Day 1 - Sleep, La Mar, and John F. Kennedy

Hola familia y amigos,

Emma and I arrived safely to Peru yesterday afternoon. Everything went without a hitch, no delays, and we somehow managed to snag enough sleep to get us through the day after having trekked down to NYC from Poughkeepsie to catch a 2am flight out of JFK. 

I should preface these posts by pointing out that there will most definitely be a lot of unnecessary information, intricate attention to detail, unneccesary adjectives, and the bulk of it consisting of reviews of food. Be forewarned that the attempts at wit may not be for all. 

Having had only minimal/sporadic sleep throughout or plane ride, I was quite impressed by how much we managed to see of Lima and how consistently high our spirits were all day. Also, amongst all the warnings, well wishes for safety, and countless stories, we never once felt unsafe, lost, a presence of a language barrier, or sick from the food (knock on wood for the latter as most of our food did consist of raw fish). 

The initial impression of Lima was a little skewed as the area around the airport (as with most airports) was quite underdeveloped, and the taxi we requested from the hostal didn't show up. The one thing we were a tad concerned about was the safety of the taxis as we've heard numerous warnings about imposter taxis that either well do bad things to you or drop you off at a completely different hotel that said hotel comps them for. That being said, Caeser la Cabbie was a gem. He did take us on a shortcut that in the moment was incredibly questionable going down narrow back alleys, but we then popped out right alongside the Pacific Ocean. 

A mere 30min ride to the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima where we would spend the night, Caeser and us bid our farewells. The hostal we stayed in was nice, above average, not as awesome/bumping as some of the hostals I've stayed in throughout Europe, but the staff was incredibly helpful and friendly, had our own bedroom, and free wifi. Quickly dropping our belongings off, we followed the recommendations of the staff and walked a few blocks to the local cevicheria titled - La Red. 

It was quite apparent right off the bat that this was a local establishment away from the tourist eyes. First the hostal and area of miraflores we were in was quite residential, and also upon walking in there were only incredibly tan people with two parties being sung happy birthday to. Interestingly enough, they began singing happy birthday in English before switching to felice cumpleanos. The food was spot on: amongst constant wide-eye, precarious eye looks and eyebrow raises from Emma, I took the plunge and ordered the cebiche while she took the modest approach of ordering an avacado salad, although the half avacodo that accompanied said salad was literally the size of a softball. The cebiche was excellent, from the incredibly fresh raw fish topped with sweet red onions, placed upon what we believe was a sweet potato and some foreim

gn yellow corn item, right down to the lemon ceviche sauce used to "cook" the fish. The waiter was incredibly friendly and helpful - ensuring a worrisome Emma that the lemonade we ordered was in fact purified, to making fun of me for not being able to manage the hot tomato/pepper appetizer sauce. 

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Ok - I will now attempt to speed things up, although typing this on the plane to the Amazon while drinking our first Coca tea has been quite enjoyable. 

We departed lunch and just decided to wander around the city as it was already about 3 and we only had that day to see Lima. The hostal staff provided us a map of miraflores and highlighted the streets to focus on, but he essentially highlighted the majority of the streets so we did what any snow ridden couple would do - vamos a la mar! With quite picturesque infinity cliffs that plummeted into the ocean, miraflores definitely has some fiiiine real estate in their hands. We spent a few hours just walking around the edges of the cliff, stumbled on a cool Bmx race course, skatepark, and ultimately this really clique romantic cafe that jutted a but out on the edge of the cliff, had swaying trees around it, and of course overlooked the ocean. Surprisingly it wasn't touristy at all, well by all means it could have been touristy and they were just doing a much better job at blending in than us goons. After swigging a couple lattes, we attempted for a while to try and find some way to navigate our way down the precarious cliff to the stony beach at the base of it. Upon finding the path that led down we also found a very cool array of tiny parks lining the path down, titled Parque de Amore (the park of love) with all these fairly massive hearts with initials assembled with fairly massive rocks. The real treat, aside from the perfect sunny weather and endless ocean, was the abundance of surfers catching wave after wave. Never having seen legit surfing before, since well Old Saybrook, CT isn't exactly known for it - this was pretty wicked. After watching them for a while and then two Americans who rented surfboards, for what appeared to be the first time, spend over half an hour just trying to paddle out to the other surfers but kept on being brought in by the waves, we meandered around the rest of Miraflores. 

I included so much detail previously as well, I tend to do such with my initial writing until realizing how much I just wrote, that being the highlight of our day, and well the rest was incredibly enjoyable, but perhaps just difficult to convey the enjoyment as it was mostly just the feel of the contrasting cultures. 

The remainder of the day was spent walking along the main drag, Av. Jose Pardo, which was quite cheesily honky tonky, bustling with people, and general mayhem. After quickly slipping into a Starbucks to just take a picture of the menu, we decided this street wasn't for us and found John F. Kennedy park to hang out in for a bit and proceed to do what Emma proclaims as my favorite thing to do, debate dinner. The recommendation the waiter gave us was questionable as it was on that main drag, quite massive, and Disney world fine dining as Emma said. So of course we had to take this debate to the nearest bar where we dabbled upon out first Pisco Sour, the popular drink of Peru that well not entirely sure what is in it (tequila?) but it was hella smooth, sweet and just so refreshing. We never actually settled on a restaurant as we literally couldn't find any around as they were either way too touristy, expensive or just questionable, until we retreated back to out hostel and stumbled on Sophie Bistro, which was somehow literally right across the roundabout from our hostal. 

Sophie seemed to be owned by just two fairly young brothers not much older than myself who were some of the most friendly and polite staff I've ever experienced. It was quite a traditional looking Peruvian restaurant with a very trendy modern bistro feel to it. With the menu in Spanish and most of the food not being familiar to us, we relied on the waiters recommendations, which curiously enough were some of the most expensive items on the menu but they ultimately prevailed to be delicious. Tapas themed, we ordered first raw razor clams with a ceviche type sauce to them, topped with a yellow pepper foam (this was quite smashing); then some type pulled chicken/pepper on top of a potato with a Parmesan cookie (meh, only so so, sorta bland); and lastly a ridiculous  and heavenly and savory and one of the most intensely flavorful dishes I've had which was some type of baked loaf of pancetta, atop sweet potatoes and red pepper medley, it was something. 

Whelp that essentially concludes the first day of our trip. We hit the hay early, woke up at 6am and just caught a flight to Puerto Maldonado where we'll hop a boat to the lodge we're staying at in the Amazon Jungle. We certainly seem to have lucked out though as we sat next to a professor from the University of Maryland who brought along a class of 20 grad students as part of a public policy masters program. We'll most certainly attempt to catch some of his lectures, or well just be their caboose, and befriend them with some Pisco Sours. 

Ciao until next time.

-Andrew and Emma