This is a trip report of a personal and subjective nature. I hope it is at least a good read, if not useful.
This trip down I was bringing a used laptop for M, plus my own, a new cordless telephone and a new camera for my fiancée’s mom. I was sweating the Customs lottery, but got the green light and sailed through. The usual crushing crowd was at the end of the hallway; I don’t know how she does it, but M is in front of me in seconds.
We take a taxi to my hotel. Someone has mentioned Lima taxis and how they are cheats. That should never happen to you if you negotiate the price in advance. NEVER get in a taxi without an agreed price, you’re just asking to be ripped off. The other thing about Lima taxis is that they will rarely go by the same route twice. This is not because they are trying to rip you off: you’ve already agreed on a price and really, all they want to do is get you to your destination quickly so that they can get another fare. They take different routes because they want to keep moving. I rarely go the same route anywhere in Lima, so it’s nothing to be worried about. One last note about taxis is to be sure to lock all taxi doors and keep windows mostly rolled up to prevent theft. This is more of a problem when going to/traveling in Lima centro, but is just a good habit to get into.
Saturday night we head to the suburb of Barranco. Barranco sits on the cliffs overlooking the bay and has a romantic spot under a pergola with a view of a huge lighted cross across the bay. I proposed to my fiancée here and so it is a special place for us. After taking in the view, we go to the main bar/disco strip. This is a pedestrian area of old buildings from the turn of the century that have almost all been converted for nighttime entertainment. Some places you just sit and drink, I think you can eat at a couple and others seemed oriented to American pop music and a young crowd. There’s one that has live music that we went to on one of our first dates: I remember sitting on the second floor looking down at the people and lights below through the gaps in the floorboards. (Made this California native a little nervous.) It doesn’t have much of a dance floor, though.
We started at one place we hadn’t been to before that M picked. I need to mention how we were dressed: M was in a gauzy, black evening dress and I was in dress pants and (bright) tie. IOW, we were overdressed, but that was how M wanted it. Anyway, we order cuba libres (35 soles/10 US) and start bumping and grinding along with everyone else, but around 3 am we decide to check out another venue. I was getting weird vibes from that place. When we went to leave, we had to be let out by a guard since the front door was locked. God help that place if there is a fire.
We ended up at the Bierhaus, which plays mostly Latin music and has a more mixed crowd. We had had a good time there on New Year’s, but hadn’t been back since. The dance floor was packed, but we found a table and ordered cuba libres (20 soles/7 US) again. We sat and talked for a while and I looked around and noticed that someone is always looking at us whenever I look around, but I didn’t think much of it. When we were ¾’s through our drinks, we went out on the floor and started dancing. Sometime later we remembered our drinks, but when we went back to our table they were gone.
M went to stake out a place on the dance floor near the stairs while I went to the bar. The bartender told me it was 33 soles (9.50 US) for the drinks. I asked him again and he told me the same price. I didn’t have much fight in me that night so I let it go. When I told M, she was not happy at all about it, but I told her it wasn’t a big deal to me and I just wanted us to enjoy ourselves and not ruin the night by making a scene.
A while went by and M went to buy another round of drinks. The same 2 drinks this time now cost 18 soles (6US)! M was really hot about that and told me that she made a comment to the bartender: “Is that the price based on time or nationality?” I chalked it up to experience and stayed focused on having a good time.
Finally we got tired and moved to a table. We chatted for a few minutes and after hugging her I realized that I was propping her up! I tried to wake her up, but she was out of it. Maybe a half hour passed during which time I rested too, but then I tried to wake her up again. She responded a little better, but couldn’t stand up. I talked to her in an attempt to keep her awake, but she drifted in and out. Finally, no one was on the dance floor, the staff was cleaning up and the sky was light. I was anxious to get out of there and I had to literally pick M up off her stool. I held her tightly as we make our way to a taxi taking baby steps.
