Miraflores

By gum, Saturday was blue skies!

I drove over to Roosevelt looking for the Saturday morning softball that supposedly happens there, but it apparently does not happen during vacation. The real outing of the day was driving the 30min to the coastal neighborhood of Miraflores set on the palisades above the Pacific. We were immediately treated to nice views of the parasailers taking tourists on 10min rides along the cliffs.

Jen had brought us to this spot because Sanjay, the Peace Corps country director, had brought her here for her first meal in Peru. And it was here, with ocean views, that I had my first Peruvian ceviche...fresh, firm and spicy. Really amazing. Plus it was accompanied by my first Pisco Sour ever. I turned to Jen and said "Well, this is going to work for me."

In the park afterwards, some guys had strung tethers between the palms for tightrope walking and Carter had a good time testing his balance. We wandered down the steps to the shoreline (at the base of the pier in this picture) and sat for a while, watching the surfers and the surfer scene.

By this time is was just about evening, so we found our way to our plans for the evening: a children's theater. The theater was in the basement of a building and does a brisk business in the lucrative birthday party trade. The show presented the story of Hansel & Gretel, but with Phineas & Ferb as participatory narrators. If you are familiar with Phineas & Ferb, you can imagine what an original mash-up this was (if you are not familiar with them, ask any 6yr-old).

The audience was packed with a chaos of kids and though it would be easy to take a jaded view of the low-budget production, it was good-natured and a crowd-pleaser. Of course, it was a copyright lawyer's nightmare.

So that was Saturday.

Sunday, our community-host family from the embassy came by to show us the hidden places where they get their produce and meat. They were very nice, but Carter and I had already discovered the area they spoke of. Still, they had some good advice and they're helpfulness was much appreciated.

Other than that, Jen took Carter to the office so she could catch up on some stuff while I got going on some of my work. I did laundry, Jen having found a washer and dryer in the hotel basement. Of course, I was half way through the second load when it became I was notified that the area was not meant for guests. Oops. They spared me the indignity of dragging sopping clothes back to the room and let me use it for today.