Lauren: Beth and I rolled into Lima and headed for the city center, bypassing what looked to be the hip, cool area of the city, Miraflores, because we thought that my friend Ruth and her friend Mary would be doing her summer internship downtown. We also saw that there was a “gay friendly” hotel, the first we had seen on our trip, so we thought we’d go and contribute our dollars to the cause.

We checked in to our plush room (with the highest cielings I’ve ever seen), and went to check email. Ruth had emailed to let us know that she was in Miraflores, and that we should come meet her for Pisco Sours. Thrilled, we decided we’d move the next day to Miraflores, and set out to meet Ruth and Mary.

We took a cab over and met Ruth near Parque Kennedy, the center of Miraflores, at a chic coffee chain called Cafe Cafe. The area surrounding the park was filled with cute bars and restaurants, with people eating and chatting at wooden tables out on the sidewalks. There was even a Pizza Hut - something we had shamelessly been craving for a while.

After catching up while drinking specialty coffee drinks, we went to pick up Mary at her Spanish classes not far from the square. We all hugged hello and laughed about the suggestion she had given us back in August before we left on our trip for a good beach - Ko Tao in Thailand where we had our infamous motorbike accident.

“Well, I didn’t tell you to rent a motorbike!” she said. And that was Mary’s debut for the quotes page.

Ruth and Mary wanted to bring us to the bar where they spent their first night in Lima a few weeks previous. We had been told since Chile where we first tried Pisco Sours with Lorena and Daniel that the Peruvian variety was much different. From what we could gather, both sides lined up on their side of the border swearing that their Pisco Sour was the best. By the end of our stay in Lima, Beth and I would have our own opinion.

We walked into a fancy smancy place with red velvet booths that reminded us of something we’d find in NYC. The Pisco Sours were a whopping $5, and we all ordered the regular. The waitress brought us our four drinks and commented that the other flavors on the menu were worth a try. Then she said she’d bring us a few taste testers.

One of the main differences between Chilean and Peruvian Pisco Sours is that the ones in Peru are made with egg whites to make them more creamy and frothy (no worries - Beth of course went online to see how dangerous this was for gringos’ (tourists) stomachs and 4 out of 5 websites agree that it’s A-OK). We also surmised that another difference between the two is perhaps that the Pisco Sours in Peru are made with enough alcohol to kill a horse. Before we were finished with half of our first Pisco Sour, all of us were pretty tipsy.

Our waitress, who appeared to be batting for our team, began bringing over half glasses of various Pisco Sour renditions for us to taste. Ruth, being fluent in Spanish, began striking up a conversation with her each time she brought a new flavor to the table. By the end of the night, all of us were toasted, after 1.5 Pisco Sours each (plus taste testers), and Ruth had in hand phone number #1 of the trip.

The next day, we got up and moved to a hostel in Miraflores near the square, and met up with Mary in the afternoon. She brought us to an amazing sandwhich place with a condiments bar with about 20 different Peruvian sauces to choose from for your sandwhich. We sat for a few hours, begiled by Mary’s hilarious stories about her family (we spent some time trying to convince her to write a book), and then walked around to run errands.

One of the errands was trying to get me a 7 Soles ($2.33) haircut at a salon that Mary had been to the previous week (and got a very cute haircut).  I have a phobia about getting my haircut because I’ve had a number of horrible, horrible haircuts (from mullets, to pom-pom bangs, to a surprise shave job in the back - that was fun) due to the fact, I believe, that there are a limited number of hair stylists who know how to cut curly hair. The most successful haircuts I’ve had have been done  with my hair dry, curly, and uncombed. The issue was how to communicate this in Spanish.

We walked into the salon, and Mary recognized a few of the folks from her last visit. Mary began to describe what I needed to one of the hairdressers, and she seemed to agree after a few unsure looks and giggles. I sat down in the chair, and she immediately broke out a brush to comb out my mop of curls. I grabbed her hand, like she was bringing a switch blade to my scalp, and we tried to explain again. She then insisted that she either needed to comb it or wet it to cut it. She began demonstrating what she’d do, and I saw Beth behind me in the mirror mouthing “NO!” emphatically. As the woman continued her explanation Beth moved to sliding a finger across her throat and pointing to the door mouthing “let’s go”.

