little things

you want to take travelers words for things because travelers are the people you can talk to in your own language (sometimes) about things that are relevant to your life, ie. where to go next. sure, these travelers can often times be anybody and they are from all over the world and hold all sorts of opinions and biases relevant to their parts of the world, but still, if one recommends a hotel, or even an entire town, you usually listen. you dont believe everything they say, but you log their opinions in a way that you wouldnt do so for a cab driver or a hotel receptionist telling you the price of their cab or the quality of their hotel.
my advice: dont listen to what people have to say about lima. all ive heard for as long as ive been in peru, from other travelers, is about how lima is a big, polluted, city that is not authenticly peruvian. however, after seeing lima, all ive learned about the traveler advice is this: most are not from big cities, and most are uncomfortable with seeing successful peruvians living in the same quality of life that they live. it doesnt fit in with their visions of travel: why travel to a place overrun by starbucks just like home?

lima has some of the best restaurants ive eaten at - some excellent ceviche, and they were showing little man at the theater. im not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you that it was an excellent movie, but one can hardly blam lima for that. much of our time was spent sitting at a cafe called cafe cafe. luckily they have two locations, so we werent sitting in the same place all day. one was located off of a plaza with a large grassy area. the other was located on a cliff looking out over the pacific ocean where people were paragliding and things like that.
we also went to starbucks, but i avoided buying anything. it was just interesting that there was one. we also went to the arcade, and i played a boxing game where you actually throw your hands against an image on the screen. i beat the first guy, but the second guy beat me even though i had knocked him down twice in a round, but he came back and knocked me down three times in a row. im no video game junkie or anything like that, but i do think that the game was rigged against me. anna and i cooke d a nice dinner for ourselves at the hostel including cheese and sansage and hearts of palm (not as cheap as in ecuador).

after lima, we went to a town on the coast of peru called chincha. it is in a town close to chincha called el carmen that the black population of peru lives and musicians like susanna baca come from. unfortunately, on the day we went there, she wasnt there and there was no-one else approximating her music, so nothing much going on. so we did get to look at people and drink beer at places, but in the end, it was just a small town. we sat around in the square and watched the little kids do this dance along with the rhythm of this other little kid who beat on a box. tourists seemed interested, but when they left, the little kids ran around the square and seemed very interested in anna and i who were the only other tourists remaining. they sat on the bench across from us and smiled. if we said 'hello', they lost their minds and did kartwheels and were shy and covered their faces. one brother and sister came up to us and laughed and ran away, and then came back with their mother who urged them to talk and it turns out that they knew a couple of words of english, but were embarrassed to say them. it got cold so we went into a restaurant and drank a beer. we were the only people there until an entire soccer team came in and ordered lots of food and fanta. that was our cue to leave so we did. back in chincha, we sat in a chinese restaurant for a while. our walking in seemed a big event for the people working there, as two waiters came to us and one insisted on turning the pages of the menu for us. surely this was well intended, but it was also unsurprising that the pages she turned to were the more expensive pages. then, when we ordered sodas, they came over witha bucket full of straws for us to choose from. on the one hand, it was more sanitary because the waiters hand didnt touch the straws, and on the other hand it was less so because my hand touched way more than one straw. if this were not done for sanitary purposes, then i dont know why it was done. well, there were different colored straws and it was nice to have a choice. out of one window, there was an old man holding a bag of candy who wanted our food, or to sell us candy, or both. out of the other window was a lady selling bread, but she kept dropping the bread on the floor and putting it back in the basket, so it wasnt a too imspiring scene. not that weve been spoiled by lima or anything like that...

today, we are in pisco, famous for pisco sours. certainly not famous for internet speed or sunny weather. here our plan is to walk around, eat, walk around more, take naps, eat, and then find things to do at night. then tomorrow we will go look at sea lions and other marine life off the coast.

the big news of recent times is our acquiescing to teach english in cuenca, ecuador. it turns out it is the best deal for us after all. certainly teaching english as a foreign language does not qualify as any sort of noble work. however, is it simply spreading the seed of imperialism? i think not. the people do pay for the classes, and besides, we are in a spanish speaking country and spanish is the second most spoken language throughouth the world, so spanish can hardly be seen as the victim. and if it is english that is necessary for people to get to where they want to be in life, then it is english that will be taught. thats how i view that. also, many of the volunteer projects out here require you to pay to join. can you imagine that? paying to volunteer? ha! thats a crime against idealism. so the moral of the story is that if you want to do noble work, the peace corps is the way to go: they seem to actually do stuff. if you want to live in another country with another culture and language for a while with a lifestyle that approximates the one you are used to, teaching english is the way to go. if you want to live in another country with another culture and language for a while with a lifestyle economically better than the one you are used to, an embassy job is the way to go.

ADDENDUM:

its a bit later now and i realize that i forgot a few things.
one is that in lima, there was a street called pizza street. thats what it was called. on it, there were many restaurants, all of which selling pizza. there was a cuban restaurant that played son and sold rice and beans and pizza. there was a brazilian restaurant that gave samba lessons, served steaks and pizza. there was a mexican restaurant that served burritos and pizza, and there were a bunch of italian restaurants. it was a street blocked off from the rest of the world. a pedestrian street that once you entered, you were mobbed by a million people holding out menues trying to convince you that their restaurant was better than the next. in one case, the menu person put their menu over another menu and pushed a guy out of the way. all of these people if you walk away, offer you free pisco sours, free beer, or free sangria. having already committed to papa johns the next day for their 2-for-tuesday deal, we wanted mexican and went for that. the reason i mention that is because here in pisco, there is a mini pizza street (my rather dim previous view of pisco was based on a number of factors: 1. i walked the wrong way out of the hotel in search of the main square, which i did not find. when i eventually found it it was lively and clean. 2. the internet shop i was in, being not around the main square, was subpar. now, i am in an up to date dsl type facility. 3. it was raining. now its sunny. can you believe it? sunny!). of course they dont sell pizza, rather more traditional peruvian food like stuffed potatoes, ceviche and rotisserie chicken. and they dont have the big city agression of the limeños, but its a pizza street nonetheless. oh, and it isnt called pizza street, but they do offer free pisco sours.
another thing: here on the south coast of peru, it is wine country. that means that in chincha, we bought the tiniest bottle of fig wine. we havent drank it yet, but i will let know how great it is for all of you bootleggers out there. also, i bought a bag of fruit that i thought were big grapes. but really they were tiny plums. the tiniest youve ever seen, with the tiniest pits. but plums nonetheless. anna and i ate most of them on the bus-ride from chincha to pisco and when we missed our stop and had to get off the bus in the middle of nowhere in order to catch another bus going the other way, at least i had little plums with me...