No sleep on my last night in Huacachina. The only thing for most 20 year olds to do in a small town like Huacachina is stay up late and drink liver-pounding amounts of alcohol while listening to very loud electronic music… just outside my dorm room window. I don’t think anyone in my 10 person dorm slept, actually. My 7:30am bus to Lima rolled into the Ica station 30 minutes late, per SSAT (Standard South America Time).
Lima bus, Lima bus station, taxi, then my hostel, which ends up being not at all like the glowing Hostelworld.com reviews. I think the owner must have had his friends pad the reviews. The place ended up being really cramped and the top bunks in the dorm were about ten feet in the air. If you fell from this bunk, you would seriously hurt something. The breakfast consisted of tang, instant coffee, hot water and tea bags for tea, and a loaf of third world brand wonder bread with terrible faux butter. Not even any milk to help cut the nastiness of the instant coffee. Yugh. So as not to sound too critical, I’ll say that the shower was clean. Good thing I only booked this hostel for two nights. My last two nights, I’m staying in a hotel, dammit. I’m going to finish this trip with class, baby.
My cold hangs on. Getting sick of being sick. The hacking cough makes me sound like a TB victim. The myriad of prescriptions the doc wrote and that I’ve now finished? I think pretty useless.
So I settle into my cramped hostel dorm room, get out the city map and forge out to experience the ‘hood I’m staying in in Lima… Miraflores. This is reputed as being the artsy bohemian/touristy area of Lima. How “artsy bohemian” and “touristy” can exist in the same place at the same time is beyond me.
I head to a café highly recommended by the Lonely Planet guide (aka: the Bible) and eat an uninspired fried egg sandwich. The sandwich leaves me with a fierce sweet tooth, so I start exploring the neighborhood to see how I might satisfy it.
Manolo. Manolo, with its pies and pastries and cakes and mile high sandwiches tantalizingly displayed under glass. Piles of churros, plain or stuffed with vanilla or chocolate custard. I settle on a slice of this insane pecan pie -- four fingers high and encrusted with giant, juicy looking pecans. The piece of pie sweetly calls my name. No one can hear it but me, but you know, when a piece of pecan pie has your name on it, it’s a sin against all that’s right and good in the world to pass it by. I sat down and the piece of pie sat down in front of me and we proceeded to have a brief but very meaningful relationship. Sadly, like many relationships that are just based on looks, I grew satiated and bored soon after engaging with the pecan pie, so left it, unfinished on the counter.
But Manolo… I knew I’d be back.
At Central Park in Miraflores, I watched 16 street artists, each creating murals on one side of four separate cubes built for this project. Baggy pants, a baseball cap, and earbuds blasting music was de rigueur. It was interesting to watch each piece taking shape right before my eyes. The creative process can be somewhat of a mystery, and it was interesting, and a little intimate, to watch these mysteries unfold before my eyes.
I took my time checking it all out, then continued my explorations. There was a warehouse-sized storefront. People were digging in piles and mounds of clothes. This I had to see. I stepped into the melee, which actually was a Peruvian manufactured clothing seconds store. Several US clothing brands filled the bins. Little did I know that premium brands that cost us all a bunch of money, like Ralph Lauren Polo, Guess, Banana Republic, Aeropostale, and more were sewn by dirt cheap labor in sweat shops in Peru.
After this strange experience, I headed back to the hostel and wrote, and wrote and wrote, trying to get caught up on my travels for this blog. My trek to Machu Picchu and subsequent ill health has put me behind.
At 9pm, out again into Miraflores and to a restaurant called “Haiti," a throwback to the heyday of 1970s Lima, complete with elderly waiters in starched shirts, green vinyl chairs, and white tablecloths. Patrons not only included tourists, but also neighborhood locals, many of which looked like they'd been coming to Haiti since the restaurant opened its doors in 1962. Peruvian gentlemen (or those thinking of themselves as gentlemen) gathered at tables, laughing and shaking hands and ribbing each other like it was their own private men's club. This was their turf, no doubt. Young guys, street musicians, artists, walked by and were greeted by the gentlemen who wanted to feel young again themselves through the energy of these artists. Then the restaurant management shooing the young artists away, like they were street urchins looking for a handout when in fact, it was the old gentlemen who were looking for a handout. Elder expat intellectuals, with stained shirts and wild grey hair sat with their used, dog eared books by Camus and Vargas Llosa, idling over small cups of espresso, cold by now but displayed, like a torn ticket to show that they'd paid their entrance fee and had every right to be here for as long as it took to finish their drink.
I ordered flounder ceviche and a double pisco sour. The ceviche arrived, fresh and fragrant, accompanied by two thick slices of yam, fresh, fat butter yellow corn kernels the size of dimes, and a hot sauce that would make your eyes tear up and your forehead break into a sweat. The pisco sour was cold, frothy, strong, and tart -- and perfect in every way. I savored every bite and drank in the experience of Lima on this pleasant night.
Then back to Manolo to sample one of their famous chocolate-filled churros. Biting into it -- the crunch of fried dough and sugar granules, then the soft yield of the dough into the creamy goodness of the chocolate filling. Perfection in a fried pastry.
As I get closer to the end of this trip, things have seemed to take on a new tone. Time has slowed down as I drop into each moment and do all I can to experience all I can. An impending sense of loss, of ending and closure, has heightened my senses and made each experience richer and more full of meaning.
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