Hi All! We’re here in Lima. So is Brunhilde. But that’s as close as it gets for the time being. Not that I’m worried. I have plenty of time for that ahead. Right now, despite bureaucratic headaches, we’re finding Lima to be our kind of place. What could be bad about a city where the vultures have such spot-on aim that when I curled myself up in a hammock for a short nap they hit me with their best shot from 1,000 feet up. Perhaps they were wondering whether that thing on the terrace could be their next snack? Well, I showed them a thing or two. “I’m not dead yet!” I shouted to the heavens (courtesy Monty Python), tumbling out of the hammock and onto the terrace floor from where i would have shaken my fist at the sky if it hadn’t been numb from me sleeping on it.
Our favorite ceviche bar in Lima
We like Lima because it’s very human -sized, with short blocks, short houses, short people. Houses are colorful, sidewalks buckled by the roots of the many trees in our part of the city. It’s warm and bearably humid; I can see the cracks on Bernard’s fingers healing as I type. Traffic is swift and amusing. Imagine this: no one uses their car horn here…I can’t figure out why… so we have no clue who’s going where. Which doesn’t actually matter, because nobody pays attention to street signs, stop signs, or any other traffic indicator. I can just feel my palms getting sweaty about this as I type.
The food is fabulous: fish, fresh and raw in lots of lime juice with sweet red onions; then there’s tiny roasted suckling pig, and thin fried strips of yucca, and light and fluffy lime pie, ….yes we’ve eaten all that and more since we arrived at our hotel at 1:00a.m. on Tuesday morning. Our hotel, on a bluff above a scummy-looking beach, is filled with sculpture and paintings by the owner’s father. He’s a noted Peruvian artist, and the works are all stunning. Two dogs perform the meet and greet function, which helps us feel less doggy-deprived. Unfortunately, there’s so much attention paid to the art in this place that the owners neglected to include chairs for guests to sit. Still, we’re not much in our room, because there’s a small matter to attend to: getting our car released from customs.
We’ve been a whirlwind of efficiency, securing a local SIM card for my phone, buying add’l car insurance, even locating a little company in a forlorn side street that had a Peru map card for our GPS (with a free add-on for Bolivia;, which makes me wonder exactly what they included for the Bolivian side of the border). That was yesterday and we felt pretty accomplished. I began speaking Spanish and had only one major faux pas, when I urgently insisted the driver turn right, RIGHT, RIGHT!!!!, when actually the word I was using was Spanish for “left.” Thankfully we exited that cab two blocks later after he made an illegal U-turn and got us to where we were going, without me having to open my mouth again.
It was all going swimmingly until we butted heads with customs today. In that regard, while I didn’t expect things to go smoothly I still dared to hope that they would. But they haven’t. Lima’s port–Callao–is backed up. Our boat, the Yokohama, has been here since Feb. 1, but hasn’t yet been unloaded. We spent nearly all of Wednesday with our freight agents, who escorted us to the customs brokers, who escorted us in turn to the customs house. Every place had double steel doors, armed guards, and a need to keep our drivers licenses in exchange for little badges that suggested we were authorized to be wherever we were. Despite this excess of security and a bounty of smiles, no one could do anything to get our car released before we leave tomorrow for the Galapagos. And they insist that Bernard be present when they open the container and release Brunhilde. After making copies of various documents, getting them notarized (which included Bernard getting finger printed), there was nothing for it but to stagger into a cafe and eat copious amounts of cake.
Brunhilde will have to sit tight till we return to Lima on Feb. 14….and that’s Valentine’s Day, so all wishes will then come true. It is still our plan to drive out of here ahead of Mardi Gras, heading up the coast to Trujillo and Chiclayo. In the meantime, we will be at sea…literally…and I will report back with news on the blue-foot boobies in a week’s time–mas or menos.
-Dina
