Day 3: Catacombs and Crack

That night was worse than the one before, as we had become gradually more well-rested and thus more sensitive to the very loud street noise outside. Oh big cities.

We woke up fairly late, around 9am, and asked the hostel guy for help booking our bus tickets to Arequipa for the following day. Turns out he was working on his birthday. When we left the hostel, I told him "Feliz Navidad". Clearly, I need to work on my Spanish.

At a small café for breakfast, I had the misfortune of getting that Zombie "in your head" song stuck in my head. For a long long time. And now it´s stuck in yours. We hopped a minibus al centro and from there walked to the Church and Convent of San Francisco to see the catacombs.

We went on the English tour, which was a poor idea, as the tour guide was simply reciting memorized phrases (such as "watch your step" to mean "proceed into this room"). On the tour with us were a few high school football players and their coach/Spanish teacher, who said they had raised money to build a house for a family near Lima. The guys were kind of douchebags, making fun of the guide and generally being stupid boys.

Carrie was appalled by poor condition of the artwork and lack of restoration, and I asked the guide (in Spanish) about the lack of air conditioning to preserve the artifacts and paintings. He said it´s too expensive and there´s no funding for it. It´s very very sad, as every single museum/cathedral for the rest of the day was the same.

We got to go into the catacombs, which were totally awesome. Don´t think we were allowed to take pictures. I especially liked the bones arranged in designs and in very deep piles.

Next, we took a taxi to el Museo Arqueologico in Pueblo Libre, a little far away from downtown. The old driver took us through el barrio and it took at least 20 minutes to get there. There we saw tons of things, ancient artifacts, etc. However, we were far too hungry to be too interested, so we walked quickly through the rest of it and took a more expensive taxi back to the Plaza de Armas. Carrie said it was due to supply and demand. I was just kind of annoyed about it.

So we found a tiny restaurant that served three course meals for S/ 5.50 and just blind ordered. The food was fantastic, but we ran out of time to eat it (along with the two different juices we ordered--Carrie got papaya, I got luchino, which is strawberry banana, I think). We ran to catch a tour bus that we had decided to take so we would feel more comfortable being shameless tourists. However, the time on the pamphlet we had was 10 minutes too late and we missed it.

So we got tickets for the next bus, 75 minutes later, and sat down in la Plaza to wait. Carrie used her Czech-- "I´m sorry, I can´t understand. Ice cream."--to get rid of three guys who tried to talk to us.

At 6:15, we got in line for the tour bus and were told that our ticket was for the 7:30 tour. The woman at the desk had written down the wrong time. We went to bitch at her in broken Spanish and in English, but she said it was full. Bullshit, I think, as the last one hadn´t been full either. Thankfully we got a refund (all S/ 16) and it was still light enough to take a minibus back to Miraflores.

The minibus was an experience, as it took at least an hour through bad traffic to reach Miraflores. At least four different people got on to beg or play music for money. Interesting system. Ambulances had difficulty making it through the traffic.

We got off the bus and went to get a pork sandwich at a stand in the park. Carrie fed an adorable cat that was watching us, so it kept trying to get the sandwich. Was annoying. But adorable. Ran to the other sandwich place for guanabana juice (it´s totally laced with crack) and walked back to the hostel.

As we were checking email, an American started talking to me and then to Carrie (switching off computer). He was from some American state (the people we meet blur together after a while) and told me he´d been in Lima for 7 weeks doing consulting work. Carrie, having missed some of the conversation, asked the same questions and received strange responses. When she asked him how long he´d been in Peru he answered, "I mean, look" gesturing to the many string bracelets on his wrists. This became a running joke.

Once we were safely upstairs, we concurred that he was kind of attractive but too weird. Very very weird.

Total catcalls: 40

Budget for two people: 3 meals, 2 buses, 2 taxis, 2 museums = $33
Peru is awsome.