Mary was unphased and went from trying to convince me it would be fine, to trying to sway the hairdresser to just cut my hair as I wanted it cut. But in the end I jumped up and we bolted, tipping the woman a Sole for her time.

Beth: That night, Ruth and Mary were having some friends over to their apartment and we were all planning to go out.  Sylvia arrived first to drop off some of her belongings for Ruth to store before she left the next day for an adventure into the jungle. Lauren, Mary and I were starving (Sylvia explained she wasn’t because she had eaten an “enormous mango”) and convinced Ruth that we should all splurge and order in Pizza Hut before the rest her friends got there. 

Sylvia knew how to make Pisco Sours, so she suggested that she and Ruth go out and get the ingredients before the pizza arrived and we’d all have Pisco Sours when the others arrived before we went out.

The pizza finally arrived around the same time that Ruth’s friends did, so we split it amongst all of us (the 2 large pizzas we had ordered were more than enough for the 8 of us).  And the Pisco Sours were amazingly delicious.

It turned our that half of Ruth’s friends were NYU Law school students in one form or another: Sandy and Sarah are starting their 2nd year this fall, Sylvia has defered until fall 2009.  And we unexpectedly met Carmen, who is going to Columbia Law, who works with Sarah but was moving into another spare room in the house with Ruth and Mary the following day.

We all munched pizza and drank pisco sours while I got some inside tips on law school.  The conversation went on into the night, but it starts getting blurrly, probably because the pisco sours kept coming. Around 11pm, we all decided that our relaxed evening in was nice and perhaps we didn’t want to go out, so Sandy, Sarah, Sylvia and Carmen all said goodbye and went home.

Lauren and I also started to leave but not before Ruth and Mary convinced us we should spent the next two nights on their floor.  The Peruvian woman they lived with, Elizabeth, said she didn’t mind if we stayed their a night or two, “as long as we all thought we could fit into that room.”  The room was pretty small, but Lima hostels were pretty expensive, so Lauren and I took Ruth and Mary up on their offer, making plans to move in the next morning.

The next morning, we packed our bags and made it to their apartment.  We had slept in and were starving by the time we arrived, so Mary insisted that she take us to a seafood restaurant she was obsessed with called Playa Azul.

(Disclaimer: if you don’t want to hear about amazing food, skip the next three paragraphs.)

We ordered ceviche (a raw fish dish with lime), a pesto pasta with seafood and a fisherman’s platter, which had four or five different varieties of fried fish.

The ceviche came first and it was, by far, the best fish I have ever eaten in my entire life.  (Yes, Bon, better than Dean Street sushi…)  The fish tasted like butter and the lime flavoring made it crisp and even fresher-tasting.  It was UN-believably amazing.

After devouring the ceviche, we dove into the pasta and fisherman’s platter, both of which were also good.  But by the time we were full, Lauren and I had made a plan to make sure we had the ceviche one more time before we left Lima.

That afternoon we did errands, boring Ruth and Mary so much that they both fell asleep on us.

Around dusk, we all headed out to another neighborhood, Barranco, where Sandy and Sarah lived, for a night on the town.

We wandered the cute, bar and restaurant filled streets, each with their own staff person outside yelling deals at us trying to get us to come in.  Still full from lunch, we ended up skipping dinner and instead fnding a cute bar at the top of a cliff with a nice view of the beach.

We all ordered Pisco Sours and got a few appetizers.  Though Ruth and I swore we were only drinking one, we ended up sharing a second.  Lauren made it through a pisco sour and a beer but poor Mary never made it through her first pisco sour.

After harassing Sandy by text message for an hour, both she and Sarah came out to meet us.  We left the bar in search of a club where we could go dancing.

Sylvia had recommended a club the night before, but when we got there, it was deserted.  We found an upstairs area and decided to at least have one drink here before heading out, but when Lauren went to order the drinks, the 2-for-1 specials they had advertised on a flashing sign turned out to simply not exist.

We decided to get some beers anyway.  By this time, Carmen had joined us too and I managed to corner her and Sarah, trapping them into a long conversation about foreign policy and cross-issue organizing.  (Sorry, Carmen and Sarah!)

