Lima, Peru is a city that plays with the mind a bit. I arrived here after getting only about two hours of sleep the night before and so I was in an altered state of mind anyway. I was picked up at the airport by a guy who used to be a narco-traffic cop for about eight years so the introduction to the city was through the experience of this guy. He was a nice guy, spent 2 years training in Quantico, Virginia so he had an idea of what the US is about. He has three kids, loves soccer, loves cumbia music and Cristal Beer and loves the ladies. He told some interesting stories from his 20 years as a cop and got me in one piece through the racecar style driving-course that is Lima's streets. They have even less regard for the law here and the horn is in thier hand as much as the maté mug is in the hands of the cabbies in Uruguay. A city full of Mario Andretti's! I told him about the law that was passed working against the taxistas in Buenos Aires and he just laughed and said that that would never happen here. Graft is such a big thing already. As an example of the technique at work here, last night I was walking along the street looking for my dinner and I saw a group of police with whistles just pulling people over at random and giving them the 10th degree, "you could go your way if only..." What a stressful thing that is!
So the guy got me to my hostel and I crashed for a bit. I woke up after dark and went out to see what there was to see. A sliver moon peeked out from the thick billowing clouds that I was to learn more about later. It was leaning back so far in the night sky that it looked like a wineglass with no stem. I ended up having my first Peruvian meal in a chinese restaurant. They are all over the place here and are called chifas. The food was amazing. No lack of vegetable here. The plate was a glowing mass of just cooked vegetables of all kinds. Out on the streets I recognized quickly that this was no Buenos Aires. Fruit stands on every other corner, boticas had replaced the kioskos, the avenues had a much more north american feel compared to the european feel of both Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Oh yeah, and then there is the fact that I am now the whitest person in all of Peru!! If you can find a whiter person than me here I'll buy you a plate of ceviche and a papaya smoothie!! It is a little like it was in Asia, the people look at me with a giggle in thier eyes. Who is this tall white person with hair that isn't jet black? I think they get a kick out of my accent too. They are polite but there is a curiosity in thier glance. I am happy to provide a little entertainment in thier days.
The seaside fog is one that evidently lives on top of the city for the bulk of the year. It is called garúa. It is almost never sunny until after december. Here and now it looks like if you took all the people and cars and buildings and cut them out and pasted them onto a perfectly white background. You pretty much have no idea what time of day it is, or what time of year it is just by looking around. It is a bit surreal because it is also very bright, but not sunny. Nor is it warm. I though it would be at least warmer than Buenos Aires because of proximity to the equator, but it definately is not. It is a humid cold that is not really cold per se, but it isn't warm either. You can smell the coastal humidity, and yesterday I went to the edge of the huge bluff on which Lima is built and looked out over the beaches and port activity on the ocean. You know, actually this place reminds me a bit of Hanoi. When I visited Hanoi I had been in Saigon before that and there it was screaming hot. Hanoi had almost the exact feel as here. It felt like suddenly I was transported to a completely different time of the year. I am glad to have warm blankets on the bed and the fact that the advertised "warm water 24 hours" is a false statement makes for good survival stories with fellow guests over breakfast. (Here, over breakfast, I met my first dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist of this trip. I am not naming names on here but I have to admit that I am awed by the dedication that this person has to the cause of digging up hidden "facts" and information implying and implicating all sorts of people, places and things. This person is certain that all sorts of these stories are just about to "break" and that it is too bad that the media doesn't have the desire to understand the details of the things that they are reporting because they are just going to make things worse. As much as we share in common in the way of political leanings, and as much as I would like a lot of the same things to happen in the political arena, I can't help but feeling that this person is shouting into the wind and I hope that they don't go off shouting about anything too volatile while passing through US Customs! Full cavity search over here!!) Nothing like a cold shower in a place that isn't warm. But it is all good. You gotta expect that kinda shit from time to time.
Tomorrow I will move into another family stay and I start new classes on monday. It is a cool thing these homestays. You speak spanish all the time and that is the thing you gotta do to get the language down. TV is also really helpful. Just to practice listening to people talk and figure out the way to say things locally. This campus here is from the same school I went to in BsAs but it is a relatively new location for them so I don't think there are as many students. We shall see. I had a great final birthday dinner with some of my compañeros from the BsAs school the night before I flew here. Some great malbec and syrah and 600 grams (over a pound!) of grilled tenderloin for each of us. Those are some fun people, now we scatter in all directions and will never all be in the same place at the same time again.
And finally, we are coming up to the anniversary of Chris Whitley's death so if you are drinking anything, say a toast to the most important musician of alltime! Most probably you don't know who this guy was, but if you are intersted, check out the Dirt Floor cd first. You can download this or just buy it, it is amazing. He died at 45 of lung cancer and the world lost some of the greatest musical potential it has ever seen. If they get too good, they gotta die. It seems like that sometimes. Anyway, that is all for the time being. I hope that your lives are going swimmingly!
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