Last Days in Lima

Well, I'm finally home from my latest epic journey: a two-week shoot all across the country followed by an unexpected 14-hour drive from Chicago to New York.  Luckily my apartment is fully functioning and intact, in spite of the fact that I left my window open a crack having not anticipated that a hurricane would blow through while I was gone.  I am extremely fortunate and much better off than many others in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey as I have electricity, heat, hot water, cable and even Internet service.  My office is still closed since there's no power below 34th Street and the subways are just starting to partially open again tomorrow so it looks like I'll be working from home for at least the next few days.

But enough about all that for now.  I've finally reached the final blog post on the specific day-to-day adventures of my around-the-world trip.  I have a few follow-up posts to write over the next few days, but this is the last one about my final days overseas before coming back to the U.S. this past summer after eleven months abroad.  Now that the major posts are out of the way, I will try to gradually update the rest of the stats, figures and photos on the rest of the website so that everything will soon be completely up-to-date.  So on that note, let's get right to it.

On the morning of Monday, June 18th, my parents and I flew back to Lima, Peru, from Cuzco.  We took a cab from the airport back to the bed and breakfast where we had stayed before leaving for Cuzco and Machu Picchu.  It was an overcast and slightly drizzly day so there wasn't much that we could do outside.  We found a place where we could have a cheap prix fixe lunch, which left my parents amazed at the value.  Then in the early afternoon, we took a walk on the promenade along the cliff overlooking the rocky Costa Verde beaches across from our hotel.  My dad had to exchange some more money at the bank so we walked to a commercial area near the Larcomar shopping mall and then continued a bit farther until we reached the end of the pedestrian walk.  Along the way, my parents completely embarrassed me by pretending to make out just like the giant statue of two people kissing in Love Park. When we returned to the hotel, we found a place to have dinner nearby and then headed in for the night.

On Tuesday, I went to go check out a tandem paragliding place across from our hotel since I hadn't had the chance to go hang gliding when I was in Rio.  We stopped by first in the morning, but there wasn't enough wind so the guys told me to try again in the afternoon.  After the aborted paragliding attempt, we decided to head in the opposite direction along the promenade from the day before and walked down a set of stairs to the check out the beachfront below.  All of the beaches on this side of the city are covered in small rocks rather than sand so they can be very difficult and uncomfortable to walk on, especially in bare feet.  After heading back up to the top of the cliff, we veered away from the coastline to try to get some lunch.  I found a roadside place where I decided to stop, but my mother wanted to go back to the place where we'd eaten the day before.  After I ate, they headed off in the opposite direction and I went back to the hotel before going to sit out in the park across the street along the Costa Verde.  I was still hoping to try to paraglide in the afternoon, but my attempt was foiled again as the weather conditions just did not want to cooperate.  I did walk back down the beach again and made arrangements to take a surf lesson at 10:00am the following day.

Wednesday morning, my dad and I walked down to the surf spot about ten minutes from our hotel.  My mother made it over a bit later.  When I got there, the instructor I had arranged to meet was nowhere to be seen.  I was about to give up, when another guy who was set up on the beach talked me into taking a lesson with him instead.  He loaned me a wet suit, but didn't have any booties so it was tough to walk on the rocks.  In spite of the wet suit, the water was pretty cold as it was an overcast and windy day.  The instructor had given me a brief demo on shore before we headed into the water, which actually better helped me to understand the technique for standing up on the surfboard.  I had one of those big foam boards and my instructor would tell me exactly when to start paddling and even give me a push.  Following a few unsuccessful attempts, I was actually able to stand up!  Even though in reality I was pretty far off, I got scared as I got approached the shore so I jumped off after only a few seconds on the board.

After that I was able to stand up a few more times, but also got knocked around quite a bit and took on a small amount of water.  The Pacific Ocean off the coast of Lima is supposed to be pretty polluted so that didn't make me feel too reassured.  Luckily, I didn't get sick.  It was so much fun whenever I got up on the board, but being rocked around while I was waiting for the waves started to make me feel seasick and nauseous.  In the end, I decided to cut the lesson a bit short.  I was still out there for about an hour and was really glad I did it because now I have more confidence for the next time I get to go surfing.

In the afternoon, I tried once again to go paragliding, but it seems I was doomed to repeat my bad luck from Rio.  Finally, just an hour or so before sunset a few guys started getting airborne and they  allowed people to sign up for tandem flights.  I managed to be the second person on line so I gave my dad my video camera and then went inside the barricade to get all suited up.  The one girl before me was there with her boyfriend who stood off to the side to take pictures as she got ready to take off.  She was only wearing sandals so as she began to run with her instructor she tripped and nearly fell before getting dragged back on her feet.  I don't know if it's because they lost speed or there just wasn't enough wind, but right after the pair went off the cliff they went nearly straight down instead of up into the air.  I think the instructor was able to land safely on the beach below, but it was a very truncated and possibly dangerous flight.  After that, the guys running the place told us that there just wasn't enough wind so we were going to have to try again the next day.  I got so close, but given what had happened to the person before me, it was probably best that the rest of the flights were called off.

The next day was our final day in Peru before our flights back to New York.  In the morning, the weather still wasn't cooperating so my parents and I took a taxi to the city center to go to the Museo de Arte de Lima.  It was our first time actually going downtown away from the beaches of Miraflores.  The art museum was undergoing renovations so only a few exhibits were open.  One of them was an overview of all of the museum's recent acquisitions from all different eras of Peruvian art.  The other three were contemporary art exhibits, including one called "Milagros de la Torre," which featured several series of photographs.  One series was printed completely in the negative.  Another exhibit by artist David Zink Yi featured several large-scale pieces, including a video project showing a man blowing on a trumpet until he nearly asphyxiated himself.  The last exhibit, "Liquidacion," was comprised of several black and white films.  One showed scenes of a man walking around a campus and another opposite it simply showed a hand turning rocks of different sizes over and over.  According to the curatorial description, the films were supposed to "invite us to reflect on different social, historical and architectural development aspects," though I don't think any of us were particularly impressed.

After leaving the museum, we walked around the park out front and checked out a public art display of aerial photographs from various neighborhoods around Lima.  Then we had a prix fixe lunch at a nice outdoor cafe.  Nearby in the park was a theater and drama school where we got to watch students practicing an assignment right outside the building.  As the afternoon stretched on, we took a cab back to Miraflores, where I checked on the paragliding situation one last time.  Since it was still a no-go, we took another walk on the promenade and as we were resting on a bench the ground suddenly began to shake.  It turns out it was an earthquake!  Luckily since we were already outside we didn't have to worry about anything falling on us.  It actually wasn't that strong and didn't last for too long.  It was still an interesting story to bring back from our final afternoon in Peru.

A few hours later, it was time to head to the airport.  My parents had an overnight direct flight to Newark on United, but I was flying Spirit to LaGuardia and had a layover in Fort Lauderdale.  The original plan was for my parents to come pick up me once they landed in New Jersey, but that was not to be.  I'll save that exciting story for my next post later this week.  It sadly reflects heavily upon the events of the past few days.