I have moved to new cities 14 times (defining “moved to” as staying in one place for more than a month. In all but one of these moves it was three or more months. One thing I have learned is that it takes about three months before you really feel at home in a new place. I remember finding the same thing with jobs, back in the days before I became self-employed. At three months you know what is going on, mostly know how things work, have started making friends, and, if it is a country where a different language is spoken, by three months you can understand and say a bit, even if you haven’t taken formal lessons.
So leaving Lima right at the three month mark is bittersweet. I’m looking forward to our next adventure, but I was just starting to make friends. (Beyond the very kind people whose jobs involved being friendly and helpful. Gracias a todos!) I could finally have conversations in Spanish. I could cross streets on red lights and wade through the traffic with the bravest of the locals. (Well, maybe not the bravest; I’m not that crazy!) The guys in the bodega (corner store) even smiled at me sometimes when I showed up all sweaty after a workout to buy a big cup of freshly squeezed orange juice!
Things I will miss about Lima, Peru
- The perfect climate. It is never too hot or too cold (average highs range from 27 – 20 degrees C. and average lows range from 15 – 20.). Also, it never rains. Seriously! Occasionally in winter there is a very light drizzle for a few minutes, but that’s as bad as it gets.
- Parque el Olivar. A short walk from our apartment is a lovely park filled with some 1500 olive trees that were originally planted by San Martín de Porres, a Dominican friar who lived in Lima from the late 1500s to the early 1600. He was the first mulatto saint of America. (His father was the Spanish nobleman, Juan de Porres, and his mother was Ana Velázquez, a native of Panama and a “black” woman.) The Parque is a lovely, calm oasis in the middle of the big city. Home to many species of birds, we have taken many an evening stroll there. It is also where we go to work out with our trainer three times a week.
Our trainer, Diego. He’s a sweetie, Three time Tae Kwan Do champ of Peru (maybe in a certain age group; my Spanish wasn’t good enough to catch the details when he told me about this.) He’s taught me how to punch. If only I’d known this when I was a kid with two big brothers!
- My Spanish lessons. I’m in my late 50s, so learning a new language was kind of a scary thing. But, after 2.5 months of hard work I’ve now reached the Intermediate level, and can carry on semi-conversations with taxi drivers. The challenge will be to keep it going once we return to Canada.
- The wonderful fruit. My morning smoothies, made with all sorts of interesting combinations of unusual fruit. I got good at judging how to balance the flavours. At first we’d just throw everything in, but then every smoothie tasted the same.
- Our Sunday morning bike rides along Arequipa Avenue to the Malecon. Every Sunday the city closes off one of its busiest streets, Avenida Arequipa, to motor traffic from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. It becomes a happy place filled with people cycling, rollerblading and jogging. There’s even dancing!
Things I will NOT miss about Lima
- The noisy, rude drivers. See my posts about Lima traffic. Interesting question: are the drivers in Lima bad drivers or excellent drivers? Depends on your perspective. They are bad in that they are agressive and lawbreaking. But they have impressive reaction times! And are incredible at judging distances on the fly. They can squeeze past each other at 60 km/hr with mere millimetres to spare!
- The income disparity. It wasn’t really in our faces, because we lived in a nice district. But when I looked at the lights twinkling on the hillsides at night and thought about the lives of people living in the “shanty-towns”, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I am so fortunate.
- Serpost: the Peruvian post office. It has to be one of the least efficient postal systems in the world! I may write a whole blog post on the adventure of my online order that arrived (only due to some pressure and help from my local friend, Carlos) on my last day here, 6 weeks after it had been flown to Peru. Let’s just put it this way: a 4 month wait for delivery of a parcel is not unusual. This may explain why Amazon hasn’t bothered trying to operate in Peru yet.
Things I will remember about Lima
(Not particularly negative or positive, and apart from the obvious stuff)
- The 1970s and early 80s music playing in every taxi. Rod Stewart’s “If you think I’m sexy…” Clearly it’s in the Lima top 10 in 2019, to judge from how often I’ve heard it lately! In a way, that 1970s music makes sense: socially, culturally, in many ways the Peru of today is very much like the Canada or US of the 1970s. Particularly when it comes to gender relations and attitudes.
- The tiny women in rural outfits with babies strapped on their backs wading into traffic to try to sell candies. Their other children playing on the median nearby.
- The ever-present yellow-trike ice-cream sellers. Never did try their ice cream. Saved myself for the amazing ice cream shop near the Parque. More expensive, but the quality made it well worth while!
- Dancing on my balcony or in the apartment to the loud music coming from parties in buildings blocks away. Wishing I could move my body as sexily as the latinas do.
- Yo no soy alto. I’m not short here. It is odd to hug people who are close to my height.
- Kissy, kissy. In France they do “bisous”. I don’t know what they call the greeting and farewell kiss here in Peru, but I’ve been getting and giving lots of them. (I guess that’s one advantage to having lived in France for so long; I got used to bisous. In fact, I probably embarrassed a lot of Edmonton business colleagues when we returned from a year in France by automatically giving bisous.)
- Family focus. My 31 year old Spanish teacher still lives at home. So do her brothers. My 25 year old trainer chose to spend his birthday at a swimming pool with his family (including little nieces and nephews. He opted for the pool instead of the ocean because it was safer for the little ones). You see large extended families together in the parks and tourist sites. Having grown up without relatives nearby, this is a new world for me. Families are close here. It’s nice, although maybe a bit claustrophobic.
- Huge portion sizes. I do not know how Peruvians manage to eat so much! We went out for dinner on DH’s last evening in town (he had to fly to Piura to do one more work site visit just before we left Peru). The restaurant (Panchitas) had delicious food, but the portion sizes! I had enough leftovers from my dish to feed me two more complete meals! Which was a good thing, since our fridge was pretty much bare by that time.
- Peruvian faces. What I found fascinating was that every day I saw faces that looked just like the ones on the pre-columbian pottery. I was surprised by how many of the faces on those pots looked kind of square, but that is the face shape of indigenous locals.
And now, on to the next adventure: Costa Rica!
