Go West!

We flew West to Lima, capital of Peru and in the 18th century seen as the heart of Latin American civilisation. Since then it's grandeur has been dimmed by poor urban planning and a catastrophic earthquake, but it still holds a certain charm. 

The aforementioned poor urban planning means the airport is a 30-90 minute journey (depending on the bravery of your taxi driver) from... anywhere you'd want to go. We found an Uber, to be greeted by Erick, a fast-talking, fast-driving Peruvian who had spent some time in the US, and insisted (in a friendly way) on being our personal chauffeur for the next 24 hours.   

Our hotel turned out to be quite grand and post-colonial, the ceiling of the room twice that of a normal hotel (and twice that of the wall separating the bed from the shower). We headed out to lunch, and weren't really sure what we were ordering, but it involved meat and cheese so we were happy. Then on to 'see the sights', the most notable of which were some extensive and deathly monastery catacombs (where the monks arranged the bones in somewhat creepy concentric circles and the voices from the church above floated down eerily through grates at unexpected moments), and some nice squares and the like. There may have been other notable things, but they were almost all closed for no obvious reason. For dinner we'd hoped to have at the restaurant run by French-speaking nuns, but when we knocked at the convent the restaurant was closed. So instead we had standard Peruvian fare in a football pub restaurant, which comprised chicken and a lot of rice. 

Guinea Pig (the food,
not my nickname for Dora)

Next day we taxi'd to Miraflores, a super-gentrified part of the city where most backpackers spend their time and money. We lunched in the poshest place we could find, where we (finally) ate Guinea Pig. I liked it (it was chewy and like grey chicken), Dora didn't (it was chewy and like grey chicken). 

After some modern art we reached Miraflores' mall, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We had completed our coast-to-coast traverse of the continent! The view was as beautiful as the description of literally everyone we'd told we were going to Lima, so that was nice. We then dined on Cerviche at a recommended restaurant - it's raw fish marinaded in a lime sauce, and with only an overnight flight to look forward to we felt like exposing our stomaches to some risk. 

Erick then drove us to the taxi in triple-quick time so ensure we made the flight with over three hours to spare. This included some fun acceleration on the wrong side of the road and towards traffic police, which gave me that shot of adrenalin everyone needs before an overnight flight. 

There was even more excitement to come, as we bumped into Ben and Veronica at the airport! Other than that it was an uneventful flight to New Jersey, aside from the food on the plane not being awful (United Airlines). 

We were greeted in the heart of Western capitalism by chrome steel everywhere, including around the bus that shuttled us to Grand Central station. We had some time to kill until we could check into our apartment, which we spent eting porridge and exploring the Public Library, which was excellent! 










We then returned to Grand Central for ... dun dun duuuu ... the BIG SURPRISE (tune in next time for what this was, or just look at the photo below).