Botulistic Doilies and Pisco Sours

After a laborious pen-purchasing episode, I was ready to embark on a City Tour of Lima. That's where you and several other tourists load onto a mini-bus (the ubiquitous mini-bus will continue to rear its ugly grill throughout my world travels) and putter about the city while listening to a woman point out things that aren't particularly noteworthy: "Oh, so that's the Venezuelan embassy? And you're going to stop the bus and give us five minutes to take photos of it? How kind of you." 

My favorite part of the tour was listening to her divergent commentaries in both Spanish and English; she'd often tell me all about something in Spanish then, presumably due to language limitations, tell me something entirely different when she "translated" into English. For example:

In Spanish: If you look to your left, you'll see a former aristocratic home that has since been converted into a luxury boutique hotel, the first of its kind in Peru. This building was commissioned by a Spanish noble in the 17th century, and is noted as having among the oldest and most well-preserved examples of the traditional "Lima balcony" in the entire city. It's rumored that its pastel yellow color originated in the original owner's love for his youngest daughter, whose favorite color was yellow. This daughter went on to marry the regional viceroy, and was subsequently killed by an outbreak of smallpox in the early 18th century. If you look just below the eaves, you'll see a relief of her face, which was added to the building by her grieving father.

In English: That building is yellow.

Fortunately, Lima itself easily overcame the limitations of my tour guide. In the course of an afternoon, we saw many colonial treasures, including the Basilica Cathedral of Lima, Peru's Government Palace, and the Plaza San Martin.

My favorite, however, was the Convento de San Francisco (pictured above at left), a Baroque masterpiece that was completed during the 17th century. What's more, the workers who toiled on the convent clearly built a sturdy building; the place survived a devastating earthquake in 1746. Even more impressive, I can personally attest that the convent withstands the weight of loads of morbidly obese American tourists every year, and with veritable aplomb. So here's to 17th Spanish engineering. It appears the conquistadors were as good at engineering as they were at genocide.

Obese tourists and earthquakes notwithstanding, the most interesting (and tititalling, if you're into the macabre) attraction at the Convento de San Francisco is its catacombs. In short, the catacombs are a series of underground caves where convent management likes to stash its dead people and then show them off to tourists. And they do it with style. Nobody's exactly sure how many bones are crammed into the convent's catacombs, but anyone can see that someone has put a great deal of effort into organizing said bones in an aesthetically pleasing manner. In one area (pictured at right), someone seems to have made a type of bone "doily," with skulls carefully flanked by outer rings of arm and leg bones. It's one of the most delightfully gross things you'll ever see. I couldn't help but wonder how all this started:

Two convent residents, a Bishop and a Monk, are walking the courtyard one day.

Monk: Man! I just tripped on another bone. Maybe we should do something about these bones lying all over the place.

Bishop: I couldn't agree more. We should put them down in the basement.

Monk: Works for me. I'll have some on the nuns sweep them up and toss them underground.

What? I didn't say he was enlightened monk. In fact, for purposes of this made-up story, I gather he was quite sexist.

Bishop: No, no, no! I was thinking we could pick each of them up, and then arrange them into really pretty patterns.

Monk: What? The bones?

Bishop: Yes, yes! Wouldn't that be a good idea?

Monk: No. As a matter of fact, that does not strike me as a good idea. You know, handling bones is a great way to develop a nasty case of botulism. And I must add that botulism is no fun at all. It's often accompanied by anorexia, uncontrolled vomiting, and excruciating muscle paralysis.

Bishop: What? I don't follow.

Monk: Botulism. It's a bacterial infection. You can get it from handling the bones of dead things like, you know, people.

Awkward pause.

Bishop: Yeah. That's where I'm going to have to differ with you. He then holds up his fingers to do quotation marks in the sky. You see, I'm more of a "Pre-Age of Enlightenment" Catholic. So, I don't really connect cause and effect. I don't know about all this "handling bones" mumbo jumbo; all I know is that if indeed you do get this botulizzle...

Monk: Botulism.

Bishop: Whatever. Like I was saying, if you do get this "botulism," it's because it was the will of God. It's all up to Him. That's the only possible explanation.

Monk: Um, okay. So, following that logic, if you were to take a nap in the middle of the street, and subsequently get stepped on by a horse?

Bishop: ....will of God, most definitely.

Monk: Wow. Well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. You can play interior decorator with your bones all you want, but I'm going to sit this one out.

Bishop: Oh, I'm afraid that's not advisable.

Monk: Huh?

Bishop: Well, another thing about the pre-Age of Enlightenment church is that we burn people at the stake who disagree with our worldview.

Monk: You mean me? Burned at the stake?

Bishop: ...to a crisp.

Monk: Oh. I don't like the sound of that at all.

Bishop: Well, sorry. I don't make the rules. I just light the match.

Monk: What? The self-igniting match won't be invented for another 200 years.

Bishop: Well, fine. I light the whale oil or whatever. Either way, I'd suggest you repent unless you're yearnin' for a burnin'.

Monk: Yearning for a burning? That's nice. You should put that on a bumper sticker or something.

Bishop: Thanks. I'll be sure to put that one on the back of my donkey cart. So, what say you to getting burned alive for your treacherous ideas?

Monk: I was thinking that we could arrange the bones in a doily pattern! 

Bishop: I love doilies!

Monk: Yeah. Your hot pink vestments would suggest as much.

And that's how the catacombs of the Convento de San Francisco came to be.

So, after my city tour was completed, I finally joined Isabel for an amazing dinner at T'anta, a rather famous restaurant in Lima, which is the brainchild of Peru's resident celebrity chef Gaston Acurio. You really should click here to learn more about him, particularly if you're lucky enough to live near one of his restaurants in Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Spain, or Venezuela. Sadly, I didn't get to enjoy my dinner (or my accompanying Pisco Sour) as long as I would have liked; I took off directly from dinner for the airport for an overnight flight to Houston. And, with that, my trip to Peru was finished.