I had a bad concience not having been to an archeological site or museum for some time so I thought about going to Pachacamac, which is the next site close to the city after the one I’ve already been to.

As always I thought about how to go there without having to take a taxi. My first idea was to take the metro (train), so I looked that up on Google Maps. The problem here in Perú is that Google Maps is not very detailed in general and especially places are very often not shown on the map and relatively often they’re shown in the wrong places. I estimated the distance between the last station of the metro to the south and the entrance to be about 5 kilometers – a good walking distance. The only problem was that the reason why my collegues claimed the train was dangerous is that it’s ends seem to be in slums or at least very poor areas of Lima. I thought I might just go to the last station and see whether it seems safe to get out. So I went there and as it didn’t look that bad I started walking. At some points I didn’t feel very safe, but nothing happened. I tried not to show my camera and cell too much though.

At about half the way I saw a pretty huge park nearby on Google Maps, so I thought it might be more convenient to walk through the park, although it meant taking a small detour. The park turned out to be very nice, although it had fences around it. The entrance fee of s/. 2,50 is not worth mentioning (less than 1,00 €), but unfortunately it has only one entrance, so I couldn’t walk through. The park itself is very nice, it has places to grill, a small food court, a big lake with small islands (one has monkeys on it) where you can even rent a boat, playgrounds, sports fields an amphitheater. I was very impressed and guessing from the crowds of people in there I guess it is successful.

After walking through the park I continued my way to Pachacamac, but when I thought I was there the place shown on Google Maps turned out to be a dessert. I started investigating and found another place in the map but behind the dessert from the point where I was. Maybe two kilometers I thought, it was 3.5 in the end not counting a 30 minutes detour I made because there was a sign indicating a huge supermarket was close and I at least needed some drink. Unfortunately I didn’t find it so I had to go into a dark hall of small shops to buy a water and leave as quickly as possible 🙂

Walking along a relatively small street through the “dessert” was not very nice because almost every empty taxi honked at me hoping I wanted a ride (did they honestly believe someone walking in the middle of nowhere would suddenly want to continue using the taxi?), but I made it and arrived at the entrance at 3 p.m. – last admission is 3.30 p.m. so I was relatively happy not to have taken longer. The place itself was interesting and even had a small museum. The view from the highest point was also interesting – it was used by the Chilean army during the war in the end of the 19th century – but apart from that it was more or less to get rid of one point on the to-do list as I don’t like walking around dusty ruins *that* much 😀

Luckily there was a bus station right at the entrance, so I had the pleasure of taking a crowded micro back to Lima which was fast, but very uncomfortable (no seat and it wasn’t high enough to stand properly) and the guy even charged me a gringo price (I did not complain because the difference was 0,30€). Fortunately I only needed one third of the time to go back, which was nice. Another interesting day, especially getting there and finding that nice park was fun!

Right after becoming homeless this morning for the few hours between check-out at the hostel and check-in at my new home I got a phone call from a collegue telling me I had to join playing soccer again. We had a really nice time, I guess this will become tradition from now on 🙂

I enjoyed the service at the hostel (breakfest, tea and laundry service just to mention a few), but I guess my room had about 5 m² which is not really not how you want to live for 3 monts. Now I’m living in a relatively huge house. It is a guesthouse run by a local family and offers 10 rooms. They rent to people doing internships or studying here in Lima, so I’m living together with people mainly from Europe and the U.S. We have a television room, a nice living room, a garden, a roof-deck and a huge kitchen for everyone.

After reserving my spot here I found out that is only about 150 meters from the hostel, so moving wasn’t too difficult. My room is at the very corner of a small park.

In the evening we went to Barranco, another district appealing to tourists with great architecture, history, beaches and a bohemian style like Kreuzberg. Of course it also has a dizzying nightlife, so we went to a bar ’till 2 a.m. and continued at some freaky club till 6. The club was nice with people constantly approaching each other and introducing themselves, but it’s hard to understand Spanish when you would already have troubly understanding German. It also felt quite weird to stick out of the crew this much, there was only one guy taller than me, so there were definitely not many foreigners in there.

We had perfect weather on Sunday, but I spent a significant amount of time on the phone again and when I wanted to go out I only made it to the TV room where two German girls were watching Germany play against Denmark. We started chatting a bit and I ended up seeing the whole game. Afterwards I headed out to Wong quickly to have lunch and buy some stuff for breakfest on Monday. Wong is a really big market comparable to Kaufland, but also has a second story called “Wong Buffet” where you can have some good and fresh Peruvian food and pay by weight (about 3 € for a full plate). I had a delicious seafood soup, some fruits and a bit of all the local dishes.

