Lima – Peru

After getting down from the mountains in the North of Peru, it was a fast drive down to Lima.

It felt so strange to go in a straight line and above 40 mph. Not even strange, more scary than anything. The road was so smooth and the ride so quite, it felt like you were floating above the ground.

Living in San Diego, I used to constantly complain, mostly to myself, about the quality of our roads. I now miss them, yes there are potholes and some rough ground…but its still so much better overall!

Let me put it to you in comparison. Back home when you get to a smooth piece of road you say…”finally, the bad stuff is done”.

Here, its the opposite, when you get to a nice stretch of road…you are constantly looking and waiting for it to end. You can’t believe your eyes and your butt that this will last for much longer, it just CANT!

I sound like I’m complaining – no thats not it. It just breaks my heart every time i miss a pothole or a speed bump and the car’s shocks bottom out with a loud thud.

After so much time in the car you become one with it and it’s pain is your pain.

Okay, back to Lima.

Why is there a picture of a restaurant? Because it is important to our story 🙂

Gone are the days of Mexican tacos and tlayudas, the El Salvadorian pupusas are a distant memory. For the last month our diet consists mostly of rice, chicken and some fresh veggies.

I’ve heard before from other travelers about the lack of imagination in the cuisine, but it was hard for me to believe that cuisine could be so flat. Its just the same thing – rice and chicken. Fine, i know there are other things…but we are tired of them. We WANT REAL FOOD.

So, upon arrival in Lima we were pleasantly surprised by the large number of different cuisines and restaurants.

This place – “La Lucha Sangucheria” was in our favorite app, iOverlander. There was a review there stating that the pork sandwich is beyond good…its godly…i’m paraphrasing.

The sandwich was amazing. Looking back i’m not sure if it was truly a peak of culinary art or we were just starved for flavor.

If you guys live in a big city and are used to trying whatever food you can think of…that is a luxury. Treasure it and have something delicious for us!

The first day we only took pictures of food – yes it was THAT important to us.

Managed to find a Japanese place, Hyein was beyond ecstatic.

Just a simple ramen and a roll – something that you can go out and get any time and any day of the week. To us – this is celebration!

I’m sure i licked the plate clean…dont care what anyone thinks.

Next day, with our hunger momentarily satiated – time to take a look at the city.

First of all – Lima is huge, like 9 million people. And the outskirts are trashy little shanty towns. But the central part is historic, clean and pleasant to walk around.

Souvenir shops all around. Hyein found a full size llama stuffed animal. It was so plushy, i wanted to take it, but we dont have enough space.

This is the central square and the following few photos are of buildings around it.

Did you see that last photo? And you thought we could go a post without it?

Is that a church? Yup, but look at how elaborate is the facade… Very nice, Lima, very nice!

Little side streets, leading away from the main square. Filled with shops and restaurants…basically a mall.

Walking around, we came across a park. Maybe its the architecture, or the traffic, but it gave me a very New York vibe.

For a while now, we wanted to make some stickers and put them on our car.

Why? Obviously, because we want to be special and stand out even more, why else?

So, when we came across the “printer’s quarter” of Lima, we knew what to do. The place is huge, size of a city block, 4 stories packed with printing shops, engravers, painters, graphic designers, banner makers, printing supplies…literally everything.

Each shop has a designer and all sorts of printers and materials.

Whenever we asked if we could do this or that…the answer was always – “YES!” Man, talk about customer service.

Stole some graphic from the internet and going to call it our own 🙂

Maybe we breathed in too many printer ink fumes…but after a while we started to get creative and couldn’t help ourselves with this one. Isn’t it cute?

Once the design is done, it takes a few minutes to cut it out.

And you get what you ordered!

The transfer paper is applied so that you can stick it on your car without any pieces moving.

Back at the car – applying the new world map. This was a coordinated effort between the two of us, to make sure its not crooked 🙂

Whaaaaat…that shit looks professional! We were not sure about how well the grey color would look…believe me, it looks dope. Visible at night and matches well with the rest of the car during the day.

Now for the extra cuteness…yup, we put it in the front. Why? So we can see it every time we drive!

View from the inside of the car.

Did you go to the same sandwich place as before? Yes… and maybe the chef was having an off day, but the sandwiches did not taste as good.

Everything was still there, but somehow they did not evoke the same feeling of elation at every single bite. I think just in a couple of days, our palates adjusted back for just a brief moment.

So you think that since we are in a big and beautiful city such as Lima, we should be exploring it, going to museums… doing all the touristy stuff?

No, after a few months of travel all the cities start to resemble each other…and we would rather spend our time inside…getting high on ink fumes. Seriously, that stuff is no joke…i’m sure the people that work there end up losing a few brain cells.

So what is our big plan for the day? Ohhh, i know… lets make stickers of all the countries that we plan to visit and put that shit on our car! Sounds like a great plan.

Since, we are dealing with actual material being cut, each letter was individually checked for continuity. And each flag was carefully stolen from Wikipedia. Thank you Wiki and Mr. Wales.

Maybe next time they ask for donations, i will break my long silence and chip in a few shekels.

We didn’t know when we would get another chance to print out stickers, so we guessed on all the possible places we would go.

Carefully cutting out all the flags. We should have been more careful when checking the flags…because there is a mistake in one of them. If you can find it…be the first to write in the comments and i’ll buy you a beer…or paypal you enough money for a round of beer. Seriously, who doesn’t want a free beer?

Decided to put on the flags and names of the countries we have already visited.

Hyein was in charge of this process. If you remember from our previous complaints about similarity of some flags…we had to use google for Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua…to avoid any embarrassment in the future.

Last sticker for now – Peru.

I think that we will finish the driver’s side with South America and start on the passenger’s side after Argentina.

Now that we got the stickers…done with Lima, lets move on to Nazca.