Monday, January 24, 2005


I think this is a cool lamp in my uncles house... Posted by Hello


Last dinner with my uncle, aunt and cousins, Pardos Chicken Posted by Hello


Very confused with the Mariachis... Posted by Hello


Lovely beach of Cerro Azul Posted by Hello

Saturday, January 15, 2005


Streets of Lima Posted by Hello


Rough translation : liquid panty remover Posted by Hello


Inside the Tacama vineyard Posted by Hello


My grandmother Mama Cata, in my uncles store Posted by Hello


New Years pic, Fernando and Brenda Posted by Hello

Friday, January 14, 2005

Run in with a Coca Cola truck

This is a little side story of something that happened to me and my cousin while we were driving.

I was driving with my cousin trying to do some last minute shopping before heading home. Looking for things like Pisco glasses (Pisco is the vodka of Peru), mixes of drinks and recipes and a bunch of other requests. Anyways so we are driving down this two lane street and there is this massive coca cola truck in front of us in the right lane. We were in the left lane.

Now you can't tell its a coke truck because its covered and has a painting of the Coca Cola trademark on it in red and white. You know the normal trucks you see here. It was basically an open truck piled with bottles of the coke as well as fanta, sprite and some other drinks. There was a guy sitting on top of this pile while the truck was driving.

My cousin tries to overtake this slow ass truck but the guy doesn't let us pass. When my cousin tried again the truck made an aggressive move into our lane forcing my cousin to break. BOOM!! There goes the side view mirror on my side.

After that my cousin speeds in front of the truck and stops to get out and confront the driver. We get out my cousin is screaming at the driver, who doesn't say anything. A woman also stopped her car and started to scream at the driver to pay for the mirror but he doesn't budge. Some guy ended coming out and complaining it was our fault and started to take down our license plate! Like he was taking our license plate down, I don't even think he wrote it down but he pretended to.

Eventually the sheriff of the town we were in arrived and we explained the situation to him. He asked us to move our cars off the road and then he called for back-up. A police SUV gets there like 5 minutes later. The two cops come out say hi and start asking us what happened etc... They asked my cousin and then the guys driving the truck. Oh yeah the old lady left a few minutes before the sheriff got there.

So the cops write down their notes and tell us to follow them to the police station to sign some documents, take an alcohol test and whatever other procedures they had. We were like ok sounds good and head for the car. When we get back on the road we can't see the sheriff's car or the police SUV. Nowhere to be found. We had no idea where the polica station is so we started to follow the coke truck.

We got behind the truck and then they started making weird turns. A quick left here, a U turn here, it was as if they were trying to lose us, but there were going 20 miles an hour! Anyways eventually they start going into residential streets an we had no idea why, there was no way the police station was around there. At one point the stopped the truck. Got out. And started to make a delivery to one of the houses!!!

On the way to the police station these guys were making deliveries!! I couldn't believe this, my cousin and I were completely shocked. The truck had zero intention of going to the police station. We eventually went and the cops that were suppose to escort us there gave us wavy excuses of why the truck didn't have to go. "They are doing their job". Complete BS. Like they are the police, but they didn't care. I've never seen this kind of indifference before, especially from the authorities. They probably got paid off, or maybe were expecting a few new cases of sprite when they got home.

My cousin signed some documents, but all the cops at the station suggested he didn't pursue it any further and to just pay for the repairs. It would cost more to do all the tests and pay for whatever they wanted. We tried to argue but there was no use, they just didn't care.

AMAZING.


In my uncles store Posted by Hello

Wednesday, January 12, 2005


Inca Kola - national soft drink Posted by Hello


In a bus to Ica Posted by Hello


With my cousin Fernando Posted by Hello


My uncle got Mariachi's to play for my birthday... Posted by Hello


Tacama vineyard in Ica Posted by Hello


Super VIP at "the" New Years Party of Lima...La Gran Estafa Posted by Hello


Chifa Choy Tak Posted by Hello

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

First few days...

Wake up in the morning after saying Hello to half the population of Lima the night before, go to reach for my toothbrush and oh wait a minute I don't have one. But I didn't care about that now because I was in my uncles house which I love.

It was really nice to be there again. I really missed my uncle and aunt and his three children. In no particular order : Fernando, Chelin and Maria Jose. They are all around my age and we always have a great time together. Whenever I'm in this house or I guess in Lima I always feel so chilled, relaxed. Its not that I feel far away from repsonsibility and have escaped, but you just get a different view of your world and its really cool. Don't make plans, go with the flow.

My cousin, Fernando, has a stand in the "Trigal" (fair kind of thing) near the house so I hung out there for a bit. He sells shirts, swimsuits and all kinds of other stuff there. It was cool to go there again, everybody has a little kiosk selling different things. A lot of patrons go there looking to spend the money they got from Christmas or just chill.

Everybody dresses to the warm weather too. Official uniform for guys is either jeans, shirt and oakleys sun glasses, or instead of jeans/shirt billabong or quicksilver shorts/swim suits with t-shirt. Everybody has oakley glasses, everybody. For girls its nice tank tops, skirts, capri, I mean anything for summer. And I'm not sure why but the girls look way younger than they actually are. You have to add like 3-4 years to what age they look like to get their actual age.

