Nov 27th: Tuesday
Nicole woke me up around 8am. Not too bad. Got a little over 3 hours of sleep. I think that’s about par for this trip. Our flight to Lima was boarding in an hour, so we went to grab some breakfast (Dunkin Donuts). Nicole had some toast, and I had a satanic donut. Not really sure why they did it, but they were there, so I got 2 =)
We heard the announcement of the boarding of our flight, so we queued up and got on the plane. My backpack fit fine in the overhead. I dunno why they kept making me check the bag. Flying is always my favorite. Never comfortable, always tired. Too tired to do anything, too awake to sleep.
We landed in Lima around 11:30am and did the whole baggage claim, customs thing. I’m a pro at this. Passport, boarding pass, and customs papers in hand. “Hello”, “I’m here for 4 days”, “Nope”, “Nope”, “Gracias”. That’s all you need to know to get through customs in South America.
After getting through customs, we entered the baggage claim area. I grabbed some soles. Exchange rate is 3 soles to 1 usd. I thought it was pretty cool that there’s a country that deals totally in soles. Then Nicole killed it by telling me it’s pronounced So-Lays. Meh.
After grabbing our bags, we had to walk up to “the button”. This magical device is a high tech piece of equipment. You push this big green button and either a green or red light glows. If it’s green, you’re free to go. If it’s red, they go through all your stuff. I know there’s someone behind the curtain controlling it, but miraculously we both got green. We were the only ones there, so I figure they were just too lazy.
Leaving baggage claim begins the standard south american cabbie chaos. That’s what I call it anyway. Cabbie Chaos is where every cabbie in the city runs up to you and heckles you to hire them. “Taxi?”, “You need a cab?”, “Follow me!”. And that’s about the extent of their english. Try to talk about where you want to go or ask some questions, you get deer in headlights for a moment, then “Come, come…”. Once again, thankfully, Nicole comes to the rescue with her Spanish.
First thing I noticed about Lima…dirty. Well, at lease around the airport area… and on the way to the hostel… and around the hostel, other than that it could be great. I just didn’t see those parts.
The beach area looked nice along the ocean. But it was all dirt and rock. Zero vegetation… and it smelled. I can’t be positive, but judging by my nose, they dump their sewage into the ocean.
We arrived at the hostel, checked in and then talked about how we are to get to Machu Pichu. I was floored with the complexity and cost that was involved to get there. Unbelievable! We had to purchase a plane ticket to Cuzco ($200 usd), cab to the train station ($5), then take a train to Aguas Calientes ($100 usd), spend the night there ($20), then bus to Machu Pichu in the morning ($12), and the finale of the entrance fee into Machu Pichu ($40). I was already broke. Actually, broke is an exaggeration. I was really broke. Like… living on credit cards and overdraft protection, and I wasn’t going to be paid for a week. Oh, and rent was due in a week. Ahahaha… and christmas is right around the corner.
So sucked it up and made a the logical decision. I booked the trip. Fuck it. You only live once, and what’s money? I’ll make more later. Right now, I want to see Machu Pichu!
With more debt racked up on my life, I asked where I could find a place that sold DVDs (I needed to get Alien from Peru =). The lady at the counter gave me the name of a giant place that had cheap DVDs. They supposedly had everything. Sounded good.
I jumped in a cab and headed for a name on a piece of paper. When we arrived, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. It was a giant bootleg flea market. 3 floors of bootleg everything. And this is no exaggeration. They had everything. There were probably 50 DVD store-thingy’s alone! They each had these bolted books of DVD covers and thousands of DVD titles behind them. If you’ve ever been in NYC and you know those little mexican lady’s that sell the bootleg DVDs in the subway, it’s like that. But they’re copies of real DVDs, and the selection is amazing. There’s movie stands, TV series stands, Anime stands, video game stands, porn stands, music stands. Everything! The best part is that they cost about $2.50 each. At the second place I looked, I got my copy of Alien. A couple stands later, I got Critters 2, 3, and 4! These aren’t even released in the US! Rock! Nicole picked up a Dolce & Gabanna (sp?) bag for about $10.
After a little more exploration, we hailed another cab to take us back to the hostel. This would be the best cabbie ever.
This guy spoke Spanish (obviously), English (nice), and Japanese! WTF?! Yeah, so Nicole talked to him in Spanish, to me in Japanese, and through in a little English here and there. He was the only person in the cab that caught everything being said. It was pretty cool to talk to someone in a foreign language that I could understand. After two and a half weeks of struggling in Spanish, this was a great relief.
I dumped my movies in the room and then headed down the street to the supermarket so I could hit up the ATM. The hostel / travel agency for our Machu Pichu trip only takes cash (just like most of the rest of South America)… arg. On the way, I took a couple photos of the neighborhood. Some of the buildings were in a state of post-apocolyptic deterioration which was kinda cool. Felt like New Orleans caught on fire and forgotten about.
While in the grocery store, I saw some Peruvian snacks that I couldn’t pass by. The popular soda (besides Coke), Inca Cola, and some spicy chips that tasted / looked like Fritos.
On the way back, there was a dentists office that looked scary as hell. I wouldn’t go in there if my teeth were falling out. But I did have a strong urge to check it out because they offered “Dental Piercings”. I was and am very curious about this. The cartoon showed a tooth with bling on it, but was it a bling insert, or did they actually pierce the tooth? I will never know!
Back at the hostel, we ordered up some dinner. Nicole had a fruit salad and some crepes. I, a ham and cheese dipped in egg, fried on a skillet, and covered in baked beans. I ordered it because it was the craziest thing on the menu, and actually, it was pretty good =). While we were munching away, we were visited by a little friend.
This little bird kept flying in and eating jelly out of a little tray. Turns out this guy has been visiting the bar for over two months and they purposely put out the jelly for him now. Reminds me of the seagull that steals the chips from the store (google it if you don’t know what i’m talking about, it’s hilarious!).
Dinner was over, and we have to catch a cab at 3:30am tomorrow morning (or tonight, depending how you look at it) to go to the airport to fly to Cuzco, and I was pretty exhausted. Somewhere around midnight, I passed out… hard.
