Lima, Peru

John Clod Van Damn is the man! Its either a marathon of Nick Cage or John Clod and good ol J,C. always wins everyone’s hearts with is crazy skills of martial arts and pure bad ass moves.

Anyways, here is a long awaited post on Lima. Enjoy…

Before I even got to Lima I knew it had good things to offer. The past month I was beach bumming around Peru searching and finding some of the best waves of my life. The only downsides to these places are lack of people and none the less society. This is why visiting big cities are necessary so the average person doesn’t get the mild case of being socially retarded. For me, big cities are really fun for me and wouldn’t have it any other way. This is where Lima comes in.

Arve and I arrive at the bus terminal and hire a ballin Volkswagen Passat hatchback and headed to this hostel called Pariwanna. We checked in, ate some breakfast and relaxed for a while. The bus ride was about 12 hours (every bus I take seems to be around this number) so putting two and two together; I was tired and needed to relax for a bit. Upstairs was a full bar, kitchen, classic ping pong table that was constantly being used and a view outside to one of the largest McDonalds I’ve ever seen to this day. The logo repeated and branched across the whole second floor of this gigantic building and occupied both top and bottom floors with hamburgers and Mcflurries. All of which I never went in, but managed to take quite a few photos of the franchise just so people would belief me. Next to this franchise was two main streets that met at the end (similar to the big apple in New York) and a large park in-between the street. Along with this had cross walks that looked like Japan and maxed out with people before the light would turn green to walk.

This was all outside the second floor of Pariwanna and both me and Arve instantly knew we liked the city already.

Before I got to Lima I did some couchsurfing messages to hopefully find some people to meet up with and show me their city. Luckily, I found two different hosts that were more than welcoming to meet up and show me their gem of a city. One of them recommended me this hostel and was supposed to meet up with her in a few hours after she got out of class. While she was in class I was talking to her on facebook (good student Grecia!) and she mentioned her friend was working at Pariwanna. Within a few minutes someone on the intercom announced some girl was having a baby! All of the workers started laughing and for some reason I thought that was her friend. I called her over and pointed to my facebook chat and asked her if she knew Grecia.

“YES!” She grabbed my computer and started writing to Grecia, laughing and still no idea why I knew her (even though I haden’t yet). Five or so minutes later we were chatting and I finally got my computer back. Grecia told me she needed to get her Dad’s car to drive out and meet up and might not work out today to show me the city. Which was actually fine. Arve and me decided to go explore and walk around. We got a few blocks out, grabbed some food and headed back in. Nothing fancy by any means. Later that night we were having a few drinks and the worker that I meant came up to me with two other girls and put a piece of paper on the ground saying I have visitors! Grecia and her friend decided to come and hang out! We chatted for a few hours and decided to hit the town. We started to walk down the street and arrived at her car. Quite strange but super stoked to see and be in a car. It’s been buses left and right for me so this was a treat. Arve and me were in back while the two girls were in front. Funny story is, from habit both of us put our seatbelts on and grabbed the railing above the window. The girls heard this foreign sound and both looked back to see what was going on. They started to laugh and wonder why on earth we would put our seatbelts on and then Grecia thought we were scared of her driving! Haha. Not the easiest way to write this but it was pure comedy.

We hit the road towards the ocean. The city of Lima is right on this point so the drive was just down the street overlooking a massive cliff drop and small province of Barranco. This had an amazing view and just mind boggling that a large city would post up so close to the ocean. We parked the car and walked to some touristy center where ice cream, clubs and restaurants like Chille’s were. All of which looked and had a similar layout of an outdoor mall but with large arcade game centers for kids and me to play at. None of us knew exactly why we came here but it was fun regardless to crack some jokes and make fun of Grecia and her friend for not knowing there city (They live 30 minute drive away from the city so they knew there area much better? Haha)

Later on we headed back towards the hostel, grabbed some much-needed ice cream. More jokes and lots of photos were taken. We said our goodbyes for the night and headed back to the hostel.

Next day woke up, caught up with work and was going to meet with my other future friend Evy from Couchsurfing. I waited outside downstairs and she showed up about 15 minutes later.