As I take her home, she is in some kind of trance and starts to talk about men asking her to dance. She says they keep asking her, but she doesn’t want to dance with them. I get her home finally and when she wakes up later that afternoon she doesn’t remember anything after we sat down. She is sick for the next 2 days and can’t keep any food down, while I am fine. This isn’t the first time she has had 4 drinks in a night. We keep talking over what could be going on since after the first day the alcohol is out of her system and she thinks that someone put a drug in her drink, probably thinking it was mine. Anyone else have an idea?
By Wednesday she is eating normally and I invite her family out to Larcomar. Her mom has been there once, but her dad has never been there. He’s 75 now and has osteoporosis and walks slowly with crutches. He hasn’t been to that part of Lima in 20 years, so he was shocked at how much it had changed. He tells me that there was hardly anything on the cliffs back then. We decide on Tony Roma’s and they really enjoyed it. The paragliders were out while we ate and we watched them sailing over us and along the cliffs.
After lunch, we see her parents off in a taxi and go for a walk along the cliffs towards the Parque de Amor. We cross a bridge that is popular for the suicidal, so there is a guard on each side of the bridge. I guess they shoot you if you try to jump?
A little ways after is the Parque. A wall with multicolored mosaic tile work borders the park, but the focus is on the ceramic sculpture of a pair of reclining lovers. I send away most of the gum/flower/candy/shoeshine vendors, but I do take a picture of an elderly Indian woman selling flowers.
We leave the park and keep walking along with no particular destination. Before we know it, we are at the launch site of the paragliders. We watch one guy take off silhouetted against the sunset as he swoops and dives his way along the cliffs. He flies near a lighthouse we hadn’t noticed before and we decide to go as far as it in hopes of getting inside.
It’s a traditional lighthouse painted with broad black and red bands and the lamp is already lighted and rotating. There is no sign about visiting hours, but there is a brass plaque on the door. I walk up to it and try to read it, but can’t. I notice a small hole in the door at eye level and watch for movement. Sure enough, someone is inside. I tell M someone’s inside and that maybe it’s a ghost. I dare her to knock on the door and she does. The door opens and a young man walks out. I ask him if the lighthouse is open for visits and he says hesitatingly that it isn’t. M then asks him if we can come in and see it. He asks me where I’m from (USA) and where M is from and he lets us come in. He gives us the tour all the way to the top where we walk out onto the catwalk right outside the lens. It was a great way to see the sun set. It turns out he’s in the Navy and all 56 of Peru’s lighthouses are under Navy control. He has a cozy room with bath and TV during his 24-hour watch. Then he goes to another location in Callao for a day and is back for another watch. I could tell the solitude was getting to him. We thanked him profusely and moved on.
The only other thing of interest was our trip to Calle Capon, my first. This is the Chinatown of Lima. It’s in the downtown area near where a fire occurred last year from fireworks that killed a lot of people. In typical Chinese style there is a large arch marking off the pedestrian zone. It is obviously cleaner than the surrounding neighborhood. We wander around for a while looking at the menus and store windows before heading upstairs to a restaurant M has been to before. We end up eating an all-you-can-eat buffet for 25 soles each. The food was very good and they served all the chicha morada we could drink.
One thing that was different about this trip was how much more conscious I was about the attention M received from other men. I’m sure it’s because of what happened to us in the bar in Barranco. I’ve seen men look at her before, but not as much as they seem to this trip. I tell her about my observation and she replies that she won’t get attention from men in the US because she is not attractive to them. I ask her how she knows that and she says it because most of the men she saw on the web sites were blond and no blond guy wrote her, ergo she is not attractive to blonds. Well, I made a bet with her that if she doesn’t get attention from blond men here I’ll take her to Hawaii, but if she does, she has to take me. I’ll let you guys know how well she takes it when she loses.
Which leads me to a question for you guys: how naïve/innocent/gullible are the women you’ve met? I’ve had to convince her about a number of email hoaxes over the time we’ve been together. We keep going around about a site that claims to bottle cats: www.bonsaikitten.com. The site’s humor is satirical and easy to miss unless you have a deep understanding of English, so I can understand that non-English speakers would miss it. We talked it over and it was a dead issue, but it even got covered on the local news recently and so now she insists it’s true. Is this common?
