Punch Buggy Heaven

Well i have officially found where all the punch buggys that roamed the streets of canada 1o years ago have gone... to Lima! seriously... every other car is a punch buggy it's crazy! If you try and play the "punch buggy (insert color here) one don't punch back" game you will be getting punched every other second!...

So we arrived safely in Lima yesterday morning at 10 am after a 8.5 hour flight through the night.. We were on the biggest plane i've ever been on where the first class seats actually folded down into individual beds! California turned in to a big waiting game, and we never got to the beach.. but i experienced my first earthquake! all though it was just a little tremour we had no idea what was going on... Kyla, another student, was in my hotel room when the whole room started to shake... we were like what the heck and jokingly she said maybe it was an earthquake... well 20 minutes later they were talking about it on the news... So that was the big expierience in LA...

I loved looking out the window on the way to Peru... it really made me realize that I was going somewhere completely different... You could see the coast, than the desert and the mountains! it was beautiful... When we got off the airplane it could have been an airport anywhere, it felt like anywhere else.. but once you left security you are hit with hundreds of people holding signs for different people, like off of the movies.. After waiting for the group to clear customes and find lost articles we were hitting the road to the hotel... The streets here are so lively and full of people.. I took an urban studies class last semester and ,my professor kept talking about how calgary has no life in the streets.. while i know what that means now... everyone is outside.. singing, talking, dancing, playing, eating.. just living... We drove through Lima and i was mesmerized by the life and the culture.. and the punch buggys.. Then we arrived at our hotel for the next 3 nights... It is a beautiful place in a more touristy part of Lima called Mira Flores... it's a block from the ocean and beautiful but it doesn't feel like I am in anywhere different than say vancouver... I mean there is a Tony Romas and a Chiles restaurant down the street... We had to search last night to find a local place for dinner.. talk about globalisation..

Today, however, we experienced true Lima.. We took the local bus (which has no bus stops) to downtown lima.... we split in to smaller groups and could take a taxi or the bus to the Spanish Inquisition Museum and jsut had to be there by 12... The bus dropped us off a ways away from the museum so 12 of us were walking downtown lima searching for it... Along the way Jeff`s watch was stolen, we passed a politial protest-rally with riot cops, and walked amongst tons of people and markets. The Museum was pretty cool... everything was in spanish so I had a hard time figuring out what was going on, but you there was alot of exhibits showing different torture that was used... Aparently the Inquitision in Lima had quite an impact, their main targets were the indigenious people, women and jews... After the Museum and a quick lecture some of us grabbed some empanadas and Inca cola (for 4 solas by the way.. everything here is incredibly cheap) and took a taxi back to the hotel... We have some reading to do before we get to Iquitos and tomorrow is a pretty full day so we figured now would be a good time to catch up and head down to the beach.. one more day in Lima than off to Iquitos to hop on the boat!