As some of you already know: instead of heading to Chili to do an internship, I'm almost home now. With family circumstances being as they are I opted to head back instead of being isolated and without communication on the other side of the planet. This also means that instead of traveling through Chili and Peru I only visited Lima. This blog post will show some final South America impressions, Madrid will be covered in a final post from home.
Let's start off with activities in the last week in Argentina: of course the final of the world cup. This would turn into a traditional Argentinian barbecue (Asado), with a load of Aureliano's friends coming in to watch the match on our projector. The asado of course featured great meat, cooked on our luxurious rooftop terrace.
Across the street, the exact same thing was happening on another rooftop terrace. Of course we finished eating before the match started. This was on a sunday: the San Telmo's antiques market day on our street's day. Just as with other Argentinian matches you could see the busy street turn into a deserted place in about 15 minutes, with people only coming out during the interval to get a smoke and a chat.
The match itself was exciting to watch, but with a very sad outcome for our Argentinian friends:
Let's start off with activities in the last week in Argentina: of course the final of the world cup. This would turn into a traditional Argentinian barbecue (Asado), with a load of Aureliano's friends coming in to watch the match on our projector. The asado of course featured great meat, cooked on our luxurious rooftop terrace.
Across the street, the exact same thing was happening on another rooftop terrace. Of course we finished eating before the match started. This was on a sunday: the San Telmo's antiques market day on our street's day. Just as with other Argentinian matches you could see the busy street turn into a deserted place in about 15 minutes, with people only coming out during the interval to get a smoke and a chat.
Youtube: http://youtu.be/m_gpbQH-NDc
I spent most of the week afterwards in bed with a nasty cold.. I got out to get a few shots of things typically Buenos Aires, which I will leave you to check out in the Picasa link at the end of this post. However, some things I did not capture, and I hope to cover here in plain text (in random order):
You know you are in Buenos Aires when ....
...you are standing in line at the post office, spending two hours to buy 3 stamps one day and two more hours another day when you need to send a package.
...you see people on the streets carrying thermos under their arms and stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to top up their mattés.
...you see side walk flower stalls open 24h a day, with the owner sitting right in the middle of the shop watching his little portable tv at 4am in the morning.
...you see lines in front of barred down kiosks at 3am in the morning, with people trading with the shopkeeper via a DVD sized hole.
...you sit in the metro and someone starts placing packets of paper towels on your lap (or packets of gum, or flash lights, or childrens playcards), doing the same thing to all the people on the wagon, only to return later to pick it up again when you show you don't want to buy anything.
...you see a centro cultural in just about every street you walk through.
...you hear people shouting 'cambio! cambio!' on the streets.
...you step into a bus at 04am in the morning and it is packed with people
...you get into a metro and after traveling in one direction for two hours you still haven't reached the end of the line.
Changing my flight from Buenos Aires to Lima from an overland trip to a flight was supposed to be a breeze: just call American Airlines (AA) and pay the change fee. However, due to Argentina's insane taxes it was looking like I should pay about 3 times the change fee in taxes. Paying in pesos to save 30% would also not be an option: Argentina charges 40% tax on flights paid in pesos... it was looking pretty bleak until after some 5 daily calls with AA I finally got the same superstar operator on the line that had booked my ticket in the first place (after all the calls with them I probably know all the first names of the people working there by now). She helped me tremendously: waiving the change fee because of the ridiculous taxes, and also fixing her colleagues' mistake (pricing the flight in dollars, while my credit card is in euro's). After a reprice in euro's the amount all of a sudden wasn't that ridiculous anymore (about the same as the change fee) so in the end it all worked out fine. With the exception that at this moment I've got 5 reservations on my credit card for this amount, instead of just one.
The flight was a morning flight, and with traffic and warnings about lines at immigration and customs that meant getting up at 04:30 to take a cab to the airport. This all worked fine (of course the streets were full of people at 04:30am). There was little traffic, now being a 'one world ruby' I could skip to priority check in, and customs and immigration offered no delays too. This meant I ended up at the gate about 2,5 hours early in an airport that does not offer free wifi... I wasted time by reading and drinking...
The flight itself was uneventful (sadly no sights of the Andes, except for a few peaks above the clouds near the landing). The taxi had trouble getting to the hostel because the roads were closed in Miraflores (the neighbourhood also known as 'gringo central'). The roads were closed because of the 'Corso Wong' a parade that is part of the celebrations for the month of the fatherland. Well, this meant that after getting set up at the hostel I would have to go explore this of course.
The Wong family runs one of the biggest supermarket chains in Lima, and as such the Chinese traditions were present in the parade. For the rest it's a celebration of local services and culture with folk dancers, school, fire brigade and police groups all giving 'acte de presence'. A funny thing is that all along the 5km route were supermarket employees, spaced in between 5m intervals... loads of 'em!
After seeing the start of the parade I went down to the coast to explore two of the other tourist must see sites of Lima's Miraflores area: the Larcomar shopping mall and parque del amor.
Pq de amor is close to the final loop of the parade route, and also close to my hostel, so I walked up to parque Kennedy to get something to eat and have a look at the parade again.
It was already busy when the parade hadn't even started, but when it ended you could get a sense of what a big event this apparently is for the people here:
After a drink at the hostel I got to bed, as the following day would consist of proper sightseeing. Impressions below.
First up: a tour of Huaca pucllana, a pre-inca pyramid structure, wedged in between the city's buildings. I opted for the Spanish tour which left some 2 mins after I arrived and I must say I was pretty happy to be able to follow about 80% of it :-). Not much is known about the people that built this structure, but the structure is probably dedicated to 'mother sea' which, if you could remove the present day high-rise buildings you could see from the top of the pyramid. Human sacrifices were used in its construction and were probably also part of the rituals. Only half of it is uncovered at the time and it is estimated that it will take another 15 years to completely uncover it.
Next up was the city center itself. Here you can see a lot of impressive buildings left from the days that this was the center of Spain's conquest of the Southern Americas. Some of them I also explored from the inside: the archbishop's palace (full of riches), the cathedral and the crypts of the Franciscan convent (the latter: not that interesting, save your crypt visit for Rome).
Pizarro's grave
The office that managed the conversion of South America to the 'One true faith'
At night I went out with some people I met at the hostel bar, so the next days were kinda slow. I visited a few more tourist sites, amongst which the 'circuito del agua' a popular destination for families, but apparently also for the teenagers. A water labyrinth switching on and off is guaranteed fun for anyone young.
While this city had got me worried about it's safety when originally booking my round the world trip it felt a lot safer than Buenos Aires. Ofcourse I only spent time in the safe tourist areas. But apparently crooks just don't go there with the sheer amount of police that is around (and each shop has an armed guard in front of it too). Another thing that surprised me is the quality of the food. Although you're eating strange stuff it tastes really, really good:
Chicken organs, beef, maize and potatoes in various forms... still don't know what the green paste is... all tasted good though!
Ceviche: raw fish in lemon and pepper, with assorted other seafood accompanying it. Tasted incredibly well!
The three days I had in Lima flew by, and with that it's time to say goodbye to South America, and to give you the Picasa links to these picture sets. Enjoy, and let's see if you get the next stories from me in person or from the blog.
Picasa links:
140719 Buenos Aires Last days
140720 Lima: Corso Wong and Coast
140721 Lima: Turistic center
140722 Lima: Circuito del Agua
140723 Lima: lastshots
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