A few hours south of Lima is the fishing village of Paracas. There is absolutely nothing here apart for a dense stink of fish. But after a few hours there you suck it in so much that you can’t really feel it anymore. Since we didn’t book a place to stay in advance, once we arrive we just walk around a bit to see what the offers are. Hostal Santa Maria looks nice and is reasonably cheap, so we take that. The view is also very pleasant from the third floor. Along the beach, from what looks more like private houses, restaurants offer all sorts of fish, which you will eat in the company of many cats walking around your plastic table. They are lovely!
A perfect 8 hours flight bring us to Lima. Since we were arriving after midnight we arranged to be picked up at the airport by a taxi from the hotel. As first thing we want to get some cash at the arrival hall. I approach a bank, which says they are not exchanging, I need to go to the exchange booth. All right, I go there and they say they take only cash…there is an ATM just on the side where I can get some dollars which I can then exchange. Excuse me??? I’m in Peru and I should get dollars from the ATM (+fee) to be changed 10 cm away from another fee? No thank you. As we get out I see a guy holding a “Lara Ferrighi” board, which makes me laugh and an ATM which gives a maximum of 400 soles (which is about 130 dollars).
Plenty of traffic on the highway has delayed our departure and even more our arrival in Los Angeles, but after 4 hours we are at the bus terminal which looks pretty poor and in a low level part of town. We take a couple of buses to get west of town since we are staying in Culver City at my friend Manuel’s place. We miss the bus stop, but we managed to be picked up somewhere at the end. Great to see my friend after so long!
For the first day we drive to the hills of Hollywood. It’s dry as hell and very hot. We take a quick look at the city from the observatory. There are very few skyscrapers, which makes the city spread very far with all the different quarters and makes it difficult (or at least very time consuming) to reach the different places with only public transportation.