Fortunately the inclusive breakfast, or desayuno as I prefer to call it these days, was located at a restaurant which is literally at the bottom of the stairs to my quirky youth hostel, so even I with my complete absence of sense of direction could not get lost.
I had a complete wobble earlier and started looking to see if I can change my flight - my thought process went something like this - what am I doing here? Swanning around for no apparent reason, making friends with strangers, sipping cerveza of an evening, reading and writing. It's the ultimate self-indulgence when there are so many useful things I could be doing at home - planning events, or sorting the details for the four residentials which are locked into the diary and others which are floating around my head but have yet to make it into writing, booking in work and training stuff, even doing actual work and other useful things, but instead I am living it up in Peru. But after a spot of self-reflection, I decided that a few days on the other side of the world, which hopefully a few others may enjoy via this blog, is verging on just about socially acceptable. To the practicalities - I booked such cheap flights (go google flights!) that they can't be changed anyway. So here I am.
Breakfast was a scrumptious egg and toast, coffee, and a cup of indeterminable juice. I brought three books with me on this trip and sat reading the first which I have very nearly finished, over breakfast. There are pros and cons to being a lone adventurer - having time and space to read is a definite pro. Whilst I routinely saturate myself with The Guardian and wall-to-wall Radio 4, reading an actual book is quite a novelty.
I have booked myself a day-trip with the mysterious and very Peruvian-sounding Patrick, whom I have just given my passport details. Those of you who know me will appreciate how careful I am with personal details, in that I trust no-one. So to have WhatsApp-ed my passport details to a complete stranger is well outside of my comfort zone. However, I've paid reception at the place where I'm staying - you'll note an absence of details regarding the specifics - you never know who might be reading - I watched the whole of Spooks in lockdown; trust no-one.
I decided to go to the beach today, to finish my personal development book and to chill and sip Coca Cola with the waves crashing close by. This plan wasn't quite to be as the beach is a very long way down from the level I'm at, although the views of Pacifico are truly spectacular. Pacifico at its finest.
Curiously, an upmarket shopping mall adorns the sea-front and there were hi-viz-clad security guards demanding proof of my covid vaccination prior to my admission to the shopping mall. I browsed a few minutes then as I felt my caffeine levels drooping, I headed for a quirky coffee shop I'd passed along the way and sat awhile, very nearly finishing my book.
Whilst day-dreaming and sipping true Peruvian coffee, my eyes fell on the building opposite - yes, that's right, it was, if you hadn't guessed, 'Mundo Alpaca', 'live the alpaca experience - alpaca museum'. As soon as I'd finished my coffee, I dashed across the road and lost myself in the alpaca museum where I am now an expert in all things alpaca - I can tell you in great details the history of how alpaca came to be used for so many things, and how the advice is to cuddle an alpaca in order to keep warm. A kindly lady accompanied me around the museum, helping me to press buttons to see pictures of the history of alpaca, watch videos, listen to audio, pose with alpaca (see Twitter) and - best of all - experience virtual reality with alpaca - I have to say, this felt like a better use of VR than dodging angry flying cubes with lightsabers - I was actually in a field of alpaca, helping to herd them, chat to them, it was surreal, but not in a bad way.
I had walked past the tourist information centre in Miraflores and had popped in. They had a free walking tour of Miraflores that afternoon! I signed up and returned five minutes before the tour started. This was a great thing to do - three hours of walking around the sites of Miraflores, with a bunch of others, all in Peru for their own reasons. As one who loves to walk and chat, this was a perfect way to spend three hours in a new place.
Our trusty tour guide Alvaro from #LimaWalkingTour took us around Miraflores, taking in all the sites and learning about the place in great detail. We tasted a raft of types of Peruvian chocolate in a chocolate shop; we visited various parks on the seafront and even met Paddington. The tour culminated with tasting Pisco Sour on a roof terrace - I love roof terraces and have had the privilege of enjoying them in many different places. A pisco sour consists of egg white, pisco, lemon, sugar syrup and tastes superb. I sat and chatted with the friends I'd made on the walking tour, including the legendary guides, Alvaro and Susana, to whom I explained that I do something a bit similar for a job at home, conveying information to different groups of people. I stayed at the roof terrace for a sumptuous fish dinner fresh from the Pacific, with new friends from the walking tour, including Deana from Alaska who is having a major adventure in South and Central America.
Well, I appear to have been added to a WhatsApp group with others who are going on this day-trip tomorrow... I am a professional avoider of WhatsApp groups so am not overly happy about this. Honestly, when did this world change beyond recognition communication-wise? It's twenty years - I know (!!) - twenty years since I first started adventuring alone - in 2002, on my first foray into solo travels in Ghana, West Africa, I used to walk into town once a week to check my e-mail, wait an hour for a connection, wait a further hour when the electric went down, then maybe reply to two or three e-mails before the connection went again, then give up and walk home. Fast-forward twenty years and WiFi is practically part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, overarching most other needs on some diagrams, and I'm sitting in a Peruvian youth hostel, wirelessly sharing my thoughts with you thanks to Yoga, my tiny laptop, whilst my smartphone pings incessantly about the arrangements with strangers for tomorrow. Although I suppose strangers are just friends you haven't made yet.
I'll leave it there as I have to get up at 4am for the day-trip. Thanks for reading - hasta mañana.
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