Last but definitely not least...Lima, Peru

11:38pm
Miraflores Internet Cafe
Miraflores
Lima, Perù



Hola gente, estoy in Lima, Perù.
I made it, it´s the final stop on my trip. Who cares, right?!
But seriously, it´s a great feeling to reach your final destination, with no harm and lots of adventures.

It´s as if I have made it across the finish line...getting back to the good ol´City by the Bay on Thursday late morning will be the official finish line, but it feels like I made it right now.

Lima is an exciting city. A cabbie told me yesterday that the census was just done on Sunday and it´s official: they counted 8 million people here. Good thing I didn´t get here until yesterday, I would have screwed up the count, huh? Huh? Anyone? Ya see, because I would have made 8,000,001...oh forget it.

Here are the past four days in beautiful technicolor and white. Notice the red and white blog colors, the official colors of Peru.

I arrived into La Paz, Bolivia on Saturday morning after a 12 hour bus ride from Uyuni. Spent. Holy crap. Ready for a nursing home. ¨Can we watch the World Series please Nurse Ratched?¨

But after a quick nap and a shower, I felt rejuvinated.

La Paz, which has a lower (Bajo) and upper (Alto) area...here´s a view from the Upper, heading to the lower...notice the snow-capped mountains behind it. They say that just under one and a half million live here, but it seemed like much more. Again, it´s so freaking high. As I sat on my airplane on the tarmac at the La Paz airport, the altimeter showed 13,000+ feet.



It´s a very crowded city, but like Brazil, gets completely quiet between like 5am-8am.





But the busyness of the day is kinda cool. The one thing that they have here in La Paz, are these minivans...that drive up and down the streets, where people get on and get let off as the minivan is MOVING. It´s an affordable cheaper-than-a-bus system. For a half a boliviano (which is like 15 cents) you can ride it as long as you want. And there´s usually a kid standing in the window yelling out where it´s going, like a paperboy. I wish they had these where I live in SF. I could use a ride to Cole Valley Video on cold nights.



I was ready for theft and trouble in Brazil, I had been duly warned. But since I left Brazil, I was not as worried. Then I heard stories about Bolivia. I met these people from Australia who live in in La Paz and they told me there are four common types of scams to rob people in Bolivia to watch out for:

1) ¨Can I help you clean up your bag/clothing?¨ This was attempted on me in Rio...it´s when someone puts something offensive on you (mayonnaise, mustard, Drakkoir Noir cologne - remember the 80s?). And then they come up to you - ¨amigo, you have something on your bag, can I help clean it off?¨Then you drop your bag to let him help, and buh-bye bag. It´s gone.

2) Disoriented travelers. There is a man and a woman, who work in different parts of town, who actually look like American tourists. They aren´t even Bolivians! There´s a woman, who claims she´s Canadian and the tour she was on just left her on the corner and just needs a few bucks to get back to her hostel. Yeah right, Canadian. And one guy, who has a shaved head, walks around saying he ran out of gas and was hoping you could help him out. I think I know this dude - he´s in downtown Palo Alto! I was approached by a homeless person for money one night in Palo Alto a couple of years ago, right on University Ave, outside the Walgreen´s. He looked hungry and asked for money for food. I happened to have a half eaten burrito from Andalè. So I gave it to him, thinking he´d be so happy. He just looked at it, handed it back to me and said, ¨can I just have money instead?¨

3) It´s raining money! Apparently in this scam, the decoy will walk in front of you, and ¨unknowingly¨drop a gigantic wad of cash or a couple of credit cards in hopes that you will pick it up and go to hand it back to him, at which point the guy positioned behind you lifts your wallet, bag, and MP3 player filled with crappy American Idol music, OR, when you pick up the money/cards, they will accuse you of stealing and have you arrested. Nice!

4) Fake undercover police. These guys are the toughest to defeat. A guy will come up to you and ask for directions, then another guy comes up and says they are an undercover cop and he needs to see both your passports and ¨check your money, to see that it isn´t conterfeit.¨ The decoy pulls out his wallet and says ¨we better do what he says.¨Then you do it, and later real money!

Here I caught an undercover cop trying to work a number ¨4¨scam on an unsuspecting woman waiting for a cab. ¨Maam, I´m a cop. Yes, I´m dressed like a shark and I´m wearing Keds, but I´m on a very important case. Someone is trying to export black market Beanie Babies into Bolivia, and I´m going undercover as a shark Beanie Baby to catch the perpetrator. Now can I please see your ID and can you PLEASE empty your purse through the back my costume? It´s a zipper, you have to kind of jiggle it...there you go...Hang on, wait, can you help me move this shark headpiece a little this way, I can´t see your valuables through the mouth of this thing. Is that a Rolex or a Casio? Damn shark suit!¨



I actually scored a nice hostel in La Paz. Called Casa de La Abuela. Grandmama´s House. In a cool little courtyard, with a great pizza place below on the right.



