Lima Lung

One of the biggest challenges here is to make your own quiet. To find the spots, the moments amid the chaos where there is a little pocket of peace you can keep all to yourself. Its not easy. You won't find them quickly. Like a scavenger hunt in the dark, between the construction clamor, the noisy women in the street trying to sell you a Peruvian hairless dog, the honk happy cabbies, and the streams of police, the quiet is elusive.

We've finally landed in the apartment that will be home, and the nesting has commenced. I went on a jog but the air is still strange and hard on the lungs. We've coined an endearing nickname for it, just to make it more familiar.

On the 19th floor it seems almost cosmopolitan: we have a balcony. We can see the ocean, and the hotel where Bush is staying for the APEC. We watched him on tv sipping a pisco sour and posing for pictures in an alpaca tunic. He looked excited about the pisco, not so much the tunic. We can also see the American battleship anchored in Lima harbor...just in case?

Security is overwhelming, police, two, three, sometimes four uniformed Peruvian officers loiter on every corner of every major intersection. Roads are barricaded off and cross too close and your bags and person may be subject to compulsory search. The place is, for the first time, swarming with english speakers, some with discreet microphones tucked in their ears, and some proudly broadcasting their native land. I'm still wondering what the battleship is for.

Sometimes you have to make your own quiet: No, i will not purchase your incredibly homely looking hairless dog, even if it is very hot to the touch, and his name is Obama (my real objection is that he won't fit in my carry-on). Yes, i can attune my ears to the placid bird calls, and not the sirens. No, i will not look at you because you make strange hissing noises in my direction. I will sit on the bench in Parque Kennedy and eat my banana, still scavenging some quiet for myself, even if its only in my head.

Hotel Stefanos

Our first real taste of Lima sunshine set the mood for our move into the hotel for the week. Impressive what a little bit of UV can do to lift the spirit. With the sky in a shocking lack of gray, Diego was ready for us as we crossed to another interesting bit of Miraflores.

We also recieved the heartening news that our scammer may have been apprehended. We were not the first victims, but it appears we may have been the last.

Typing blindly on a Spanish keyboard...I hope this makes sense.

Needles, Haystacks, Hotels, APEC

Morale has hit a troubling new low.

Not only have we been introduced to our first experiences of severe gastric distress, it seems that we are set to be hotel hopping for the next week, as some one took the deposit and first month's rent for the apartment and split the city.

It ordinarily wouldn't be too much of a problem, but for the 21 country summit meetings, APEC, set to commence in the city in a few days. Accomodations are at a premium which could make our situation very difficult over the next few days.

It seems as though, once again, Cesar has managed to get us into a hotel for a few nights, a feat in itself considering. We will have a place to go, but with spirits just a little bit crushed as we face yet another harsh reality.

La Rosa Nautica

Lima is a study in extremes.

High, low, and seemingly nowhere in between. From the perfectly intoxicating ambiance of La Rosa Nautica for Teresa's birthday, to yet again being filled with nerves about the potential of our new apartment having been nothing more than a scam. November 18th we will have no place to live if we do not hear back from our future landlord, who has curiously disappeared off the radar over the week.

At night, when the sky is dark, you can squint away the smog, and the lights glisten in dewy evening shades, its very nearly pretty. From the restraunt over the water we were afforded a welcome escape from the noise of the city, and hearing the ocean waves over dinner, the hectic seemed to melt away just a little. It helped us get through the next very busy days.

Cesar came to town again, and we welcomed our friend who had come for some business and also to help us make arrangements at the airport. Tuesday was Diego's birthday, our cabby, and we celebrated lunch with him at a hole-in-the wall cevicheria on the beach in the neighboring district of Chorillos.

Cesar also showed us to one of the highlights of Lima's tourist destinations:

The water fountains in downtown Lima made for a diverting night and we returned with slightly elevated spirits.

Como el Rio

I'm searching for a place to start explaining the past few days. And for the first time, maybe ever, my head is blank.









Somewhere in between trying to read Mario Vargas Llosa and the metallic tinge of our spanish tutor's cell phone, and the general sensory affront on all possible stimulus that is Lima, I'm jarringly reminded of the critical nature of seatbelts.



In a loud, heartstopping moment, our little DaeWoo Tico mangles itself into the back of a black SUV in the inner 'lanes' (trust me I use the term loosely) of the Ovalo Guittarez.

We'd been at a cafe studying Spanish with some friends after a long day.

The car rattles, crunches and lurches. Its no more than a tin can on wheels. A woman climbs out of the front of the SUV, gesturing loudly while inspecting the damage. Scores of car horns erupt from the circle.

The cabby is swearing...though i'm sure I don't understand the severity of his expletives, loudly, to counter the car horns. Kike's phone is still screetching Latin soul. In the front seat, Teresa is shaken, but ok. We're all ok. Physically.

The taxation on all sensory fronts is too much for my gringa stomach, and it will not let go of itself. Amid the unbelievable chaos there is a strange pool of calm. I'm operating on a minimum of sleep; rest is cherished for all its scarcity.

Everything must be relearned here. Even and especially things we thought we already knew. We could waste our time struggling upstream, but the reality of the current will carry us where it will. Perhaps its best to save our strength for the ocean.

What is odd is that the car accident is not the foremost thing on our minds. Even in the midst of it. That is just another minor hiccup in the flow of life here. The major problem is that the state of Oregon needs to evaluate Teresa. And i'm struggling to understand a system that seems over all our heads. Teresa's treatments will be interupted as she needs to continue to receive state funding. The bureaucracy, more than the traffic even, has staggered us.

