Asia -- New Year's Week -- Day 1 -- Dec 30th

After dropping off L and E at the airport and waiting until their flight left at 1:10 AM I trekked back to Ericka's parent's house and a bed for the evening. The next day I planned to spend the majority of the day being a tourist but I was able to help listen in planning for the New Year's party and buying alcohol and groceries for the next day.

The morning started with a visit to the Museo de Oro in Peru which had several fascinating pre-columbian artifacts. The museum housed both jewelry and a "History of Weapons" museum containing a vast collection of weapons from swords, and knives to arrow points and cavalry gear. The most interesting armament was a sword from circa 1500's thought to be that of Francisco Pizarro.



The gold museum had a tremendous collection of gold and silver jewelry including crowns, gold finger tips, nose, chin and ear jewelry and piercings. It also contained mirrors (shiny black rocks), knives, combs and large textiles with small gold squares woven in as decoration. The museum even had several mummies examples of skulls with trepanation holes in them that had been covered with gold protectors. The metal working techniques were "crude" in that the gold was not the highest quality, and that the surfaces were not machine smooth, but you could see the basis of many current techniques in the earlier ones.

As a whole exhibit it was fascinating, but I found it odd that as human beings that the two things we choose to display and preserve in museums are our weapons and our jewels. S highlighted that this was likely mostly because we choose to build our jewels and weapons out of things that will survive over generations.


Gold finger tips


Two crowns, sceptres , and a gold breast plate.


A shirt with small gold squares woven together.




The lunch and early afternoon was spent with Ericka's friends planning the alcohol and food for the New Year's party and a great lunch with Ericka's parents talking about the recent military history of Peru against Chile and terrorism, racism and culture within Peru, and then the basis of Ericka's mom's work on orphanages and the reason she has been wanting to build a community center in San Francisco de Assis for the past 10 years. The lunch was delicious and the recent history on Peru was great.


Later afternoon was spent shopping for clothes, shopping for food, shopping for supplies for the next few days, and then sitting in traffic as everyone seemed to be escaping Lima to go to the beach. Along the way I finally saw three traffic accidents, and arriving at Ericka's house the parking lot was full of people vs it looking like a ghost town earlier in the trip. We got in at the same time as some of the other volunteers for the community center and we all got in and settled in for the night. The day ended with a beautiful night walk along the beach with views of many people beginning to gather and hold parties the night before New Year's Eve. The shopping trip made me note that there was a disappointingly small number of tequila options in Peru, and if I really wanted it, I should have brought it down myself.

After mentioning all the errand running including lots of sitting around and waiting in women's clothing shops yesterday, S. provided my favorite quote of the day with a quick and earnest deadpan delivery of "I am sorry that was neither right nor fair." Which made me laugh as it was exactly the kind of phrase anyone in a long term relationship would have immediately available as a first and best response.

-Ruben