Lima is for lovers (of smog and poverty and bad weather and...)

Well it has certainly been a whirl-wind couple of weeks. My mom and sister arrived in Ecuador last Friday night, a day late after they missed a connection in Houston. We had a great time traveling for a week and they got to see several of my favorite places in the country. I don't know how much they appreciated the extensive bustime and I had to remind myself at points to value safety over budget but I think all three of us had a fun, comfortable time.

The first day they were in Ecuador we hopped on a bus for the Saturday market in Otavalo. It was kind of an intense introduction to Ecuadorian souvenirs but they were much better at keeping their eyes on the prize than I usually am. After that we had a day of walking around Quito seeing all of the churches and whatnot before we had dinner with Charo and family. It was a really really fun evening seeing everyone again. It was amazing how easily, despite significant language barriers, Charo and my mom ganged up to get the "rest of the story" and jointly fret about my current travels. Apparently the maternal language transcends linguistics.

The next day we headed to Canoa for a couple days at the beach. It was super relaxing, just like every time I´ve been to Canoa and it was just cloudy enough to preserve our porcelain skin. There were some (just) complaints about the 7ish hour night busride but we agreed the end justified the means. We then had another day in Quito in which we had lunch with Martha, the director from my program last fall, and visited Sol de Primavera. I wasn´t really sure what to expect (I was pretty sure most of the kids wouldn´t remember me) but as we walked up the street and Gonzalo saw me from the balcony we were quickly surrounded by my kids yelling "Nata! Nata!" and, almost as frequently, "Zancos! Zancos! (Stilts! Stilts!)" We played new games for a bit and I tried in vain to explain why I couldn´t stay for longer than a couple hours. It was harder than I´d anticipated to see them again and see how they´ve grown physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Hopefully I´ll be able to visit again in August. The next day we went to Mindo for a visit to the cloud forest. The first day was spent walking around and visiting orchid farmers but the next day we had a lot of fun. We hiked down to a beautiful waterfall where Lauren and I jumped from the 9-meter cliffs and Mom braved the slide into the freezing water. We were tempted to jump the 12 meters right into the waterfall but at the time I couldn´t remember whether my traveller´s insurance covered repatriation or not. I looked it up and for future notice: it does.

Mom and Lauren flew back home (and arrived safely) on Saturday and I departed on my long and windy journey to Cuzco. Because originally we were planning on visiting Manuel and his family in Riobamba but didn´t have enough time, I made a quick stopover to say hi and mend any miscommunications/hurt feelings. Manuel actually wasn´t home but it was nice to see the rest of the family for a few hours. I dropped off a few gifts from home (including some rose quartz which is used in traditional healing) and tried to leave for Loja. Unfortunately the connection I assumed I could make in Riobamba didn´t stop there so I had to go round-about to Cuenca first. I arrived in Cuenca around 1:30 in the morning and resigned myself to sleeping in the bus station for the night. After a few minutes I decided to walk around for a bit and as I passed by the bus stop there was only one bus in the terminal. One bus marked ´Loja.´ The driver was just standing there like he was waiting for me and called me over. I was therefor able to arrive in Loja at 7:20 in the morn in time to leave for Piura, Peru at 7:30. The border-crossing went fine and I caught a sleeper bus in Piura to Lima. The woman sitting next to me was disgusted that I traveled in buses with "chickens and things" and described our bus (with beds, meals, and AC) as "more or less." We traded travel tips (her giving me the names of up-scale buses and hotels and me advocating travel on the cheap) and slept through almost all of the 14-hour bus ride.

So far Lima has been more or less what I imagined and had heard from others. At 8 million people it{s a sprawling metropolis and there´s a gigantics, visible division of wealth. Coming in to the city you pass mile after mile of run-down neighborhoods and slums while farther to the south are suburbs more reminiscent of Europe than other Latin American capitals. The weather during the winter (which is now) is mostly cloudy which does little to improve on the general feeling of smog and grime. My bus companion had also warned me that people in the city speak very quickly, which I quickly learned to be true. Today I walked around Miraflores (one of the wealthier suburbs and more or less the tourist center) to the ocean and then around Central Lima and Chinatown. It was a lot of walking but I saw a lot of the city. Even though Lima is unappealing to the passerby-tourist, it´s still a very interesting city and I´m sure it has a lot more to offer given more time and patience.

Tomorrow I´m heading off to Cuzco where hopefully I´ll spend one and a half to two weeks exploring the city, visiting the sites around Cuzco, and hopefully doing another home-stay with a Quechua family. In 2-4 days I´ll be at Machu Picchu! Very soon I´ll have more to update than bus schedules (which I realize are boring but are basically all I´ve done the past few days).

Coming soon: a little more Lima and Cuzco: An Introduction