Lima: The Arrival

These just weren’t any friends who were coming to visit me in Peru.

In Lima, I am known as the wild and crazy one by my friends. But in comparison to the group of people that was coming, I am the tame one. I prepared myself for the insanity that lay before me but from the moment they stepped off the plane the Lucchesi brothers, Eric and Ryan, along with their friend Rico ,were non-stop action and comedy. By the time Steph’s plane arrived 12 hours later, the boys had made Lima their playground.

Ryan accompanied me to the airport at midnight while I sent Eric and Rico with some Lima third year volunteers to meet up with the party of the Peru 12 swear in. We had all been drinking since dinner and to save a little money (the last time tried to save any money on this trip) I convinced Ryan to take one of the local micro buses instead of a taxi. I barely fit in the micro buses here and Ryan is 6’6’’. Fortunately for me, Ryan had a great time on the half our trip to the airport. He was excited by the way the door man hung out the window to hail pedestrians and by the crazy manner of driving. He got a kick out of all the people that got in and out of the van, but I think it’s safe to say all the Peruvians got a bigger kick out of him. He kept trying to communicate with them with 98% of the words coming out of his mouth in English. I must admit Ryan’s excitement for all the foreign things around him made me enjoy the trip more than any other bus trip I can think of. It was just a taste of things to come with the group I had assembled for our adventure in the Peruvian Andes.

We picked up Steph at the airport without any problems at all. She looked just as tall, skinny and glamorous as ever. Let me put it this way, I knew I wasn’t going to have to worry about loosing her in any crowd of Peruvians. We took her strait to club to meet up with the rest of the group. We danced and partied till things died down around 4 then we went back to our hostel. Any other group after a long day of traveling and partying would have gone to bed then, but not the Lucchessi brothers. We went up to the roof of our hostel where there was a DVD room with a bunch of bean bags on the floor. It promptly got renamed the romper room and we stayed up till 6 am jumping around and yelling movie quotes at people out the 3rd story window…..in English.

The next day we did Lima right. We started the morning (or more accurately the afternoon) with a lunch of Ceviche. Then we headed to the cliffs to do some paragliding. I had been wanting to try paragliding for the year and a half I had lived in Lima but was waiting for the right moment and the right people to do it with. I highly recommend this experience for any one that comes to Lima and doesn’t suffer from vertigo. It was so neat to get a different perspective of it all and to be soaring around with my friends. After paragliding, we crossed the street and went to the apartment of a guy I know who works for the embassy. There jaws dropped at how amazing and how cheap ocean front rent is here. They not only got a glimpse of the upper crust of Peru (the last they would see of that for the rest of the trip) but some of the perks of working for the US foreign service.

Then we went to the center of Lima and the Plaza de Armas. I got to be a tourist again going to the Catacombs for the first time. The hours of day light we had for our one day of sight seeing in Lima were fading, so we went back to the hostel to get ready for Thanksgiving #2.

There were about 30 people at dinner. It felt like it was the culmination of something amazing, though I’m not sure what. I just felt during the night that those were the moments that made life worth living. There were so many people there from all parts of my life, Lima, Peace Corps, California, that I was just a big puddle of love.

Thanksgiving #2, 2008 was definitely a highlight night in my time in Peru. And while I retired early that evening (I think I went to bed around 2 AM) the Lucchesi boys and Rico were out all night on the roof party that our hostel hosted. I am happy to say that of all the new adventures I provided for my guests, seasoned traveler Ryan Lucchesi experienced his first real stay in a youth hostel and it was more than he ever could have hoped for.