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.