Our only options are expensive to our budget, our time, and our resolve.

No phone numbers are exchanged, no insurance, no liscence plates, no police reports. The car is sputtering again, ever more noisily away, with no regard for the past. As though this too, is routine.

From somewhere I can hear Simon and Garfunkel:

And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives



We have no idea how to pace ourselves for this.

Learning Lima, Piece by Piece

There is an ambulance outside our apartment, stuck in traffic. The siren runs through its ear-bleeding cycle as honking cars make no attempts to yield. The chaos is no more than a pane away.

The museum today is not what I have pictured. In slummy Pueblo Libre, across from what once was likely a nice park, lies the Larca museum of archaeology and anthropology, home of the most complete collection on the continent.



Crowds of school kids in all-to-familiar plaid skirts and scratchy cardigans skitter around in a frantic facade of organization.

Its staggering, the interior feels like an Isabelle Allende novel. The antiquity is immense and exciting. There is however, a shocking lack of mummies. I'll be honest, I was hoping for at least one.

(left: The museum courtyard)

Back amid the relative quiet of our apartment on Javier Prado Oeste, apartment shopping is underway and hopefully we've got several good leads. I feel the seconds tick by here too, in the murky backwaters of my brain. But they are slow, languid ticks to counter the ceaseless stream of traffic and car alarms just feet outside. We've got to be out by November 18th.

Pause for Effect

Luz is a pocket-sized Peruvian creature with bobbing, pin tight black curls and buttery Incan features. She's been treating Teresa more and more lately and on this Saturday afternoon, the city is eerily motionless. Traffic is sparse, the horns distant: today marks the Day of the Dead. Any shopping, as we had thought, will have to wait for another day. The streets are empty and the cabs hard to come by.

There's a distinct vacation-like feel to the clinic today too, like the friday afternoon before a three day weekend. You can tell, even english speaking ears, that not much is getting done. Luz is kind, but her bedside manner needs some work.

I'm already far too annoyed that both she and Nathan halt treatment to answer their cell phones, which are always in their front scrub pockets, hands still covered in the green iguana ointment (yes, iguana...and no, i'm not asking any more questions about it).

I'll assume for now that this too is a cultural adjustment to make, just like the constant staring. Its still hard to get over feeling the person on the other end of Nathan's phone, with whom he is having a very personal conversation, is more important than the patient who he is scheduled to treat. Most of me still thinks its downright rude.

My irritations are truncated quickly when the clinic floor begins to roil and rumble under our feet. Luz's head snaps up from the massage table: she holds up a slender hand as though we are not already silent and stiff. The hand shakes back and forth, the walls shivering as pottery plates glide over the sheetrock. Nathan appears around the curtain. "Terremoto," he says looking around. Of course today i've forgotten the dictionary, but thanks to Coach Bob, the concern in Nathan's voice, and remembering we're positioned over a subduction zone, i'm pretty confidant terremoto must mean earthquake.

Its our first Lima shakedown, and it probably won't be the last. The 4.5 hiccup along the Peru-Chile trench registers on Reuters that night. You don't get mountains like the Andes without having to pay a little geologic price tag now and again I guess. The fluid tremors settle out and when its clear its over, Nathan erupts in high pitched laugh, hitting several octaves my ears are not prepared for, even from school girls.

On the way home, cemetaries brim with flowers, and the only thing that crowds the streets is a still, haunted emptiness.

Halloween at the Cubano

With a full day of freedom ahead of us Friday, no treatments and no obligations, we looked forward to a day of exploring. We were ready to leave the apartment around 4:30 in the afternoon after some sleeping in, stretching, a much needed set of cardio for Katrina and I, and showers for all of us. We were off, as Erin says, like a herd of turtles.

The first venture on foot from the new apartment is promising, we pass a tourist information center, and make mental plans to visit later. The upscale alpaca shops are plentiful here too, and the women are kind as we peruse the craftsmanship. Pressing on, we grab a taxi for 'Pizza Street' a pedestrian avenue in cobblestone filled with restraunts and bars. Just outside the street, I try on shoes and have yet another BWA moment. (Big, White, and Awkward-not much different from the states mind you, just more obvious). I ask if the shoes come in any other sizes, as i've packed mostly summer footwear and somewhere the Peruvian weather gods are getting a good chuckle over my ignorance. (Memo for next time: Summer in the southern hemisphere does NOT mean summer in Lima...not yet at least.) The petite street vendors shrug shoulders and raise eyebrows. I never liked shopping anyways.

Strolling down the crowded avenue, its Halloween here as well, and the attire is itself a spectacle. Amid many skeletal 'day of the dead' ensembles there are also small little ones in synthetic spiderman onesies. After a Peruvian supper, we decide we could celebrate with another Pisco Sour and maybe some dessert. Inside the Cuban bar, skilled, fluid dancers are making it look easy as salsa music plays loudly overhead. One of many things that catches my eye inside the black lit club however is a lone older gentleman at a table near us. With a large pitcher of Cusquena in front of him, forgoeing the glass entirely, I can't help imagining he's a famous British author on a chain smoking South American bender. Just after we discover Manuel is actually an Argentinian doctor, its time to leave as Katrina is getting hounded for her phone number. Conveniently, she dosen't really have one.

With so many little kids out so late on this candy charged holiday, my mind is wondering what my little nephews have sported this evening.