April 12, 2006 - PERU!
Well, I never got around to writing about 2005. Suffice it to say that I broke my wrist on January 1, 2005, I got to travel to New Orleans (once) in April, and Lima, Peru (March to April. twice in June, and once in July - four times) and I made a lot of new friends along the way. Most importantly, the UNC Tarheels won the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship and I watched it all in Peru, thereby completely missing all the Coach K. commercials, as well as Billy Packer's slobbering praises of Duke and snide remarks about UNC. The saddest, most devastating event was Hurricane Katrina, which affected many of my friends and acquaintances in the Big Easy. My heart still hurts for everyone there.
Today's blog is about my most recent trip to Lima, which was for vacation and not for business. I took my mother. We flew from RDU to Houston and Houston to Lima on March 24, 2006, arriving at the airport at 12:01 on March 25. We left Lima on April 4, 2006, and arrived in Newark (first class thanks to my Elite status) on April 5. A few hours later we flew to RDU. We had an awesome trip - it was great for both my mother and me. Each day was an adventure, but the best part was how social we were. We had a social engagement with some or all of my friends almost every day that we were there.
We arrived at about 12:00 midnight on Saturday and my friend Julio (whom I got to know in 2003 when a huge group of us were in New Orleans working on an automation project for the container terminal at Napoleon Avenue) and his friend Juan Carlos were waiting to drive us to the hotel. (It is important to note that Juan Carlos is a very popular name in Peru - possibly because of King Juan Carlos of Spain. I have met 6 Peruvian men named Juan Carlos). Since we didn't go to sleep until after 2:00 Saturday morning, we took it easy that day and walked to the stores I knew near the hotel to get water and a few other staples. I took Mom to two local department stores and we had ice cream at my favorite gelateria. That night, I introduced her to Pisco Sours, which is practically the national drink of Peru. It's created with a wine from the Pisco department of Peru (although the wine is very strong and is more like tequila than table wine), lime juice, egg whites, and bitters.
On Sunday, Julio and Juan Carlos drove us two hours south of Lima to a place called Lunahuana where we had lunch at a nature preserve that featured over 50 different kinds of fruit trees and an splendid herb garden. We ate traditional Peruvian seafood and tried a bunch of different fruit drinks. The drive there wove along the Pacific coast of Peru before winding back up into the hills along a river (which I think is the Rimac River, which also runs through Lima). We left at about 11:00 and returned at about 6:00. We invited Juan Carlos and Julio to have drinks with us at the bar and after that, we had a light supper and retired, because my mother was a bit tired after all the traveling.
On Monday, we slept in, had a great breakfast, and looked over the guide books to decide what to do that day. My mother wanted to buy a Peruvian notebook, some pens, and coffee, so we went to a store called Metro, which is the Peruvian equivalent of Wal-Mart (only much nicer). We had a hilarious interlude when my mother had to use the rest room and we couldn't remember how to ask for a public restroom. We were directed to the bed and bath section of the store, where we spent about 15 minutes trying to explain that we wanted to use the bathroom, not buy bathroom items (I was saying "no para comprar, para usar" and my mother was trying to describe them as rooms for men and women). Finally, we were understood and my mother was escorted to the bathrooms. We bought all those items, as well as some coffee mugs. My mother decided she wanted to go shopping, so after lunch at my favorite cafe across the street from the hotel, we went to the Jockey Plaza mall, and I found a really cool skirt made in Peru and she found some presents for Mary, Anna, and my sisters. We really enjoyed the first-rate, courteous service you get at all the stores. My mother got tired again, so we had another quiet evening in the hotel and watched a couple of movies on television.
On Tuesday, we spent most of the day at the Museo de Nacion, which is Peru's national museum. It details the history of Peru from pre-Incan times to the present and has a wonderful collection of artifacts collected at various architectural sites. We had an excellent guide who taught us a lot about Peru and stressed the fact that Incas are only the tip of the iceberg for the history and that the pre-Incan peoples were just as amazing, if not more so, with their agrarian planning and knowledge of astronomy. The most interesting thing I learned, however, was that a community/society has recently been discovered in Peru that might be the oldest in the world. The place is called Caral (I think) and it is still being excavated by archaeologists. Our guide said that it might be open to the public sometime in 2007 - so I hope to go back not long after that.
