Lima, Huancayo (Peru)

My arrival at the airport in Lima was marked by a common scene especially at South American airports: huge crowds waiting for their loved ones coming back for the holidays, armed with signs, bells, and a lot of determination! All usually goes well as long as the people stay behind the "barriers" and patiently wait for their passenger to make it through the "funnel"...well, Lima takes the cake for the biggest airport crowd in my limited experience...all I could see was people! I almost felt like a rockstar or something, if it wasn't for the fact that nobody was there for me at all! It was even more impressive than others because I could see through the endless lines of people, since most of them were quite shorter than me...and the balcony above us was also filled with people...they all seemed to behave, till one of them crossed the fence to hug their wife only 5 meters in front if him, and of course many more followed his example! This forced all of us trying to get out to stop, because, well, nothing and no one seems to be organized and efficient here! :)
After enjoying Christmas carols in English all night long at the coffee chain inside the airport (all because of their free wi-fi!), I decided to get to the city first thing in the morning...much better than trying to wing it at midnight, in a dark, new city with a lot of cash in your pockets and millions of piranhas (taxi drivers) waiting to get a bite out of you! So the next morning I walked out of the airport on my own, instead of paying too much for a taxi, and asked some locals, and then got on a local bus for next to nothing...it was a good introduction to traffic in Lima, a South American metropolis of 8.7 million people! I was in the passenger's seat of a 12-15 seat minibus...needless to say the driver was all over the place, we saw two wrecks right before our eyes, and the "bus guy" was continuously screaming and banging on the bus for all sorts of communication with the driver! How fun!
Luckily the hostel was in a very relaxing area of Lima, between Miraflores and San Isidro...my bus left me off after over an hour at the beginning of my street, some 15blocks before my hostel...right in front of, guess what, the Doubletree Hotel! My hostel, HQ Villa, was one of the most beautiful places I have ever stayed at, and that includes my house as well!
A combination of stress, lack of sleep, relaxation after a tense bus ride, and other things made me collapse on their amazing couch for a good 2-3 hours! When I woke up I was ready to hit the center of town! A couple of beautiful colonial squares, some governmental buildings and I was also able to find a vegetarian restaurant right in the middle of all that! After having checked out Miraflores and the center, I went on a ride through the coast through the beautiful Parque del Amor, onto Barranco, another area of town famous for its bars, clubs, restaurants and so on...if the city center could be compared to any colonial city in Latin America, and Miraflores could be compared to a South American version of Europe, the coastal area of Miraflores and Barranco could definitely be compared to...coastal California! Yes! You would have never guessed it!
The next day it was time for me to part ways with Lima and my amazing hostel...after taking several pictures of it, and facing the much-hated but inevitable taxi ride to the bus terminal of choice, I ended up at what I believe is the fanciest bus in all of Peru...so nice that my seat was twice as big and twice as comfy as any airplane seat, we had lunch on our 7 hour bus ride, and I slept the entire way! haha
I guess the fact that it was "so safe" implied that we each get a screenshot of our faces by a security guard who came onboard right before we left...that was a first for me too!

I got to Huancayo last night, and I could tell that our whole bus ride here was very rainy...I would wake up every now and then, and I couldn't see much outside our window...what I was able to see before it got dark though, was beautiful scenery!!!
I went from 200m a.s.l. to over 3400m in a few hours...so, as everyone repeatedly says, one should take some time off to adjust to the altitude and help the process either with pills (who likes pills anyway?!) or with mate de coca, which is pretty much hot tea made with coca leaves...after leaving my stuff at "La casa de la abuela" which was pretty much deserted, I was lucky enough to find another very vegetarian-friendly restaurant, El Pueblo, where I was able to get asparragus soup, an entree of rice, potatoes and soy meat, plus a cup of mate de coca and a dessert (mousse of maracuja...I don't know if this fruit has an English counterpart...sorry! It's a yellow tropical fruit! haha), all for an unattainable 3.5 soles, just a bit over a dollar! Guess where I am going for dinner as soon as I am done with typing this?! I already told him I would be back today!
Today I walked around a lot, visited a Salesian school and museum, checked out a local market, and hiked a good 3-4km to some reserve whose main attraction is these magnific geological formations called "Torre torre", because some of them look like towers...it was amazing, and totally unexpected considering the surrounding lush vegetation and poor neighborhoods...it was well worth the hike, and putting up with the rain and endless amount of stray dogs along the way...kinda stressful at times, since the ones who looked menacing actually proved to be harmless, and the ones who seemed friendly ended up sending their loudest barks my way. I survived though, made it back to town, chilled in the main square with all the locals, walked around a bit more to get my bus ticket for tonight...I am going to Ayacucho, hometown of the infamous Sendero Luminoso movement of the 70s...also famous for being one of the most authentic "Inca places" in the Andes together with Cusco, which is next...the book says both tonight's and the next trip, respectively 12 and 23 hour long, are not for the faint of heart!