Saturday, August 2, 2008

Tonight, one of those nights.

All I can think to say is that it is experiences like tonight that make travelling the amazing, strange adventure that it is.

Today started off a normal, mundane travel day. That is if your normal travel day consits of finally getting up enough nerve to board one of the jam-packed, painted school buses that travel at blinding speed and sudden stops along Avenda Arequpia, because that is just what Emily and I did. We boarded that crazy shool bus lookin´thing, paid our uno nuevo-sole aand boarded that bus. We happened to sit next too the most benevolent Peruvian who used to live in Florida and took a liking to us so much that he helped us at our stop and even got a taxi to take us to our awesome travel desination, the Lima zoo.

Our totally awesome mundane travel actitivy, the zoo; only this zoo had an oil museum. That´s right, an OIL museum. Because when I think animals, I think oil. Ok, maybe that was a bit snarky, but I blame the cerveza pumping through my bloodstream, which bring me back to tonight. (by the way, the zoo was awesome)

Peña´s, clubs, or better yet, holes in the wall that feature traditional music, traditional food, traditional dance and an all around good time. Our night started off as a quest for live music and a good time and well ended in our hostel. We found the address of what looked like an awesome peña in Mirafores and set off to find it. We couldn´t find it, and well neither could our taxi driver. He asked random people for directions, he asked cops for directions. When we finally found our bearings and headed out, our lovely, benevolent taxi driver kept trying to tell us through hand signals that the area of Miraflores we were currently driving through was not a very good area. (holy shit run on sentence) Alas, we figured that out later, after the whole thing. In our persistance to find this place, given by the rough gudie, what we found instead was a half block of hollowed out bulidigns; hollowed out bulidings that we assumed to be the peña, our peña, the palce where we were going to get our groove on to awesome traditonal andean music.

Not happening.

One look at the area and Emily and I decide it is time to high tail it back to Pizza (aka tourist, story later) central. But our taxi driver does not understand that. Frantic hand gestures later we are finally at torist central and way too happy about it. We decided we deserve at least one beer for the trials and tribulatins we already went through (it really was much more frantic and well embarassing and kinda scary than I protrayed it) we set off in seach.

Should we go to the AMAZING bar we went to last night?
No, too expensive.
Another bar?
No, fuck no, not after that ordeal.
...Supermarket!

So yes, we proceed to the supermarket, buy a 6 pack of cuzqueña, 1 huge water bottle, 2 candy bars and 1 bar of soap and go back to the hostel. Instead of an awesome music bar that was buldozed over for some (probably, I´m just assuming) housing aparment type dwelling, we sit on the old worn in couches, watch the Professional with a Canadian couple and drink beer all the while the hostel owner who only speaks Spanish is reacing along with us, watching the movie in subtitles.

Honestly, I couldn´t think of a better night.

Tomorrow it is off to Arequepia.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The Professional is one of the best movies of all time. I can only imagine seeing it under such circumstances would be... interesting. Don't forget to take lots of pictures.