So after a nice dinner consisting of more meat I went to bed (this was it for meat for me for a long time, at least until this weekend, when I go to Tommy´s Mexican in the Richmond with Jen for my favorite carne asada fajitas), and I was a little freaked out for what I had signed up for the next day.

I woke up on Sunday, with the usual first thought: ¨Where the hell am I right now?¨
This morning, I looked around, and after a few seconds, ¨oh yeah, I´m in Bolivia. Holy crap, today is the day.¨

This was the last of the thrill-seeking activities on my trip. The main event.
Mom, allow to to let you know that I signed up to mountain bike down what has been called ¨The World´s Most Dangerous Road.¨

The road from La Paz to Coroico, which is a one lane, dirt road, that winds down close to 9,000 feet from the high snow-capped mountains outside La Paz (12,000 feet) to the Amazonian jungle terrain of Coroico. There are no guardrails. There are many MANY straight drops around corners, where until last year, about 300 people died each year traveling up and down in cars. But they have since built a paved two lane road, so there aren´t many cars, which is better for the bikers. Although there are tons of crosses and monuments at different spots, marking where cars, trucks, buses and jeeps flew off the side.



So this one company, called Gravity Bolivia (check it out: http://www.gravitybolivia.com/) rents bikes and takes small groups down the mountain. It was a blast, but a little nuts!





Here we are in the FREEZING cold around 8:30am at the top putting our gear on. They are huge on safety. They have GREAT bikes and excellent gear. 34,000 riders and not one death.





Here´s my Aussie bud Chris and I bundled up like Ralphy from ¨A Christmas Story.¨ I want a Red Rider B-B-Gun for Christmas.
By the time you get to the bottom about 4 hours later, you are in shorts and a t-shirt.



Check out the bus on the left side of the photo.



We were lucky and didn´t get rain until about halfway down. Here is a pic of the pouring rain approaching.



There were three times where I was extremely close to the edge and my heart skipped like 5 beats. Like less than a foot from the edge and looking straight down. But they teach you techniques to avoid falling off the cliffs. Yeah, I think one of those techniques is called NOT GOING. Serious fun though. One of those things where you are on this incredible high afterwards. Kind of like beating your sister at Yahtzee with a Yahtzee on your final roll.

This is our super cool guide Lynn from South Africa, and a monkey at the post-ride lunch. She told us after we got to the bottom that she has been doing this for about 5 weeks. We all thought it was a bit strange that she was hugging people really tight after we got to the bottom. Now we know - it´s because she´s new! So to put this into perspective, the monkey is only about a month from being as experienced as Lynn in riding the world´s most dangerous road.



It was a bummer I had to say goodbye to my new friends Chris and Lisa. They were going to stay in Coroico for the night and then go on to Lake Titicaca. Good times.



The craziest part of the day was going back. It was getting dark, and we were told that the ride takes 3 hours. The whole time I assumed we were going to take the new PAVED road, with guard rails, and no slippery roads.

So Lynn our guide says, ¨who is up for taking the old road back to La Paz?¨The old road? Is that the road where it´s been documented that 300 a year perished while on board motorized vehicles? About 8 of the 10 people on the bus shouted YEAH! And before I could ¨12 Angry Men¨all of them into going the other way, we were racing up the hill.



3 gripping hours later, I ran off the bus as fast as I could and back to my hostel. Although, you just look down and for some reason I wasn´t as scared as I thought I would be. More of ¨íf it´s my time, it´s my time.¨ Never had those thoughts before really. At least, not since my parents took me and my sister to see the Righteous Brothers in concert.

A little trivia for those who don´t know about Laur and Reg...the Righteous Brothers´¨You´ve Lost that Lovin´Feeling¨is their ¨Song.¨ You´ve LOST that Lovin Feeling. 40 years of losing the loving feeling next year Mom and Dad. Par-tay!

Back to La Paz, I crashed hard and woke up at 5:30am, ready to fly to Perú and the final three days of my trip.

Here´s the LAN airlines onboard map of my flight. We flew right over Lake Titicaca and a hundred miles or so from Macchu Picchu (next time!).



Here´s the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca. I kept hearing Beavis´voice (from Beavis and Butthead) as we heard the captain tell us where we were. ¨Titicaca! Hmm-huh-hmm. Ti-ti-ca-ca!¨



And here is my cool hostel in Lima. It´s Primavera here in Peru. That´s spanish for spring, and also Spanish for ¨Dan likes to sneeze a bunch because of all the blooming flowers.¨



I took a 10 minute walk down to the beach area in Miraflores (to Elizabeth Zapatas, my Conor golf tournament partner, and Limeño - Lima is awesome!).



