Goodbye Lima, Hello....

Well I guess it's probably due time for another little update because we are about to pack up and head on to the next city!
But I'll back up.
Our days have been really busy (kids are exhausting), and most of the time we arrive back to the house and have a siesta before almuerzo/lunch at 3 ish and our spanish lesson. The lessons are really helpful simply because we get a chance to talk to someone who is fluent in both spanish and english and can tell us exactly how to say what we intend to! There have been a few mishaps in that department as you can probably imagine...

From our house it is about a 15 minute walk to the main street where there are shopping centres, internet cafe's, and restaurants. One of the things I think is so neat here are the mototaxis. They don't drive long distances but we can take one for one sol (equivalent to about 33 cents) to the main street. They are smaller than smart cars and have three wheels like a tricycle. They just barely fit four people on the bench seat in the back:) One thing I won't miss about Lima is the smell. It is really smoggy and there's lots of exhaust everywhere.

This week I've had three cups of arroz con leche (rice pudding with a Peruvian purple corn sauce- Chicha morada). You can buy them from people on the side of the road, also for 1 sol.


This past weekend we were all sick but did manage to get out and about a bit. We went to Central Lima which is the "downtown Victoria" of Victoria, of Lima... if that makes sense. We took a tour of The Cathedral San Francisco which was absolutely STUNNING! It is a catholic cathedral and convent dating back to the 1600's, although much has been restored. I managed to grab a few pictures from the cathedral before mass started, but we weren't allowed to take any other pictures:( Underneath are cattacoombs where the poor people burried their dead so that they would be closer to reaching heaven (the richer people had designated graves under the church, not communal holes).

We watched the FIFA games in the Plaza de Armas and cheered along with many other people when Spain won. Football (soccer) is huge here, in all the neighborhood parks men and boys (no girls I've noticed) are playing. We wanted to take the taxi down there to get the last half of the game and realized why there didn't seem to be any around... all the taxi drivers were watching it too!

Today we made our family pancakes with some syrup that we brought. They liked them (or so they said)!

So tomorrow we take a bus from here to Cusco- 21 hours! It's an overnight bus. We will have to remember to pack kleenex... we're going to drive our neighbours nuts because we're still a little sick. It feels like we have just settled in here and now we're moving on... but we're excited to see Machu Pichu, South America's national pride!