How good is your geography? Apparently mine sucks...

I landed in Lima, the capital and the largest city in Peru, yesterday late at night. I was welcomed by a balmy 76 degrees an loud Latino music. Immediate after I left the airport I was shocked by the amount of people on the streets. It was close to midnight but streets where extremely busy, people walking, talking, driving - I can’t even imagine how busy it is during the daytime. Apparently Lima is one of those cities that never sleeps...

The language was another story. I couldn’t understand one word; I wasn’t able to answer hundreds of questions that where throwed in my directions. Granted, it was way beyond my bedtime and I was exhausted, but the cacophony of the foreign words was overwhelming. Than I saw a familiars word on the billboard ahead: “Zumba”. Yep, I’m gonna be OK here...On the way to the hotel the driver tried to show me some of the Lima attractions but since it was completely dark I couldn’t fully appreciate his efforts. His English was even worse than my Spanish and he ended up with this endearing mix of two languages, that I was somehow able to understand. At some point he pointed to the wast darkness behind the car’s window. “Pacific Ocean” - he said. What? Wait a minute. How there can be an ocean at 5000 feet!? Something is very wrong with this picture... immediately after I got into the hotel I started googling. I was able to find several pages that put Lima at 5000 ‘ above sea level, but finally I realized that it was a mistake, or rather a misunderstanding, probably repeated by other writers. According to Wikipedia “the city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes as high as 5,090 ft (1,550 m)”. So, there are parts of the city that go above 5000 but most of it is no higher than 500. Unfortunately, I’m in the lower part, no higher than Chicago. So much for my high altitude acclimatization! The upside of my mistake? I’m writing this post watching hundreds of surfers snapping and slashing in pretty impressive pipelines, admiring enormous cliffs on which Lima is situated, and listening to the sound of the surf on the rocky beach. It doesn’t get better than this...