La Ciudad De Helado

Welcome to Lima, where everyone´s either suckin´ face or suckin´ ice cream!
We arrived here Sunday morning after a short flight from Santiago and immediately went exploring. Lima is a mix between the old (bicycle carts, auto-rickshaws, old produce mercados) and the new (paved roads, international chain restaurants, big supermarkets, real coffee houses). Although, not noticeable at first, it has high pollution, lots of police, private security and gates surrounding everything, even parks. And yet, I still like it. Frankly, it´s more of what I expected from a South American city. Like any big city, it can be unsafe at times and delightful at other times. Oh, and did I mention the prices? They´re actually reasonable here...much more in our budget than Santiago. But then, this isn´t a tourist-only town, so I bet things will be drastically more in Cusco and Aguas Calientes.
For the last 5 days, we´ve been busy exploring downtown, Miraflores, and the places in between. Miraflores is the nicer and safer part of town, located on the coast. We´re staying just a few blocks north at a restored colonial mansion called Home Peru (C+, nice dog and inner courtyard). Perfect for us, it´s located on the big Arequipa Ave, so getting a collectivo in to town or down to the beach is super easy. It´s fun, these minibuses drive along main thoroughfares and stop every couple of blocks or when you hail them or at any other time the carnival barker ticket guy sees a human being. They cost only S/. 1 per person, including the 20min ride downtown...how can you beat that?!
So we spent 2 days downtown exploring the tourist sites: Plaza San Martin (lots of fuzz), Plaza de Armas (incredible amounts of fuzz), Jr. de la Union (main shopping street, recommend the churros), changing of the guard at Palacio de Gobierno, the main cathedral (since when did God start charging to you to see his house?, S/. 10), San Francisco Convent Church and Catacombs (here, the last supper painting includes guinea pig as the main dish), and Gran Parque Cultural de Lima (large flowery green park with local eateries, kids´ entertainment park and, of course, lots of ice cream).
The next couple of days we slowed it down and hung around Miraflores doing laundry, people watching in the park (Roman hands, Russian fingers), holding hands along the coastal cliffs, shopping at the produce market (no other farang in sight) and eating well. One lunch, at the well-known Punto Azul, included ceviche de pescado (big fan) and a monstrous portion of arroz con mariscos (S/. 41 including two Cuzceños). The next day´s lunch, a local´s menu ejecutivo at the slightly more modest S/. 10, included ceviche mixto and tamalito starters, a t-bone with fries and roasted chicken with rice and beans, and unlimited apple juice. Equally satisfying, the first lunch included ordering help from the Peruvian ambassador to Cuba, sitting the next table over, and the second lunch took place in a much sweatier construction workers hotspot.
Yesterday we stopped in to a clinic for our yellow fever vaccinations, ate the aforementioned cheapo lunch, went paragliding off the cliffs at the southwest end of Miraflores, and washed down butifarra de pavo sandwiches with hot chocolate and chicha morada in Parque Kennedy before following the sound of roaring engines to a road rally introductions ceremony held between giant blow up bottles of Pilsen Callao. It´s getting harder and harder to be Baltimore these days.
Tonight we fly to Iquitos to hang with the Forshey crew.