Now I've Bean to Lima

Saturday, 4 October

Lima, Peru

I failed to mention earlier that I had dinner Thursday evening with Selvaggia and Alessandra. The three of us discussed shipboard life, the travel industry, and living in various countries and had a few laughs. I got a number of thumbs up from some of the other guests upon leaving the dining room. I am having a very good time on this cruise.

Now back to the port journal.

At noon yesterday we sailed into to huge industrial port of Callao (Cay-Yaw), actually more of a district of greater Lima, “The City of Kings”. No huge swells or other nautical issues to deal with, but the ever present tugboat escort all of a sudden started to pop wheelies as we entered the breakwater. After watching about a half dozen rotations, I tested my theory that this was because they were happy to see us here rather than what a fellow passenger intoned was to “clear the tug’s thrusters” by applauding the tugboat captain when he finally stopped his rotations. He immediately waved to me and then proceeded to rotate in the other direction for quite a while until he began to turn green and then slowly stopped. I was told later that our captain was watching and had gone into an uncontrolled giggle fit. Such is life at sea. I later saw the captain in plain dress as a member one of the ship’s excursions. A bet a few of the ship’s passengers on the bus were wondering who that short Italian was. He later told me he was afraid to go into Lima alone.

Having read up on the city, I spent the afternoon taking the four and a half hour “Greater Lima City Sights” excursion offered by the ship. We drove from the port (where the immigration officials checked our landing cards to ensure that we were not trying to enter Peru illegally, which would be very unlikely indeed) through quite a few iffy neighborhoods to the heart of downtown Lima. As it is still winter here, the people in the Plaza de Armas were about to slash their wrists from the 200^th day of 60ish highs and 100% humidity under dense clouds. (It rains only 1 inch a year; so it’s a dry wetness I guess.) Actually, all the Limarians (?) appeared to be seriously considering slashing us tourists’ wrists from the way they looked at us. Fortunately armored police vehicles and riot swat teams were everywhere. But, they were looking morose too. Clearly, Lima is not a rich town even though Peru has the highest GDP per capita of any of the Central and South American countries I am visiting on this cruise according to the CIA Fact Book entries I copied to the laptop before leaving Boulder. You never know when a fellow guest will ask me what the percentage is of men between 25 and 50 in Guatemala or the major crop in the highlands of Chile. Did you know that Ecuador transships half the cocaine from Colombia to the US? At any rate, on our way to the very exclusive Miraflores district we passed a guy pushing a plumbing supply hand cart. Not to sound too negative, I did enjoy the tour quite a bit. We visited the “Case de Aliga”, a fantastic very well preserved colonial mansion that is still used as a residence and a Franciscan run cathedral. The cathedral has cloisters and many architectural features that are very similar to those of Alhambra including intricate Moorish wood carved ceilings and beams and 100s of thousands of hand painted tiles. I also saw the Desamparados Central Railway Station where one of the great rail journeys departs each day to a 15,500 foot high town in the Andes.

We ended the tour itinerary by visiting how the other “1 in 100,000 lives”. Miraflores is lined with high rises, but all of them are capped with barbed wire and electrified fences. The shopping center is underground, no doubt to be guarded more effectively. Machine gunned security personnel were standing (looking morose) in each doorway of each residence, but a park overlooking the polluted Pacific coast had wonderful replicas of the mysterious Nasca Lines laid out in flowers and an exact copy of the serpentine Gaudi bench from Barcelona and the 10 times real life statue of a copulating couple. A nice touch.

Although the ship will stay in Callao Port until 6:30 this evening, I will most likely avoid taking the 1 hour ship’s shuttle bus back to Miraflores and consider this a sea day. I plan to wait until the sun begins to lighten the gray skies a bit and walk around the pier to see the huge container ships being loaded and unloaded. Tomorrow is a sea day and then on to three stops in Chile. I’m looking forward to my all day trip into the Andes on Monday.