Lima, Home of the Beans

Ain´t she sweet?

This is my adopted grandmother and I outside the Cathedral de San Francisco in downtown Lima. No offense, Grandma Muriel, but there´s something adorable about the word abuelita, and she personifies it. But I´m getting ahead of myself.


So after twenty-some hours of traveling (that´s Bogotá out the window, btw, as good a place as any to spend a long layover, gotta love that 2100 to 1 peso-to-dollar exchange rate, and as you can tell by the logo on the jet engine, I travel in style) I arrived in Lima, and was met by Eloisa and her neighbor, Andres the Taxista. The first thing you notice about Lima is that a heavy grey cloud hangs over it. Like all day long. They call it the garúa. Add to that the palpable air pollution, the grinding poverty, the constant fear of kidnapping or fraud, and all the shouting, and it just didn´t seem like my kind of town. But, I thought, you can´t possibly be giving it a fair shake. The parts of L.A. around the airport ain´t that pretty, either, right?

So Doña Eloisa prepares me a lovely little dinner of chicken and rice (well, actually it was prepared by Marita, Eloisa´s tiny, half-blind companion. Yeah, I´m not sure. Near as I can tell, she was hired to take care of Eloisa after she had 3 spinal operations in one year, and just, you know, stayed. It seems like a pretty nice setup. And if you like old ladies, you know they´re better in pairs) and then proceeds to tell me of her conversion to the born again persuasion. Now, keep in mind, my Spanish is only passable when I´m fully cogent, and after an intercontinental voyage, it´s barely more than si y no. But what I gathered was that she contracted a shaman to exorcise her demons, and he couldn´t even look at her, the devil was so strong in her. So he brought in an army of brujos (witch doctors), some 30 of them, and together they still were powerless against the devil. Eloisa found herself in a dark tunnel with a light at the end, which when she reached it shone with the light of a thousand suns. Jesus was there, and he saved her, and since then, she is born again. This is a greatly shortened version of the story, which involved several bouts of tears welling up, and took almost forty-five minutes to tell. Then she asked me, Do YOU believe in Jesus? Boy, that answer took some delicacy.

Now I don´t tell this story to mock anyone´s faith. I know better. I only tell this to illustrate my discomfort when we spent the next day, the three of us, touring the gigantic Catholic churches of Lima. So many questions burned in my brain! Like, if he´s the patron saint of the poor, why is his statue (and shrine, and cross and sceptre) gold-plated while just outside children use rocks and walls to draw because they can´t afford paper and crayons?


Suffice it to say, I was much more comfortable in the afternoon when they went shopping and I went to the Museum of the Inquistion:


Yeah, he´s pouring acid into the Protestant´s eyes under a carving that reads, Ave Maria. Just one of the many delights religious intolerance can bring.

And then it was on to Museo Arqueologico Rafael Larco Herrera:


which has the world´s largest private collection of pre-Columbian art. There´s a small exhibition spanning the many different cultures in Peru´s history. Sorry, Jeopardy fans, the Incans weren´t the only indigenous culture, just the latest.


And then, there are rooms and rooms of racks and racks of ceramics of every culture, representation, and use that you could think of, and several you can´t.


It´s kinda like that room at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, right?

"But Max," you´re crying, "surely you´re not going to show us photo after photo of ceramic monkeys and ceremonial noserings, are you?" And no, of course not, I wanted to show you this:


That´s right, they also got all kinds of Erotic Pottery! (Erottery?)


Well, hello there!


This one made me verbally start. "whoa," I said, much to the delight of the middle-aged German woman appreciating the same piece. Something terrifying yet beckoning about it, no?


And my favorite, the fellatio group!


Ah, I love art. See how much fun South America was before the Christians had to come along and spoil everything?

Dinner was in an actual archaeological site in the middle of the fashionable Miraflores district. They call it a huaca, I call it a ziggurat. But that´s mainly cuz I likez me some zzzzs. It was delicious, though the second pisco sour was a bad idea (costly in several ways).

Returned to la casa, watched a little telenovela with the viejitas, then up to bed.