a day in mireflores, lima

hey, hey.......hola

so, i got my bags and all is right with the world...

jess and i slept in and then woke up for our hostel breakfast which was butter and jam on hamburger buns with coffee.

took a long walk through an area called miriflores which is the neighborhood that we are staying in and one of the nicer parts of town. it is still absolutely mind blowingly nuts. really, i´ll take that back. at first it all seems so crazy but i think it is the just franticness of the people and the driving. run down strange store fronts, etc. after a little while it just becomes kind of normal. the craziness of the drivers really covers this city in a feeling of like mad max meets cheap 4 cylinder car. people do what ever the living hell they want to in the road. i think the only rule is no driving on the sidewalk. and i´d say in the right situation that would be fine too. keeping in mind that the area we are in is one of the richest and nicest-safest in lima and this is what i´ve seen. can´t imagine what the bad neighborhood drivers are like. there is 8 million people here and they all drive like nuts. it´s kinda great!!!!

add to that that 1 in 7 cars is a taxi. that helps the craziness.

anyway enough about driving.

we had pisco sours in a small little local place. found out that they have egg white in them. they are amazing. like a margarita with liquer made from grapes, about 4 other ingrediants and egg white. quite wonderful. sat with a peruvian woman who lives in paris who is visiting family.

the coast is right here in this area. the city is situated on top of cliff-bluffs over looking the ocean. beautiful. supposedly you are not supposed to go down the bluffs to the ocean cause it is kinda sketchy when you get off the beaten path. hooligans about, i suppose.

oh, i don´t know why this entertained me so but there was a guy standing on top of a fire truck with the hose in his hand and they just drove along the street and he watered the plants and grass with the fire truck. you know, how ever you get it done. right

luckily things are very inexpensive as a whole. we are on a super tight budget, but we figured we should live it up while we are in the city. we had a nice dinner of shrimp in a resteraunt that is built into the cliffs over looking the pacific. entirely above our budget and worlds above our budget if it was anywhere other than peru. nice.

we are going to hang another day in lima tomorrow and check out further downtown. we have a bus ride set up to go to a town called huaraz. it is about 8 hours from here and is at the base of the cordillera blanca. that means the white mountains. they are that, 20,000 ft mountains covered in glaciers. one of the highest areas in the andes mountain range. will be a comlete 180 from lima.

so, i´ll be back tomorrow for more details. off to bed. i hope everyone is good...

much love,
be well,
marc and jess