We were told to wear swim suits, bring a picture ID, and to wear running shoes. We took a bus into the central part of Lima and were dropped off at a park and handed directions. Our first task was to go on foot to find a statue that is a bust of a person in front of a structure that has fallen into disuse. Our team found a statue that was a bust, but it wasn’t the correct one. We ran another block found the statue, took a picture and found out the name of the man and learned that he died when a bell from the church fell on him.
From the church we ran back to the main road and grabbed a taxi to make it to the Parque del Amor, also known as the Park of Love. Here we found the inscription, “Edgardo y Liu” in a serpentine wall that was covered in mosaic tiles. At this point due to our mistake with the statue we were in last place. So we ran down steps about a fourth of a mile to the Pacific Ocean. The beach was made of large smooth pebbles where the waves were pounding. The crashing sound was intensified by the pebbles smacking up against each other. It was a little intimidating to dive into the loud powerful waves, but in order to complete the task we had to swim around a buoy about 50 yards out in the cold wavy water. This was my favorite part of the race. It was grueling and intense, but fun.
When I finished swimming, Josh and I ran to find the next part of the race. The run was so hard because my muscles were fatigued from the swim and we had to run back up to the top of the hill and down the road a couple blocks. We arrived first at the restaurant where we needed to order Anticucho; it was in a very nice outdoor three-story mall. We were the only team there, but the restaurant was closed. By the time it opened another team had arrived and shouted out the order before us. Within a couple minutes about 4 teams were at the restaurant asking for four portions of the same dish, so they were a little flustered. About 30 minutes later our meal came out of the kitchen; it included some vegetable that was fried like French fries, half a potato, corn on the cob with kernels that were about 4 times the size of normal corn, and two skewers with four pieces of meat on each stick. We started chowing down because we had to eat everything before moving on. I thought everything was delicious especially the meat. It was nice and tender and had a flavorful marinade. I was down to the second to last bite when I found out that I was eating a cow’s heart. The meat still tasted delicious but knowing it was cow heart made it a little more difficult to get down.
Two other teams left the restaurant before us to go to the Catacombs at SanFrancisco monastery. We ran to the main road where we climbed in a taxi that took us to the next location. Once there we paid an entrance fee and asked where the skulls were. They pointed us through the halls of the church, we ran following the signs to the Catacombs. The signs took us down stairs into tiny stone hallways. We ran through the basement passing piles of bones down in the floor. It was kind of creepy, but fun. We found the water wheel shaped stone and looked down in to see hundreds of bones and skulls. We took our pictures then ran back out. At this point we were still in third place.
We asked directions for Barrio Chino (China Town) and ran through the crowded streets of central Lima. The two other teams had run through before us, so by the time we came through people were throwing us curious stares. We ran passed one team that had stopped at the wrong restaurant and arrived at the correct restaurant first. We ordered four portions of Mim Pau and started running through more crowded streets to Plaza Mayor while we ate the softball sized dumpling filled with gravy and meat. We arrived at Plaza Mayor with all of our team and were just about at a carriage when another racer jumped on before we made it there. We had to wait for the one other carriage that was on the other side of the square. Our carriage finally arrived and we tried to get the driver to speed up the horse but he only went one speed. As we approached the end of the ride we waved down a cab from the back of our carriage. We jumped out of the carriage and started towards the taxi when the other team jumped in. We told them it was our taxi and they willingly got out to find another taxi. As we left the square we were team number one on our way to the final destination, the cross at San Cristobal. Our driver wound through the streets and fought the traffic. We started up a hill winding through narrow streets with houses on either side when we spotted the other team in front of us. Our driver pushed his car as hard as he could around the curvy roads that dropped off onto steep cliffs, but we fell behind more and more. We could see the cross so we asked our driver to stop and we climbed up over rocks to the top hoping we could beat the other team, but they had already made it to the top. We came in second by a minute or two, but we were happy with that. The race had been so much fun that it was definitely worth the effort.
We sat at the top of San Cristobal overlooking Lima. I was struck with how large the city of Lima is. As far as I could see there were box shaped houses stacked on top of one another, multiple story buildings, roads, and traffic. There are mountains in and around the city, but they are brown in color because it is so dry. The smog covered the city and prevented me from being able to see the ocean. Lima is so vast.
After all the teams had arrived we prayed for the city then walked back down the mountain because the roads are so curvy that the bus was not able to make it to the top. At the bottom of the hill was a soccer field with a bunch of kids playing. A few world racers joined in the game and the rest of us watched. I sat beside two teenage girls from the city and we watched the game together. Shortly into the game I looked around to see shop owners, residents, and taxi drivers that stopped to watch the Gringos play soccer.
To see a video of the race and my team go to theworldrace.org and check out The Peru Race video.
