I arrived in Lima late last night thanks to American Airlines´ complete lack of punctuality. Both my flights were delayed over an hour...yuck! And to make life more fun my flight that was due into Lima at 9:30ish didn´t get there until 11:30ish, add customs and I finally got to my hostel at 1:30 in the morning. Driving through Lima at night didn´t really make me feel all that comfortable about where I was staying and I secretly wished that I had just let my Dad book me a snazy hotel for the next hour until I fell asleep.

But in the morning the area I was staying actually wasn´t that bad, and neither was the hostel. Unfortunately the breakfast consisted of bread (yuck...gluten) and jam, so I opted for one of my larabars and a banana on my way to the bus stop. I hopped on a bus that took me all the way to the center of the town for about 50 cents (where is that in the US?) and visited the sights down there. I saw the catedral, both the monestaries (and the catecombs), watched the changing of the guards at the Palacio Nacional, and somehow got conned into spending about $2 for three of these cool butterfly toys that a street vender was selling. They´re actually really cool...you wind them up and then let them fly away...they look very realistic. In fact, the vendor almost scared a (male) tourist right of the curb into Peruvian traffic with one (silly boys afraid of butterflies). Yes, I´m easily amused, but I know quite a few other people who are too (aka all my friends) so I had to buy some to share.

I went for a run tonight and got lost...in the rich/nice part of town, but its stressful nonetheless when you can´t even remember your street´s name (its not my fault it had FOUR words...its actually some dudes name, thus making it even harder) and it gets worse when the streets you do know go by multiple names: ie Avenida de Roosevelt and Avenida de Panama. Okay so maybe you could relate those two names, but that´s not the point. The embarassing thing was when I stopped and asked for help from a very nice Peruvian lady, it became obvious that I was only 2 blocks from my hostel...so close, yet so far. Sigh...so needless to say the last twenty-two minutes of my 45 minute run where around a park the size of 2 small city blocks that is right across the street from the hostel. I was definitely not going to get lost twice in one night. Tomorrow I plan on running in the morning and not getting lost on my way to the beach...I´ll let you know how that goes for me...