Lima, city of Biblical traffic jams

So I'm in Lima, sitting in an overpriced internet cafe in a bus station. I'm heading north to a city called Trujillo overnight, and from there to a city called Huanchaco, on the ocean. Supposedly it's a good surfing site, with the downside being that everyone apparently knows this, meaning that I'm likely to be only one of many tourists there this time of year.

I flew from Cusco to Lima this morning. I was a little sad to say goodbye to Cusco, whose charm is all the more endearing after being subjected to a day's worth of Lima. Imagine Manhattan. Then quadruple the number of cars, and hold up the biggest funhouse mirror you can conceive of, so that the relatively tidy grid of streets is bent in all sorts of crazy directions. That's much of Lima. I walked part of the way to the bus station, and from a pedestrian overpass you could look up and down the expressway and not see the end of the line of cars, all honking impotently. It was like an automotive example of the vanishing point. It is, quite frankly, insane that anyone builds places like this. Unless, of course, your goal is to make the maximum number of people frustrated and unhappy.

Lima does sit right on the Pacific ocean, so I took a stroll there today. As I approached the beach, I was met by an older man who offered me a flyer and some surfing lessons. His name was Doc Ricardo Garcia, retired psychologist and now full time surfer. He was fun to talk to. A surfer for over fifty years, mostly self-taught but introduced to it by his aunt, he now gives lessons and hangs out on the beach. His sister, he said, studied in Raleigh, North Carolina, some years ago, and now works in Peru in the field of macroeconomics. She is, he said, "the white sheep of the family." The black sheep, of course, is him. He owns a number of 60s era cars, which he tinkers with and restores in his spare time. He knew seemingly everyone on the beach, and was a fine salesman of his services as an instructor, as well as those of his colleagues. The beginner's board, he said, is so easy "it's like driving an automatic car."

I regretted not being able to get some lessons from him.

So, soon off to Trujillo, a few days around there (with some sightseeing of some non-Incan ruins,) then off to either more sites in the north, or perhaps a quick doubling back to the south.

Hope all is well at home.