"O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is." (Walt Whitman, "The Lands") (Entry 33, Day 14)

Friday, 7 June, 2013; hotel, Lima; 9:33 PM

Back.

Anyway, after we got to Lima, we went to the hotel to set down our stuff and figure out what we wanted to do next.  We decided to take a taxi out to the edge of the city by the coast, which was kind of interesting.  (for those who are curious, we went to a neighborhood called Miraflores).

The most terrifying part, of course, was the traffic.  If you think New York traffic is bad, you haven't been to Lima on a Friday, especially when Lima is hosting a World Cup match against Ecuador.  It's the craziest traffic I've ever been in - made worse by the fact that everyone is super aggressive and decides that the time to merge is NOW, not in two seconds when they have a lot more space.  On the way back, I found myself leaning away from the door, because I was half-terrified that we were about to get hit.

At dinner, I got my first real view of the Pacific Ocean, which was cool.  We saw a lot of surfers and some hang gliders.

On the way back, we got some gas and nearly got run over a few times.  The ride back took almost two hours because of the traffic, especially because it's World Cup night.  Soccer is really big here, like in many South American countries, so everyone was either going to the game or finding a friend/ bar with a TV to watch the game

Interestingly, a lot of cars in Lima run on natural gas, not gasoline - so now we know why the city of 28 million people smells a bit better than downtown Manhattan (point of reference - New York City has around 8.3 million residents.  The US needs to step up its game in environmentalism).  Lima also houses over half of the Peruvian population - there are 42 million Peruvian residents, and 28 million of them live in Lima (and 27 million of them are trying to watch the game tonight).

So far in the game, Peru is winning, 1 - 0.  I can't understand the commentary too well, since my understanding of Spanish is minimal, but it's fairly easy to know what's going on (I played soccer for a while, so I know the game).

Now it just passed an ad for what appears to be a soap opera called Avenida Perú.  It appears to involve shooting people in the head, illicit dealings, and some making out - in other words, the standard soap opera (though perhaps without the shooting people in the head bit).

One major difference I've noticed between Lima and Cusco is the type of shopping available.  Admittedly, tourism is the #1 industry in Cusco, but that would make one think that the latter is the more "modern" and "developed" city, but that's not really the case.  I think that's mostly because Lima is younger than Cusco - the structures in Cusco are mostly Inka or pre-Inka, so they're historic locations within themselves.  Both cities are sprawling, but Cusco has so many more people selling on the streets, or in open-front stores.  They all sell basically the same thing, as I mentioned earlier - "alpaca" goods or restaurants, and sometimes some will have laundry opportunities, too.

In Lima, however, everything (at least the bit we saw) is a lot more developed.  There are a lot more Western-type stores - I saw a Nine West and Adidas and Starbucks (though there was a Starbucks in Cusco as well), just to name a few.  The architecture is definitely more modern than Inka times, and there are pretty much no street vendors that looked like they were there regularly (there were some, obviously, that were taking advantage of the World Cup traffic to try to sell some team apparel type stuff).  We did see a lot more couples making out in Lima than we did in Cusco, though.  In all, I think Lima's population is younger and has a smaller percentage of tourists than Cusco's does.

Right, I'm done for now.  I'll write tomorrow on the plane, most likely.