Getting up this morning was easy – because of all the novelty and excitement, my brain was producing so much melatonin, that my body just skipped over the whole jet-lag thing.
Hard to stay in bed when you’ve practically circumnavigated the globe!
Meeting me at the reception area is Pablo.
Pablo is my trainer, a tour leader working for the same company as me.
Together, we gonna spend the next 3 weeks touring Peru with his group, me learning the ropes of the work and him filling me in.
Pablo is from Columbia, a country currently swept-up in the aftermath of a decades long civil war, yet one of the happiest countries in the world, according to a survey, if you could believe it.
And no, his name is not Escobar.
When I tell him I speak fluent Spanish, he gets super excited – finally someone to talk to!
So, within an hour, I learn that he’s gay, dyes his hair ‘midnight black’ and just had $2,000 of the company’s money stolen from him by a young lover he took to his hotel room the other night.
I feel like I’ve known him for years.
The first thing on our itinerary is an orientation walk of the historic center, formed by 2 large plazas connected by a pedestrian shopping zone.
Buzzing with people, beautiful architecture and striking colonial buildings of the once most important city of the Spanish dominion in the South America, the larger of the 2 squares is really a must-see for every visitor to Peru’s capital. Called Plaza de las Armas, just like all the other main squares in South America, it boasts some grandiose buildings, rebuilt every time after a massive earthquake hit the city.
Three hours later, when my own buzz is about to hit its lowest after visiting the fifth old church out of the city’s seventeen (this one with fine carved balconies and catacombs containing 80,000 skeletons), Pablo makes a suggestion.
“If you want an adventure, there’s a tourist bus for 5 soles going from the Santo Domingo monastery all the way up to the San Cristóbal hill, the highest peak in Lima.”
I do want an adventure.
After the bus winds its way up the 1300 foot hill through tight treacherous turns and poor parts of Lima where I can see how the majority of Limeños live, we enter a vast sea of flat roofs and unfinished brick shacks climbing up the hillslopes all around us.
The first real slum in my life, a crowded anthill with a mountainside full of tight-packed roofs and steep alleys.
Some of the houses have two or three stories and facades painted in vivid colors, a sign that even among the poorest, some are doing better than others.
Called in different parts different names (shantytowns, favelas, or “pueblos jóvenes,” young towns), these slums are usually found on low-value land and populated by low-income families. They have a few paved streets, no running water and electricity available only on a pirated DIY basis.
“That’s a bullfight ring,” Pablo says, pointing to a red, round, open structure at the edge of the slum.
“It’s the oldest bullfight ring in the Americas. When the bullfighting fair takes place in October and November, the whole area is swarming with police, army, and tanks protecting the local elite in attendance.”
Connecting the city with the slum hill is the Puente de Piedra, the Stone Bridge, the oldest bridge in Lima. It spans the Rímac River, the most important source of local water, and has a promenade to make sure you don’t miss the absence of water in it and the layers of trash covering it.
The top of the hill, where we’re dropped off, is marked with an architectural feature incredibly popular on this continent – a huge, white cross that overlooks the city. It has a viewpoint, offering 360-degree panoramic vistas of the vast, flat geography of Lima that runs on to where the land meets the horizon, as if the place had no borders.
It crosses my mind that the city could fit in the entire population of my country. Hell, the entire population of most European countries!
Lucky for us, the day is blue and sunny, which is a rare occurrence in this city of perpetual coastal mist and polluted haze (about as rare as orderly traffic at lights).
Closest to the viewpoint is the Old Part with its churches, colonial palaces, and canary-yellow buildings of the City Hall, the witnesses of the lost grandeur of days long gone.
Further out, along the coastal cliffs of the Pacific Ocean where the city meets the water, are the upscale and tourist districts of Miraflores, Barranco and San Isidro with their high-rise buildings, international hotels and beach boardwalks.
Almost out of view but still in Lima’s proximity is the city of El Callao, the country’s chief seaport with a large naval base. Founded by the Spanish conquistadores in 1537, just two years after Lima, it was the most important port in Spanish colonies, handling all goods produced in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, carried over the Andes by mules, shipped to Panama, carried overland there and transported on to Spain via Cuba.
Overlooking the harbor is a fortress from the 1700’s, built to defend the city from sea attacks (and to protect the gold, the Spaniards stole from the Inca, from being stolen from them by British pirates and other thieves!).
“Hey, a lady just came out on the porch and warned us not to linger around,” approaches me one of the guys on the tour whose name I can’t remember.
“The bus ride up here was pretty dangerous, too. There were hardly inches of space between the road and us rolling down the hill! Maybe you shouldn’t bring your clients here on your own tours,” the complaining continues.
Silently, I curse Pablo – even though we hit it off pretty good (Pablo is friendly, suave and easy-going while I’m blunt, opinionated and uptight), to my displeasure, Pablo told the group who I was, and now, I have to listen to this!
And as if that wasn’t enough, he encouraged everyone to go ahead and turn to me with any questions, inquiries or suggestions they might have!
Damn! There goes my plan of traveling incognito for a couple weeks, of doing my own thing while anonymously soaking up local ambiences!
Now that everybody knows who I am, I have to be nice, ask polite questions and pretend to be interested in people’s travel experiences. And don’t people love to talk about them. What a bummer!
It’s not even like I’m getting paid for my training, anyway. I even had to buy my own flight ticket and travel insurance.
Well, that’s what you put up with when your dream is about to come true. You click your heels and smile.
Don’t they know it.
At least the palm trees, swaying lazily in the ocean breeze back on the main square and the uplifting tones of a salsa, mixed with sounds of military marching, goose stepping and rifle throwing are nice.
It’s noon and the Change of Guards is in full swing.
Hold on – a military band playing Latino dance tunes?! I have to get as close as possible to the fence of the Presidential Palace to see that!
A whistle blows and a Kalashnikov Model 1947 is waved at me by a guard in black fatigues to back away.
I’m in one of the oldest cities of the New World and I’m loving it!
Read next https://bohemianhag.com/peru/heading-down-the-coast/