Peru - Day Two

Saturday:
Rise and shine to an overcast Saturday morning in Lima - population 8 million according to Rodolfo.  Looks pretty much like other South American cities - a bit seedy - old buildings, some abandoned buildings and construction sites, broken tile sidewalks, major security roll doors with locks as big as my fist covering store fronts.  But, beautiful flowering trees, cacti and hibiscus on sidewalks; taxis everywhere hooting horns - like listening to an orchestra practicing for a concert.  Uniformed people sweeping gutters or sitting on wooden boxes guarding parking spots or entrances into buildings.  And, oh heaven! cafe con leche! Coffee like it's supposed to be made.  Good buffet breakfast with a wide assortment of fresh fruit, huevos and breads.  And did I mention cafe con leche?

First walk to orient ourselves in the city, completed right after breakfast.  At noon, off on another exploration of the streets of Lima.  Found a whole street of jewellers (in my element, Rick....not so much).  Found a park - pretty bougainvillea and art-in-the-park on display.  Had lunch at an outdoor cafe - our first ceviche in South America in years - yum.  Hard to believe it's winter and we are sitting outside in the sunshine and high temperatures.  Served by a waiter who could have walked out of colonial times - great service, great food and great views.

At 2pm Tour of the City of Lima with Vanessa, our guide and Jose, our driver from Metropolitan Tours.  The usual traffic snarls, ignore the lanes, no signalling, motor bikes piled with people weaving between cars.  Saw a great metro public transport system - real people movers - passed Canada Station and Canada Road (apparently quite proud of their ties to our country). 

Into the city and saw much of the old city preserved - beautiful buildings from 1700's, facades of Gothic/Alhambra style influence everywhere, neo-colonial columns, balconies and scroll work.  Pebbled, cobble-stone pedestrian streets and everything from MacD's to mercado.  Beautiful squares and plazas with fountains, trees and flowers, and so many different people - Quecha, local Limains, and tourists.  Government buildings - the Presidential Palace, Bar Cabrona - looks like an Ernest Hemingway haunt - great for Pisco Sours and hot ham sandwiches.  Plaza de Armas - largest square in the heart of Lima with bronze fountain from 1650 and a reconstructed cathedral - rebuilt in 1746 after an earthquake.  San Francisco Monastry and Church - a quiet walk through it's quadrangles, lined with tiles called 'azullinda', handpainted from 1606.  A peak into its historic library - remarkable for its ancient texts dating from the conquistadors.

And then onto the Catacombs underneath the Church - where 70,000 residents of the city were buried in crypts.  The skulls and femur/tibia bones arranged in macabre concentric circles.  The Church itself a magnificent rendition of Baroque and Moorish influence.

A walk around Santo Domingo Monastery and the Tomb of Santa Rosa de Lima - a devout woman who wore a crown of thorns and helped the poor.  Onto Plaza San Martin - a more French influence in the architecture.

Last stop - Las Muralles - a park engineered from a criminal hotspot to become a family favourite with views, play parks and an uncovered architectural dig of the original city wall.  About 2.5 hours of walking altogether - why don't I lose calories, and weight??  Patrick says I eat too much!

And therefore, onto the next topic - dinner at 6.30 pm at Las Tejas - sea bass steamed in white wine and tomato sauce, a Pisco Sour (fermented grape juice liquer, fluffy egg whites and lime juice) for me and a Pilsener and grilled sea bass for Patrick.  Ok - not great but fair.

After dinner, a long walk to the Pacific Ocean Promenade - an obvious Limain destination - crowds of people, restaurants everywhere and Parque Amor - statues of lovers everywhere - obviously another favoured location - saw sweet sixteen's in Cinderella gowns and brides in white being photographed all around us.  Peaking over the wall - cliffs forming sheer walls to the waves rushing in on brown sand, pebbly beaches.  Long walk back and bed. 


 Early start tomorrow morning - drive to Pisco the Nazca Lines - exciting times.

Our Trip to Peru - Daily Diary: Day one

Day One - Friday:

Check-in at 3pm on Flight AC 80 from TO to Lima, Peru flying out at 5.35pm.  Air Canada strikes again!No plane at the gate, no staff at the counter, no announcements to be heard.  Board late via an unintelligible male drone on the PA system.  Sit on plane for at least 1 hour while they fix a malfunctioning 'IPS' system.  Watch fellow pax board like pack yaks - 8 pieces of luggage each to be squished unceremoniously into every nook and cranny like squirrels storing acorns.  As usual, over-the-hill, bored and otherwise disinterested staff adorned with desultory service faces plastered on like masks.  Food blach, tea ...excuse, but is that what you call it?

