Lima

I was exhausted by the time I got onto the plane.  Right after we took off they served food and I figured I should probably eat whatever they offered me even though it was 2 AM in Cali.  I got about four hours of sleep and just before we landed I got to talking to the English guy sitting beside me.  He said this was the first time he'd ever traveled by himself and he didn't speak a lick of Spanish.  Hopefully he made it to his trip trekking along the Inca Trail okay.

Dave had told me that the customs and declarations areas were crazy, people pushing in a line 3-people wide.  I guess since I left at 1AM, it helped out because there were only people from out flight at customs.  I got through there really quickly and then went to go get my bags.  It seemed like it was only the people from our flight in the whole airport, getting our bags and breezing through declarations.

El globo que Juan trajo para mi.

After declarations, I looked amidst a sea of people for a sign with my name on it.  Blenda's brother, Juan, had forgotten the sign, so he'd bought a balloon and written "Amy!!!" on it.  We got a taxi and he spoke to me in both English and Spanish as we made our way into the town of Miraflores.  Blenda and Raymond rented a place overlooking the ocean.  Here is the view:

Afuera la ventana en Miraflores.

I took a shower while Juan cooked some fried rice with fish for us.  He is a chef in Cancun, so it was quite tasty.  We washed it down with Inca Cola.  After that, we took a walk down by the ocean and through El Parque Del Amor.  He said that people would come and write their names on the walls there, so the mayor eventually made a park dedicated to people in love.  The brightly-colored mosaics on the benches include poetic lines and the couples or person who wrote them.  I loved looking at all the poetry and took pictures of almost all of them.  Here is an example:

Un banco en el parque del amor: "Mi recuerdo es mas fuerte que tu olvido."
("My memory is stronger than your forgetfulness.")

After the park, we walked down to Larcomar mall.  Juan bought us both lucuma fruit ice cream.  I had never tried lucuma before and it was really tasty.  We walked around and peeked into some of the shops selling items made from llamas and alpaca.  When we'd taken a look around the entire mall, we made our way back to the apartment, dodging all the skateboarders.

We watched The Town with Spanish subtitles and drank canela y clavo (cinnamon and clove) tea.  After that, I could have fallen asleep standing up, so I went to sleep.