Ciao for now South America

After a whirlwind of traveling through the Andes by bus from Mendoza to Santiago, then flying from Santiago to Lima, stay in Lima for 12 hours, then flying back to Austin, I am exhausted but happy. It is good to be home after being away for so long.

On my last day in South America, I am happy to report that I survived touring the city ON MY OWN and speaking Spanish to cab drivers. Granted, I am sure they only understood like half of what I said at best. But, hey, at lest I tried and lived to tell the tale ;). I even negotiated fare to downtown Lima to see Iglesia de San Francisco and the catacombs underneath it. The catacomb is one freaky place. Because I arrived basically right before they closed and was the only English speaker, I totally got a private tour! It is pretty awesome. Seeing tons and tons of bones and skulls can be slightly creepy but they have arranged them in very interesting ways so as to remove the creepiness a little bit (at least for me) They have no idea how many levels of catacombs there are as they have stopped extracating due to fear of the church tombling down. The catacombs are basically the foundation of the church. The church and museum itself is pretty cool as well. Too bad there are wayyyy too many pigeons in front of the church and I do not like rats with wings. EWW.

Lima downtown is pretty neat with lots of cool architecture/buildings. Too bad it is so far from where I stayed (Miraflores). On the way back to Miraflores I was impressed (scared to death) by the way people drive in Lima. Two cars in one lane on a free way. One of the cars was the one I was in. The other car? was right next to my door. Wow.

After a quick and LARGE dinner at Makoto which was located at the mall near the beach, my hotel called a car for me and back to the US I go!!