September 2 — Getting Lost and Finding My Way in Lima

Sept. 2 —

I slept until about 9 a.m. this morning, which meant I got around eight hours of sleep. I really needed it. I think I had been awake for close to 40 hours between getting ready to leave, traveling all day, and arriving in Lima so late last night.

I woke up feeling pretty okay and started figuring out what I needed to do today. The most urgent thing was finding a plug adapter because none of my plugs seemed to fit into the outlets in the apartment. I had tried the outlet next to my bed last night after unplugging the lamp, and I couldn’t get my phone charger into it at all. Then I had trouble even getting the lamp plugged back in. I tried another outlet too and couldn’t get that one to work.

I figured out that there was a store called Coolbox that should have adapters, and there was also an iShop at Larcomar that I thought might have one.

Larcomar is very close to where I’m staying and was mentioned as one of the selling points for the apartment. It’s a big shopping center built into the side of the cliff above the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to see it anyway, and there was also supposed to be a Wong grocery store there, so I thought I could get the adapter, buy some groceries, and explore a little at the same time.

First I went to La Baguette, which is just down the street from my apartment, for breakfast.

This was my first time really going somewhere by myself and ordering food since I got here, so there was a little moment when I sat down and thought, okay, here we go. The menu was completely in Spanish. I tried using Google Translate with the camera, where you hold the phone over the menu and it translates everything, but it wasn’t working very well.

Eventually someone who spoke English came over to help me. I ordered a piece of toast with avocado, egg, and tomato, and some green tea. It was really good.

There weren’t very many customers, but there were a lot of people working, and I spent quite a bit of time just watching everyone.

One woman had a snake tattoo on her right arm, and she was working on the ice cream display. She would take out one flavor at a time and carefully reshape it wherever people had scooped ice cream out of it. She wasn’t rushing. She was just slowly making each container of ice cream look beautiful again.

Someone else came over and carefully put the silverware and napkins and sugar and everything else on my table. Everyone was so polite and seemed very present with whatever they were doing.

Outside, there was a woman sweeping up orange blossoms that had fallen from the trees, along with leaves and other things from the sidewalk. I watched her for a long time too. She was slowly making these little piles, and people would stop and talk to her as they walked by. I noticed that everyone seemed to know what she was doing and walked around her piles instead of tromping through them and scattering everything again.

I really liked watching her.

I took a picture of one of the flowering trees later. I think it might be a Tipuana tipu, or tipa tree, although I’m not completely sure. It has these beautiful yellow-orange flowers against all the green leaves. I’ve been noticing the plants and trees everywhere I walk here.

After breakfast I walked over to Larcomar.

On the way in, there were quite a few people trying to get my attention—trying to sell tours or talk to me about something—and I had gone out with this intention of acknowledging people and saying buenos días instead of just ignoring everyone.

That lasted about five minutes.

There were too many people trying to engage with me, and I realized I was going to have to just keep walking sometimes.

Larcomar turned out to be much more confusing than I expected.

It’s not like a regular enclosed shopping mall. It’s built down into the cliff, so instead of going up to the second and third floors, there are levels -1, -2, and -3. There are open-air sections and different sets of stairs and escalators, and I still don’t completely understand whether all the different parts on the same level connect to each other.

There were also a lot of stores that I could just as easily find at a mall in the United States—H&M, The North Face, Patagonia, Banana Republic, and so on—which was a little disappointing.

I walked past Banana Republic and saw a really beautiful dress in the window. It made me wonder whether Banana Republic sells different clothes in Peru than they do in the United States. I looked it up, and they do! The Peru website has different clothes from the U.S. website.

Unfortunately, the dress I liked wasn’t available in my size. In fact, a lot of the things I looked at only went up to a medium.

I did find iShop, but they didn’t have an outlet adapter.

So then I started trying to find Coolbox.

Google Maps kept telling me it was about 700 feet away. I would walk toward it, and then somehow I wasn’t on the line anymore. I walked out of Larcomar. Then I walked back in. Then I walked out again. Then I went back in again.

At some point I decided to try to find Wong instead. I read that it was on level -3, so I went down to -3 and still couldn’t find it.

