I'm sitting in our hostel now, feeling the thumping music coming from the bar (I might be the oldest guest here). 12 beds in our dorm. Early 19th C former mansion, French architecture (somehow Eiffel was involved). It's glory days are LONG gone, but I think it's pretty cool. Met some very interesting people so far. English kid who registered for university last fall, but they have way too many students sign up, so they offered 5,000 pounds to anyone who would defer for a year! He took it and is spending 5 months travelling South America. He had some crazy stories (he only told his parents parts of them!).

Driving here is NUTS!!! Taxi drivers take naps at red lights, ours was playing games on his phone, and I can't believe we haven't seen an accident yet. All kinds of random vehicles in this traffic.

Maintenance....everything is under maintenance, from the kitchen or bar here (depending on time of day) to what seems like most of the roads and sidwalks in the city center, to the toilet in a store we visited. In that case we were told there was no water, so we could only use it "ordinario". We didn't understand that, but we did understand "pee-pee". We agreed and complied.
There were so many demonstrations, and yesterday the police wouldn't let us cross the main square. Not sure what about...veteran benefits? It didn't feel at all dangerous, our tour guide took us right through there (unconcerned, said no problema), police were very chill (although many had shields) and friendly.

We stayed close to the city center, which is not as nice as Miraflores where all the tourists seem to go...but I'm so glad we did. We can walk to the Plaza Mayor which is full of cool stuff. Presidential Palace with changing of the guard, the Cathedral and archbishop's home, and so many amazing churches/monesteries/catacombs. We took a walking tour our first day and that was great.Read more