Lima: 8 weeks on

Greetings from Lima! Yes, we are still in Lima. When we first arrived in Lima we didn’t know how long we would be here for. One week turned into 3 and then became 5 and is now at 8. It seems to have passed quickly; it certainly doesn’t feel like we’ve been here for 8 weeks. But we have enjoyed our time here and it’s not a chore being here. However, all the hotel staff know who we are and greet us like family. Even people in the local Inca gifts market know who I am. It’s a little embarrassing.

Justin’s local Lima colleagues smiled indulgently and knowingly at us when we said we were only in town for 1-3 weeks and told us to prepare to be here for Christmas. It was our turn to laugh, Christmas? But that’s more than two months away, of course we’ll be in back in Brazil by then. Well, turns out they were right. The process of obtaining a work visa in Brazil is a very slow and painful without much feedback along the way.

Four weeks ago and four weeks into our time here, we heard that the 1 year Brazilian work visa that Justin was applying for was denied. This decision was based on the reasoning that the application did not fully explain and justify the necessity of Justin working in the country and how he would benefit the local partner company and employees. What flummoxes me is that they weren’t shy to ask for extra documents up until that point, why did they stop then? More meetings with the company representative and the labour department followed and then the request for further documents supporting the claims made during the meeting. Apparently these documents have since been submitted and to cut a rather lengthy story short, we are still waiting for a revised decision. It is becoming clear that one will not be made this year and we will remain in Lima, or at least out of Brazil, until at least January.

So we have indeed made Christmas plans from Lima. Next week we fly to Santiago in Chile to visit our dear friends Joan and Mayira. We will spend two weeks over Christmas and New Year with them and their families split over the cities of Santiago and Concepcion. We are super excited and can’t wait! It’s going to be an epic holiday! Joan and Mayira have made some wonderful and exciting plans for us, but we won’t spill the beans just yet, you will have to wait for the blog posts in January. We will return to Brazil in early January after our holiday in Chile. By then we would have been out of the country long enough that we can come back in for a few weeks and hopefully the visa process will continue and be resolved during that time. One can always hope. In the meantime, we wait. And enjoy Lima.

View up Avenida Jose Pardo, the street our hotel is on

Miraflores is an affluent and well looked after area.

This is a view over the highway into the city looking across at the next district Surquillo. It's amazing how different the districts are, just across the road and you immediately know you are no longer in Miraflores. In the middle of this highway is the rapid bus transport system for taking people into the city centre. 

Since our time here has felt endless, the intense exploring of the first weeks has passed. While we are still enjoying being here, the weeks and weekends are starting to look similar as we settle in. We have enjoyed watching the city change and warm up as Spring has gained momentum and gone into Summer. It is often still very cloud with some mist but still it never rains. We have many more sunny days now and the days and nights are definitely warmer than when we first arrived.

We took advantage of a sunny Saturday and walked along the cliff front to the district of Barranco. We had spent a Friday evening here before but were keen to explore in the daylight. Barranco is the next district just south of Miraflores but has a very different feel; it feels more relaxed and quite romantic. We liked the many tasteful apartments on the cliff front, smaller and more quaint than the high‑rise blocks in Miraflores. Barranco means ravine and there is a walkway to the sea down a slope that was once a stream. Many of Peru’s leading artists, musicians and photographers live here adding to the bohemian atmosphere. Indeed, we saw many art students drawing scenes in the main square. There are also many restaurants, bars, night clubs, and peñas, traditional Peruvian music clubs making the area popular with tourists in the evening. We enjoyed exploring the area while sipping on a new Starbucks seasonal toffee nut frappuccino in a red Christmas cup. Red cup coffee dates have become a regular thing, sometimes with a scrabble game thrown in.

