It has already been a pretty wild adventure and I am so glad
to be here with two wild women – Carla, one of the ER docs and Deepa, who also
works as a scribe in the ER. We woke up around 4:30 am Friday morning. After a
long “de-icing the plane” session in Baltimore, a “too heavy” plane in Texas,
and a lost taxi driver who left us parked in the middle of a dark Lima
intersection to ask some shady street kids for directions, we finally made it
in to our hostel around 3:30 am on Saturday morning. Needless to say, we were exhausted and went
straight to sleep.
We woke up this morning and after stumbling through
directions from our hostel owner who speaks only Spanish and the native Quecha,
we boarded a somewhat sweaty bus in search for pachacamac, a set of pyramids
that the Incas used for religious purposes. I should mention that of the three
of us, I somehow got appointed as the translator, although I really only know
about seven Spanish words, Deepa knows about six and Carla knows that ‘jambo”
means ham. The buses are crazy though, painted on the outside, with a man who
hangs out the door until the vehicle screeches to a stop by the curb. People
then jump in and out of the bus very quickly, because right as the bus stops to
open its doors, it takes off again down the road, weaving in and out of
traffic. After about 30 minutes or more, we transferred to a second bus but
that was the wrong one (apparently) so we quick jumped off and a security guard
(I think that’s what he was) told us which bus to take. So we got on there and
eventually were dropped in what looked like a desert, until we turned around
and saw the ruins. We walked through the museum and then walked around the
pyramids, eventually all the way up to the Temple of the Sun.
Carla really liked the street potatoes that she bought.
Next, we wanted to go to Miraflores, a pretty major touristy
area near Lima. So then we followed a stranger on a different type of bus that
was going in our same general direction and he, like everyone else, did not
speak any English. Given our lack of Spanish we played charades until eventually
could communicate, and he had someone else on the bus help us transfer to the
next bus, which we took to Miraflores and met the first English-speaking person
of the entire day, who gave us directions to the mall and then to the
cliffwalk. We walked along and you could tell that this was a much higher end
of the neighborhood; there were more, clean parks and much fewer street
vendors. We walked along, and then eventually ended up at the market next to
the Inca Market and did all of our souvenir shopping. It was kind of weird to
souvenir shop on the first day but I figured we wouldn’t have much other
opportunity later on. I bought some presents for my sisters, and one for Chris
(surprise! There’s your shout out) and a beautiful alpaca blanket for myself:)
I can’t wait to cuddle up in it tonight!
Tomorrow, we fly to Iquitos! There are no roads into or out
of Iquitos; you can only get there by air or by river. It is on the edge of the jungle and from
there we will be headed into the rainforest.
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