Goodbye Mexico, Hello Peru

This is going to be a long, long trip if it continues like it has. We only spent THREE nights in Mexico, and feel like we've done so much and are ready for a rest. Now we've arrived in Peru with a pretty jam-packed schedule for 17 days. Hopefully we'll get 'travel-fit' and fast.

One of Steph's requests for the blog is that we do a "Top 3" list whenever we leave a country, so here goes (along with a few other Best/Worst of...)

Top 3 Things from MEXICO
1) Pyramids. The mystery of past civilizations is fascinating, so standing in an ancient city that is not yet understood and not yet fully discovered was very cool. Plus climbing a pyramid just isn't something you do every day.
2) Walking the downtown areas. This one made the list in large part because we weren't expecting much, but we truly did enjoy the large and varying amounts of architecture, the masses of people, and, though weird at times, being some of the only tourists in the city.
3) Trying to order chicken tacos and getting weird soup. This is obviously a Steph nomination. She apparently delighted in seeing me try to get some decent food and then seeing the disappointment when the lady picked up the soup ladle. This does lead us into another award...

Biggest Disappointment
Surprisingly our biggest disappointment, mainly because I had such high expectations, was the food. Believe it or not, but Mexicans don't eat chicken tacos and big Moe's-style burritos, at least not the way we do. They seem to prefer things like beef hearts, intestines, and eye in their food (yes, I said eye). They do have tacos, as we finally found out our last day, but most of the food they eat is wildly different than what I was expecting and it was surprisingly difficult to find even remotely Americanized Mexican food. If it weren't for that taco stand we found our last day, offering 5 mini-tacos with beef or pork, onion, and cilantro for a mere 18 pesos (like $1.50), I might have cried. Next time, though, we'll know what to expect and what to look for so should come out much better on the food front.

Biggest Dislike
Actually this is kind of a hard one. Not that it was perfect in any way, but nothing really stood out as the worst part of our time in Mexico. Sure, it would have been nice if more people spoke English, but we can't exactly complain about that, now can we? We had a lot of rain our last day. You would run across some nasty smells every now and then. Other than that, we had a good time. If you want to check out all our photos from Mexico, go HERE.

Budget
So we've basically just pulled a number out of the air of $100 per day average for our entire trip as our budget. This should be easily do-able, but it's good to have a goal. We counted 4 days in Mexico, and came out to $65 per day. So far, so good! Unfortunately, I think Peru is about to bust our budget...

Hello, Peru
Again with the overnight flight. This one wasn't as bad, we did score exit row seats somehow, and the hostel we're staying at in Lima (actually Miraflores, sort of a suburb of Lima) let us check-in really early so we got to take a nice nap this morning. Today we took it pretty easy, exploring some of Miraflores around our hostel. The hostel owner, Frances, gave us a really elaborate walk-thru of things to see and do in all of the different areas of Lima (as Steph and I tried to keep our eyes open). He is very nice and helpful but I think we'll try to take it slow our first couple days in Peru. There are a lot of tourists here (many, many Americans), and a lot more people speak English than in Mexico, both of which are both good and bad. There is a big round-a-bout near here that would have you believe you're in any standard American city. Starbucks, Chili's, TGI Fridays, and of course McDonald's are at our fingertips. We didn't go to any (okay, so we went in Starbucks, but Steph didn't buy anything!), but did enjoy the big supermarket located next door. It's kind of like a Super Walmart in that it has groceries plus a lot of household things, but is different in a hard-to-describe way.

what you do during a red light is your business - dude spinning on his head with a hoola-hoop

Later, Steph was drawn like a magnet across town to a huge handicrafts market. There's only about three different types of stalls in the 100+ market, so you could really spend about 5 minutes and see all there is to see, but we enjoyed strolling around and practicing our bargaining skills. Did we mention it's cold here? Not cold-cold but colder than we expected, which duped us into each buying an alpaca wool hat and Steph a pair of gloves. We can only assume it will be much colder in the mountains, even more so in Chile and Argentina, so there is no reason not to plan ahead.

Steph in the market with her new hat

Tomorrow we are going to explore Lima some, go check out the beach (about a mile away), and do some planning for the rest of our trip in Peru. Well, I hope everyone is still reading, because I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPH! She's an old lady at 26 now, and it may be time for me to start telling people she's younger than she really is. Could she still pass for 23? Only kidding, of course. I hope she had a great birthday, even if most of it was spent in a tired trance. We went to dinner and I got her some candy from the grocery store. I know how to treat a lady. Adios amigos.