Day 1 - Lima

all guys my age are raising kids
...
but I'm still out there havin' fun
and Jesus loves me, yes, I know
so, I keep on rollin' with the flow
keep on rollin', keep on, keep on rollin'

Rollin' with the Flow - Kurt Vile

Hello guys, so I'm back. Last week on a train to Machu Picchu someone asked me how the trip had been. I said it was physically demanding. The guy nodded, he understood what I meant. Truly this trip to Peru was the most exhausting of all my trips so far. My body is so battered and I think the recovery for me would take some time. I arrived back in Singapore Monday evening and by Tuesday it was back to real life :( Wednesday was a public holiday here and I decided to sleep without setting the alarm and I woke up at 4 pm something. That was a shock. I think my body really needed the shut down. Since I have difficulty sleeping, being able to sleep that long was actually really good, but at the same time I was kinda disappointed about missing like half a day of life :( Also it truly doesn't help with jet lag because you're supposed to get sunlight and I didn't. My body is not doing really well right now. I can only hope I can get better but right now I'm just not feeling it :(

Me and Gioia talked about perhaps this is something you really should be doing in your 20s where you have more energy and are just excited about everything. I don't think we're that old, but we do think of ourselves like we're middle age :D We talked about in what ways we could make the trip easier for the body. Conclusion was more time to recuperate in each of our stops and that would mean bigger budget. Honestly though, the thought never crossed my mind that this trip would be so tiring. I also had a bit of a flu when I was in Cusco. So with everything, I really overworked my body and now it is having difficulty calibrating. As usual, I'll write about my trip. If you're interested to go to Peru maybe you'll learn about things to do or not do.

Peru is the furthest I've been on planet Earth in terms of the journey required to get there. We took AirFrance / KLM to get there and to get back. Chose that because AirFrance arrival is the best for me. While other airlines will get you to Lima (the capital city) close to midnight or some other uncomfortable hour, AirFrance gets you in at around 4 pm. So that's a good schedule. In Singapore, I managed to check out Jewel Changi before departing. I can't say I like it much. Maybe because it's new and it's the weekend, the crowd was insane. I wasn't hungry but I did want to check out Shake Shack but the queue was crazy so I couldn't. Another store that had crazy queue was the Pokemon store. There's just too many people for the anti-social me. So I'm not feeling Jewel Changi much. It's like a mall on its own. I don't feel like it's part of the airport and I think it's not that convenient to get there if your flight is not in Terminal 1 which is the terminal connected to it. Even if your flight is in Terminal 1, I would suggest you give yourself like 30 mins to get from the mall to the immigration check. If you're just arriving, it wouldn't be nice lugging your luggage and exploring Jewel Changi. If you're departing, as Gioia found out, baggage drop off opens like 3 hours before flight, do you actually want to explore a mall with luggage? Perhaps it would be more useful for people who have some transit hours in Changi. Me and Gioia agree that perhaps most of the people who were there were locals who live in the east of Singapore. I myself have doubt on the longevity of some of the shops there. Another annoying thing for me was when you arrive in Terminal 1, the taxi stand is like further, you kinda have to walk to the direction of the mall and being nearer to the crowd is just not appealing to me.

Anyways so first flight was to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. I've only been there once years ago and the airport didn't leave much impression to me. This time around it also didn't leave much impression. We had around 4-hour wait time. We went to our gate and in the early morning there were already a few people waiting. Then it was another long flight to Lima. As we entered the plane, the song at the beginning of this post was playing and I was like, fate, since it's in my playlist for this trip. Both flights were like 12 and a half hours and more. When we touched down, I told Gioia, can you imagine taking another flight to Cusco straightaway? I really don't recommend doing that. There's a hotel by the airport if you're also thinking of taking a break, but don't really want to spend a lot of time in Lima. For us, I think we really need a break in Lima, at least a proper sleep. First thing first though, going through immigration which was not bad. They took fingerprints. By the way, Indonesian doesn't need a visa to go to Peru so actually Peru has been in my list of places to go for a long time. Found money changer near the baggage belt and since I didn't want the confusion of changing in the city, we straight away changed all the USD we brought. I know that the exchange rate in the airport is bad, but I just don't want the hassle of having to do that in the city, with us being unable to speak Spanish. I'd arranged for transport to get us to the hotel and saw the guy immediately once we got out and he took us to the parked car.

From the outside I saw that Lima airport is quite small. Like Jakarta's airport, this airport is not actually located in Lima itself. Being that Peru is a developing country, I was straightaway comparing it to Indonesia and I was thinking that perhaps Indonesia is more developed. On the drive to the hotel, I was thinking that this city or this area we're driving in is like one of those not so big city in Indonesia. There are aspects of it which reminded me of Indonesia a lot though, like the people selling things in carts, how they display their goods, and people selling snacks when the traffic lights turn red. All that kinda made me smile because it's so Indonesian. There's a familiarity to it that made me nostalgic :D Lima itself is not like Jakarta. It felt less busy and I don't know, by Indonesian standard it doesn't have the big city vibe for me. We're staying in Miraflores district and the hotel was nice, Gioia would say it's the nicest of all we stayed in, however the area we're staying in felt residential to me. It's kinda weird for me. Really I'm not feeling the big city vibe. On the way back to Singapore, I met 3 Indonesian men who's returning back after a 2-month work stint in Peru. I asked them if they felt that perhaps Indonesia is more developed? They agreed. They also felt that Lima itself didn't feel like a big city by Indonesian standard. We're not throwing shade at Peru and I really don't mean to be offensive. Perhaps if a Peruvian arrived in Jakarta, they too would want to leave immediately because of the chaos and crowd :D Peru as I found out during my trip is very beautiful and through the drive there, they have so many open spaces. We have quite a number of common things, but we're also different at the same time, that's all.

