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Kim and I arrived in Lima two days ago. The first night we got in a little after 8PM so we didn’t do much before going to bed, just walked around a little. Our first hostal was called Inkawasi even though we meant to go to Inka Lodge. This mistake happened because I made our reservation from our South America guide book and we used our Peru specific guidebook to find the hostal the night we arrived and just picked the closest name. It all turned out okay and we didn´t even realize it until we had spent two nights. Ha ha.

We mostly walked around Miraflores the first day. The coolest part was the cliffs along the ocean looking out into the greyness. Lima is constantly under a cloud during every season except summer (it’s early spring here now), so it’s not really all that warm here. I’ve had to switch over to pants, a jacket and shoes after so long in shorts and flip flops. We’ve been eating at the vegetarian restaurants in the guidebook and I’m sure Kim will have full reviews of them on her blog :-) It’s been very good and we just had mushroom ceviche.

We also went to a film that was all in Spanish called “Los Borgia” and barely could understand the dialogue. We doing pretty well with our Spanish in conversations that we’re involved in, but it’s going to be a while before we can understand other people’s conversations since they’re often much faster and use words we probably don’t know yet. It’s fun and challenging to get back into the swing of another language.

In the evening we went to the neighborhood Barranco to a bar. There was live music which was fun. Overall the bar scene was pretty dead since it’s off season on a week night. A ten minute taxi ride there was about $2. We took the bus back which was only about 60 cents. The currency is called soles and one dollar is worth about 3 soles.

We just moved to a hostal that’s $10 per night in central Lima. We were paying $30 per night in Miraflores. I love the dollar exchange rate, even if it’s really dropped in the last few years. The architecture is much more interesting here in Central Lima and everything seems cheaper. I’m not sure why most tourists go to Miraflores. Anyway, later today we’ll probably see a museum or something and then have some pisco sours.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, we’re in the same time zone as Eastern Standard Time, but there’s no daylight savings time down here, so we’re equal to Central Time until y’all fall back. For you west coasters, that means we’re two hours ahead of you right now and will be three hours ahead after your next time change. We have a cell phone now too, so if you want to call me feel free. I sent out the number in a mass email, but let me know if you didn’t get it and want to call.