Iglesia Santa Cruz church on the main plaza

Overlooking the main square across to the church

The Municipal Library

Tsunami evacuation route along the ravine down to the shore

Walking down to the shoreline 

View of the cliffs from the ocean

La Rosa Nautica restaurant, surfers and cliffs

One of our favourite things about Miraflores is the ~5 km stretch of green park space on the cliff front. We often walk and chill in the parks and enjoy watching people playing with their children and dogs, dogs playing with other dogs, watching the paragliders taking off and whooshing around, and the antics of people on slack lines set up between trees. We are enjoying southern hemisphere plants again such as hibiscus, cycads, myoporum trees, day lilies, bougainvilleas, succulents and others. We miss having a white sand beach to walk on though and so don’t go down to the pebble beach very often, but we do enjoy the amplified sound of the ocean retreating over the pebbles from the cliff tops.

Parque del Amor

Tile mosaics in Parque del Amor

Walking in the tranquil parks

Colourful paragliders

View over the cliffs and bay

Mountain bike track in the park. There is also a skate park.

Our other favourite thing in Lima is that movies at the cinema are mostly shown in English with Spanish subtitles. What a great find! Two movie tickets, two large drinks and two large popcorns cost less than two movie tickets in the Netherlands. What a winner. Up to now we have enjoyed several movie and popcorn dates. So far we have enjoyed watching the very funny ‘The Big Wedding’ (a modern family style big wedding with Robert de Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, and Amanda Seyfried), ‘Captain Phillips’ (the Somali pirate hostage drama with Tom Hanks), and ‘About Time’ (a sweet time travel movie with Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy and Domhnall Gleeson). We were hoping to catch the next instalment of ‘The Hobbit’ as well but it seems that it will not be released while we are still here.

We are still happy in our hotel, although it would be nice to have a bit more space and to be able to do at least some of our own catering and make a cup of tea. This has given us plenty of opportunity to try the local cuisine. We have enjoyed discovering ceviche and causa, eating lots of seafood and catching up on good red meat. We now have our favourite sushi, fish, pizza, sandwich, salad, and Sunday lunch restaurants scattered within walking distance of the hotel. The one good thing about not doing any cooking is no washing up! We will, however, miss the giant bigger-than-king-size bed; we can both starfish and not know the other is there. And having someone make that bed for us every day.

Ceviche!

View across Larcomar and the bay

Boibs enjoying the sunshine and festive spirit 

People chilling over the water at Larcomar

One weekend there was an election of sorts; not a general presidential election but for the lower parliament, similar to the Tweede Kamer in the Netherlands and the House of Commons in the UK. It was quite strange since we didn’t see any posters or any kind of party promotions prior to the elections. The only reason we knew there was an election was because of the no alcohol rule on election weekend. No licensed establishment in the country, and I presume supermarkets etc, may serve alcoholic beverages at any time on an election weekend. No beer or wine with dinner for us that weekend. It is a good rule though: people don’t have the excuse of a hangover for not voting and there can be no drunken mob demonstrations. I guess people can still drink their own alcohol at home though.

We have also been fortunate to see some friends from Cape Town here in Lima. Michael Gathercole happened to be in town on a 2 week holiday with family. We shared a lovely dinner with him and Bron enjoyed a fun morning at the Inca Markets with Mike and his family. Bron also met a friend of a mutual friend in Cape Town who now lives in Lima. I spent a lovely day hanging out with Kim and her 7 month old son Kai. We also had lunch together on another day in a local market with another of Kim’s friends.  

Pinkberry frozen yoghurt with Mike

Colourful baby Alpaca wool in the markets

How Bron spends her afternoons...

We also experienced our first South American earthquake recently. The centre of the earthquake was about 100 km southeast of Lima. The earthquake registered 5.5 on the Richter scale but there was no damage. Justin was at work in the office and Bron was in a supermarket at the time of the tremor. Everyone I saw looked fairly calm but it was reported that some people did file out in the street. I was quite nervous but it was over quite quickly.

This is our last week in Lima before heading to Chile for Christmas. We are making the most of our favourite activities and restaurants.  But it is quite possible that we will be here again at some point in the New Year while the Brazilian visa debacle continues. Time will tell!

This past weekend as South Africa laid Nelson Mandela in his final resting place, we remembered Justin’s Gran who passed away a year ago. We still think of you often and miss you lots Granny.

As we go into the festive season we wish all our family and friends a merry and blessed Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. Enjoy the time with family and travel safe on the roads!!

See you next time from Chile!

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