Lima, Peru

When we arrived in Lima, I had not slept at all on the bus. Some a-hole had insisted on playing music on his phone from about 4am on and then another guy started taking phone calls at around 6am...I was on the verge of a double homicide but somehow restrained myself. The other issue was that one of the ear pieces to my headphones had somehow gotten lost so I could only hear music in the left ear, leaving the right ear more vulnerable to the douchbaggery of others. Ughhhhhh
There were two different bus terminals in Lima and we had no clue which one we needed. Finally another English speaking girl was able to figure it out since she was confused as well and we got off at the second stop which was at the city center. The taxi drivers were hounding us as soon as we stepped foot of the bus which I definitely one of my pet peeves. We turned down multiple cabs as we still didn't even have our bags but eventually we began to price the cabs against each other. It's hard to know what price you are looking for when you have no clue how much the ride should cost. We finally settled on $20 soles for the ride to "Miraflores", which is the more touristy part of town.
We had wanted to stay at "Flying Dog" hostel but all three of their Lima locations were full so the guy working there helped us by calling around to see what was availableat other hostels. The only place that had a private room was "Condor's House", which is a little bit of a walk from the main part of Miraflores but was priced right at $70 soles per night ($26 USD). Condor's House is definitely new and though the rooms are bare bones, the downstairs area is nice. We walked the twenty minutes from Flying Dog to Condor's and were pretty exhausted once we were checked in and got settled. We still hadn't eaten anything all day so we decided to head out in search of a sandwhich and coffee (coffee is definitely necessary since it is cold and overcast in Lima).
We headed back into the main part of town looking at all of the little cafes. We couldn't dream of eating any more "comida typica" which means meat and rice...ugh kill me. We found this adorable little place called "La Lucha" and decided to try it. Sadly we couldn't figure out how to order from their menu so we both just opted for club sandwiches....bad move. In Peru, a club sandwich consists of ham, turkey, bacon, chicken, cheese, a fried egg and as much mayo as they can fit into the bread. Never has there been a less healthy meal! We ate it since they were $20 soles a piece but definitely felt sick after.

There was a Starbucks next door so we stopped in to get a coffee and cookie (since at his point, health was out the window) but the cookies were so salty we threw them out. So much for food today! I'm shocked that Starbucks would allow them to sell that crap in one of their stores.

Once back at the hostel, we attempted warm showers although the showerhead was completely retarded so you had to hold it the whole time- at least it was warm! We are now running into issues with plugs and 230v vs 120v for the first time. We don't give a crap about blow drying our hair to look nice (trust me, it goes up in a bun almost immediately, lol) but rather that its so cold in some of these places that your hair practically turns to ice. Sadly we can't get my apapter to work properly with the blow dryer so I'm pretty sure it's going to explode soon since every time we use it, it looks like a fireball.
I spent the rest of the evening reading downstairs while Alyssa was up resting in the room since she had a migraine. The hostel was full of people but they seemed a bit more cliquey than most backpackers so I didn't engage with them and was happy to finish my book. When I headed back upstairs to go to sleep, I found Alyssa in a terrible state. She was in a ton of pain, felt like she was going to throw up and was convinced she'd been poisoned. My sister is not one for dramatics and certainly not one to ever admit to pain or suggest that maybe we should take her to the ER. I was immediately alarmed but I had no idea what I could do to fix her. She decided against going to the ER but since she had gotten the idea of carbon monoxide or some other undetectable killer into my brain, I stayed awake until 4:30 watching her sleep and making sure she was still breathing. Finally I decided that if I hadn't felt the effects of anything after lying in there for five hours that the room was fine and drifted off for a few hours of sleep.

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