Welcome to Lima

I think most of us slept pretty well last night and we all emerged from our room into the Hostel which didn´t really reveal itself to us last night in the dark, or if it did we were too tired to notice. I carried Bo out into the hallway and past the dining table where a team of Chilean badminton players were sat eating their breakfast, seriously - you couldn´t make it up could ya? A cursory ´hola´, ´Buenos Dias´and I sheepishly walked past, ignoring the óoh, es pequeno bebe blanco´. I wasn´t ready to speak spanish, not yet.

Luckily there is a small courtyard between the kitchen and the dining table so I camped myself there until Claire arrived moment later. We sat there taking it all in I think. Not quite sure where exactly we were, what to do or what came next. By this time I´d manage to work out that the spanish speakers were in fact the Chilean Badminton players and not staff members and I´d managed to work out who worked here so, with a deep breath, I walked over and....spoke to him...in spanish - ooh eck! It was OK actually, didn´t understand every word he said and I don´t supose he understood me totally but I managed to ask him if we could add another night to our booking, to which he told me the woman who deals with that would be in later about 8.30am, and I asked if breakfast was included with our room - it was, Result!

We then managed to eat breakfast (fruit juice, coffee, bread and jam) in between cleaning and sterilising all the bottles and feeding Bo. It was quite impressive. By 8am we´d all eaten. All bottle were sterilised and we were ready to walk. Melissa, the owners daughter who sorted bookings etc, came in shortly after so we managed to sort the room and glean some info from here about the area. We headed off to the supermarket and local plaza in Barranco about 9am, bit of a mistake really as most things were shut! (Looks like they don´t rise until 10am!), We managed to head down to the beach but were MOST unimpressed! Dirty looking sand (could have been shale we didn´t bother to go all the way down as it would have meant crossing the main road which was the size of a motorway! So we headed back, the supermarket was open so we stocked up on toiletries and water and once back at the hostel we boiled the water and made up Bo´s bottles for the day.

Although we´d slept well enough we still had that ´lagged´feeling, if ya know what I mean? By the time we´d pootled around the hostel for a bit it was geting on for lunch time so we decided to head up to Miraflores, the ´uptown´area which catered for tourists. I know its just semantics to some but I never consider myself a ´tourist´, not in the conventional sense of the word at least. I always seek out the hidden places, the local bars, eat at those dirty stall with the locals not with the tipping brigade. Not with folks who pay the equivelant of a months local wages for a nights stay at the Marriot. So I wasn´t looking forward to the walk to be honest - think that makes me some kind of snob!? lmao!!

We headed out and it soon became apparent that the attention on this trip was all gonna be sucked up a certain little fella....little Bo...A.K.A. ´El pequeno bebe blanco!´ (The little white baby!) All along the walk people would be looking, smiling, cooing. Woman would be seen tapping their husbands and making them soak in the site of the funny white baby! It was quite funny to be honest.

The walk itself wasn´t particularly interesting but once we got to Miraflores you could see the difference. Being greeted by ´Pizza Hut´for a start! We walked pastt he park which was immaculate and could be seen being attended to by official ´park attendants´, never saw them in Barranco ;o) But, amongst all the tourist traps we spotted on the opposite side of the road a tiny, easily missed and unassuming place that reminded us of all those little places we´d eaten at in other countries, the greek family run taverna, the chinese stalls in the side streets of Beijing, they all have a certain ´feel´about them and this place obviously had it. We could tell even from the wrong side of the road. We crossed quickly and soon sat down amongst the peruvians.

Just sitting there we could see that this place was were all the local workers came after servicing the needs of the gringos. The place was obviously run by the same family with the grandma, wife in the kitchen while the husband flitted between helping to cook, serving and taking orders. The owner came quickly and I started the spanish, wish I could talk it better! I managed to ask about the menú (They have a set menu with a limited choice of starter and main and a drink) They had 2 options, which I could not make out the difference, so we decided to go with the 7 solés version (about a couple of quid). I ordered 2 bottles of water while we started to try and work out what was on the board!! We must have sat there for about 15 mins, slowly trying translate what was on the Menú. We worked out that the main was steak, fried fish, chicken and another (can´t remember what!) but the starters were more difficult so I asked the guy which ones had no meat in them and if any were vegetarian or had fish but no meat. It wasn´t perfect but we managed to work out that there was chicken soup, fried calamari and a potato dish which we knew was vegetarian but we weren´t exactly sure what it was!? We dove straight in there and ordered a squid starter, the potato thing and the fried fish main. We then got handed the drink, a sweet thick liquid. Not unpleasant but very sweet! Then Claire´s potato starter came out. Basically slices of boiled potato layered on a plate with a cold sauce covering it. IT was actually very nice - think I liked it more than claire. Then the best dish of them all came the squid. Fine slices covered in crunchy coating and deep fried and served with salad, sauce some small nut type things - sweetcorn kernals maybe? I thought it was all just fantastic! I could have just eaten that again but we´d ordered the fish, and who knows maybe that would be just as good? It wasn´t. Don´t get me wrong it wasn´t horrible, just a bit of a let down after the squid. It was a piece of fried fish with rice and some beans in a sauce...bit bland if I´m gonna be honest but we ate it, paid up, thanked the family and duly headed back to the hostel.

Claire was getting grumpy at this stage, as she always does when she´s tired, and starting to pick at me - cow! lmao! So I suggested she went and lay down for a while ´I won´t sleep, never do´. Yeah, right. She disappeared into the room and didn´t appear again for a few hours. I managed to do a bit. Got Bo to sleep, checked e-mails etc and even managed to read half my book before Claire woke. We all showered, Bo with me which was funny - he prefers baths I think ;o) Basically had a lazy day while we recover from the journey, normally takes a few days. In the meantime we got some news that a family friend of Claire´s was visiting his daughter in Bolivia and would like it if we went to see them somewhere. We´re still in the process of trying to see if it could work but I love the randomness of it if we could sort it out! If we do go, it may mean cutting a section of our trip down. Not sure which bit, so watch this space!