Lima

Today has been very relaxed, although Lima is an incredibly busy, huge, loud and crazy town. Annie and I were both almost killed by taxis on two separate occasions--pedestrians absolutely do not have the right of way. In efforts to stop jay walking, the city has people dressed as mimes at each intersection of busy pedestrian streets, stopping people from crossing by...being mimes. It´s pretty funny.
We got to our hostal (this is Spanish, it´s not a typo) early this morning, and headed off to see the weapons and gold museum, which also turned out to have a lot of mummies from way old times. There were gold ornaments (ie huge nose rings and ear plugs) from the Chimu and the Moche people, and a lot of jewelery and art made from Spondylus, the bivalve that I studied in Tahiti. We have been seeing it a lot, all over Peru and Ecuador, and it is interesting because we learned today that it is found only in the waters off Ecuador.
We spent the rest of the day walking around the city, spending a lot of time around the Plaza de Armes and in Miraflores, where our hostal is. We had dinner in a Chifa (Chinese restaurant), which is really good in Lima. Tomorrow we are heading off to Pisco (where pisco sours come from), which is south of here, on the coast. We may have to do a little research on finding the highest quality pisco... We´ll also go to the Reserva Nacional de Paracas, which is a national park of the Paracas people, who were also in Peru around 1300 BC. It should be great!!