Just a short entry to update in case I don't get the net for a while. We're currently staying with another Nakiska friend of Andrew's in Lima. Mario lives in the outer suburbs of Lima, but yesterday took Andrew and I and drove us all around Lima, showing us downtown and a couple of suburbs (Miraflores, Barranco). We met up with two of his friends, Paul and Jose, who were, let me say, somewhat younger than us.
Lima is blanketed in fog at this time of year, though doesn't tend to get cold. It's the only coastal capital in South America (so I'm told). I honestly haven't really done that much, just trying to get a bit of work done whilst Andrew does a small amount of gallavanting around - he caught up with another couple of people from Nakiska today.
His mother doesn't speak any English bar the odd word, so it has been very challenging and enjoyable attempting to communicate with her. It's funny how relative your grasp of a language is. When we were with our Cusco tour group, essentially nobody spoke any Spanish bar gracias, de nada, muy bien and a couple of other essentials (e.g. cerveza). I've always felt that I knew quite enough to get by - we can book tickets, accommodation, buy food, use directions to find places (especially toilets!) and all the necessary things. However, you need a reasonably sophisticated grasp of the language to converse with somebody, which I am seriously struggling to pull out of my hat. Andrew is better at understanding, and I am better at talking, which works well, but a lot of the time we have NO idea what Mario's mother has been talking about. Thankfully she has a lot of patience and she is also starting to use very basic words and talk slower, so I actually had a conversation about teaching today at lunch (she taught history for 20-30 years).
Anyway, I'm going to stop procrastinating and get some work done before we head off to Trujillo tonight.
Peace out. XX
Lima photos
