Miraflores!

Yesterday a few fellow trainees and I spent the day in Miraflores, Lima. This is the nicer, more uppity part of Lima.

We started out getting into a Colectivo. It’s like a shared taxi: a privately owned van that you pay to bring you somewhere. People will jump in if there are open seats and they are going in the same direction. We flagged down an empty one, since we had 9 people who would fill up the whole thing. They first said 100 soles. After arguing for a while we got it down to 10 soles each, which is good for a ride into Mira Flores, considering it’s farther than Central Lima.

Only 10 minutes into the ride, however, we blew a tire! Luckily there was a tire repair shop shack on the side of the road. The worker helped jack up the van (with us inside of it!) and swap tires. Unfortunately the rim of the spare wasn’t fitting so they had to put the rim of the old tire onto the new one. Instead of using the machine auto shops use to do this, the man did it manually. It was very impressive, he made it look easy and like he’s done this for a while. After about 30 minutes sitting there, our driver paid the repair man and we were on our way!

Once into Mira Flores we found a café that had yummy coffee drinks and a hipster café atmosphere. It was a great escape that made us feel like we were back home in the States. We hung out there for a good hour. Afterwards we did some bookstore browsing and then headed towards the beach. The ocean was a 5 minute walk from where we were. We didn’t get down to the actual beach but soaked up the views at an overlook. It was quite breathtaking!

Next came the mall! This mall rivaled Southcoast Plaza for all my Orange County people! It had pretty much only name brand stores: Northface, Ugg, Nine West, etc. I couldn’t shop at these types of stores when I was working for $13/hour, I certainly can’t afford them now when I make less than $4 a day as a PC Trainee!! (to clarify: this is how much I get for spending money… My meals and housing are coveredJ). So I wasn’t able to find the boots or fleece I was shopping for. We did enjoy a delicious lunch of sandwiches and “the best French fries in Peru!” Sabrina and I got a second coffee before we headed back to the park area to grab cocktails.

After a round of Pisco Sours, we did some more shopping at more reasonably priced shops around the area. We found a store that sold any type of boots you could possibly imagine! They were not too cheap and looked good quality. According to the sales woman they are “100% leather, made in Peru.” I ended up buying a nice brown pair and I am very satisfied!

There was also an artisan fair (mostly just paintings) in the park. We browsed for a while. Katy bought a set of 4 tree paintings that were beautiful and affordable! I wanted to buy an oil painting but the one I wanted was pretty pricey and we couldn’t get the price low enough. Sabrina and I decided we would wait and put out money into Amazonas’ economy instead! There was also music and a dance floor in the middle of the park. It looks like a pit circled by stairs that go down into it. People were standing on the stairs and around the top, and couples danced in the bottom of the pit. They were dancing salsa when we walked up and a woman next to us taught us a few moves!

Our journey home was quite an adventure. First we got on a large packed bus that was free to ride. We got off at the stop they told us too. However, after asking where we pick up Combis, we were told we had to get back on the bus and get off in central Lima. After riding 20 more minutes on an even more packed bus, we got off in the middle of Lima. It was not the nicest area and packed with people. Not to mention it was starting to get late. Not a safe place for Gringos with big shopping bags. Fortunately we all managed to stay together and keep a hold of our bags as we made our way to the Combi stop. Once we got on the Combi it was a straight shot back home to Chacrasana. I checked up on the Giants game (wooo we won!) and called it a night.