Lima

We went to Lima the weekend of June 23rd for a cultural experience. We got split into two groups, my group going to Miraflores. Miraflores is very close to the center of Lima and has the feel of any real touristy big city you’ve been to, complete with big buildings, fancy restaurants, and a lot of taxis. Our professor gave us assignments while we were there, such as find a particular market and report back with directions in Spanish, and find how much it costs to take a taxi to X and how long does it take. Before and during our trip we were given several speeches about safety and how usually the first incident of a volunteer getting robbed takes place in Lima. The girls stayed close to the guys, and all the guys probably went a little overboard with the “I’ll watch your back, you watch mine” mentality but I do know that nobody got robbed during our trip. I definitely held off taking a lot of pictures to show anybody interested the nice brand new expensive camera that I had. We ended up meeting with the other group in the center of Lima, at the park in front of the President’s building and the Municipal. This place definitely had a safer feel to it, unlike the Chinatown district, thus the accompanying photos to this entry (the building with the Peruvian flag over it is the President’s building). The town I live in and the adjacent cities have a second world feel to them. The center of Lima is first world, but on the outskirts of Lima, which we passed through on our way in and out of town, was undoubtedly third world. Trash everywhere, buildings falling apart, and people getting on the bus at every stop singing, playing a wooden flute, or handing out candy for money. On our way out two other volunteers and I took the bus back and we happen to go through a red zone (areas that are off limits to volunteers due to high crime/risk) by accident. While we were on the bus we saw a group of teenage kids run in front of the bus, the one in back carrying a snatched purse. Our bus turned down the same street they ran onto and I caught a glimpse of them cutting down an alley way and the one with the purse tossing it in into a cubby hole.
The traffic was insane on the way home through this area. There is no such thing as traffic laws, every car/bus for themselves. Lines are not obeyed, people might as well have their hands glued to the horn. I would never drive here no matter how good of driver I think I am, I have never seen vehicles packed so tight together like this and I have been too the New York City many times and it looks like a carousel ride in comparison to this. The bus drivers slam on the brakes, and the accelerator, and every half minute you think you are going to get into an accident or hit a pedestrian. In Chaclacayo it isn’t as extreme, but still the bus drivers have a lead foot and cars pass each other in the oncoming lanes. The Combi, which is a mini bus, doesn’t wait for you to be completely on before it starts moving again with the door being wide open. The bus system is privatized, so ever bus is competing to get as many people as possible on the bus at a time. I suspect they have a quota to meet, and that at times the driver and employee working the door cut a deal with each other to take a little money off the top since there is no way for the company to know how many people were actually on the Combi. A number of us volunteers, including me, have been lied to a couple times about the rate to take the Combi by the employee working the door, and of course since I refused to pay more they passed up my stop. I managed to resist the urge to chuck the employee off the Combi in the name of Cuerpa de Paz (Body of Peace aka Peace Corps).