Saturday 29 June 2002
What a wonderful day. We went to Mira Flores, which is the rich and nice part of Lima, situated close to the coast of South Pacific. To get there, we got on one of the innumerable mini busses that cruises the Avenue Arequipa from downtown Lima to Miraflores.
The bus driver´s assistant constantly shouted out the door which direction this bus was heading. Not my first choice of job. They work all the day in extremely polluted surroundings and our throats was pretty exhausted after that trip.
In Miraflores, we met a local Peruvian named Larry who is 26 years old and earns his living by write for newspapers, reading his poems and teach friends and the tourist police English.
Larry took the opportunity to train his English talking with us and we got the perfect guide for the day. One of Larry's "students" was a female police officer from the newly established Tourist Police. A very few of the police officers speak English, which I thought was a must to serve tourists. Apparently this woman shares that point of view as she approaches us after some persuasion from Larry.
Larry translated between her and us, and we learned bit and pieces about the police and about Peru in general. She recommended a market where we could get equipped before going to Cuzco as the weather at this time of year was pretty cold. Larry informed us that it rained "cats & dogs" up there; hence he would prefer to use some days around Lima instead.
It turned out to be very comfortable having Larry around us. At the market he helped us bargain with the locals, leaving both the seller and us satisfied. We also learned some handy answers to respond when beggars became too tactless. "Estoy misio" meant, "I'm broke" and served with a smile it turned out to be very effective.
We bought us some lunch and as we would like to see the South Pacific, we later walked to the east coast of Mira Flores together with Larry. Here we saw the new hotels, shopping area and a very different Peru.
We came to a very nice place called "El parque del amor", the lover's park. And it surely was. All over we saw couples kissing and of course we had to make our wishes and kiss next to the giant statue of two lovers. The tradition said, that those who had their wishes fulfilled should write their name in mosaic. A lot of them had done, making the park something special.
Larry told us about life in Peru and didn't understand why the Peruvians had to be so poor. Most of them work really hard and the country has all the beauty and sources needed to earn good. We discussed earnings and taxes and were embarrassed to mention our level of our income.
All in all we had a perfect start on our trip in Peru and got ourselves a friend in Larry.