3 May Our first day in Lima, Peru! What a horrible place! On our trip from the airport to the apartment we see large swathes of illegal (I assume) garbage dumps along the highway. It’s disturbing to see a dog carcass in the strewn trash. The traffic is frightening! It appears that no traffic laws are in place or followed. Our driver ran through every stop sign. We are happy to find our apartment is truly one of the nicest places we have ever rented and it’s in a nice neighborhood. Can we move this lovely place to another country??!! It is spacious and homey. 
The kitchen is large and workable. I wonder if we will have the opportunity to cook a nice meal… We notice that the beautiful garden is fully secure–there are bars from the roof to the 10 foot high walls so that no one can scale the walls and gain entry to the house. We wonder what that’s all about! There is noise 24 hours a day. Someone across the street has a car alarm that goes off at least once an hour–including all night long. At night I hear disturbing screaming and yelling. I imagine in my sleep-deprived brain that Lima is on the brink of anarchy and the bars are a meager security measure. We are starving when we arrive. We walk to the grocery store and find it closed for the day. It’s hot and humid so we decide an air-conditioned restaurant is the best next step. But getting across the busy boulevard is life-threatening! There are few traffic lights so it’s difficult to find a safe corner from which to cross. But even when we cross with the light someone makes an illegal turn on red and scares us half to death. As a pedestrian you cannot let your guard down for a second or else you’ll be run down. I don’t want to die in this hell-hole! We have lunch at a modest place. The menu includes Peruvian dishes with an asian influence. We try Chaufa, stir fried rice with egg and chicken tempura; and Lomo Saltado, stir-fried beef, onion, red pepper and french fries in a soy sauce and beef broth. It was not bad–we cooled off and chilled out. We walk around the immediate neighborhood and find an organic grocery and, more importantly, a GREAT French delicatessen. If we had not already booked 3 days of tours we would buy wine, cheese, bread and charcuterie from the French place and lock ourselves in the apartment for 4 days and never leave. We buy great French bread with incredible goat cheese dusted with herbs and nice French wine. For dessert we try a weird frozen concoction from the natural foods place. The flavor is Lucuma-Zanahoria, a tropical Peruvian fruit with carrots–very unusual. As we go to bed there is lots of street noise but with the windows closed it seems to be much more quiet.