First Stop: Lima, Peru

We finally made it! Out of North America and into South America! After 5 years of planning and anticipating, it is finally here!

It didn't take long to realize that the comforts of home are long gone and will be out of reach for a while. The language is different, and no matter how many hours I spent on my Duolingo app, it is extraordinarily hard to communicate in this fast paced city!

Speaking of a fast paced city, I don't know if it is because we are such a small city, but Lima is crazy busy! The driving is shockingly chaotic. The best thing that we have done so far is that we arranged a ride from the airport to our hostel because we never would have handled figuring that out once we got there. First off, as soon as we left the luggage area in the airport, companies and individuals are shouting and trying to get your attention to get your business. Luckily our driver had David's name on a sign to find us. Then he wove in and out of traffic to get us to our hostel. I am pretty sure that the traffic has most of the same rules as back in Canada. There are traffic lights, lines on the road, stop signs, etc., but divers don't seem to follow all those rules. Almost every car just drives through the stop signs! And they sure like to use the horn! They honk when they are mad about another driver, to say hello to other drivers, and to get people's attention on the streets. We started singing "If you're happy and you know it honk your horn " and almost every time, someone wold honk on cue! With all the crazy driving, we quickly learned to be very attentive walkers. But you also have to be assertive walkers, by seeing a small gap and going for it. Otherwise you might never have a chance to cross the street.

We spent our time in Lima walking around town and just relaxing. We were staying in the very safe neighbourhood of Miraflores. There are police officers standing on a lot of streets and patrolling the area, so safety was never something we were worried about. Miraflores is more of the we'll to do area for locals and has lots of nice parks. There was even free wifi in the parks! I think that the kids liked the mini gyms we could find all up and down the ocean walkway. Adeline especially loved the flowers and trees. She was frequently trying to find the perfect leaf or branch to give herself ears and a tail. From the ocean walkway there was a very steep cliff and we could watch surfers and paragliders at work. The kids are very excited to give these a try sometime. We'll have to find a place for them to learn to surf.

One of the things I have enjoyed so far are all the street vendors. People are riding their bikes with big glass cases on the front selling breads or sweet treats, and little stands have one of our favourites, "choclo con queso" (corn with cheese) where you were given a cob of corn (with enormous kernels) with slab of cheese. I am not sure what kind of cheese it was, but it was great! Yesterday Charlie had "Pan con Huevo" (bun with a fried egg) and David and Amanda had "Papa con Huevo" (boiled potato with hard boiled egg).

On our Instagram I shared that we visited a park that his home to many cats in the middle of the city. Nobody knows how they got there, but there they are, and volunteer groups help feed and care for them. There are also dogs everywhere. It reminds me of Greece where you could have a new best friend on every street as stray dogs are abundant there, but here you can find dogs with and collars roaming the along with dog walkers. This has actually been tortuous for Adeline because we won't let her pet the dogs. Nobody seems overly open to sharing their pet, or really playing with them in public at least. At one stop we made on a bus trip, a boy brought out his dog, so I told Adeline she could go for it, and she had a solid 10 minutes of puppy heaven! This was on our bus trip south of Lima, which I will report about another time!