We saw a great replica of the Nasca lines and several tombs. There were also some beautiful Peruvian textiles and an intriguing art exhibit that we saw as we tried to find the museum store. My mother was hoping to buy postcards at the store, but most of them were for places other than Lima. Instead, she bought a book about the Nasca Lines and I bought a small present for Wayne. After our long day at the museum, we had another quiet evening, with delicious soup Criolla for dinner. We watched television, which is entertaining for me because a lot of the shows are in English with Spanish subtitles and sometimes the subtitles aren't quite right, although for the most part, the translators do a really good job, especially since American TV shows use phrases like "Stick a fork in it, it's toast," or "You gotta walk the walk first, pal." They obviously don't use literal translators like the ones you get on the Web because the manage to paraphrase the sentiments of our phrases pretty well. Anyway, I enjoyed reading the subtitles for CSI and Law and Order SVU.
On Wednesday, we went back to Metro to look for postcards and were sad to discover that they didn't have any. Then, we went to TSS, the company where most of my Peruvian friends work and met another Juan Carlos for lunch. He took us to a wonderful Italian restaurant called Donatello's and we had the luxury of enjoying an excellent Chilean wine with our lunch, since I was on vacation and didn't have to go back to work like I did last year when I was there on business. Lunch was quite long, so we went back to the hotel and my mother had a nap, while I went out to get more water.
That night, I had dinner and drinks with Julio at a Chinese Restaurant ("Chifa"). The Chinese food in Lima is really good - it reminds me of the Chinese food you can get in London which I think is closer to real Chinese food than what you can get in North Carolina. We had a great discussion about our family lives and our thoughts about our careers. He reminds me of my daughter Anna, who has mapped out a very clear path for her life, as he has. My goals haven't changed, but I took a more scenic route to attain them and am not averse to detours. After dinner, he suggested we get one more drink at a place called "Longhorn's" and I told him that at a place with that name, we had to have margaritas, not Pisco Sours. So, we did, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good their margaritas are (better than the one I tried the last time I was in Lima).
On Thursday, we slept a little later than usual and lingered over breakfast. We walked to get money from an ATM machine and had more coffee when we returned. After that, we had lunch with my friends from TSS at a restaurant that has a wonderful selection of seafood and ceviche. Lima is a coastal city and there is seafood in abundance there. The ceviche I like is ceviche mixto, which is a mixture of uncooked white fish and shellfish, marinated in lime juice and served with the sauce thinly sliced red onions, along with Peruvian corn and sweet potatoes. In the past, I've eaten at cevicherias that also offer a cooked version of ceviche mixto served up with rice - kind of like a seafood jumbalaya - and a fried version, where the mixed seafood is fried similar to Calabash style seafood.
After lunch, my mother and I took a taxi to an Adobe temple (c. 400 A.D.) in the middle of San Isidro, the garden district of Lima. It has a nice, small museum there and after you tour the museum, you can walk up to the top of the Adobe temple and you get a wonderful view of the homes and rooftops in San Isidro. Due to past unrest and burglaries in Lima, most residences are behind huge walls with electric wiring on top. You can't get much of a picture of what the residences are like from the street, but you get a great picture from on top of the temple. My mother was afraid to walk down by herself (because there was no handrail), so a security guard came and got her down. We decided to walk back to the hotel because it was a safe walk near a park and the weather was beautiful. It was a really nice walk, even though the map we were using didn't have the street names printed on it correctly and while we were trying to figure out what to do, a security guard that was watching a very nice house came out to help us and before long so did the resident of the house, who gave us the right directions. We also found postcards in a little shop on our walk and my mother was really happy about that.
