Chicago – Panama City – Lima

Because it’s been a full 7 months since I left the country, I made the mistake of arriving at the airport too early. Erin and I made it to O’Hare with 4 hours to kill, so we kept busy exploring all areas of the airport and playing on all the moving walkways.

Our first flight was about 5 and a half hours. We had a 5 hour layover in Panama City but weren’t able to leave due to our passports. Our next flight to Lima was about 4 hours.

We became very good friends with the man sitting next to us. He gave us advice, told us of his local favorites, and offered to meet us for lunch the next day.

Our friend helped us get a taxi and Erin and I made our way to our hostel which was in the Mira Flores district of Lima.

We spent a total of 23 hours traveling – which is crazy, but we got the cheapest possible tickets. Also I LOVE the fact that there isn’t any time difference between Peru and the U.S.

Because of the crazy long travel day we had the night before, we didn’t end up leaving our room until about 2pm. The weather here is pretty chilly, it’s winter. But for 2 Wisconsin girls, it’s beautiful out 🙂

We decided to take it easy because the next day we would be on a plane again. We walked outside with directions in hand to go shopping, but two blocks in the opposite direction sat a HUGE PYRAMID. Of course we had to go and explore a bit!

It turns out that the Huaca Pucllana was just a 5 minute walk from where we were staying. We made it just in time to catch an English tour of the site.

 

This pyramid was built in 400 AD and was mainly used as sacrificial grounds. A community of people lived there back in the day, and would use the area to bury their ancestors, grow vegetables and animals, and make offerings to their Gods. Common Offertory items included cotton, corn, frogs (Lima only gets 7-10mm of rainfall each year, so moist frogs were a delicacy), and shark bones. One of the main Gods, the God of the ocean, was believed to live on the earth in the form of a shark.

 

 

While on the Huaca Pucllana grounds, I chatted a bit with the others around me. I asked one of the travelers if he spoke Spanish and he said, “No I’m an American”. I said “me too!”. It turns out that these folks own the Ho Chunk Casino! We live only a short distance from them in Wisconsin! It’s crazy that in our small tour group of only about 18 people, 6 of them were from throughout the state and were traveling through South America together.

After that unexpected find, Erin and I headed toward a shopping area on the water. We took our time walking through many local parks and just enjoyed the amazing views.

One of my favorite things about traveling independently is having the freedom of choosing everything to do and spending as much or as little time in any spot.

It’s lovely to be here with the closest thing I’ve ever had to a best friend, my beautiful sister Erin 😘 I can’t wait to see what the next 9 days ahead have in store for us!