Hot Damn! Gentle Reader, you may have picked up a trend in these pages that as the Blogger and the Lady have progressed in our careers, our trips have become increasingly, well, swanky. This trip bumps things up quite a bit in that regard, as it is our 10th anniversary so we did not concern ourselves greatly with economy. This showed once we cleared customs last night and were met by The Most Interesting Man in the World, Victor, who was our Mr. Wolf for the Lima legs of our trip. Simply having a guide at all is a huge change from our historical approach of “get free ticket to most random new Delta destination, pick out a couple of places to stay, then wing it,” but with TBJ along for the ride we felt it best to have things pretty well locked down. We did quite a bit of research, came up with a detailed itinerary, and then realized that every place that we planned to stay (along with the train we planned to take to Machu Picchu) was owned by Orient Express, so we called and got a personalized tour for less than we would have spent had we gone it alone. This turned out to be a sound decision, paying almost immediate benefits, as customs was a bit of a mess, we had some confusion around where to get our gate-checked stroller, and by the time we made it through arrivals we were rapidly approaching being stressed out. Victor immediately created order our of chaos, had his people take our bags, and escorted us to our waiting mini-bus for our ride to the hotel.
Today, our first day in Peru, dawned bright and early and upon opening our curtains we realized that we had a private garden off of our sweet. This was pretty cool as it afforded opportunity for mischief for TBJ, and opportunity for pictures for your Blogger. First things first, however, so after breakfast we met our guide for the day, a lady named Sylvia, for a tour of Lima.
Sylvia turned out to be both extraordinarily knowledgable and extremely funny. The main portion of today’s excursion took us from the Miraflores district to the central Plaza Mayor, the old city and heart of church and state in Peru. Being Sunday, this was only a 30-45 minute trip, but we pushed it out a good bit thanks to Sylvia’s flexibility. While still in Miraflores, we visited an enormous pre-Inca pyramid, Huaca Pucliana, which was made of millions of small adobe bricks and has apparently been in the process of restoration for years. This was just a quick photo op, however, and we soon found ourselves in the gorgeous San Isidro neighbourhood, which boasts a number of embassies, weird Tudor-style homes built by expat Brits sporting clay tile roofs (which aren’t used elsewhere in Lima because it almost never rains there), and more parks than one can imagine. Recognizing TBJ’s need to run, Sylvia took us to El Olivar, a stunning park on the site of an old olive grove that still has trees hundreds of years old. Watching TBJ run around the park, make friends with the local kids, and generally act just like the people he was encountering were the same people he encounters in Atlanta was just awesome. People ask us all the time why we take TBJ on these long trips since it’s a bit of a hassle and he’s unlikely to remember much of it. One look at TBJ flailing around at a ball with some similarly aged Peruvian kid, or walking up and giggling with some Andean Indian, should answer that question. Exposing him to as many people and places as early as possible can’t help but make him the kind of person that takes everyone at face value and respects them for who and what they are, and that can’t help but be a good thing. Not taking him would just be laziness.
After El Olivar we made our way to Plaza Mayor to see the tourist stuff – the ubiquitous Cathedral, the governmental palace and the San Francisco Monastery. First up was the Cathedral, which was notable (from my perspective, anyway) for two reasons. One was that it is the resting place of Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conqueror of Latin America and founder of Lima. Pizarro’s bones were apparently found in the early 20th century (the first time), at which point the city decided that he merited a place of honor in the Cathedral, not for his role in the near-genocide of the Incas and dozens of other Andean tribes, but as the founder of Lima. Amazingly, at some more recent point a more ornate casket was found at the same place that “Pizarro’s” was, and after some analysis it was “proven” that the new bones were Pizarro’s “real” body, so all is good and everyone is happy. At least, in the words of Sylvia, until a fancier coffin is found.
The second cool thing about the Cathedral is that after the original (which was apparently the typical Baroque monstrosity you find throughout Latin America) was destroyed in an earthquake in the 17th or 18th century, the Cathedral was rebuilt in a simple, clean neo classical style. I’ve seen a lot of 16th century Cathedrals in my day, and it was an absolute delight to see one built with a focus on simplicity, function and being a house of worship as opposed to a gold dripping ode to ostentation. I get why our forebears in all faiths made the huge megalomaniacal religious centers back in the day, but the exception to the rule in Lima was quite something. For those of you with more prosaic bents, think about the difference between a clean and simple 70s chopper versus some chrome plated yuppie wagon built by one of the modern chopper builders you see on TV.
After the Cathedral we strolled over to the Governmental Palace. Today, the palace was blocked off for some sort of “town hall” event in which the current government heard grievances and wishes from various tribes from various regions of the country as some sort unity-building measure. Fortunately for us, this also entailed lots of people dressed up in their traditional garb, including (of most interest to myself) a tribe from the Amazon who’s traditional costume showed a lot of leg and which seemed to be comprised largely of women who looked like the lead in Lambada, the Forbidden Dance. Unfortunately all of my photos are of the mountain tribes, but you get the idea. In an interesting flash of evolutionary insight, comparing the legs of the women from the flowing, sinuous Amazonian region to those from the granite-rich, stocky Andes, I realized how much of an impact one’s geography can have on one’s physical form.
After this Darwinian exercise, we headed to the San Francisco Monastery, which according to its propaganda holds the largest collection of colonial religions art in “America”. Before going in we spent 15 minutes or so watching TBJ chase pigeons in the monastary’s courtyard, which was an almost religious experience in itself – at least for those of us who follow the Gods of Comedy. The monastery lived up to its billing with respect to the art, but one of the more interesting features were some frescos that were being restored while we were there. Apparently the frescos were “lost” for several centuries after they were painted around the time of the monastary’s construction because they were frequently damaged in earthquakes, so were covered with framed oil paintings that were less prone to damage. It was pretty cool to see these “newfound” frescos, and see the kind of detail, decision making and thought that goes into a well done restoration.
One of the biggest surprises about Lima is how much of a civic society the city seems to have, with massive investments in wonderful parks and open spaces, public art, cleanliness (it is the most litter-free big city I’ve been to) and people living outdoors and in public. Combined with some huge public works projects to reclaim land from the ocean and a tremendous amount of new construction, Lima (or Miraflores, at least) is a remarkably dynamic and city.
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