Now I wanted to buy my bus tickets so I hopped onto the Metropolitano. Unfortunately I did know the only the adress, but the street is 2 kilometers long and Google Maps does not know where a number is, so I had to walk a little bit to find my bus company. It is a company that mainly Peruvians use and although good for local standards their service is limited. That’s why I have to go there instead of buying the tickets online, but they have new buses and are the only company I could find offering a late departure (8 p.m.) to Cuzco so that I can go after work and have a good part of the 20 hour drive during the night. My main problem was that I was walking around one of the poorer areas of Lima without presence of the police and a lot of trash in the streets. I was really happy to reach the bus company without being robbed, but still my happiness about that didn’t last too long as I was told they only sell tickets 14 days in advance, so I have to go there again. I wonder why they didn’t tell on the phone…

Saturday morning was phone time again. Because of the 7 hour time difference to Germany it’s the only time nobody has to get up at odd hours to talk.

I was actually invited for a barbecue at the hourse of a nice guy from the U.S. who owns a local Pisco bar. But since I couldn’t reach him the invitation was useless as I didn’t know where to go. The students traditionally play soccer on the company-owned field outside the office on Saturdays, so I decided to join them this time. We played 5 against 5 and it was a lot of fun, luckily there were some people who were not too much better than I am in soccer.

When I came back to the hostel I was introduced to the granddaughter of the owner, who just finished school and wanted to play at one of the many local concerts in a park in downtown Lima that evening. I spontaneously decided to join, so I had my first trip to the historic center of Lima at night with some friends of my host’s daughter who went by car and kindly gave me a ride. Unfortunately the band was late at the concert, so they couldn’t play. Instead we listened to a kind of rock concert for about an hour, but our position next to a bass-speaker wasn’t really optimal. Besides that it was interesting to see another part of the local culture – public concerts in parks are really common over here and are free due to sponsorship from the city government.

When we came back in the night I quickly snatched up some stuff to take for sunday (headlight, sunblock, water, bread and bananas) and set the alarm to 5.10 a.m.

In the morning I took the Metropolitano, a modern bus which has its own track and is operated by the government. It is powered by Peruvian natural gas and runs very frequently, even on sunday morning. I met a small group of Couchsurfers (one was from Berlin, living here for two years) a ten-minutes bus drive away (still Miraflores) to share two cabs and go to the meeting place, where our bus would depart to the Cañón de Autisha. We arrived there very early, but the 90 minutes until our bus finally departed passed quickly, because there were so many people to talk to. Except for some German and French only Spanish was spoken, so I had some difficulties.

The group was really interesting. We were about 40 people with only a few tourists and most of the group Peruvians. The age was range was probably from 15 to 40 years. There were solo travelers like me as well as small groups, but everyone seemed to share the CS spirit and talked to everybody.

The bus ride was only 20 soles (6€) and I would say the bus was local standard, definitely without ABS 😉 We went up the whole time and soon reached the really nice village of Chosica, where I unfortunately didn’t take pictures as I was talking to a cute Peruvian girl all the time 😀

Soon after this village (we had already reached an altitude of about 1800 meters) the street turned to a path, where most people would not think about driving a normal car in Europe. The bus was shaking like crazy and almost didn’t make it around the steep curves. Additionally there was so much dust inside (the driver would not close his window), that you could barely breathe. We went through a small river and the chassis of the bus hit some rocks really hard, so that everyone thought it would break, but nothing really happened. I really didn’t want to think about going all this way back downwards and the local people seemed not really used to such a ride as well. At one point we had to decide whether to continue walking for 90 minutes or go by bus for approx. 30 minutes some people didn’t want to walk, so everybody had to take the bus to not waste the other’s time. At about half the way up it took 10 minutes to get around one curve, with the bus going back and fourth all the time and some guys on telling the driver how many centimeters he had on each edge, half of the people couldn’t stand being on the bus anymore and continued walking. I joined them of course and enjoyed the absence of dust after the bus had passed.

Shortly afterwards we arrived where the bus was parked. There was a small bridge from one to the other side of the canyon, where a small group did bungee-jumping. We wondered whether we might get close to their level of adrenaline 😀

After walking some 15 minutes on a small path we reached the chasm of the canyon and the first obstacle – we had to climb down about 3 meters on a rope. A discussion about who should go first started and somebody said “why not one of the Germans?” so I went, but it wasn’t that difficult for me, at this point height was a huge advantage. Because we were so many people, we went on directly in small groups. Now we were inside an abandoned hydroelectric power plant and descended down into the canyon inside an elevator shaft. Inside there was no light except that from our torches and we met some bats.