That night, we had both been invited to have dinner with Julio and "his" Juan Carlos, but my mother decided she would rather have a soup and a drink at the hotel and not go out where she would have to speak Spanish (Julio's Juan Carlos, who is also Julio's business partner at their company, Agile-Works, does not speak English). Julio and Juan Carlos took me to a very nice restaurant near the ocean that specializes in Peruvian cuisine and I had a great dinner while we shared a bottle of Peruvian Cabernet Sauvignon. We talked about the plans for Agile-Works. On the way to the restaurant, I got an impromptu tour of the city at night while Julio and Juan Carlos debated whether to take the direct route or the scenic route. Miraflores and the ocean are quite beautiful at night, although it's hard to realize how breathtaking the ocean views are until you see them in full daylight.
On Friday, my mother and I went to Larcomar, which is a shopping center that specializes in Peruvian handcrafts, that is partially built into the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. There are spectacular views of the Pacific there, so we took a lot of pictures. We bought more presents for Mary and Anna, had a nice lunch and ice cream, and watched the different families and nationalities stroll by. That night, I went out drinking with four friends, three of which work for TSS and one who used to work for TSS but now works at a life insurance company. We went to a microbrewery in Miraflores, which is the part of Lima that tourists flock to for antiques and art shopping, as well as good food and to see the park that is dedicated to lovers. We had a great time together there and then went to a disco, where it was fun to watch the younger people dance.
Saturday was very full. We had been invited to a barbecue at another friend's house and they'd asked us to get some meat to bring to it. So, while my mother stayed in the hotel to get ready, I had fun buying ground beef, hotdogs, and chicken. We were picked up at about 2:30 and taken to the friend's house (his name is Nestor) where most of the guys that I worked with on the New Orleans project eventually congregated. The guys had a lot of trouble keeping the grill lit because of a cold wind that suddenly came up from the north. No one knew what to do with my hamburger, so I made patties and spiced them up with some Peruvian spices. Then, they didn't know how to flip them on the grill, so I demonstrated that as well. My mother, Nestor's wife Fanny, and I chatted while we helped her make salad and other side dishes, which were ready long before the grilled meat was. My mother worried that there was too much food until she saw the hungry young men descend on everything like a pack of well-behaved wolves and before long, no food was left. Then Fanny made us Pisco Sours (the best I've had so far in Peru) and we had ice cream for dessert. My friend Rale drove us home to rest for about an hour and then we were off to a pena, which is a show that showcases traditional Peruvian dances. We saw examples of dances from the coast, the southern highlands, the northern highlands, the Amazon jungle, Lima, and the dances created by the combination of African and native Peruvians. They also got everyone from different countries onstage and made them do what the emcee at the pena considered traditional dances, which for the U.S. was breakdancing (which I couldn't do because I was wearing a skirt) and the YMCA - LOL. They also had dancing between performances. We didn't get in until after 3:30 a.m.
On Sunday, we were invited to lunch at Juan Carlos de Vinatea's house (the one who invited us to have Italian lunch) and we had yet another fantasic meal, which was prepared by Juan Carlos's wife Martha. We also met his sister, who had lived for a year or so in Siliver Spring, and she and I got along really well. We talked a lot about our children and it was really nice and relaxing to sit in their beautiful, sunny home. We were tired, though, because of the long day we'd had on Saturday, so we went home at about 3:00 p.m. and just took it easy.
Our plane didn't leave until 11:00 p.m. on Monday, so after we had breakfast and packed, Mom went to the Central Business District and saw Lima's famous cathedral, which is beautiful. I decided to wait at the hotel because I was tired. Unfortunately, photographs of the interior weren't allowed, so she didn't take a camera. I'll have to go the next time I'm there and take pictures of the exterior when I go back. After that, we had lunch at the cafe, and searched for a place where we could download the pictures in the camera onto a disc, because Julio had lent us the camera after he learned that I hadn't brought my digital camera (the charger is missing) and my mother forgot hers. I'm happy to say that my Spanish had improved to the point where I could make them understand my questions and I could understand the responses. We had ice cream and returned to the hotel. After that, Julio arrived to pick up the digital camera. My mother went to the hotel mezzanine to take a nap and Julio bought me one more Pisco Sour for the road. He really was the star host on this visit - witty, entertaining, and very helpful.
