Global Volunteers Team

Edith, our local team leader

Annie

Lulu

Westin

Laura

Fountain at La Plaza Mayor

Statue of San Martin, one of the liberators of Peru

Carved wooden ceiling in the catacombs

Presidential Palace

Pedestrian Street

Door of the Church

Church of San Francisco near the catacombs

"The Peruvian Kiss" sculpture

Sunday Nov. 9 Global Volunteers Team
I didn’t write about yesterday as it was a transit day from Cusco to Lima and I had digestive problems. I stayed at the Torreblanca Hotel before I went to Cusco. The room was large and had a gorgeous Jacuzzi shower/tub. I was a bit surprised to find my new room was much smaller, about one quarter the size. But it is cocoon-like and cozy. I did meet a colorful character at dinner at the hotel. Fifty-seven year old Terry moved to Lima 17 years ago. He went to the beach every day for the first four years. He started to get bored so he started a business of importing used car parts. The business was wildly successful but his main competitor was the brother of then President Fujimori. Terry was told that his business was now illegal. He lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now he works in gaming, arranging for simulcasts for OTB (off track betting.)
Today I met our team. There are two Lauras. One is a restaurant owner from Virginia. The other Laura is a retired scientist from the Boston area. Westin is a 22 year old college student studying international business. Our team leader, Edith, is 27 and lives with her parents about an hour and a half from Lima. We gelled right away. We took a tour of the project sight, PPA, a place that provides safe housing and nutritious meals for 450 children. About 5% of these children are actual orphans. The rest are in the custody of the state for myriad reasons and many see their parents on weekends or monthly. It was quite clean and friendly.
We went out to lunch and had a delicious meal of fried fish and cooked vegetables. All four volunteers decided to go on the two and a half hour City Tour, which was $28 USD each, and boarded the tour bus at 2:10 p.m.
We are staying in an area of Lima known as Miraflores. It is quite upscale. Enrique, our tour guide, gave the explanations in English and Spanish and was quite easy to understand. We passed colonial mansions and foreign embassies. We passed a park where olive trees were planted more than 300 years ago and still are producing olives. An old wooden horse powered machine that pressed the olives into oil was on display.
We only saw Huaca Pucllana, the pre-Incan pyramid, from behind bars. This is a site I will need to revisit.
We went to the Plaza Mayor at the center of town. In one part of the square is a statue of San Martin, one of the liberators of Peru. At the center of the square is a 17th century bronze fountain that has lions copulating. Its water is supposed to aid fertility.
We all boarded a two decker bus and rode around the square twice because the tour operators had arranged it with the producers of a travel video. We saw three symbols of power in Lima: The cathedral, the president’s palace, and the mayor’s residence. There was an ironic juxtaposition of romantic horse drawn carriages and huge military tanks to protect the president’s palace.
We went into the Cathedral, constructed by Pizarro. It has been rebuilt many times due to earthquakes. The ceilings were white and arched.
We walked to Monasterio de San Francisco, a church painted colonial yellow on which many pigeons collected. My favorite statue was of the “Apostle St. Jude Thaddeus, work patroness and lawyer of the impossible causes.”
We toured the catacombs below the monastery. These catacombs were used as a cemetery until 1810. The wooden ceilings were fitted together with tension, not nails, and have survived Lima’s many earthquakes. It was pretty creepy to see the earthen rectangles that went meters down and still held bones. After years these bones were transferred to “wells” ten meters deep and arranged with the skulls in the middle. This was also another way to earthquake proof the monastery. Of course I had to buy postcards of the well for Susan G. and Veronica.
We boarded the tour bus about 5:30. We passed the famous statue of “the Peruvian Kiss.” That was the end of the tour, but we kept going around on the bus for no reason we could divine. At one point the driver, Edgar, left the bus for about 30 minutes and Enrique did not know where he was. We finally returned to our hotel at 7 p.m., to a very worried Edith. We took fifteen minutes to freshen up before going out for pizza and empanadas.