My Time Visiting Lima Peru: My Second Incredible Week

On Wednesday two more volunteers joined the Karikuy team which has brought even more life into Julio’s house. Friday we went to visit Julio’s aunt in the hospital who normally lives with Julio in the house but since she’s been in the hospital for the past month it was the first time for me to get to know her. I enjoy staying with Julio because that way I get the chance to get to know his family and see how people live here. Volunteering makes visiting Lima Peru more personal.

Friday was the first night for me to experience the Peruvian nightlife – we went to a peña called “Aires Peruanos“; it was kind of a weird places as only old people seemed to be there but we had quite a good time I would say. Due to dance classes that gave me my Peruvian friends back in Spain I didn’t feel too awkward to dance to Cumbia, Salsa, Merengue, Chicha or Huayno music.

I felt a lot more comfortable than dancing Salsa in Mexico… Here it seems like everyone’s just dancing according to his own style and it doesn’t necessarily have to be with a partner, which is why it is also called “party salsa” (and I definitely can’t dance the “real salsa”, so yeah I had a good time in that bar on Friday 

The Body Exhibit Visiting Lima Peru

Saturday me and Peter (the volunteer from England) went to see the Body Exhibition which is in Lima right now until the 20th of September and I can just RECOMMEND going there; I enjoyed it a lot. I mean I’ve always been interested in the human body and how it functions; the exhibition just gives you a much better idea how everything in the body works than a book with drawings in it! 

Visiting Lima Peru offers such unique experiences I actually had the chance to touch a lung, a bone and a stomach – exciting stuff! What I thought was kinda weird though was that they only had bodies of Asian men exhibited, apparently because women don’t donate their bodies that often…

Enjoying Lima Nightlife

That night we went to the Bourbon Street – that’s how the gringos call it referring to New Orleans or Theodor Heuss Straße that’s how I would call it referring to Stuttgart which basically means that they have a street strip with one club right next to the other. CRAZY. We went to the one called Karamba which had some salsa music going on and the place was SOOOO PACKED.

You had to wait like half an hour to go to the toilet and it just go very hot in there but apart from that we had a good time partying into my birthday:). I guess it is kinda weird to celebrate your birthday if you are not with your friends and when you are outside your country… But anyways…

Visiting Ruins In and Around Lima

Sunday in the afternoon we went to see the Pachacamac ruins (the closest major archeological site to Lima) as my birthday wish which are like an hour taxi ride away from Julio’s house. Since I’m really interested in all “that old stuff” I really enjoyed the trip there, although it seemed like that most of the ruins haven’t been excavated yet for money reasons.

Julio also mentioned the difficulty of protecting the archeological sites in Peru because of the global warming which brings rain to areas that never used to see rain. The buildings are made out of adobe which is a material that disintegrates when in gets in touch with water. The site kinda reminded me of ruins in Egypt because of their location in the desert and because of the color of the buildings.

The main pyramid is “El Templo del Sol” (Temple of the Sun) which gives great views from above to the nearby ocean and the Andeas in the back. The funniest thing for me though was that they were “drive-through ruins” since you can just hop onto your car and drive on a street to the different pyramids which are scattered on the site; walking it took us like 2 hours to see everything.

After the Chauchilla cemetery and the Nazca lines this was my second encounter with the ancient people of Peru and I AM UP TO SEE MORE. (two weeks to go for me and Chani until we try our luck on the alternative Inca Trail which will lead us on the 4th day to the glorious Machu Picchu).

Celebrating My Birthday

It was already like 9 o’clock at night and I suspected really nothing when all of the sudden Julio’s cousins and aunts (sorry Julio I just can’t remember how you are related to all of them, it just gets me confused a lot) showed up with a huge birthday cake and sang a birthday song to me. That was really sweet. Thank you :)!

At night we went to the same Bourbon street as on Saturday – it was really different though. The doormen were fighting about us since there weren’t a lot of people out partying and they wanted to get in as many customers as possible to earn money. When we finally decided which club to go to there were not a lot of people in there and the music wasn’t that good plus we were really tired due to the party nights before so we called it a night quite early.

Visiting Lima Peru this week I’m looking forward to do a big city tour through Lima on Friday and to see the football game – Universitario against Alianza- on Sunday which is supposed to have a great atmosphere and some fights going on since the two competing teams are the biggest ones in Peru and they are both from Lima.

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Maren is a Volunteer in Peru with Karikuy Tours. Want to travel affordably and blog about Peru? Check out the Karikuy Peru Volunteer Program!