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Miraflores, Lima.It´s the surburb where I stayed, but it´s also featured in Mario Vargas Llosa´s ¨La Ciudad y los perros¨, a text I had to study for my degree.Let´s face it I forgot the majority of what I learnt the moment I walked out of my last final, but I do remember the romance and mystery with which Miraflores was portrayed.I didn´t see any of that, I saw a suburb of priviledge with Limeños cruising the boutiques, impeccably smart business men lunching in swanky restaurants, Vegas like casinos lining the streets and armed security guards patrolling the residences.I suppose I wouldn´t notice any of this so much (well apart from the guns) if I wasn´t in Latin America, in fact Miraflores comes nowhere near the immaculate pretentious magnificance of most of Europe, Australia and US´s districts of the rich and famous. It´s just in this city of 8 million people I wonder what miniscule fraction have even been here, nevermind had the luxury of dining and gambling here and whether there is any opportunity to clamber out of the favelas or if the people around me all come from generations of blessed rich peruvians.Also if those that migrate have as much luck falling on their feet like Paddington Bear did 50 years ago (although I do hear he´s going to be in a spot of bother with immigration!), or if the Peruvian upper classes end up sliding down the social scale in their adopted country.
Anyway social ponderings aside, Lima is perched cliffs that drop to the sea and on clear afternoons people paraglide of the cliffs, canoodle in the famous lovers park (nothing too sordid though, I think they´ve kept all the shrubs to a certain height to impede things getting too heated). It was along these cliffs and gardens that I ran during my stay in Lima. I love exploring new places when by running, it´s normally early in the morning when noones´s around and I get to see a whole different side to the place however it´s fair to stay I´ve experienced a range of obstacles so far. Some of them geographical, like paths running out and the only options to advance being the medium strip of dual carriageways or steep embankments, social - being asked to leave a pier as I was appropriately dressed in my sports attire or my least favorite the notorious joggers blight dogs. Whether they are taking me aback by emerging over rooftops barking horrendously and displaying their fangs or on my post run yoga on the beach deciding to come and be overfriendly to me while I´m trying to do downward dog, they´re a pain. I also get taxis beeping me about every minute, they´re looking for a fare, but isn´t it obvious I´m running, catching a cab of my running circuit would surely defeat most of the object. My best running episode so far though has been in Lima as I ran along, 6am on a sunday and not a soul in site, the morning mist keeping me cool, a bicycle peddler came up behind me and decided to befriend me. We tootled along swapping snippets of information about our relevant countries, weather and family. He didn´t seem to be in any hurry, or with any specific direction but as my path turned into a park away from the road, and behind me he said farewell (while asking for my email address) I smiled and appreciated the friendliness I´ve experienced so far that have made moments travelling so special.
Lima is often compared to Madrid and the colonial centre is beautiful in that faded grandiose way, that European cities were before the buildings got the smog washed off the facades. I got to see catacombs where 25,000 people had been buried and see wells 10 metres deep of bones and skulls, which bizarrely archeologists had decided to create patterns with. I got a private tour of an old railway station, that the Lonely Planet (or Lonely liar as Rebecca calls it) that was supposed to be a cultural centre but as the security guard showed me before asking for his tip for letting me in, was just a disused railway station. I got hideously embarassed by a busker with a massive crowd picking me out for humiliation (I know tourists are easy pickings) I also went up to the Cerro de San Cristobal, a cross overlooking the city at about 4000 metres which is flanked by the poorest areas and ¨houses¨, which are truely no more than rough shelters, but are painted with the most glorious lively colours that sitting in their hotchpotch fashion reaching up the hill are a real rainbow visual feast.
Last night in Lima, and new tour group. So excited, and they are a really good bunch. Hallelujah!
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