Off to Iquitos

So I’m sitting in the restaurant part of our fancy hotel in Mira Flores drinking coffee and eating the freshest fruit that I have ever tasted. Today we are flying out to Iquitos in Northern Peru where we’ll get on the boat tomorrow morning first thing! I wasn’t sure when I would have the opportunity to post again so I thought I’d put up some pictures from my Lima adventures.Monday afternoon me and the two other girls that I am sharing a room with, dara and Allison, took a walk down by the beach. It was a nice walk but like I said it was just like being in any city by the ocean. Except it is permanently foggy down there.. We had some good conversations and after 3 days I feel like I’ve known them for a while. We then had to climb up some dirt cliffs to get back up to the road by our hotel. Needless to say I was thankful for my sandals that were strapped on; the other two were only wearing flip flops and had a hard time. After that little adventure we stopped at the North American style outside mall for some ice cream and wandered around. It’s amazing, there is an aldo’s shoes there, along with hooters, chiles, tony romas.. nearly all the stores there were from the United States or Canada. That however was countered by our experience in Lima yesterday. Yesterday morning 4 of us hopped in a cab to the museum of Natural History. Now the drivers are so crazy here, turning right from the far left lane, no traffic lights so there is either a police officer guiding traffic or they just honk without slowing down through intersections. Well, I was just waiting to get in an accident and yesterday we did. Someone pulled out into our cab! So we pulled over while they sorted it out. Luckily it wasn’t anything serious. The museum of natural history was pretty cool, they had real animal bodies that were stuffed that are native to Peru and the Amazon. So we got to preview what a caimen looked like, anacondas, the only bear in South America and even different parasites. I even saw the huge rodent animal that attacks the guy in “Princess Pride.” I definitely took a picture of that. Then we took a cab to downtown Lima where 4 of us grabbed a 5 solas meal of chicken, beans, rice and potatos. We then wandered around the government buildings that had the most amazing architecture and tons of military personnel and army tanks. We kept wandering until we saw an amazing church. From the outside it didn’t look that big but then we saw that they there was a tour of the church and the catacombs, so of course we had to go in. For 5 solas we had an hour guided tour of the Fransiscan monesetay church and of the dead bodies in the catacombs. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the church but it was beautiful. They had a gorgeous library that held the first Spanish dictionary, and all the original books. The tour was in Spanish but luckily we had someone in our group that spoke Spanish fluently so she was our translator. That catacombs was incredible. You entered into these caves underneath the church where all there was pits with human bones in the inside; mainly femurs and skulls because those are the hardest bones to breakdown. I have never seen real human skeletons before and it was kind of creepy. Then we walked down to a lookout where you could look across to a mountain with colourful houses built into it and a Peruvian flag at the top. After that we walked down to the main market and it was crazy! I have never seen so many people crammed in the streets nor so many people selling just stuff. You could have bought any sort of stuff that your heart desired down there for cheap!.. like one solas or so (which is about 50 cents Canadian). It was definitely a contrast to the shopping mall by our house. It was like 20 blocks of just chaos. We quickly tired of all the people and chaos and worrying about our stuff, and we only had an hour until we had to be back at the hotel for a lecture so we hopped in a cab and headed for Mira Flores. After a quick lecture and dinner I went back to my room to do some work, talk to ben and have some time alone. It can be pretty exhausting being around people all the time, mind you everyone is pretty great. Now I am up early to write one last time before the boat! So here’s to the next adventure in the rainforest!