Moving On

I had to say good-bye to Cusco yesterday. It was a bit bittersweet, since I had such a wonderful experience and lots of happy memories, but I´m excited to move on. I´ve been playing guide and translator for the family since their arrival. While I´ve been frustrated by how seemingly slow the Spanish learning seems to be, now I know I´ve improved. I can function with very few problems. On Friday, I visited two new places with the family. Tipon, more Incan ruins, and Piquallacta, a pre-Incan city.

On Saturday, we flew to Lima. As soon as I arrived in Lima, I felt like I had re-entered civilization. Cusco is beautiful, and definitely a city, with a population of 400,00, but it´s very isolated. While there are neighborhoods in Lima I wouldn´t want to walk through by myself in broad daylight, the Miraflores neighborhood (where I currently sit) is like being in a candy store after 6 months of obeying a sugar free diet. The ocean! Pizza Hut! Department Stores! A movie theater! Burger King! Starbucks! I know, I know, I don´t eat fast food when I´m at home, and I´ve never spent a dime in Starbucks (making me a member of a very exclusive club, I´m sure) but just seeing their familiar trademarked faces is comforting. And I know I´m only appreciating it because I´ve spent 6 months in the last McDonald´s-free wilderness.

The rest of Lima isn´t as bad as I previously wrote. During a tour of the city, we visited the San Francisco Monastery, complete with a crypt full of thousands and thousands of human bones and skulls. Creepy. I could never live here, however. The city is currently blanketed under a coastal fog, which is apparently the weather situation from April through December. That´s 9 whole months of gloominess. No thanks.

The family leaves in a few hours (airport pickup time is 3am, lucky them), but I think I´ll stick around in my ultra-urban environment for one more day before moving on. I might even see a movie. How exciting is that?!