Culture there is very open, friendly, get introduced to everyone all the time. Kiss on the cheek when you meet a girl. I mean it sounds dumb to say this because for me its normal, but in Canada/U.S. its not at all like this. You shake hands with everyone!

That night I went with Chelin, Maria Jose and some of their friends to a Chifa to eat. Chifa is what they call Chinese Food in Peru. They are everywhere in Lima, very popular. One our way to the place we wanted to go to Chifa Choy Tac there were at least 8 other Chifa restaurants! The style of food is very different than here though. The dishes are still Chinese influenced and somewhat similar, but the flavours that Peruvians prefer I guess are different. My favourite dish is Arroz Choifa, which is Fried Rice, but it tastes different, so good I'm gonna learn how to make it. Another thing when you order something to drink you have to specify you want it cold or they will bring you warm Coke or the national soft drink Inca Kola (very very good). There is never enough cold drinks, its the same with beer you always have to bargain for cold beer.

That night I went back with Fernando to the airport to see if there was any info on my bags but nothing... The Delta representatives had zero information. I gave them a description of the contents of the suitcases so they could identify them in Atlanta, but the Delta people in US never got this info. The next day I called my parents to see what they could do on their side and eventually I got my suitcases as a result of that, but 4 days late...

After visiting the airport I knew that I would either not see my suitcases ever again or it would take too long. So I needed some clothes. I went with Fernando to a friend he knew and picked up some jeans, shirts, swim suit for a great deal...

I was suppose to go to Arequipa for New Years with one of my cousins, normally we were all suppose to go the 27th (next day after I arrived), but because my suitcases never got there and I lost 2 days from being there I would have had to travel over 30 hours to spend 2-3 days there so it wasn't worth it. This kind of sucked because my cousin, Chelin, had made a lot of plans for us to go with her friends.

The 2nd day I was cruising around with Fernando all the over the place. I got to see some people I had met last year and had been keeping in touch with which was awesome. People drive very agressivly there. Everything is very chaotic, you are constantly on the offence when driving, honking, cutting off everything, and surprisingly there aren't a lot of accidents. I guess everybody is used to it. (I have a story about driving that I'll post later). They also sell you everything you can imagine when you stop at a light. You can buy the newspaper, cigarettes, car power adapters, books (yeah books), banana's, plastic bags basically anything you can think of just cruise around and you can find it.

Alright that is it for now. Stay tuned...

Trip to Peru... Intro

Ok so this is the first installment of a few posts about stories of my trip to Peru. I have been receiving a lot of flack (I don't know how to spell that), that there has been no updates here in a while so here is one!

I guess I'll do this in chronological order just to give you a sense of my experience.

I left Canada 26th of December with final destination Lima, Peru (where I was born...). My flight schedule was Ottawa, Toronto, Atlanta, Lima. Yes 3 planes, 1, 2.5 and 6.5 hours each. A very long day with stop over time. In Toronto I was delayed 1.5 hours because a plane needed repairing and the corridor that you take to walk on the plane wasn't moving (probably because it was frozen!). At the time I didn't think too much of it but later on this had a major impact on my trip.

After getting on the plane in Tdot they had to go through this special de-icing phase before take-off. It was pretty cool I never saw that before but they spray this red and then green liquids to thaw the wings out. Anyways I arrived to Atlanta and had like 20 minutes to make it to my flight to Lima. I had to go pretty fast to make it, I knocked over a couple slow people, old people, women with children but I did make it in time, one of the last passengers.

The flight was long... I sat next to this couple that had been travelling for over 12 hours from Tokyo. They gave me some Japanese coins and had some interesting things to say about the country; I gave them about 35 cents in Canada coins and they were happy.

At about 11:00pm Lima time (which is same as Toronto and Atlanta time), the plane landed and we had to go through about an hour of customs. The first add I saw was about some Peruvian company that uses SAP, pretty cool. Finally get out of customs and go to reclaim the lugguage...

Waiting... waiting... There are all kinds of people that try to reclaim their bags. You have the ones that come and all their stuff is right there and they don't have to wait, I hate them (unless its me!). Ofcourse there are the ones that think every bag is theirs and are constantly checking name tags, flipping over suitcases, having to put them back on the conveyor belt. The funniest ones are the ones that see their bags and are too late to get them and they have to run after them and try to get them before they go back into the suitcase cave. Anyways I didn't have much to do so I was just watching people pick up their lugguage... Ofcourse mine never came...

I made it to the plane in Atlanta but my lugguage didn't. All I had when I got there was the clothes I was wearing and a poorly packed backpack. Brutal.

After talking to the Delta representative I made my way to customs and to greet whoever was waiting for me like 1.5 hours after everyone had already left.

Finally outside after a barrage of people offering you everything from taxi, carrying your bags, hotel, trips to other places I saw my uncle and cousin. We got into the car and made our way home. They enjoyed making fun of the fact that I didn't have anything else besides my backpack...