Day three of adventure
May 1st: This morning we woke up early at 6 am in order to check out of our Airbnb and store our luggage at our hostel nearby called The House Project so we could have an early breakfast and take a double decker bus on a city tour by 9:30am since we did not have the change to to first day in Lima. We were exhausted and ended up sleeping until nine, deciding to take the later bus. We checked out of our place by ten and left to the hostel to store our bags. The hostel is very bohemian style and filled with colourful paintings on the walls! I will post photos of it when I have a chance! After settling in our hostel we left to go have brunch and buy some sunscreen! We found a bottle at the nearby pharmacy outside which there was a street fair going on as it was labour day here in Peru! There were vendors selling beautiful (and cheap) paintings on the street, people playing volleyball, and artesians selling their goods in the park for upcoming Mother's Day. We found a beautiful small painting of Machu Picchu for about 9 dollars Canadian, but we had no cash so we decided to leave and come back for it! That which we forgot to do.... As for brunch, we ate at a nice older looking restaurant across from the park where we had fried eggs on toast with ham. It was called Haiti and the food was delicious! At this point it was around 11am and so we still had a few hours before the bus tour left, so we rented a pair of bicycles and decided to ride them to the bohemian neighbourhood called barranco just south of Miraflores and take advantage of the rare and spectacular sunny day that we had and go to the beach. Fun fact: it is never ever sunny in Lima nor does is ever rain. In Lima, most of the main streets have two way bike lanes separated from traffic with barriers the perfect height to step in and push off of on either side of the lane, they also have a bike and pedestrian lane going all along Costa verde facing the ocean which is the path we were going to take. We cycled for a few minutes to larcomar (the outdoor mall built into the cliffs on the coast) and stopped so that Marisa could put on her go pro (we discovered later that night that she filmed everything sideways...oops!). When we went to continue en route, we discovered that my bike chain had come off the front gear and so my bike was useless and we could not fix it ourselves, so we returned to the rental shop where we were given new bikes and then returned to the coast to continue on our way. We cycled all along the sunny coast until the bike lane ended where we rode on the sidewalk instead once in barranco. Here I may or may not have almost crashed into an old man who moved to make way for me in the same direction I did as I was trying to stop to avoid him..... He lived! We may have also got it on camera.... Eventually we arrived to the centre of barranco where all the buildings are very old and typical with lots of different colours, people sell their handmade jewelry on the street, and there are buskers everywhere. It is an artistic adventurers paradise! We carried our bikes down the stairs and locked them up halfway to the beach. We arrived shortly at the beach and lay in the sand under the hot sun! It was fabulous and warm and gorgeous! I tried bathing in the ocean with all the locals but it was not very warm, so seeing as I have a cold still I only got in about half way into the small waves before going back to the beach. We were having a beautiful relaxin afternoon when a small girl who was half Peruvian from Florida and her dad came up to us as they had heard us speaking a small amount of English as he wanted her to practice with us. Little did we know that introducing us to his little girl was also a way of introducing his friend to us who had just so "happened" to have strolled by. The friend asked us all sorts of strange questions like where we were staying, who we were staying with, where we locked our bikes up, if we wanted to meet up with them later, if they could escort us back to our bikes or give us a tour, if we had Facebook, what our email was, what school we go to, what city we live in, a landmark or street near where we were staying. It made us very very suspicious and uncomfortable. We lied of course, and very well I might add, Marisa and I. Eventually we told them after perhaps a half hour that we were meeting up with someone and had to leave to which they asked us to come back to meet them at a certain spot and time, to which of course we told them to go there and if we were able to show up we would. Of course, we did not even think about it. And so sadly we left the beach early in an attempt to rid ourselves of the middle aged men and their strange curiosity for us, looking behind us to ensure we were not being followed. We walked back up the cliffs, unlocked our bikes, carried them the rest of the way up, and ride back to miraflores to return them and go back to the hostel. At this point unfortunately it was again too late to take the city tour bus. Hopefully we can do that once we return to Lima! Once we arrived in miraflores we went back to our hostel to freshen up in the room and meet our tour leaders! The hostel has an outdoor courtyard with couches, tables, umbrellas, and foozeball while there is a bar upstairs also open with a straw roof. Our room faced the courtyard on the ground floor and contained three bunks and a bathroom (hot water this time round yay!!). While there, we met our awesome group leaders Kyle and Julia, as well as another girl our age from Quebec named mathilde who has been travelling in Argentina and chile for three months until now and will be still travelling in Peru and Ecuador for another two! The rest of the group arrived later that night after I was asleep (minus one poor girl who missed her connection in Mexico so she will be arriving the next night once we are in the desert). Eventually we were ready for dinner and Kyle suggested a busy sand which place nearby. So he took us two to La Lucha here in miraflores where we ordered La Lucha, a massive artesian sub sandwich with caramel iced onions, steak, fried egg, and many other things inside. It was delicious! Kyle also let us try his chicha morada, a purple drink traditional from Peru and northern chile made from purple corn. It was very nutmeggy and tasted like eggnog; needless to say it was delicious! After leaving la Lucha we went to metro to buy a few toiletries and water, however the lineup was out the door to the street for the registers, so we just went back to the hostel, ate up in the bar area, and I went to sleep for the night while Marisa went back out to buy her own chicha morada with Julia. Tomorrow: we head to the dessert oasis or huaccachina!!
