We made it to Lima about 8:00am, got through customs, located the bag in Miami, got it scheduled to be shipped to Chiclayo (our final destination), checked in and ditched Andrews bags for the flight to Chiclayo. The Chiclayo flight wasn’t until about 6:00pm that night, so Linda had lined up for a niece of Carlos’ to meet us there and show us the sights.

Catherine found us at the airport even thought she had never seen us before, I wonder if I stuck out in the crowd? Catherine is the general manager for a travel agency, so she was awesome at giving us tours, and she spoke very good english.

San Francisco’s Cathedral is where we went first. It was huge. They had some fantastic wood balconies that had been there for hundreds of years. They were having church in the monastery at the time, so we only got to look at the outside and inner area, but it was very cool. We don’t spend anywhere near the time building our buildings as these people did. Everything was carved, brought in from other countries, people spent years designing and installing the intricate roofs and cupulas.

San Francisco’s Cathedral is on one corner of the Plaza Mayor. All around the plaza there are these same style buildings, most of which are city and state buildings now. In the center is a big fountain. Catherine told us that the fountain was the spot where they would publicly kill the withes and people that would not convert to Catholicism. It had seen a lot of blood.

It was interesting to see the things the Spanish did during the spanish inquisition. In the museum of the inquisition, they had on display all of the ways that they tortured the people, it was pretty harsh. The museum of the inquisition had some underground tunnels and torture chambers, but they were nothing compared to the catacombs under San Francisco’s Monastery.

San Francisco’s monastery was huge. Again they had a huge church attached to the place where these munks would live and study. The building was full of art. The tour took us through where the monks ate and studied, then down into the catacombs. The catacombs were massive, and stock full of bones. When you were to be buried in these places, they threw you in a hole with 10 or 12 others, and sealed the lid. Only to have you bones organized and on display centuries later. After a while they had filled up all the tombs so they would take out all the bones and throw them down the well. The well really deep to begin with, but now was about 20’ from being full to the brim.

After the tour was over, we were able to go upstairs and look at the library. This library was huge! It had 25,000 books in it, and most all of them in latin. We were amazed that they had left the books on the shelf! They should be in a humidity free environment, but no, they were just sitting there. Remember, no body has any a/c, and you don’t need it, so everything is exposed to the humidity.

The average temperature in the summer is about 75º and in the winter about 65º. You can’t eve call that winter, its ridiculous. They average .02 inches of rainfall each month. Thats right, I didn’t screw it up. So this whole trip, you look at the construction of their buildings, and they don’t worry about water proofing for rain. You just think about building in a world with no rain. It takes care of everything, you don’t need a roof, and unfortunately, that is how some of Peru’s house are, roofless.

Chicken and French Fries. Peruvians are crazy about that plate. Pollo Braza they call it, and its basically rotisserie baked chicken. Really good food. The other is Seviche, but we’ll go over that more tomorrow.

So we ate our Pollo Brasa and beef hear lunch and headed to the airport. The airport trip was good. Here’s the thing. On the way to Lima, the uncomfortable plane was the American Airlines flight. The one I missed was a LAN airlines flight. So when we got on the LAN flight to Chiclayo, then I was mad at my self. The plane was spacious, nice seats, I really screwed up when I missed the plane in Miami.

So on to Chiclayo. It was the smallest airport I have seed to date. We had to get off the plane on the ladder down on the tarmac, so that was cool to see the jet up close. Linda and Carlos were there waiting for us. My bag had not gotten there, so I spent an hour talking to them about my bag. By the way, my spanish held up very well.

Then Carlos took us to diner. After the chicken and french fry dinner, we went to the hotel. The hotel was not like American hotels, for which I am glad, this makes the experience much better. The internet speed, well lets just say that they had internet, which is better than not. In fact most people in Peru have internet. Its mostly wireless. Most of the buildings have little directional antennas on their buildings.

Hot water, you don’t need hot water. The first few seconds of the shower is “breath taking”, no seriously you can’t breath from the cold, but then its just fine. In fact after a day of walking around in the heat, it felt pretty good.

With no bag, we walked down the street to the local drug store / pharmacy / hole in the wall / and got some tooth paste and tooth brush so I could sleep that night. I noticed that behind the counter they had all kinds of antibiotics and other prescription drugs for sale right off the shelf. The streets at night are packed full, all evening. Its like there’s a huge party going on ever night, all around the whole place. People just all go out for walks.

I slept like a rock.