Looking back, I think there may be multiple ways to get down to level -3 that don’t necessarily connect to one another. I still don’t know.

I just knew that I had been walking around for a long time, Google Maps wasn’t helping me, I couldn’t find either of the places I was looking for, and I could feel myself getting more and more overwhelmed.

Eventually I started crying a little.

At that point I realized that what I was doing wasn’t working. I really wanted to be able to figure it out myself, but I finally decided I was just going to get into a taxi and ask somebody to take me to Coolbox.

My driver’s name was Fernando.

I was nervous at first about how much he was going to charge me. I think I have this expectation when I’m obviously a tourist that someone might take advantage of that, so I asked him how much it would cost before we went.

But he was great.

He drove me to Coolbox and said he would wait for me, although he had to keep driving around because there wasn’t anywhere for him to park.

Even at Coolbox, it was harder than I expected to explain what I needed. I had prepared all this Spanish before I came to Peru because I really wanted to try to speak Spanish while I was here, but when I’m standing in front of someone trying to explain a specific electrical problem, it gets a lot harder.

Eventually I bought an adapter.

It seemed pretty expensive, although I also have to get used to prices being in soles. One U.S. dollar is worth a little more than three soles, so everything looks like it costs about three times as much as it would if I were looking at a dollar amount. My brain hasn’t adjusted to that yet, and I keep having this moment of thinking, WHAT? before I do the conversion.

Fernando came back for me, and I told him I wanted to go to a grocery store close to where I was staying. I gave him the address of my Airbnb because I was trying to explain that I wanted a grocery store near there, and I think he thought I wanted him to take me home first and then somewhere else.

He drove me to my apartment, and once we got there I just got out and thanked him.

Then, almost immediately, I heard some Americans talking nearby and noticed that they were carrying grocery bags.

I walked up to them and said, “Hi! Where did you get those groceries?”

They told me there was a place only about five or six minutes up the road. They were describing some kind of big outdoor market that I never managed to find, but I did find a grocery store several blocks away.

So I went grocery shopping.

By this point I think I was still pretty overwhelmed. Everything was unfamiliar and even very ordinary things seemed harder than they normally would.

I bought water and strawberry kefir and honey and some other things.

Afterward I was going to walk straight home, but I saw a place called Ché Chá that described itself as a tea bar.

A tea bar! Perfect.

I thought maybe they would have coca tea, but they didn’t. It was really more of a restaurant and bar with a big tea menu, but I loved the space as soon as I went inside. It was colorful and pretty and just had a really nice vibe, and I’m so glad I decided to stop.

I ordered tea, and when they brought it to me, they brought this tiny sand timer with it so I would know how long to steep the tea.

I LOVED THIS.

I’ve never used a sand timer for tea before, and now I always want to make tea that way.

There was something so satisfying about just sitting there watching the sand slowly fall while my tea steeped. It was such a small thing, but it made me really happy.

I also had lunch there. The thing I originally wanted to order, called the Avocado Queen, turned out to be fried, which I didn’t really want because I’m trying to follow the dieta before the retreat. Somehow the conversation ended with the waiter suggesting mushrooms, and I said okay.

The food was okay. I don’t think it was anything I would specifically go back for, but I really liked being there.

After spending the morning getting more and more overwhelmed at Larcomar, it felt good to just sit somewhere pretty, drink my tea, watch my little sand timer, and eat something.

Then I walked home.

By the time I got back to the apartment, I had this feeling of, okay, I’m going to make it really nice here, and I don’t want to leave.

I needed to come back and settle for a while.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I discovered something ridiculous.

There was an outlet in the kitchen. For whatever reason, I took my regular phone charger and pushed it into the outlet.

It went right in.

No adapter.

I just stood there looking at it.

After spending the morning walking all over Larcomar, getting completely overwhelmed, crying, taking a taxi to Coolbox, and buying an expensive adapter, I apparently did not need an adapter.

I think the outlets by the bed are just really tight.

I couldn’t believe it.

The other grocery-store surprise came when I opened one of the three big bottles of water I had bought and it basically exploded.

Sparkling water.

I had accidentally bought three enormous bottles of sparkling water because I hadn’t translated the labels.

So that was going well.

I took a shower, and afterward I just lay down on the bed for a long time.