After about half the way down we continued walking in a tunnel, which was obviously made for Peruvians and encountered another difficulty. A wooden ladder of about 5 meters was fixed almost horizontally there (it somehow looks more vertical on the picture) and stringed with some net. The gaps between the steps were quite huge even for me and I didn’t really trust that net. The view at least 20 meters down contributed to some pulse rise as well, but this is what we came for 🙂

Now it was done and we took a brake to enjoy the waterfall and took pictures. Two guys even went for a swim in the small lake, which supposedly had about 10°C.

When we had almost reached the bus in a group of about 10 people a girl came running behind us and told us to go back in order to rescue another girl who had fallen into the canyon. I didn’t understand the details she told us, but from looking at the other’s faces I was certain that I did understand the main point. Honestly, at this point I was thinking we had no chance of doing anything for somebody who fell down this high, but when we reached the canyon again the girl was already back on track with just a few scratches. She had – maybe exhausted from the climbing – slipped of the way and fell a few meters where she was able to grab some root and climb back up. So she was really lucky and everybody was relieved. At least at this point I guess everybody had enough adrenaline, but we still needed to survive the bus ride.

When everybody was back at the bus it was 6 p.m. and almost dark. The prospect of driving that dangerous road in the dark almost appealed to nobody, but we wanted to go back. Except for that one curve, where we needed 10 minutes again and the top scratched the rocks at one point we soon reached civilization again and stopped in the first small village to buy some food and sodas from women selling it directly on the street.

Still the street was more suited for Jeeps and quite small, so as you probably expect by now we encountered the next problem. A broken car stood right in the middle of the street and the owner – a really old man – insisted on repairing the car there, so we couldn’t move. After about 45 minutes our driver lost his patience and went by, but it was really tight again.

When we arrived in Lima at about 10 p.m. there was a big goodbye ceremony and people headed in all directions. This day was incredible – first time out of Lima and first time to experience the CS spirit. I can definitely use more of it!

If this post wasn’t enough, you may also like this video 🙂

Somehow the second week passed so fast I barely noticed. My tasks are getting serious now at work and I suddenly know most of the names of people around me.

I had several good conversations with collegues, fellow travelers and Angelo (the owner of my hostel) about Perú and life in general and I think I will not cover much of it here, instead I decided to write another post about some of the insights later. It will be mixed with my own perceptions and hopefully include some pictures I still have to take. I’m also planning to cover traffic over here, right now I use the bus to work (which is sometimes crammed to people but feels safe) and in most cases a collegue takes me home (he lives two blocks away in Miraflores). So far pretty cheap and convenient.

Since all the paperwork from the UCSB arrived on the last weekend I wanted to get my visa to finally get everything organized. I spent almost one evening in the lobby of my hostel trying to get the web application to accept by picture and working through pages and pages of questions. After the first ones I stopped wondering why those were important and just wanted to go through.

Unfortunately to schedule an appointment you have to pay the visa fee, which can only be payed in cash at Scotiabank in Perú. I thought well, this might be a bit inconvenient, but no problem. So I tried to walk into a Scotiabank office next to my hostel to discover it was closed already – shortly after 6 p.m. I had thought everything here is like Wong, the big supermarket I always buy my food at. It is open from 7 a.m. until midnight 🙂

The next time I tried was Wednesday morning before going to work. It was 8.15 a.m. and still closed. Now I became a bit clueless about what to do – my next idea was finding a Scotiabank next to my office and going there during the day. When I opened their website and browsed through the locations I found one agency with the exact same adress the office has. I knew that we have ATMs at building, but on the web it clearly said “agency”. So I asked a collegue and was told that we indeed have a fully functioning bank agency inside the building. I went there, paid my dues and was able to access their appointment reservation system on Thursday. The waiting time in Lima at the moment is zero, so I reserved the earliest possible date Friday, 7.30 a.m.

Now I know, why there’s no waiting time. They just call people in no matter how many are already there. So I spent 2 hours at the embassy this morning to have my 90 second interview and the visa was approved – which finally made up for the waiting time.

Additionally plans for the next weekends develop – I will be going to Cuzco with some people to see the legendary Independence Day Celebrations on 28th of July. As foreigners pay three times the price for domestic air travel over here, I’ll be taking the 20h bus ride. I also plan to join some people from Couchsurfing on a trip to the Cañon de Autisha on Sunday missing the soccer game Peru against Uruguay, the last chance to still qualify for the World Championship 2014. Believe it or not: Peruvians are even more obsessed with soccer than Germans.