“What’s up Evy?” She goes “Lets go!”. We start to walk and walk we did. Couchsurfing has the fun adrenaline rush of meeting someone new without ever knowing them but they open their arms wide to show you things. Evy did just that. At this point I really had no idea where we were going but knew it would be fun. As we were walking I was practicing my Spanish with her and she could speak both the languages so it was easy to ask for help. From walking we hoped on some jam packed bus and headed to the main square of Lima. 15 minutes later we hoped off the bus and walked to the square. This was the area where the president house was at, lots of colonial buildings that were turned into stores and plenty of tourists roaming the area. Of course we stopped at a middle point and grabbed some ice cream and kept on the random conversations all day. After walking around and exploring we jumped back on the bus and headed towards Barranco. Barranco is this awesome province right on the beach, crazy cool parks and some series seafood. We started to walk around looking for some Ceviche. Some grandmas pointed us in a direction but we got lost looking for it. We found some random alleyway that had some smoothie shops in it and walked down that. At the end of this weird, mostly closed up shops we hit the end of the road to this small seafood restaurant. We both knew this had to be good. Sat down and ordered Ceviche. The waiter came out with this large pitcher of Passion Fruit Juice and one incredible plate of Ceviche. Easily the best I’ve ever had. Every piece of seafood was prepared to perfection. To this day, I still think of that meal and how we stumbled across it.

After lunch we walked down to the beach and hung out for the rest of the day. Evy is an architect major so we were both naturally criticizing most to everything. This area of Lima was so cool. Part of it reminded me of Balboa Park with the trees and random bridges, while other parts looked like San Francisco. The buildings would be squeezed together, all pastel colors and filled with restaurants tons of culture. At this point Peru is really capturing my attention and loving it.

The day ended and we both were beat from walking. Evy headed back home and I took a nap. She said she might come back out tonight to party with me and Arve and all of the friends we meet at the hostel.

That night got pretty rowdy. We ended up getting a large group of friends from the hostel to make our way back down to the beach where Grecia took Arve and me the first night. While we were pre-gaming at the hostel, Evy ended up making her way down to come party! At the beach, the party was pretty crazy and very strange. The club was at this outdoor mall and downstairs. If you went outside parents could literally look down and see their kids and wave. This was weird because those parents would wave down while they were in Chille’s eating a steak. But life moves on and you end up forgetting about the families watching you as you dance like a complete idiot.

Next day.

This was a interesting day because the city of Lima was having there political elections on Sunday. This meant no fun for anyone since they closed all of the liquor stores. At the time it didn’t make sense, but the day before we were at the store and all of the locals had there shopping carts filled with beer and alcoholic beverages because they knew about the law…We didn’t.

Our solution was this: Lima was covered with casinos and we figured they couldn’t do such bad act of god and turn shut down the bars. This time we added another friend to our group. It was a Canadian we called Chad. We blasted out of the hostel and headed towards the casino to “gamble” and of course eat of the free food and hopeful free beer. Every casino gives the users free drinks anywhere in the world to keep you gambling. This was the same case in Lima. We all sat down at the slot machines and played .01 cents. This was about a half a penny back home so our $10 buy in could potentially last all day. This was the case! We all ordered sandwich after sandwich, lots of coka-colas (because yes, the law was in fact in full effect here and beer was not served) and tons of ice cream. Here, the casinos were not winning. We were all somehow making money on the slots and I think I ate about 6 sandwiches and more soda than a Shilo trip could handle.

We win.

Left the casino and spent about $5 and 3 or 4 hours of eating a buffet that served you food at your slot.

Got back to the hostel and noticed all of the people drinking beer out plastic cups! Wtf. We went over to the bar and “ordered” a beer. The “bartender” said we needed to pour the glass beer into plastic cups in order for it to be legal. None of this made sense but didn’t want to educate them on being stupid. So, I ordered a beer.

Ate some random BBQ there that night and went to bed early.

Next day did a lot of working. Grecia was planning on coming back over to the hostel to hang out later that night. Since the town was on some sort of prohibition we ended up going to Barranco that night and hanging out at Startbucks. Pretty cliché but it was open and hung out there for probably 4 hours until three or four in the morning. Pretty fun.

Next day me, Arve and Chad booked a VIP bus to Cusco to get closer to Machu Pichu. Evy came back over to say goodbye and she was talking about coming to Cusco to meet up with her cousin who lives out there and to hang out.

We left that night.

Lima is such a rad city and both Evy and Grecia showed me some great spots around their city. It was rad enough that I will go back to visit in the near future.