So, as you can tell by this very long email, we had a wonderful time. Because it was the end of summer in Lima (they're in the southern hemisphere), the weather was gorgeous except for the afternoon of the barbecue where a mist and a chill wind blew up from the north. Everyone in Peru is so courteous and helpful and they love to ask questions about the U.S. They also want to know why I'm not married (!) and some wonder if the women in the U.S. are a cross from Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives. It's fun to tell them about our lives and to demonstrate that Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives are fictional. I like answering all of their questions about the U.S. I hope that my Spanish will improve to the point that I can understand them. I have less trouble speaking it but often when they reply to my questions in Spanish, I can only catch a word or two. My mother and I were a good team in that respect - she lived in Argentina when she was young and can understand Spanish, but she says she has a harder time remembering how to say things in Spanish. LOL
A week after we left, Peru had a presidential election. The candidate with the most votes (Humala) is someone that many think will return Peru back to the violent times of the 1980s and they're very worried about it. Humala did not win a majority, so soon there will be a second election between the top two candidates. Right now, it looks like Humala will face Alan Garcia, a former president, but there is a small chance that Humala might face Lourdes Flores, a woman who is friendlier toward the U.S. than Humala, who has implied that he prefers the stance taken by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela regarding the U.S. The reason that Humala is popular is that the citizens of Peru that do not live in Lima think that he'll do a better job of handling poverty in Peru. Sadly, the inequities between the rich and the poor are great in Peru. I just hope and pray that this beautiful country with its lovely people will not descend into violence and even greater poverty. I think that Peruvians have made me feel more welcome and treated me with more courtesy than any other country I've been to. I plan to go back in July this year (my daughter Mary has requested a trip as a high school graduation present) and, as long as the political climate allows it, many more times after that.
I've uploaded pictures of the trip on yahoo, and you can see them at http://photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos. You'll need a yahoo ID and password to see them. If you don't want to sign up for one, email me at falexander@flexi-word.com and I'll let you use mine.
Enjoy!
Today's blog is about my most recent trip to Lima, which was for vacation and not for business. I took my mother. We flew from RDU to Houston and Houston to Lima on March 24, 2006, arriving at the airport at 12:01 on March 25. We left Lima on April 4, 2006, and arrived in Newark (first class thanks to my Elite status) on April 5. A few hours later we flew to RDU. We had an awesome trip - it was great for both my mother and me. Each day was an adventure, but the best part was how social we were. We had a social engagement with some or all of my friends almost every day that we were there.
We arrived at about 12:00 midnight on Saturday and my friend Julio (whom I got to know in 2003 when a huge group of us were in New Orleans working on an automation project for the container terminal at Napoleon Avenue) and his friend Juan Carlos were waiting to drive us to the hotel. (It is important to note that Juan Carlos is a very popular name in Peru - possibly because of King Juan Carlos of Spain. I have met 6 Peruvian men named Juan Carlos). Since we didn't go to sleep until after 2:00 Saturday morning, we took it easy that day and walked to the stores I knew near the hotel to get water and a few other staples. I took Mom to two local department stores and we had ice cream at my favorite gelateria. That night, I introduced her to Pisco Sours, which is practically the national drink of Peru. It's created with a wine from the Pisco department of Peru (although the wine is very strong and is more like tequila than table wine), lime juice, egg whites, and bitters.
On Sunday, Julio and Juan Carlos drove us two hours south of Lima to a place called Lunahuana where we had lunch at a nature preserve that featured over 50 different kinds of fruit trees and an splendid herb garden. We ate traditional Peruvian seafood and tried a bunch of different fruit drinks. The drive there wove along the Pacific coast of Peru before winding back up into the hills along a river (which I think is the Rimac River, which also runs through Lima). We left at about 11:00 and returned at about 6:00. We invited Juan Carlos and Julio to have drinks with us at the bar and after that, we had a light supper and retired, because my mother was a bit tired after all the traveling.
