South America

We arrived in Lima yesterday after returning from my grandad’s funeral. It was a such a lovely service but also very sad and he will be missed by everyone. One of the reasons we came back to South America is because my Grandad loved reading my blog and commenting on it, and we knew he would be disappointed if we cancelled our trip. ❤️

Today we had a tour around Lima with an American guide. He moved from Minnesota to Lima 6 years ago and loves learning new things from the people he tours. He showed us around Lima and showed us all the street art, architecture and told us about the geography and climate of Lima.

First, we were shown all the street art of Lima. The most famous artist is called Jade Rivera, and is an incredible artist and paints using magical realism (if you read my blog from earlier you will know that I visited the home of the “kickstarter” or “inventor” of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez). So for example he would paint a realistic boy but with a huge snail on his back. There is a tunnel that goes under a bridge, and all through that tunnel and around it is beautiful street art representing many things. Most were left for you to interpret for yourself. Something that really got me thinking was a female Spanish street artist who, for international women’s day, painted some Spanish words often used in a derogotary way towards women - our guide said she was proudly reclaiming the words as points of pride. Other artists painted female ninjas, and one painted a woman shown “shouldering the burden” of handling all the jobs of the house such as feeding everyone, educating the kids and taking care of everyones emotional well-being.

We also looked at the unique architecture in Lima. There are some long houses, that used to be one house, but over time, people split them up for their kids, so now they look like many small divisions of one large house. There was one house that we saw and it had no roof! When the house lost its roof, the owners didn’t bother fixing it as there is only 1cm of rain a year in Lima! Did you know Lima is the 2nd biggest city built on a DESERT? I had no idea that Lima was originally a desert until my mum pointed out all the cacti and the sand plains on the hills! See if you can see any in the photos.Читать далее