I noticed that they have tons of banks, where you can change your dollars and euros for Peruvian Soles. But OUTSIDE the banks, right in front, there are these guys with green vests, doing the same thing, changing money right on the street, but not affiliated with the banks. They have HUGE wads of cash and give pretty good rates. $3 dollars per Sole is good, no? Whoops. It´s the other way around. Where did that guy go!?



Here is what´s called the LarcoMar in Miraflores. It´s a good sized, upscale mall, built into the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. It´s a really beautiful setting. But, it´s a MALL. They have a booth there where you can vote as many times as you want for the LarcoMar Mall to win as one of the top ¨Wonders of Peru.¨

¨So we´re down to the final two. Macchu Picchu, please step forward. LarcoMar, please step forward. Peru has voted. The top Wonder of Peru is...¨

But what´s funny is that yes there are locals here, but there are also TONS of Americans. How can I tell, you ask? English, yes. Very white, yes. But they all wear high shorts, long tube socks, Nascar hats, and they all eat at the Tony Roma´s or the Hooter´s here. Yes, they have both of those here.



They also have this. I haven´t seen this in almost a month and a half. What is this. Even the woman in the photo is embarrassed.



It was really bad. I couldn´t believe these American tourists were coming all the way to Peru, and eating at Hooter´s. I felt sick. I don´t think it was from seeing these people go into these restaurants, as much as it was from eating my Pizza Hut Meat Lover´s pizza too fast.

You know, you learn things about yourself in certain situations. Like when you go into an arcade and spot a Crazy Hoop basketball game, and notice that the high score is 152, and you forget where you are or what you were doing 3 minutes before you walked in and quickly dump 10 Peruvian soles on the counter to get tokens to beat that score.

First game I got 105.
Here´s my second game score. I´m almost there...141.



Finally, I figured out the technique - use both hands and just chuck it up as fast as possible against the backboard. By the third game, when I got the high score of 164, I was making so much noise bouncing the balls off the backboard, a crowd had gathered. The game ended and I put my very sore arms up in triumph and shouted out: ¨YES!!!¨And THEN turned around to see a bunch of parents and their kids wondering why the dumb American was pumping his fists when all he got was three tickets for the winning score. So I turned back around, took a few seconds to gather myself, very slowly and deliberately tore the three ¨Coney Park¨tickets from below the console and calmly walked over to the prize center where I picked out my rubber alien pencil topper. Whereyouat kids?



I actually passed by a few times later on to make sure my score wasn´t beaten. And I went back today and noticed they unplugged the machines and the new high score was 152, so I played until I beat it. I clearly have a problem here.

Today, my last full day in Lima, I went to the Museum de Arte de Lima. Lots of pre-Columbian artifacts and post-Columbian. Amazing how quickly everything changed just when the very advanced Incas were becoming a HUGE force on the continent.

Outside the museum, I caught a big march on the governor´s building. It was mothers and their children marching to unseat a current administrator who after elected didn´t focus on important education policies like he had promised.



This place is right by my hostel. Called Viranda I think. It´s the Peruvian Whole Foods. It looks like Whole Foods on the inside and the food is very very good. Fresh meats and breads, great cheese, great fruit selection. Definitely as good as Whole Paycheck. But 1/2 the price. Medio Paycheck.



Although their wine section was a little sketchy. It was set up by country: Chile, Argentina, Peru, France. And then there was this little area called ¨Resto del Mundo¨where US and Aussie and New Zealand wines were. There were three American wines on the shelves. One of them was the top-notch export of Boone´s. Not kidding. Boone´s.



With these last three days designed to relax and chill from all the moving around the past 34 days, I have had a good amount of free time. So I got a three-day pass at this gym that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Here´s a shot. Beats staring at a wall when you are on the treadmill at the 24-hour gym back home.



And, around 7pm tonight, I caught the last sunset I´ll probably see on my trip.
I took a moment to reflect a bit on this whole experience (which I´ll share tomorrow). And then I celebrated witnessing this incredible sunset on my last night by doing something very special. I went back to the Coney Park arcade to check that my high score on Crazy Hoop was still up there...all is good. But they better not unplug it and reset the score.



It´s pretty amazing that this trip has for the most part, come to an end. For all the silliness that I put in this blog, I have done things that are life-altering. The biggest of all is going away for 35 days, not knowing a soul, with only one night at a hotel and a return flight booked. It lends itself to living, truly living, and putting yourself out there. Getting out of your comfort zone.

I think the Inca Cola is wearing off. Must go to bed.
Goodnight everyone.