Adventures, or rather naptime, in Miraflores

After 34 hours without sleep, 19 of which were spent traveling we arrived in Miraflores, Peru. Miraflores, just South of Lima, lies right on the Pacific Coast and leaves something to be desired though the people have been very friendly. We were greeted at the airport by a kind taxi driver holding a sign with our names on it. We hopped in the taxi and began the most extreme 30 minute car ride we had ever taken. I felt like I was riding Jeff Gordon in the Datona 500. We cut people off, nearly ran over dozens of pedestrians, swerved, honked and thanked our lucky stars as soon as we pulled up in front of our bright yellow hotel. We checked in, e-mailed our nervous parents (love you guys!), crawled into bed and slept for the next 15 hours.

Today we had breakfast at the hotel, then went out on the town! Well sort of... We had to figure out how to get out of the locked gate first, which took looking at, poking, priding and finally asking about, to get through. Nothing can stop us! With the traffic as it is here we counted every safely crossed street as a major success. We walked about a mile to some little shops where we met a very kind woman who we talked to for quite some time. We told us we were lucky to live in America where working hard pays off. We told her that we were glad to be visiting her country too though. We made our way back to the hotel, stopping at a supermarket for some lunch.

Tomorrow is day 1 of making our way north to a small farm near Loja, Ecuador where will will live and work on an organic farm and volunteer with a local school for a month. With the help of the kind woman at the front desk of our hotel we bought bus tickets that will take us 8 hours North to Chimbote, the one place in the guidebook that I had decided we should skip because of the following excerpt:

"Chimbote is Peru's largest fishing port - and with fish-processing factories lining the roads in and out of Chimbote you'll probably smell it before you see it. The odor may take a while to get used to."

Awesome! We are sort of being forced to go to Chimbote rather than the ancient ruins of Caral due to safety reasons, so while our hopes of seeing a delightful piece on ancient history, we will see fish processing factories! Our spirits are still very high and we plan on stopping at Caral on our way back from Ecuador.

For now though, we look forward to the smell of fermenting fish as it will signal the end of our 8 hour bus ride and mark our northward progress. Onward!

Note: I apologize for any awful spelling or word errors. I'm using an iPod touch to type and it is proving to be quite difficult!