On Monday, we slept in, had a great breakfast, and looked over the guide books to decide what to do that day. My mother wanted to buy a Peruvian notebook, some pens, and coffee, so we went to a store called Metro, which is the Peruvian equivalent of Wal-Mart (only much nicer). We had a hilarious interlude when my mother had to use the rest room and we couldn't remember how to ask for a public restroom. We were directed to the bed and bath section of the store, where we spent about 15 minutes trying to explain that we wanted to use the bathroom, not buy bathroom items (I was saying "no para comprar, para usar" and my mother was trying to describe them as rooms for men and women). Finally, we were understood and my mother was escorted to the bathrooms. We bought all those items, as well as some coffee mugs. My mother decided she wanted to go shopping, so after lunch at my favorite cafe across the street from the hotel, we went to the Jockey Plaza mall, and I found a really cool skirt made in Peru and she found some presents for Mary, Anna, and my sisters. We really enjoyed the first-rate, courteous service you get at all the stores. My mother got tired again, so we had another quiet evening in the hotel and watched a couple of movies on television.
On Tuesday, we spent most of the day at the Museo de Nacion, which is Peru's national museum. It details the history of Peru from pre-Incan times to the present and has a wonderful collection of artifacts collected at various architectural sites. We had an excellent guide who taught us a lot about Peru and stressed the fact that Incas are only the tip of the iceberg for the history and that the pre-Incan peoples were just as amazing, if not more so, with their agrarian planning and knowledge of astronomy. The most interesting thing I learned, however, was that a community/society has recently been discovered in Peru that might be the oldest in the world. The place is called Caral (I think) and it is still being excavated by archaeologists. Our guide said that it might be open to the public sometime in 2007 - so I hope to go back not long after that.
We saw a great replica of the Nasca lines and several tombs. There were also some beautiful Peruvian textiles and an intriguing art exhibit that we saw as we tried to find the museum store. My mother was hoping to buy postcards at the store, but most of them were for places other than Lima. Instead, she bought a book about the Nasca Lines and I bought a small present for Wayne. After our long day at the museum, we had another quiet evening, with delicious soup Criolla for dinner. We watched television, which is entertaining for me because a lot of the shows are in English with Spanish subtitles and sometimes the subtitles aren't quite right, although for the most part, the translators do a really good job, especially since American TV shows use phrases like "Stick a fork in it, it's toast," or "You gotta walk the walk first, pal." They obviously don't use literal translators like the ones you get on the Web because the manage to paraphrase the sentiments of our phrases pretty well. Anyway, I enjoyed reading the subtitles for CSI and Law and Order SVU.
On Wednesday, we went back to Metro to look for postcards and were sad to discover that they didn't have any. Then, we went to TSS, the company where most of my Peruvian friends work and met another Juan Carlos for lunch. He took us to a wonderful Italian restaurant called Donatello's and we had the luxury of enjoying an excellent Chilean wine with our lunch, since I was on vacation and didn't have to go back to work like I did last year when I was there on business. Lunch was quite long, so we went back to the hotel and my mother had a nap, while I went out to get more water.
That night, I had dinner and drinks with Julio at a Chinese Restaurant ("Chifa"). The Chinese food in Lima is really good - it reminds me of the Chinese food you can get in London which I think is closer to real Chinese food than what you can get in North Carolina. We had a great discussion about our family lives and our thoughts about our careers. He reminds me of my daughter Anna, who has mapped out a very clear path for her life, as he has. My goals haven't changed, but I took a more scenic route to attain them and am not averse to detours. After dinner, he suggested we get one more drink at a place called "Longhorn's" and I told him that at a place with that name, we had to have margaritas, not Pisco Sours. So, we did, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good their margaritas are (better than the one I tried the last time I was in Lima).