Finally arrive in Lima after 7.5 hours flight - painful journey because of back issues, but c'est la vie.  Met at Airport Jorge Chavez by Rodolfo our guide, who commandeered our luggage and scrutinized our passports before escorting us to Hotel Casa Andina where we dropped ourselves in a comfortable king-size bed at 4am and slept a peaceful first night in Lima - wonderful to stretch out and be comfortable after a torturous sardine can experience in seats 37 A and C.   (Forgot to mention the 50 minutes cattle pen experience for luggage drop-off - another award winning AC service.  Remind me never to fly them again.) 

AC slogan: "We're not happy till you're not happy" - apt!

Oh the places I'll go; Oh the things that I'll do.

Another school year bites the dust this month.  Don't know where it went - I feel sure that if I was in regular time mode we would still be in the middle of the year, but no, I am in fast-forward mode where time speeds up so that each hour only has 5 minutes.

I look back on the year and wonder where all the time has gone.  Just how much did I accomplish and why do I still feel like I am panting to the finish line, hobbling along at the back of the pack?

Nonetheless, have to say it felt like a good year - did some much needed assessments, met some interesting people, made some new friends, and generally still on a steep learning curve.... I like it!

And how can you not appreciate a whole summer off - Oh the places I'll go; Oh the things that I'll do ....like idling away an afternoon reading a book, sauntering down to a coffee shop, winging our way to a South American vacation for another check on the bucket list, and if I get the time .... and inclination, I will clear the clutter, catch up on the crafts, make an effort on the errands and chores and hopefully check off items off that long 'honeydo' list.

Waiting for sunshine and siestas and the adventures that summer will bring!

Zoom zoom

I now have to report on the time lapse between January 2011 and June 2011.  Time has zipped by so fast that it seems almost like I have been standing on the side of a racetrack, watching a Porsche whizz passed me at the rate of knots on a race track, or a kid holding on tight to the bars of a merry-go-round.  Weeks went round, and round, and round, and round again. 

Each week I would set the goal of getting down to business - write the blog, post with pictures and move on.  How long could it take?  Yet each weekend would come and go without one line being written - something else always seemed to come up.  During the week writing was unthinkable - get up at 6am, drive, start work at 7.45/8, keep head down till 4.30, drive, make dinner, do chores and collapse on the couch for the rest of the night.  And weekends ended up being the catch all and catch up point - like a spinning tombola - round and round - pick a prize - and the prize was always housework, house maintenance, chores and errands.

Round and round we go - spinning ever faster.  When will it end.

So racetrack or merry-go-round - any way you look at it - time relentlessly moves forward and I find myself desperately clinging on and barely keeping up.

Sad Passing

Rina

15/12/1931 to 7/05/2011

On May 7 2011 we received the sad news that Mom J had passed away.  She had been getting ever more fragile over the past year and since July 2010 had been in the 24hour nursing care / frail unit.  Her quality of life had dwindled to barely passable so we are both relieved for her and sad for us.

She was a most resilient person, bearing the burden of watching her siblings die young through tragedy and through cancer.  She was a caring and exemplary teacher - I can easily say that not one Grade 1 or 2 child ever left her classroom without being able to read.  She is one of those teachers that you will always remember from the handful of those who made a difference in your education. 

She was always up for learning new things and loved doing 'firsts':  I remember her first sushi bite - not one that she would repeat, but at least she tried.  She had to experience Canada in winter: threw her first snowball, screamed with delight as she hurtled down on a toboggan behind a delighted grandchild, and how she relished being able to "walk on water" on an iced-up lake.  She played tennis into her sixties and I think if they had let her she would have bungee jumped in New Zealand when she went to visit her grandchildren there. 

Photographs to capture every momentous occasion were snapped with abandon - which meant every restaurant visit, every new place she visited and each annual celebration of birthdays, graduations, awards, births and weddings.  Thousands of photographs were fervently placed in photo albums and picture frames for posterity and were pored over - she took advantage of every opportunity to reminesce and tell stories of who, what and where.  Probably her favourite introduction was "When I was in ...."

A remarkable lady who has left her mark.

Pets and my peeves.