The next time I looked up, the bar was completely packed and three Ecuadorian men had positioned themselves next to us.  One of the Ecuadorian guys and I were sitting on rolling stools and he started rolling his chair like a bumper car into mine.  I tried to ignore him, raising my eyebrow and shooting Lauren a look.

He tried to start a conversation with me, but I told him I didn’t speak Spanish, understanding even less than I normally could because the music was blaring at this point.  When I would end the conversation with him,  he would wait a few minutes and then start bumping his chair into me all over again.

Lauren, watching the scene unfold, loudly exclaimed, “WHAT IS THIS?? ANIMAL PLANET!!” while flinging her arms around like a monkey.

“Does your friend no like hungry?” the Ecuadorian asked me in English.

“Hungry?” I asked, confused.

“Hungry,” he confirmed, though he seemed to be searching for the word.

The next day, I realized he had gotten confused between “hambre” meaning “hungry” and “hombre” meaning “man.”  “Does your friend no like men?” he was asking.  Had I understood, I would have definitely responded, “you have no idea…”

Not long after Lauren’s outburst, the Ecuadorian boy and all his friends cleared the area. Mary expressed a mixture of awe and horror at Lauren’s ability to clear a group of men from a room.

We ended up leaving the overcrowded, thumping bar later that night, but not before Ruth managed to get another number from a guy who worked at the bar — phone number #2.

Lauren: That night, we headed back to the homestead for our first night and Mary and Ruth insisted that they sleep on the floor since the bed was tiny. We told them that we had no problem sleeping on the blanket laden floor, since we had sleeping bags as well, but there was no moving them. Talk about the “perfect hostesses!”

The next morning Ruth and Mary took off with the crew to do a hike to a waterfall. Beth and I, adventured out a bit, decided to hang back to relax and soak up their wireless internet. Beth was struggling a bit, so we took off for the mall to grab some greasy brunch. We tried to resist the temptation, but ended up at Tony Roma’s for potato skins, quesadillas, and mini-burgers. We walked around the mall for a while, and then made the walk home for naps and internet.

Mary and Ruth said they’d be back around 7 or before, and that we’d meet then to head out for dinner. Around 9, we started to get a bit worried, realizing we had no idea where they actually went. At 10, we started contemplating what we should do if they still weren’t home in 30 minutes. Finally, around 11 they walked in the door, with stories of their crazy adventure to and from the hike. Since it was so late, we decided to order in Pizza Hut again.

Beth and I had planned to leave the next day for our Ecuador adventures, but were feeling like we wanted another day in Lima since we had been having so much fun. After about an hour of deliberation, and planning our a new route through Ecuador to make up the lost day, we decided we stay one more night.

The next day, Beth and I ran errands again (changing money, sending a box home to South Carolina, and buying our bus ticket for the next day) and met up with Ruth back at the homestead after work. It was Mary’s first day, and we were all anxious to hear how things went. We left to meet her again at her Spanish school, but one of the workers there said she had already left.

Ruth made a quick call home to tell Elizabeth, the woman who owned the apartment, to tell Mary to meet us at Playa Azul when she got there. We walked down to Playa Azul, but lo and behold, it was closed. Ruth ran across the street to use a phone at a local hotel. We could tell she had gotten a hold of Mary because she was flailing her arms around and pointing into the air in gestures of frustration. We decided to all meet up at a nice restaurant down at the mall, that had a patio overlooking the water.

Beth: When we arrived, we had 10 minutes of happy hour left, so we ordered a round of some flavor of Pisco Sours.  Our cute waiter humored Lauren´s and my awful Spanish as we asked questions about various plates.  Ruth grilled him about what fish was local, a conversation that took at least 6-7 minutes. In the end, we ordered cheviche for the table, and Lauren convinced me to order some beef heart as well.  Yes. Cow. Heart.  Ruth and Mary decided on a fish and a ceasar salad.

We were more than half-way through our drinks before the appetizers even arrived.  To paraphrase Ruth (actually from another night):  We were drunk now and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

We dug into the ceviche, which wasn’t as amazing as it was at Playa Azul, but we needed food desperately.  Ruth and Mary started on their salad and Lauren´s and my main dish came out.  The plate was slightly reminiscent of an appetizer sampler in the states but with Peruvian specialties: it had various kinds of potatoes, empanadas, fried fish and huge skewers of the beef heart.

