The lady wears a llama (my Pisco Sour obsession begins)

17–18 May 2013

We had a couple of days to spare in Lima before our next tour started, and we spent them acclimatising to Peru, seeing the sights and sleeping in.

Although the mornings were overcast, with clouds and mist so heavy and low they touched the ground, the days cleared by lunch time and turned so warm we got a little burnt on our travels.

Each morning, we had a late breakfast at the hotel, with soft rolls, butter, jam, eggs (sin jamon), coffee, tea and juice. I stuck to my new favourite, anis tea (aniseed for the non-Spanish speaking among us!), while Chris tried the local ‘coffee’. It didn’t take him too long to work out how to make the disgustingly strong brew drinkable – by adding loads of milk and sugar.

Each night, we visited a great little vegetarian restaurant that overlooked one of the main streets, where we could watch people drinking coffee, eating ice cream and chatting below, and the cats that lolled around them, waiting for scraps. We indulged in all sorts of healthy but delicious culinary delights, including fried cheese in pastry, vegetarian ceviche, salads, eggplant parmigiana and juices that were the epitome of a liquid Bounty.

Lima’s inner city seems quite ‘Westernised’, with people wandering around in Western-style clothing and eating Western-style food (sadly, fast food, like burgers, fried chicken and pizza, is everywhere). But despite us being Western, we were still stared at everywhere we went. Strangely, we were also repeatedly offered drugs, tattoos and piercings (by very nice, polite and friendly people, I have to say!). Perhaps that was more to do with Chris’ facial hair though?

However, the roads in Lima are clearly not yet Westernised. No one pays much attention to the lights or road rules, with honking, arm waving and the odd Spanish expletive the main forms of communication. Crossing any road was like playing your own real-life version of Frogger. It was just like being back in Ho Chi Minh City!

Even so, Lima city is very walkable, and walk we did. We passed run-down, seemingly abandoned mansions with dead and littered gardens and broken fences and windows; beautifully restored, grand homes with manicured lawns and big, secure gates; and modern villas and apartment blocks. We passed industrial areas, car lots, embassies, fast food restaurants, casinos, upper-class book, record and clothing stores, museums, galleries, and glorious, lush parks with tall, cast iron fences. It was such a mix of wealth and poverty, all so contradictory.

Along the road, pimped up, colourful mini buses pulled up randomly (so it seemed to us), their conductors hanging from the door and yelling at you to board. Even when you were going the opposite way. We politely declined. We couldn’t imagine fitting into one when there were already people pressed up against the windows because it was so full. That, and the people on board looked decidedly like escaped convicts.

We also avoided taking too many taxis after one especially crazy experience, in which our driver weaved in and out of traffic, and on and off ramps on the highway, at full speed, all the while whistling some kind of serenade. Goodness knows how we would have felt if we hadn’t had a couple of strong Pisco Sours before getting into his cab, which probably helped to make the trip more amusing than terrifying.

We spent a good half day walking to, around and from Huanca Pucllana, a pyramid complex built by the Lima people in around 400AD. The Limas worshipped the moon and sea, so painted the building yellow… to match the sea (the sea is maybe 20km away but clearly they didn’t travel that far!). Every 20 years they added a new layer to the top, and celebrated the completion of each layer with animal and human sacrifices. As you do. Rich dead people and priests were buried in the pyramids, and the lower classes and poor were buried around outside them (similar to Catholic churches, you might say).

The Limas lived in the area for 300 or so years, before being conquered by the Wari. The Wari kept using the ruins for their ceremonies and burials, in a similar way to that of the Limas. The Wari were conquered a few hundred years later by another people, who were then conquered by the Incas in around 1400.

This huge complex was only recently uncovered – until then residents had just thought it was a hill upon which they could play, climb and do motocross. Apparently only about 50% of it has been excavated so far, with surrounding houses and businesses likely built on top of more of the ceremonial grounds. They’re doing a really good job of restoring the layers and environment in the area, although their representation of the original inhabitants’ way of life, using odd-looking dwarf-like figures wearing hessian, and standing around big barrels and dead ‘bodies’, was a little freaky.