I felt so peaceful.

I just lay there breathing and letting my body settle, and I felt really, really good. I also spent some time doing Reiki.

Then I did some work and some writing about my travel day.

Later I started thinking about dinner.

I found a place called Quinoa Cafe that looked healthy and was about a ten-minute walk away. Earlier in the day, after the whole Larcomar experience, even walking somewhere unfamiliar had started to feel intimidating. But after being home for a while, I decided I wanted to try again.

Before I went, I looked at the menu online and figured out what I wanted.

I think this is going to be a good strategy for me here. I can look at menus ahead of time, translate anything I need to translate, and know approximately what I want before I’m standing there trying to process a menu and communicate at the same time.

I had also written out some Spanish that I planned to use.

And then I got there and mostly just pointed at things on the menu.

A lot of people here speak at least a little English, and between their English, my tiny amount of Spanish, and pointing, we figure it out.

I ordered a salmon bowl and a cucumber shrub.

The bowl was good, although it had a completely ridiculous amount of these little crunchy strips piled all over the top. I’ve had dishes like that before where there are so many crunchy things that they almost make the food difficult to eat.

I ate all the salmon and some of the rice and vegetables and brought the rest home.

The most important part, though, was that I walked there.

It wasn’t hard.

I figured it out.

And then I walked home a different way.

At one point Google Maps was telling me to go the wrong way down a street, but this time I recognized where I was. I was right near Ché Chá, which I had seen earlier, and I knew that I needed to turn left.

So I ignored Google Maps and turned left.

And I was right.

I was really proud of myself for that.

Earlier in the day I had gotten so completely turned around. I walked in and out of Larcomar over and over again and couldn’t figure out where anything was.

By evening, I was starting to recognize places.

I knew where one street connected to another. I had landmarks. Things were starting to make a little more sense.

When I got home it was hot and muggy, and my feet were hot too. I had worn sneakers today instead of my Birkenstocks, which was probably a good decision after all the walking.

I took off my clothes and hung things up, and I also discovered that the washing machine in the apartment is a washer and a dryer.

That is excellent news.

I’ll probably try doing some laundry on Friday.

Later there was a dog somewhere nearby barking incredibly loudly and over and over.

Instead of getting irritated with it, I started thinking about the dog. I mentally connected with him and thought, I hear you. I’m listening. You’ve got something important to share. I’m with you. You’re okay, buddy. You’re okay.

I focused on this feeling of sanctuary for him.

And then the dog stopped barking. And didn’t bark again for the rest of the night. I’m not saying that happened because I was energetically communicating with the dog. I’m also not not saying that. I haven’t heard him bark again since…just saying. Listening is powerful.

One other thing I kept noticing today was all the plants.

There are plants everywhere as I’m walking around the neighborhood, and so many of them seem really well cared for. I love the way they’re placed around buildings and sidewalks and entrances. There are these flowering trees with yellow-orange blossoms, vines and huge leafy plants, and little planted areas tucked into spaces everywhere.

It feels like a very plant-friendly place. I like that.

I think what I keep coming back to about today is that I started the morning with a very clear intention. I needed an adapter. I needed water and groceries. I wanted to figure out where things were.

And my way of going about it wasn’t working. I kept trying because I really wanted to be able to figure it out myself. Finally I asked for help. I got in a taxi. Fernando took me where I needed to go. I got what I thought I needed. I went home. I calmed down. And then I went out again.

Each time I went out, things made a little more sense. I started recognizing buildings and streets. I started understanding how different places connected. By the time I walked to dinner, I felt much more confident being out by myself than I had earlier in the day.

I think that’s just what it’s going to take. Slowly, slowly, little by little, I’ll get used to my environment. It’s probably going to take another day or two before I really feel oriented here. But I do feel impressed with myself today. I got overwhelmed. I cried a little. There were moments when everything felt much harder than I wanted it to feel. But I kept figuring out the next thing.

Sometimes that meant continuing to try. Sometimes that meant asking someone for help. Sometimes it meant going home and lying on my bed until I felt okay again.

And then I went back out.

I dug pretty deep for my resilience today.

Tonight I watched an episode of Ted Lasso, and then it was definitely time for bed.