Hello from beautiful Peru in Southern Hemisphere!!!! Today is my first full day in this beautiful amazing country. I absolutely love it here. Everything has been great so far, albeit not having done much really on my first day. Let me retrace all the nitty gritty, since I´d like to use this blog as sorta a log of the places or hostals I´m visiting and staying, for future references! So I landed in Lima´s airport last night near midnight. The airport was completely packed, and there were at least 5 more flights going to arrive after mine. The airport was surprisingly nice, I wud say it´s even US standard, as you know how some airports in the US are really not so great anyway. I guess I´m spoiled by HK standard. I had a taxi guy Antonio pick me up which was from the hostal I stayed in, called Posada del Parque in Central Lima. I found this hostal from my travel guide Moon Peru and it is a lil´ cute hostal with adorable wall decor and a very homely ambience to it. I liked my room and my bed quite alot, but unfortunately, it´s booked up after last night so after I checked out at noon today, then had Antonio from last night take me to Miraflores, another part of Lima which is relatively affluent, to look for another place to stay.

The new place is called Hostal Oro Blanco, the name sounds great but the ambience is much worse, albeit more expensive because of the location. I wanted to stay at Hostal el Patio which has lotsa fauna and plants surrounding it and more colonnial style, unfortunately it´s also all booked up. It´s high season so I´m lucky to even find a room this last minute. So after checking in, I grabbed lunch at a lil´restaurant next door and went straight to South American Explorer Club, which is 15 minutes walking distance from my hostal. I signed up to become a member, USD50 dollars per year per person to become a member, not cheap, but very helpful because you get to use their library to access travel information for South America and can store luggages for free there, which is what I most want. I realize only yesterday that my big backpack weighs 43lbs and small one weights 18 lbs. Together they weigh more than half my size. There is no way I´m carrying that around to anywhere rural, so for sure, I need to slash out ideally 30 to 40% weight and store at SAE before I leave Lima. Did some research in SAE, I was really pulled to going to Bolivia to see the salt lakes called Salar dUyuni at the moment, but will see how my research goes in the next few days, as my mind seems to change every few minutes. Then I went to a really nice restaurant for dinner called¨Astrib y Gastron, which was by far the best meal I´ve had since traveling, beating even the great food in LA! Although initialy I was a bit bummed out that I have to eat by myself, very soon after, I became fully engrossed in my guidebook again and my spanish-english dictionary, scrambling for the right Spanish phrases to say to the waiters. I was also in awe with my appetizer Ceviche, a very famous Peruvian dish, which is basically a cold fish dish with very sour sauce.

Ok writing too much. I better return to the hostal before it´s too late. This computer is really bad, the symbol keys are all screwed up...