When you are
hung-over from 24 hours of sleepless travel, dehydrated and stomach queasy from
airport food and are surrounded by people speaking rapidly in a language that
you don’t understand it can be difficult to recall what it is you love about travel. But as first days go, this one is
pretty near perfect.
Our flight
to Miami was packed solid – I guess they all are – but left on time just ahead
of the expected snowstorm. We
deliberately booked a connecting flight to Lima that would leave around midnight
just in case we were delayed getting out of Denver and so we would arrive in
Lima in the morning, not in the dead of night. Our few travelers’ arguments have happened after midnight in
strange cities. Besides, we didn’t
have to pay for a room last night, although I didn’t get much sleep either.
We did book
ahead for a hotel, something we seldom do, so we would have a place to hang out
and store our luggage until check-in.
Hostal Torreblanca near the ocean in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood
will be home for the next few nights.
“Hostal” means guesthouse or B&B as opposed to ‘hostel.’ Since we will be in Lima for only three
nights we wanted something nice.
Our room is large with many windows, a fridge and a working
fireplace. The bathroom is big and
bright and the shower is great.
Even the promised airport pick-up happened, a first for us.
Around nine
we caught the purple bus headed, we hoped, for the Plaza de Armas in central
Lima. My Spanish has improved
since our Central American trip but still has a long way to go and Peruvians
speak ‘muy rapido’ but I was able to understand their directions to El
Monistario de San Francisco, one of the oldest in Lima. It survived the earthquakes of 1687 and
1746 but didn’t fare as well in the 1970 quake though it has been restored to
its Moorish grandeur. The
highlights are the catacombs packed with random bone piles from the burials and
the huge library filled with texts dating to the Conquistadors. Sadly the library isn’t climate
controlled and the volumes are in poor condition.
Back
at Torreblanca and after a much-needed siesta we walked a few blocks to the
ocean front park. I was surprised
to see so many surfers on such great waves. There aren’t too many cities of 8 million with world-class
surfing within city limits. We had
dinner at El Seniorio de Sulco, a bit out of our price range but we deserved a
treat. Great seafood and a view to
die for.