On Thursday, we slept a little later than usual and lingered over breakfast. We walked to get money from an ATM machine and had more coffee when we returned. After that, we had lunch with my friends from TSS at a restaurant that has a wonderful selection of seafood and ceviche. Lima is a coastal city and there is seafood in abundance there. The ceviche I like is ceviche mixto, which is a mixture of uncooked white fish and shellfish, marinated in lime juice and served with the sauce thinly sliced red onions, along with Peruvian corn and sweet potatoes. In the past, I've eaten at cevicherias that also offer a cooked version of ceviche mixto served up with rice - kind of like a seafood jumbalaya - and a fried version, where the mixed seafood is fried similar to Calabash style seafood.
After lunch, my mother and I took a taxi to an Adobe temple (c. 400 A.D.) in the middle of San Isidro, the garden district of Lima. It has a nice, small museum there and after you tour the museum, you can walk up to the top of the Adobe temple and you get a wonderful view of the homes and rooftops in San Isidro. Due to past unrest and burglaries in Lima, most residences are behind huge walls with electric wiring on top. You can't get much of a picture of what the residences are like from the street, but you get a great picture from on top of the temple. My mother was afraid to walk down by herself (because there was no handrail), so a security guard came and got her down. We decided to walk back to the hotel because it was a safe walk near a park and the weather was beautiful. It was a really nice walk, even though the map we were using didn't have the street names printed on it correctly and while we were trying to figure out what to do, a security guard that was watching a very nice house came out to help us and before long so did the resident of the house, who gave us the right directions. We also found postcards in a little shop on our walk and my mother was really happy about that.
That night, we had both been invited to have dinner with Julio and "his" Juan Carlos, but my mother decided she would rather have a soup and a drink at the hotel and not go out where she would have to speak Spanish (Julio's Juan Carlos, who is also Julio's business partner at their company, Agile-Works, does not speak English). Julio and Juan Carlos took me to a very nice restaurant near the ocean that specializes in Peruvian cuisine and I had a great dinner while we shared a bottle of Peruvian Cabernet Sauvignon. We talked about the plans for Agile-Works. On the way to the restaurant, I got an impromptu tour of the city at night while Julio and Juan Carlos debated whether to take the direct route or the scenic route. Miraflores and the ocean are quite beautiful at night, although it's hard to realize how breathtaking the ocean views are until you see them in full daylight.
On Friday, my mother and I went to Larcomar, which is a shopping center that specializes in Peruvian handcrafts, that is partially built into the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. There are spectacular views of the Pacific there, so we took a lot of pictures. We bought more presents for Mary and Anna, had a nice lunch and ice cream, and watched the different families and nationalities stroll by. That night, I went out drinking with four friends, three of which work for TSS and one who used to work for TSS but now works at a life insurance company. We went to a microbrewery in Miraflores, which is the part of Lima that tourists flock to for antiques and art shopping, as well as good food and to see the park that is dedicated to lovers. We had a great time together there and then went to a disco, where it was fun to watch the younger people dance.
Saturday was very full. We had been invited to a barbecue at another friend's house and they'd asked us to get some meat to bring to it. So, while my mother stayed in the hotel to get ready, I had fun buying ground beef, hotdogs, and chicken. We were picked up at about 2:30 and taken to the friend's house (his name is Nestor) where most of the guys that I worked with on the New Orleans project eventually congregated. The guys had a lot of trouble keeping the grill lit because of a cold wind that suddenly came up from the north. No one knew what to do with my hamburger, so I made patties and spiced them up with some Peruvian spices. Then, they didn't know how to flip them on the grill, so I demonstrated that as well. My mother, Nestor's wife Fanny, and I chatted while we helped her make salad and other side dishes, which were ready long before the grilled meat was. My mother worried that there was too much food until she saw the hungry young men descend on everything like a pack of well-behaved wolves and before long, no food was left. Then Fanny made us Pisco Sours (the best I've had so far in Peru) and we had ice cream for dessert. My friend Rale drove us home to rest for about an hour and then we were off to a pena, which is a show that showcases traditional Peruvian dances. We saw examples of dances from the coast, the southern highlands, the northern highlands, the Amazon jungle, Lima, and the dances created by the combination of African and native Peruvians. They also got everyone from different countries onstage and made them do what the emcee at the pena considered traditional dances, which for the U.S. was breakdancing (which I couldn't do because I was wearing a skirt) and the YMCA - LOL. They also had dancing between performances. We didn't get in until after 3:30 a.m.
