The (Mis)adventures, Revisited

Lima, Peru, July 27, 2003 — Lima (at least 10 years ago) was one of those cities that everyone warns you to be very careful when touring; the signs that crime was rampant were everywhere: from the wide variety of police and soldiers stationed regularly in the nicer parts of town to the hooks attached to all the tables in restaurants that are used to secure purses and bags from being swiped.  Nevertheless, we spent day 50 of our trip wandering around Lima, where we happened upon an old, deserted fair complete with beat up old ferris wheel, and a local festival that was decidedly for local consumption not for tourists.  I got some cool photos that day, including some portraits of the soldiers and cops, as well as some interesting shots of the fairground.

Lima, Peru, July 26, 2003 — Our first day in Lima turned out to be a national holiday, so we didn’t do that much other than catch up on some errands and meet with travel agents about possible itineraries within the country — during the entire trip we rarely had anything planned more than a few days ahead, but Peru was one of the places where we didn’t want to miss out on the big sites like Machu Picchu, and that required some planning and organization.  The day’s highlight was a dinner with a local family, who we had connected with through a group called Servas that serves to connect travelers with local families (sometimes for overnight stays, and sometimes just for meals).  The patriarch of the family was a former agricultural engineer, who took great pleasure in describing all 16 varieties of Peruvian corn and the countless more varieties of potatoes.  It was a weird but enjoyable evening.  I took a portrait of the family, but I clearly didn’t have enough room to work with and only had an on-camera flash.  So, it’s really a terrible shot.  But this is a picture of the day blog, and I have no alternative photos (and Sherri tells me that it looks OK in black & white), so I’ll post it here.