Un poco Miraflores, un poco Chinatown

This morning we ventured to Miraflores, an affluent suburb of Lima, where most of the tourists stay, and where there are more and fancier restaurants and shops. We started by going to the street corner indicated in the guidebook as the place to catch a colectivo (bus), where we'd already been yesterday. Sure enough, they were there again today -- about every third vehicle at that intersection was some form of minibus, van, or giant touristic bus, most of which appeared to have been made in the 70s, and each of which had a few place names we didn't recognize painted on the side. The business going in and out of the buses was very quick; each bus has a manager who rushes new passengers in and old ones out whenever the bus is at least close to stopped. We conferred a little bit about which direction we thought we wanted to go, and assured ourselves that we could quickly ask "A Miraflores?" to make sure we went where we wanted to. After we had worked up enough courage, we approached one bus, where we were quickly ushered aboard with lots of nodding and "Si! Si!" in response to our attempts to confirm "Miraflores" and to confirm the price (1 sol, about 33 cents). Once aboard, we learned that the guidebook wasn't exaggerating much. David saw our bus pass within 12 inches of other vehicles at least four times, and we always seemed on the verge of running into cars or pedestrians.

It worked out great, though -- we made it to Miraflores, and managed to get off only a little beyond the optimal stop. In our afternoon of exploring there, we enjoyed a great lunch, and a coffee that (to our surprise) cost almost as much as the lunch (about $2.50). We also bought a novel for me for tomorrow's bus ride: El hablador, by Mario Vargas Llosa, en espanol. I'm excited to learn more about Vargas Llosa, who is one of the most famous South American authors, and who was nearly elected president of Peru in 1990, coming in first in the general election but losing in a runoff to Alberto Fujimori.

This evening we had one of our best adventures so far -- a trip to Lima's Chinatown. After almost giving up hope on finding it, we started to see a couple of "restaurantes Chifas" (Chinese), and soon came to a block where all the storefronts on one side were Chinese restaurants. After enjoying a tasty dinner in one of them, we continued further along the street and found ourselves in an incredibly active, bustling street, with shops and stalls of all sorts. It was about 7pm at this point, about an hour after sunset, and we felt like we had found the real place to be in Lima -- families, couples, and bunches of friends of all ages were browsing in the shops and walking down the street. The party zone was very big, too -- we estimated it was about 16 square blocks, or maybe more, and many of the stalls were in buildings that had 2 or 3 stories full of rows of stalls with lots of activity. Mixed in with the Chinese restaurants were a handful of Peruvian snack, dinner, and pastry shops. We're interested in finding a hotel nearer to Chinatown for our next stay in Lima.

Speaking of which, this is our last night in Lima for now. We'll be heading out on a 21-hour bus ride to Cusco tomorrow (it seemed like a fun adventure, and cost about 1/3 as much as the 1.5-hour plane ticket would've). We changed our plan to allow us to take a train ride from Lima to Huancayo later -- the train only runs about once every 2 weeks, returning a few days later. In our next update, we'll let you know whether the buses truly "remain in the category of adventure travel" (andeanexplorer.com), or whether they're actually safe and comfortable (Peruvian blog post).