away from the balcony, I don’t know how sturdy it is. Let your Dad go.”
Sam: “How come Dad can go, but I can’t?”
Angela: “Because your Dad is smart.”

We know what she meant (even the dull one), but couldn’t resist the opportunity to bust her chops a bit for how it came out.

Finally geared up and ready to go, we head to an area called Miraflores, which is the affluent area of Lima. We have no particular agenda, other than the check things out and get a feel for the city. As the uppity part of town, prices are higher, but we manage to find $3 lunch, most of which we recognize. Sammy also discovers his new crack cocaine – Inca Kola. There must be a good story behind how something that tastes like liquid bubble gum and looks like a trucker bomb became so popular, but nonetheless, it is all my son can talk about (he starts making beeping sounds when the bottle is almost empty to let us know he is running out).

There are a few sights in this part of town, but nothing overwhelming, and by dinner time we are powering down. With none of the restaurants in our guide book close by, we break down and pick the first place we see. One uninspired meal later, we decide to call it a day, and head off for a nice walk back to the hotel (or at least where we believe the hotel to be).

Overall, a good first day. As capital cities go, Lima seems very clean and orderly. Traffic is bad, and horns are blaring all the time, but there is still some structure to the whole experience versus the outright chaos we found in places like Cairo and Delhi. The people here are extremely friendly, and thankfully very patient with the scraps of broken Spanish I have to use to communicate. English is less common here than other places we have been, but so far we’re getting by.