We have always owned pets - as a child there were dogs and cats that came and went, and perhaps because I was a child, they never seemed to be any trouble at all.  The difference was, I think, that we lived in South Africa where dogs lived outside most of the time.  They may have been allowed into the kitchen to sleep at night, but no further.  Cats never had to grow thick winter fur so shedding was never a major issue.  Windows were always open and dust and fur were quickly disposed of.   We called them 'braks' or pavement specials - no-one that we knew was really into specialized breeds with three-page ancestry links.  I am not sure how vets made lots of money as we certainly didn't have our pets rushed off every 6 months for annual shots, physicals, and vitamins.  Your dog had to be licenced, wear a collar, have an occasional rabies shot, and most of us were sane enough to have it 'fixed'; and after that it was up to the gods.

Now that we live in Canada we see an entirely different story unfolding: cats are declawed and barred from leaving the inside of their homes during their lifetime.  You are considered to be adventurous and a little risky if you let your cat out on a regular basis.   These Canadian felines seem to develop enough winter fur to fill a duvet for each family member each year.  There is food for kittens, for young cats, for old cats and outdoor cats, there is special food for preventing hairballs and urinary infections.  There are pellets for cleaning teeth, and delivering vitamins, and for pampering.  And all are pretty costly.  We have whole warehouse type stores filled to the brim with parphenalia and 'must haves' for your special family member.  There is even, would you believe, clothing and accoutrements to be had - matching pink shirts, skirts, hats and sequined bows and collars.  The vet bills are outrageous and the new in-thing of pet insurance is hardly a choice anymore.

What bugs me the most these days:  the clawmarks that have made a pincushion of my sofa and chairs; newel posts that have become convenient scratch posts, cleaning upchuck on my favourite rugs.  And my favourite job of all - scooping poop from the litter everyday - although that at least beats picking up the deposits left by your doggie in a little (hopefully) baggie and holding it in your hands like a prize possession until you can garbage it at home. 

We have recently had the interesting experience of a giant German Shepherd sharing our abode - so now it's not just the constant drizzle of white cat hair on carpets and stairs and beds, but great big hunks of dog hair resembling birds nests that deposit themselves all over - heaven forbid if you miss a week of vacuuming - you will be tripping over the tufts and kicking them around like soccer balls.  And as for the wet paw syndrome - constant mopping of muddy imprints on floors, and thirsty lapping of water from the water bowl results in a river of saliva-coated water spread in every direction for a radius of six feet.  And ah, just when you want to relax on the leather couch and watch some tv - you have to first scooch Fido up to make a space for yourself!

Oh the joys!  It's funny when I was a child I never thought of all these things - and I still love my animals, but....wish it wasn't such a tough job to run around after them.

The Renovation Drama

So we took the leap, closed our eyes, and decided to do another renovation.  It seems every house we live in needs a makeover at some point - some have been harder or more complicated than others.  The beauty of this one is that most of the work will be farmed out to contractors who do this sort of thing every day.  In the past, we have undertaken the gargantuan task ourselves and faced the uphill learning curves that each job presents.  This time round we are hoping for a smooth transition from past to present.

The reality is always somewhat different than the dream or the expectation though.  We started just after Christmas last year - spending the month of January packing up all paraphenalia and chotkes on the main floor and storing them whereever we could stuff them in the basement, with a spill over deposited in the garage.  In February, the crews started marching in: the first one created the most dust and debris jackhammering the ceramic tiles up from the entrance and kitchen. 

Dust inviegled its way into every crevice and cranny on all three floors of the house, the chipped tile flew all over, landing mostly down heating and a/c ducts.  Once that was through, the next legion attacked the carpets and then laid the new hardwood all over the main floor - what a difference it makes.  Then it was over to the carpenter who gave us a new staircase and finally, the painters who gave the house its first facelift in 10 years.  We now have an interior that has finally found the 21st century.  We are very happy with the outcome - it looks great and is much easier to keep clean. 

In a gargantuan undertaking, we had the swimming pool made smaller (it used to be of Olympic proportions) and more manageable – now we have more entertainment areas, and more garden.  The pool itself, being smaller, is easier to heat and keep clean, and we have a modern pool cover that doesn’t sag into a cesspool by the end of winter.   We added a gazebo so that we can lounge outside without being in the direct blaze of sun, and the pergola – covered in a beautiful wisteria - was enlarged off the family room.   A new outdoor lounge suite and dining set, with outdoor lights and a fountain nearby has rounded off the back garden nicely.  Et voila, we have our personal summer resort!

 We are really loving the house and living here is a pleasure - no more talk of selling and downsizing.  And I think we have just about done all the renovations we ever need to complete.