Day One - Central Lima

We were going to go paragliding today, but hadn’t been able to get hold of the company, so ended up switching with our plans for tomorrow and were tourists around central Lima. Began the day getting majorly hit on by our waiter at breakfast, so that was great…Then was hit on by two other guys that I know of during the rest of the day, including one from a taxi who blew us a loud kiss as he drove by. Oh Peru.
Anyway, started off at Monasterio de San Francisco (yes, how appropriate). First were paintings and history about the Franciscans and a lot of religious things, which didn’t interest me too much. Then came the strange and morbid paintings and carvings of each saint and important figure and the way that they died – there was one lovely painting of a saint with his head chopped off kind of lying on his shoulder. Interesting, though. Then we went down to the catacombs in the monastery, the first floor of them, at least… there were countless floors of bodies beneath us that hadn’t been excavated. We walked around under low stone ceilings and looked at piles and piles of mostly femurs, and a few collections of skulls here and there. The architecture in the building was also pretty cool. I’m loving all the buildings around here.
We wandered on and ended up at the president’s palace next to Lima’s main plaza. It was exactly noon, so we arrived to the sound of a band. We watched the changing of the guard ceremony. The palace was a huge, really nice old building, but sadly, to get inside, you need to make reservations two days in advance, so that was that. Continued on, past people trying to force us to eat at their restaurants or buy this or that.
After some searching, asking, misunderstanding confusing Spanish directions, and ending up in the warehouse side of the post office, we eventually found it to buy some stamps – which are ridiculously expensive, btw. Went to the museum of the old post office and saw stamps that they’ve used over the years, back from when they first started using them here, and some stories about Incan forms of sending messages.
Next, on to Parque de la Muralla, where the museum turned out to be open by appointment only, but we saw some excavations of some walls and some views of the city. Well, views of the city… you can’t see much here because it is so polluted. But we saw colored houses off on the hillsides through the smog. You can feel the pollution constantly outside and also because it is winter, but mainly because of the smog, the sky is always that nice smoggy shade of gray. Everything in Lima smells like gasoline, especially near the main streets. It’s hard to see off in the distance because everything is obscured by the smog. Yuck. I wouldn’t be able to stay here for too many days, though I’m sure people just get used to it.
Next was Casa de Oquendo, one of the highlights of the day. It’s an old colonial mansion that’s open to the public. We walked in and were greeted by a really nice guy, Ricardo, who took us on an amazing tour of the house. We saw the library, which had some of the oldest books I’ve ever seen, including a bunch of old medical books with really scary pictures of people tied down for different medical procedures. Went to a room that was used as a classroom. The chairs in there were really old and had cool images on them. One was about a marriage between a Spanish king and an Incan woman, so combined some of the Incan gods with Spanish symbols and linked the images together in a really nice way. Up and up the stairs we went, from the restored part of the house to the upper two floors which were not restored, so were just as they were (minus a bit thanks to the humidity and earthquakes) in the 18th century when the family lived in the house. We went into the tower of the house, the tallest colonial in the area, and could see all over Lima. When it isn’t so smoggy, you can see all the way to the coast. The man who used to live in the house apparently was really rich and owned a lot of boats so would sit in the tower with his binoculars and watch his boats moving out on the water. It’s hard to describe, but everything up there was completely run down in an incredible way, gross and worn out by the pollution, the weather, and time, but almost magical still. We were way up high but when on the edge of the roof, could look down the four stories into the middle of other houses where people lived.
Had lunch at a yummy vegetarian restaurant, where I didn’t know what anything was so just ordered something off the menu and it turned out to be a giant pancake-ish thing that I can’t think of the name of with soy and yummy cheese and lots of vegetables inside. Also a really good juice/smoothie thing with a combination of a bunch of fruits. Mmm.
Then off to the bank museum, where we got another really nice tour. The bottom floor started off with a huge collection of pre-Columbian art, which our tour guide knew a ton about and he spoke English really well, so learned a lot and it was really interesting. He went through all of the different cultures up until the Incan time and the way that the art changed in each one. Some didn’t like using many colors, others focused on animals, some used two pipe things in their pottery while others consistently only used one, etc. One of the cultures, I can’t think of which off the top of my head, had really cool musical instruments in the shape of animals where you either blow air in or put water in and sound comes out through holes in the eyes, ears, and so on. After that collection, we walked through the doors of an old vault (the museum is in an old bank) into the gold collection, where there were tons of awesome gold vases, masks, jewelry, ornaments for the dead, all pure gold and made with so much detail. This mask was use to put over the face of the important dead, and has teardrops symbolizing the people asking for rain. Oh, and gold and silver were really important because gold symbolizes the sweat of the sun and silver, the tears of the moon.
The last place we went was to a Dominican church, which was so amazingly decorated with huge ceilings and really intricate religious scenes and altars. Soon after we got there, a mass started, so we sat through a bit of it listening to the booming voice of the preacher/bishop/someone, but couldn’t understand a thing, so left after a bit.
Boiling hot shower tonight to compare with my freezing cold shower last night. Maybe I’ll get somewhere in between tomorrow night.
Things are so cheap here, I love it. Five mini churros for about 33 cents, dinner for $1.75, museums either free or about a dollar each, 6 bucks a night each for our room. Okay, this is probably long enough for today.