Today I had planned to visit the historic center of Lima, which is north of Miraflores in a district I haven’t been before. On the breakfest table though I got to know a nice guy from New York who wanted to visit an archeological site within walking distance and as this was also on my list of things to do I joined him. His flight back to New York was in the evening so he basically had to kill the whole day.
On our way we found one of the big streets to be closed for cars and people were biking there. It was also pretty nice for us to walk without all those honking (which is part of the crazy driving style over here). We got a guided tour there for just 12 soles and it was really interesting. Those ruins are over 700 years old and were just discovered about 10 years ago despite being directly in Miraflores. Before it was just a hill and nobody knew what was hidden below the sand. We also had a nice view over parts of Lima from the top of the hill.
Afterwards we wanted to grab some food so we went to Lacomar (the shopping area at the beach). On our way we thought about watching the soccer match Colombia against Perú as part of the qualifications for the world cup in 2014. We saw a sign at a bar indicating the game would start at 2.30 p.m. so we ended up at Chili’s with beer and some food wondering why the game wouldn’t start.
When we asked it turned out it just started at 5 p.m. so we left dissapointed.
We then walked back, enjoying the parks of Miraflores and tried the Frogurt store I found yesterday. It’s self service and you pay by weight, which I consider to be a good concept.
Some time passed and we decided to watch the game in a little Irish bar close to the hostel where we met Methew, who owns a Pisco bar a few blocks away (still in Miraflores). We talked with him throughout the game and he invited me to try Pisco Sour at his bar and to his barbeceue next Saturday, which sounds really nice and appears to be a good opportunity to get to know some locals. I guess I will call him during the week…

So except for the weather (no sun at all again) we had a really wonderful day and it I am still amazed by how beautiful Lima (I should probably say Miraflores) is and how easy it is to get to know people 🙂

Obviously the first weekend has to be used to explore the city a bit more than is possible during the working days. In the morning I bought some food and put some money on my SIM-card to that I finally have mobile internet. Afterwards I went to a nice park very close to the hostel to find my first Geocache in outside Germany 🙂

Afterwards the sun came out so I had to use the chance to go paragliding which is one of the popular tourist attractions. Because the city is located slightly above the cost it is almost a perfect spot for paragliders. Still the wind is not always optimal, I was told they hadn’t flown since Monday due to bad wind conditions.

To get there I had to walk a bit through Miraflores and discovered a frozen jogurt store, a great outdoor shopping center directly at the coast and the Mariott hotel, probably the most expensive hotel over here and one of the biggest buildings.

Unfortunately I lost some time during the walk, because I walked around things to much. When I reached the starting point, there was a long queue already and 30 seconds (really!) before it was my turn the sun vanished behind clouds that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Since I had forgotten to buy sunscreen and was out in the sun a few hours already I thought it might not save me from getting sunburned. Still the 10-minute flight was really nice, but except from the start it was really smooth. We flew very close to the Mariott hotel and over the sea, a nice perspective upon a new city. Somehow I had expected more adrenaline though, I don’t know why it feels this save to fly a few hundred meters above ground. For instance I’m really afraid of bungee jumping which might be less dangerous.

In the morning I got up at about 6.15 a.m. and decided to go jogging. After a quick glance to Google Maps I decided to try to reach the beach area which I estimated to be about 5 kilometers back and forth. It was seven in the end, but really nice. In the morning there is not much traffic, at least not in the smaller streets of Miraflores, I met a lot of other people jogging, walking or otherwise exercising. At the beach there are lots of sports equipment and everything can just be used for free, which I consider to be pretty cool and will definitely integrate into the next jogging tour on the weekend 🙂 Thanks to Google Maps I didn’t even get lost, what usd to happen to me in Munich.

Today my right to IBM went really smooth, knowing the right number I immediately found the right bus and it wasn’t even crowded. Door to door I need about 1 hour and it costs s/. 1.50 which is about 0.45€. At IBM I’m getting to know more and more people although the language barrier is a slight problem sometimes. Most of them speak good english and I do understand a good deal of Spanish, but speaking is still quite difficult.

Another challenge I underestimated was finally buying a SIM-Card to get mobile internet and be able to call collegues for a reasonable price (my O2 roaming was at 3 € per minute). I had been to Wong several time before, but the phone shops were always quite crowded. Now I realized I would have to wait so I joined the line. I decided to buy a prepaid Movistar card, because the internet package is way cheaper than with Claro (at a lower volume limit which is ok for me). I did not expect any verification, but luckily I had my ID with me which had to be copied and the SIM card had to be activated using a difficult procedure of sending SMS messages to certain numbers containing the ID number. Still that’s not enough, the SIM card only works for 2 weeks during which I have to present my ID at the headquarter of Movistar (no joke) for it to continue working. Fortunately it is only a few blocks away. Additionally I discovered that the SIM-Card only works for Edge, not UMTS, but well I am in Lima.

Yesterday I was lucky again to get a ride home, today I had to take the bus which was really crowded, so I had to watch my Thinkpad, but of course nothing happened.

I already have good list of things for the weekend 🙂