When we arrived at the hotel, first order of business was to get water. Only after a day we found out that the hotel actually has a good water cooler in each floor. Anyways found a small supermarket nearby then Gioia got some snack from a cafe we found also nearby. I think I wasn't hungry so I didn't get anything. Bed in the hotel was big and I love having all those space for myself. The next day we took a half-day tour to explore Lima. Usually I prefer to explore the city on my own, however public transports in Lima is not very conducive. Basically I had no confidence in both of us to get around on our own by flagging the taxi. I chose this tour just because we would be visiting the catacombs at Basílica y Convento de San Francisco. The first stop was actually outside Huaca Pucllana. We didn't go inside, we just looked at it from the outside. I have no picture of this, you can google this yourself. As usual, I couldn't remember much from any of the guides I had in this trip. I just remember that the compound is actually pretty big and parts of it is now divided by streets used for traffics. There were also sacrifice done in this place last time, that's what I remember.

After that we went to Plaza San Martín where there's this statue of a guy on a horse. Googling told me it's of Peru's liberator, José de San Martín. The plaza wasn't very big. Then we went to Plaza Mayor or Plaza de Armas. We may have misunderstood our guide, but it seemed they were expecting demonstration or some sorts so some parts of it were closed and you could not enter, but somehow we were allowed to walk inside the closed area. It's just we couldn't really walk around the plaza. This means you kinda get a picture of an empty plaza, which is kinda good I think.

We stood by the Archbishop's Palace of Lima building which was kinda interesting, but we didn't go in. I don't know if it's open for the public. Here a Singaporean lady said hi to Goia. We had a discussion the next day about how I was surprised she wasn't that chatty with the lady because if I met an Indonesian, I would be like best friends to that person :D So anyway while standing here, I also saw like a big police car used for crowd control passing by, but we didn't see any crowd. It was weird thinking, waiting that something would happen, but nothing happened, which is good actually, 'cause you don't want to be caught in the middle of a riot right.

In this plaza there's also the Government Palace. There was like a changing of the guard when we were there but our guide said we couldn't go nearer and see. The officers were like an army band and they were playing music. After that we walked around the area which has shops and restaurants. I was thinking it must sucks so much for the businesses that day because no tourists were coming in and access was restricted. Then we arrived at Basilica and Convent of San Francisco. You cannot take pictures inside the church and catacombs. So this below is a picture of parts of its outer facade.

We straightaway went to the catacombs. Of course there were bones and such. This is my second catacombs and I appreciate the opportunity. What I recall from the guide is that there's a lot of tunnels running underneath Lima and that's why they couldn't have underground subway. After that we saw parts of the church a bit. The church compound has a small cloister. The wall and ceiling of the corridors enclosing the cloister are quite interesting with the different designs. After that we're done. The tour actually should include a visit to a museum but it's not open on a Monday and so we didn't do that. I didn't feel like we saw a lot, but I guess it's good that we saw something. Anyways, we chose to be dropped of at Larcomar which is like a mall, but a very small one. Saw the Paddington Bear statue at the above playground. I knew that Paddington Bear is from the deep jungle of Peru, do you? Hence the statue there which was gifted by British embassy. Then me and Gioia decided to have a nice lunch in a restaurant overlooking the sea. I recalled Gioia being excited that this is the other side of the Pacific ocean. Sometime it's good to see other people's view :D

For drinks we chose something unknown, chicha morada. I chose the smoothie one and it was good. This drink is like very common in Peru and that smoothie was the best version I had. It was made from purple corn. After that Gioia agreed on my long walk back to the hotel. First we walked to Parque del Amor or Park of Love where there's this statue of a couple embracing.

There's a paragliding place nearby and we saw some people taking off. We thought how scary it was for the guy pushing the other people off, because this guy could easily just roll off the cliff. The long walk to the hotel included visiting ChocoMuseo which is a chocolate store. I wanted to see what they had and then perhaps get some things when I was in Cusco, but I didn't end up visiting the Cusco branch. After this we decided to call it the day. Got a bit lost on the way back to the hotel but we managed to find our way. As we walked, I got to see the busy chaotic Lima with its traffic :D Again there's aspects of it that reminded me of Indonesia and this meant I told myself to walk across this traffic like an Indonesian would in Jakarta :D My body was shutting down that day that I slept early, which was good. I don't have a lot of pictures of Lima and the ones that I took are disappointingly bad. I'm disappointed at myself. For the few pictures I have, you can go here.

:) eKa @ 10:20:00 PM •

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