The heart was more flavorful than almost any other beef that we’ve had.  It was sort of like liver (except I hate the taste of liver and this was much more mild and better); and it had more of the texture of a sirloin steak.  There was absolutely no fat on it, but it was tougher than some of the amazing Argentian steaks we had. (Mary, in this picture, is displaying a piece of Ceviche while Lauren holds the Beef Heart.)

By the time we were finishing off these plates, Ruth and Mary were regretting having ordered the fish since they were stuffed.  Our waiter came by to check on us, and Ruth inquired about when the fish would be coming out.  The waiter, obviously embarassed, apologized and said that after all the questions, he thought that Ruth and Mary decided that they didn’t really want the fish. 

Ruth and Mary were relieved but Ruth played it up, asking instead if we could get another round of drinks for happy hour prices, even though happy hour ended more than an hour before.  He agreed and the next thing we knew, the four of us had another Pisco Sour sitting in front of us, even though we could barely finish the first one.

At this point, things started getting a little rowdy and the conversation turned to what most 20-something women like to discuss over drinks: um… dating.  We felt sorry for a group of upper class Peruvians who were sitting beside us because we were sober enough to know we were laughing really loudly and too drunk to stop laughing and being slightly obnoxious.  We were thankful, though, that it was unlikely they understood what the conversation was about.

Lauren: When we brought up the fact that we were maybe disturbing the upper class crew next to us, Beth stated, for all of you who know Spanish, “Well, they need to get their “cuenta” and “saleeer”.

Beth: After another 15 minutes or so, they started to leave, and one of the older men men turned to us and said, in English, “The Pisco Sours are good, yes?”and gave us a thumbs up sign.

We were embarassed, but apparently Lauren wasn’t embarassed enough.  She quickly spotted a desert on their table that was two pieces of cake, one of which they had taken a bite from and the other they hadn’t touched.

The waiter came over to clean the table and Lauren started asking him, in perfect Spanish, if we could try their cake.  He looked confused and Lauren repeated the question saying that they had hardly eaten it and we wanted to try it. 

At this point, the waiter was struggling to keep it together.  He later told Ruth that he was used to foreigners asking to order what the other table was having but not actually for the other table’s food.  I, of course, was sinking into the ground with embarassment and finally we convinced Lauren to back off and let it be.

Five minutes later, the waiter showed up with our own cake for us to “try” that wasn’t from someone else’s table. 

At this point, Ruth started engaging him in conversation.  He was cute, and the three of us started our own conversation, leaving them alone to discuss… something.  The conversation kept going, and I was toasted enough to unapologetically snag this photo of him giving Ruth his phone number — phone number #3.

The four of us paid our bill — tipping 20% and probably overpaying because we couldn’t really manage checking the bill.  I don’t think any of us actually finished the second drink.  We made it home in a taxi and crashed, desperately needing to sleep off the Pisco Sours. (Lauren: Though before we went to sleep, I snapped the funniest pictures of the whole trip of Ruth who was in a few… compromising positions before heading to bed. But don’t bother checking, they’re hidden at her request. Though we´ll put this amusing one up instead… this had us laughing for a while as well.)

The next morning, Ruth left us a note, commenting that she wasn’t sure if she was still drunk, just tired, or hungover.  I woke up so hungover I wasn’t sure I could make it to lunch — much less onto a bus.

But Lauren and I finally pulled it together (Lauren: after Gatorade, the holy grail of hangovers) and met Ruth and Sandy for a last lunch at the ever-so-delicious Playa Azul.

We, of course, got the ceviche, and I gobbled down some pasta while Sandy fascinated us with her Spanish film director/boat captain love affair story.

After devouring our desserts (Tres Leches cake, an incredible treat), we realized we were running really late to catch our bus and we rushed back to Ruth’s apartment to throw our last items in our packs (Lauren: forgetting our towels) and headed off to the bus station.

Lauren: PS In our humble opinion, the toxic Peruvian Pisco Sours win the prize.