hello, miraflores!

Since we are grownups who do what we want, Marlo and I made the executive decision to spend the next three weeks on the beach. Being a grownup is the coolest thing ever, how come no one told me?! So here we are in Miraflores, Lima in a situation that might commonly be known as living the dream. Here's why:

We are sharing a beautiful townhouse with two Peruvian med students. This townhouse involves a maid and a doorman, but more importantly, it involves TWO MONKEYS IN THE KITCHEN. Saved from a lab experiment only to live a cramped life in a cage, these two little guys spend their time leaping around the cage and releasing pent-up aggression in sexual ways (well, the boy monkey tries; the girl monkey appears to have a headache tonight). Here's a good diet trick: put a sexually charged male monkey (who isn't even wearing a dignified diaper like the street performer monkeys) next to your fridge. Making repeated eye contact with simian penises (peni?) is profoundly disturbing/unappetizing. Don't look at this picture too closely. Fair warning.

The huge, airy cafe with leather couches at the end of our street has a playlist that consists solely of Tupac, Fugees and UB40. That's not a joke, someone at that cafe divined precisely what we want to listen to and plays "Red Red Wine" followed by "Shorty Wanna Be a Thug" and follows it up with remixes of "Family Business." After six weeks of listening to horrid Bolivian pop, Tupac is like water to my thirsty ears. Here's a fancy old lady doing some important work at the cafe. That's right, our creepy documentation of the elderly in public hasn't ceased since we left Buenos Aires.

Our proximity to the beach is absurd (this sunset is a couple blocks from our door), and we have no excuse not to be on the water everyday. When in Rome, people! This has also led to the long-awaited surfing phase of our adventure. Side note: the first and only time I have been surfing was in high school, when a 400 pound security guard named Kaz taught me on Waikiki and my upper body strength was roughly equal to Stephen Hawking's. After a couple days of getting my butt kicked by the Pacific Ocean and wanting to die from paddling so much, I'm currently at the phase where I catch a wave, stand up, get nervous and sit down, realize I'm still on the wave and stand back up, almost hit someone and sit back down, and eventually topple over. Watch out Kelly Slater.