I was quite taken with the little garden nearby, in which the historians grow plants and keep animals similar to those that were around in 400–1400AD. The plants – mostly vegetables and medicinal and culinary herbs – were very similar to what we see around today (actually they probably just grabbed some seeds from the local nursery!). There were plants like cherry tomatoes, beans, corn, peppers, sweet potatoes, dill and coca – and others I had no idea about. Animals included guinea pigs, llamas, alpaca and weird, oversized duck-like birds.

The lady in the museum shop talked me through some of the herbs they use to treat inflammation and cancer, and the various ‘super foods’ on sale. I’m a sucker for good customer service and health food, and accidentally spent up big on sugar-free chocolate, nuts, dried fruit and energy bars (which turned out to be quite useful on our Incan walk!).

We made a pit stop visit to the Museum of the Inquisition (AKA the torture museum), which details more of Lima’s rich, macabre and gory history. It’s a small but brutal showcase of how the city’s founders dealt with residents who didn’t fit the norm, and is looked after by oddly upbeat and helpful staff. A bit too gruesome for my tastes, albeit kind of interesting.

By chance, we scored a free visit to the museum and gallery by visiting it on a museum/festival day. Thankfully this was the case, because the art was totally lost on us – with a special exhibition featuring photos of various genitalia, flowers and food more than a little bizarre. However, the salsa dancing and music outside was fun, with the girls in gorgeous, brightly coloured, frilly dresses and embroidered shawls. I also discovered the deliciousness that is clove and cinnamon tea in the cafeteria.

We also explored a few of Lima’s town squares, which are reminiscent of Europe, with beautiful, lush gardens filled with trees and flowers, old-style elegant street lamps, and park benches, all surrounded by ornate, imposing stone buildings.

Plaza Mayor features the Archbishop’s residence (unsurprisingly ornate inside, and filled with religious art and memorabilia and expensive furnishings) and La Catedral de Lima (less decadent but more gruesome, with mummified bodies and bones – including those of babies – displayed in its catacomb).

Unfortunately, Plaza Mayor’s palace was off limits, but the nearby Church and Monastery of San Francisco were interesting – and housed one of my fantasies: a huge library filled floor to ceiling with antique books, the upper most of which were only accessible by ladders and big spiral staircases.

The monastery also houses a less desirable attraction – Lima’s most famous catacombs, where archaeologists got creative with the bones they found, making all sorts of shapes and patterns and artwork out of them. Interestingly, these catacombs were so incredibly well built that they’ve survived multiple major earthquakes. An impressive feat. They clearly don’t build things now like they did in the 1500s.

At Plaza San Martin, the beauty of the grand old European buildings, hotels and gardens was overshadowed by the peculiar statue of a woman with a llama on her head. A llama you ask? I kid you not.

The story goes that a monument including a woman with a flame on her head was commissioned to commemorate freedom, among other things. However, something got lost in translation. Apparently the word for llama and flame are the same in Spanish. (You can see where I’m going with this.) The artist, clearly having indulged in a wee bit too much coca and Pisco, read it as llama.

“Why not a llama?’ he probably thought. “A flame on a head is odd enough. Llamas are everywhere here, a national pride, and if you have many llamas, you are rich and free. They must mean this to be a celebration of prosperity and freedom given to us by agriculture and nature. A llama is a good symbol of this.” (I might be paraphrasing here.)

And so it was. The lady wears a llama.

To fully appreciate this statue and the park in which it stands, we took a window seat at the adjacent Gran Hotel Bolivar, which is rumoured to have the finest selection of Pisco Sours in Lima (if not all of Peru). And a very fine selection it is. New to the game, we stuck with the classic version, in a very, very large glass (each). After a few sips of one of the strongest cocktails I’ve ever tasted, we were both giggling like tipsy little school girls. And despite our best efforts, we had to leave before we finished them, for fear we’d never find our way back to the hotel.

Those first delicious, delicate, precious Pisco Sours set the standard by which I measured the rest of the Piscos on this trip. And there were many, many, many more to come.