Commo Una Serpiente

Okay!

It has been 5 days since I arrived and I have already made it down to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru, and about a 15 hour bus ride from Lima. Despite even what an American man told us about Lima, upon deboarding the plane, Lima proved to be a beautiful city in its own way. Ayla and I were picked up by Lucho´s niece´s family at the airport-Lucho is a friend of my parents who used to play on my dad´s soccer team....also know as "Luigi", I´ve been told. We stayed with them in their apartment in the barrio of Surco in Lima in their ´7-year-old son´s (Mateo) room......two grown women in a twin bed was a bit of a squish, but we were cozy. :) They also had a son, Salvador......who is quite possibly the cutest baby I have ever seen in my life and was a good distraction.....he and I spoke about the same amount of Spanish.

Apparently most major cities in Peru have a "Plaza de Armas" in the center of town, and so far we have seen two, one in Lima and the other today, in Arequipa. In Lima, there is a large cathedral on one side of the Plaza, and as we were leaving a bride and groom got out of a white VW bug (very popular here for some reason...) and took pictures in the center park-a centerpiece that was oddly fitting among the insanity of traffic and churro carts. An art show was also on display-one piece communicated the negative sentiment of many Peruvians towards Fujimori, a previous president who stabilized the currency of Peru-the nuevo sol (and with it had large advancements in the economic and social rhelms), but has since been exiled due to a mess of corruption and money laundering scandals and the decision of the Peruvian Congress that he was ´morally unfit´ to govern.....among other previous incedences of abuses of power including suspending the constitution and leading an ´autogolpe´, or a coup from within which was seen as a dictorial move, and threatened a suspension of international aid he had won before by making import and export regulations and international investment regulations much more liberal......moving away from a more socialist government and arguably creating a situation in which the 50% of the population already under the poverty line, would be destined to stay there.

The schools in Peru generally provide a minimal, relatively poor education. There are many private schools, especially in Lima, which even the middle class attends. Lucho´s niece and her husband are both teachers in private schools, and told me of this situation, as well as the one in the highlands. In the mountains (sierras) the major source of income and the sustained lifestyle, however meager, is based on farming and thus manual labor. As a result, quite often, children have to walk an hour or two or three to attend school for a minimum amount of time per day, to be able to return to the farm to work-and I believe they stop schooling after they have learned the basics of reading and writing. It was quite amazing to look out over Lima, population 8 million, and think that much of the food the city consumed, including us, came from these farms where people were leading a less than luxurious life. Lucho´s niece told us that many people from small villages move to the bigger cities-Lima, Arequipa, Cusco-to find work. From her apartment, we could see the famous hillsides surrounding Lima where the underprivileged live. It will be interesting to see the differences in Argentina and Chile, if we end up traveling there.

During our days in Lima, Ayla and I never really knew what was going to happen next, and were very suprised at the overwhelming amount of hospitality afforded to us. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was served to us every day-even on the morning which the mother had to go to school in the morning-the grandfather came over before we woke up and cooked us breakfast! (hot dogs and huevos....seems like a grandpa breakfast to me!) They also took us to the beach in Lima in the barrio of Barranco (Mine and Ayla´s favorite barrio), and we were quite obviously the whitest people in sight......in 45 minutes i had a sun burn-turns out the Pacific Northwest´s sun has nothing on Peru!

On our last day in Lima we had lunch with the whole family (grandparents, brothers and the family that hosted us).......chicken and rice seems like a typical dish, with sweet potatos, native to Peru, along side with a slightly spicy cream sauce, which I could never really make out the contents of......but it was muy rico (tasty)! Not surprisingly, the entire family piled into Lucho´s nieces minivan (not like my caravan at home.....much skinnier with no trunk to speak of, and handled like a compact in the crazy lima traffic) to take us all to the bus station that evening.
We took a night bus to Arequipa which lasted about 15 hours, from 630pm to 10am the next morning. It would have been a relatively comfortalble ride-a first rate coach, for sure- but as Lucho´s niece had warned us, the roads in the mountains up to Arequipa ( 2350 meters, elevation) were like a serpent (commo una serpiente). Weaving back and forth at rediculous angles that one couldn´t imagine a double decker tour bus could make, Ayla and I barely caught a wink of sleep. However, it was the best time I think I have ever spent at 5am- looking out over the huge rock formations with desert-like appearance in the soft orange light of dawn.

We are now visiting Arequipa for 2 days, seeing the sights, including the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, where the second child of the wealthiest Peruvian families used to enter religious service. Apparently musicians and other entertainers were often invited into the monastery and the lives of the nuns were generally very lively and especially priveleged, with each nun having a few servants to themselves.......until......a straight Dominican nun was sent to this ´hedonistic´ monestary, and made things very different for the nuns-keeping them inside the walls for most of their now, much more pious lives. Now, it is open to the public due to pressure from Arequipa´s governor (to milk the tourists´pockets, naturally), and we´ll be opening OUR pockets tonight!
Adios!