On Sunday, we were invited to lunch at Juan Carlos de Vinatea's house (the one who invited us to have Italian lunch) and we had yet another fantasic meal, which was prepared by Juan Carlos's wife Martha. We also met his sister, who had lived for a year or so in Siliver Spring, and she and I got along really well. We talked a lot about our children and it was really nice and relaxing to sit in their beautiful, sunny home. We were tired, though, because of the long day we'd had on Saturday, so we went home at about 3:00 p.m. and just took it easy.
Our plane didn't leave until 11:00 p.m. on Monday, so after we had breakfast and packed, Mom went to the Central Business District and saw Lima's famous cathedral, which is beautiful. I decided to wait at the hotel because I was tired. Unfortunately, photographs of the interior weren't allowed, so she didn't take a camera. I'll have to go the next time I'm there and take pictures of the exterior when I go back. After that, we had lunch at the cafe, and searched for a place where we could download the pictures in the camera onto a disc, because Julio had lent us the camera after he learned that I hadn't brought my digital camera (the charger is missing) and my mother forgot hers. I'm happy to say that my Spanish had improved to the point where I could make them understand my questions and I could understand the responses. We had ice cream and returned to the hotel. After that, Julio arrived to pick up the digital camera. My mother went to the hotel mezzanine to take a nap and Julio bought me one more Pisco Sour for the road. He really was the star host on this visit - witty, entertaining, and very helpful.
So, as you can tell by this very long email, we had a wonderful time. Because it was the end of summer in Lima (they're in the southern hemisphere), the weather was gorgeous except for the afternoon of the barbecue where a mist and a chill wind blew up from the north. Everyone in Peru is so courteous and helpful and they love to ask questions about the U.S. They also want to know why I'm not married (!) and some wonder if the women in the U.S. are a cross from Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives. It's fun to tell them about our lives and to demonstrate that Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives are fictional. I like answering all of their questions about the U.S. I hope that my Spanish will improve to the point that I can understand them. I have less trouble speaking it but often when they reply to my questions in Spanish, I can only catch a word or two. My mother and I were a good team in that respect - she lived in Argentina when she was young and can understand Spanish, but she says she has a harder time remembering how to say things in Spanish. LOL
A week after we left, Peru had a presidential election. The candidate with the most votes (Humala) is someone that many think will return Peru back to the violent times of the 1980s and they're very worried about it. Humala did not win a majority, so soon there will be a second election between the top two candidates. Right now, it looks like Humala will face Alan Garcia, a former president, but there is a small chance that Humala might face Lourdes Flores, a woman who is friendlier toward the U.S. than Humala, who has implied that he prefers the stance taken by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela regarding the U.S. The reason that Humala is popular is that the citizens of Peru that do not live in Lima think that he'll do a better job of handling poverty in Peru. Sadly, the inequities between the rich and the poor are great in Peru. I just hope and pray that this beautiful country with its lovely people will not descend into violence and even greater poverty. I think that Peruvians have made me feel more welcome and treated me with more courtesy than any other country I've been to. I plan to go back in July this year (my daughter Mary has requested a trip as a high school graduation present) and, as long as the political climate allows it, many more times after that.
I've uploaded pictures of the trip on yahoo, and you can see them at http://photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos. You'll need a yahoo ID and password to see them. If you don't want to sign up for one, email me at falexander@flexi-word.com and I'll let you use mine.
Enjoy!
posted by Froshty | 10:23 AM
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