Lima's Parks and nightlife

It is now one in the morning and this place just seems to be waking up. I took a bus tour of Lima by night and walking home from Park Kennedy was quite the experience. There are nightclubs, bars and restaurants which people literally fill to the door; that is on a Thursday night! It was like the middle of the day in Toronto on Yonge Street. They must sleep some time during the day because they sure don’t sleep at night!

The highlight of the night for me was what should have been called "Parque de Fuentes" or Park of Fountains but instead was called something like Reservas Park. A few years ago the government redid the whole park and put in dozens of fountains. Some small, one shooting 80 meters in the air, a few you walked through or played in, but one, which gave the musical fountain in the Melbourne casino a real run for its money. There was obviously the great music and dancing waters, but there was also the three dimensional images popping out of the water. In fact, in sort of gave the history of Peru in pictures which made me feel guilty for not visiting Cusco. I will simply have to come again, that’s all!

I met two childhood friends on the bus; one who moved to Miami thirty years ago and one that still lived here. We were talking about the differences between American and Peruvian culture and they came up with a few. The American one told me that in the States all she did was work to make a living and she says that when she calls her Peruvian friends here they always seem to have time to talk, have coffee and go out. Secondly, you could see the difference between the two women. The Americanized one had no lipstick, her hair was a mess and so on and her Peruvian friend was immaculately dressed, hair coiffed and was wearing beautiful clothes. Basically, they both said that in Peru you work to live and in the States you live to work. These are my words and not theirs, but pretty good, eh.

There are something like forty boroughs or districts in Lima and from what I can see, they are all full of parks with fountains, walkways, birds and wonderful statues. Lima is a Unesco city and certainly not as pretty as Cartegena, but the parks are really special. There are loads of people just sitting feeding the birds. Lima must also be pretty wealthy, especially where I tend to hang out ,because there are copious women dressed in white pushing old people around in strollers. Interestingly enough, I made eye contact with about a ninety year old woman in a stroller and she seemed desperate to talk. God it must be awful to be cooped up in your house the whole day with no-one to talk to.

The week just flew past, it seems. Tomorrow, I want to visit the Japanese cultural centre and see if I can figure out why there are so many Asians here ( in fact, I visited Chinatown during the day) and then perhaps the art gallery which has a spectacular building I did see to-night. However, if I don’t go to bed now, I probably won’t see anything because I will be sleeping all day!