We made it to Peru!
Oh my god jetlag is a bastard! We woke up the other day in Santiago got to a place - caught the plane 3 hours) to Peru checked into the hotel had a nice lunch and a pisco sour (the local drink yum yum!) We were planing a busy afternoon of exploration and walking around Miaflores (the part of town we are staying), sat down for 5 mins and then just passed out. Like passed out! like Grizzly tried to wake me up and I just grunted and passed out for another 2 hours. Needless to say my explorations yesterday were limited to the hotel room and the restaurant. Although the bar staff were great sports with teaching me spannish and trying to get me to drink pisco sours instead of water. (Pisco Sour is a bit like a margharita). But today we were more alive. - awake at 6am style alive.
We had breakfast in the hotel where I noticed that everyone was speaking French. Instead of greating people with Buenos Dios I started singing Bonjour! como Ceva? which caught me in a complex conversation in french which I managed to fake my way through for a fair while before they realised my french is limited to basic greetings and gesiticulating. hahah we enjoyed ourselves anyways.
anywho... We hired a private taxi from a guy who we thought was the hotel receptionist´s friend Mario but turned out to be the driver from the Mariot hotel. LOL.
We are staying in a place called Mirafloes which is something like a cross between Subiaco and Scarborough and we had a lovely drive past the coast. The thing that is so noticable here is the air pollution. The coast would be stunning here if you could just see it through the hideous grey cloud. I´m glad I trained my lungs to deal with pollution (ie smoking too much in pubs) or I think I would be couhging up my lungs in this place!
Hilariously the driver put on an early 90´s american music CD so we were chauffered through the streets of Lima to the soundtrack of Alanis Morrisettes ïronic, ¨Back Street Boys and Ëternal flame¨who the taxi driver explained to me in brocken english was his favourite song by the Bangles. When I expressed my pleasure at his musical taste ¨Mi Gusto Senor!¨he cranked it up loud and we wound down the windows for maximum cruising pleasure.Pachamacas Ruins is out just passed the slum lands, and although it dosnt say so anywhere you can tell that they stumbled across these ruins whilst developing the area for housing or factories. Heres a happy snap of how the people live round these parts
So we got to Pachamacac pretty quickly and our Taxi driver was absolutely astounded that we did not want us to drive us around the site - infact we intended to pay him to wait for us in the car and we would explore for a couple of hours on foot. He nearly feinted when Grizzly gave him $5US and said to buy himself some lunch while he waited. hahaha being ridiculously affluent can be quite enjoyable.
So Pachamacac is a temple of both the Earth Mother and the Sun God and was a place of pilgramage for the Incans. The site is the home of 3 pyramids, roads, temples and a very complex water a sewerage system. The quality of the buildings is amazing, you can see the skill of the builders in the tight detail of the stonework.
Here you can see a ramp leading to what was once a pyramid.
And here is how archeological resrtoration is carried out in Peru...
Yep, what you are looking at is two dudes with wheel barrows digging out ancient ruins. NEAT!
Heres a security guard at the top of temple of the Sun God... I guess when he sees me being mugged down the bottom he can jump off, Bruce Willis style and rescue me? Not really sure about his function here...Ok so, all things said and done, this -is- just a big pile of rocks in a huge dust pile, so Grizzly and I entertained ourselves by showing off to a small bus load of Japanese Tourists who thought we were amazing attractions as we spoke some basic japanese to them.
And teaching a group of very cute Peruvian primary schoolers to say ¨G´day Mate¨. They seemed to think we were heaps more wierd and interesting than a bunch of ancient rocks and would smile at us and then run away squealing or try their best to say ¨helloo¨
Also, there was a Llama! Hi Mr Llama!!
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