Lima de Peru (part 2)

Pachacamac is in the town of Lurin, about forty'five minutes from the city. I consulted with the hostel owners and they promised me that it would be super easy to get to on public transport. WRONG! First I had to take a bus to the highway. Buses in Lima, though, are not really like buses anywhere else that I´ve been. You shove yourself onto this crowded little van where a young guy walks around and takes your money, and maybe you go where you think you´re headed and maybe you don´t, because the buses aren´t labelled so well and the drivers are prone to following their own whims. So I got on this bus and asked the kid who was taking up the money, (are we going to Puente Primavera? And he assured me that we were...until I asked him ten minutes later and he was like, well, we´re going somewhere else, but it´s practically the same thing. And I could barely understand him because he was speaking a kind of Spanish that didn´t sound anything like the beautiful singsong of the Limenos, but instead sounded like a lot of grunting, so I had no idea what he was saying, but no, wé weren´t going where I needed to go, and I got mad and got of the bus and caught a cab to the Puente.
At the Puente, though, I was suppposed to transfer. What do you know, but the bus to which I transferred was yet another small van, crowded with a bunch of people from Lima´s outskirts. The whole way there I sat next to a lady with a crowded baby on her lap, and yet again, I was not even sure that I was going to get to the ruins because I´d already come to doubt what bus drivers told me from the other ride. When we at last arrived, I was so grateful...
Pachacamac, unfortunately, just looked like a pile of rocks. The sky was perfectly, abysmally gray. And there were a bunch of kids on field trips that apparently weren´t used to seeing an American and kept trying to talk to me, saying ¨What is your name¨ a hundred thousand times. Charming.
Then I rode the bus back, which was a whole other affair. Same crowded state, same confusion. This time, though, there was a robbery in the aisle. Three guys took the backpack of another guy, and they started FIGHTING. ON THE BUS. RIGHT BEHIND ME. Literally scrapping, throwing punches. Not immediately realizing what was happening, I got hit upside the head. The lady next to me screamed (this one had a baby too). And the driver and the money collecting kid didn´t do anything. Just let it go on until the next stop, where the three thieves tumbled off the van and the kid who got robbed stayed on nursing his bloody nose.
Holy shit. On my first venture out.
Anyway, I took a cab back to my general area and walked a mile back to the hostel. A lady was walking her dog (without a leash), and when he merilly jumped onto the curb and nipped at my legs she laughed. Which made me laugh too. But then the dog ran into the empty street and she started screaming. AY, CARAJO, NO TE METES EN LA CALLE SIN PERMISO!!! And the poor little dog jumped back on to the curb and I couldn´t help but thinking that all of Lima is insane.
Sunday I went out into the city with two friends I met here at the hostel. What fun!
I´ve been out clubbing a couple of times with other hostel people. Lima may be wacky, but they do know how to party.
Um...I need to write more, but there´s a little line for the compu, so I´d better go!!!