Landed Lima, Peru just after 5 am, immigration, customs and with a strong warning to use the 'official' cabs, not the street variety, because folks are often robbed during the ride, and my observations, the rest of the morning seemed to generally prove that out, this appears to be a very poor-very rich country.  I thought I was getting a bed in an open dorm in the hostel, but surprisingly I was assigned a private room with a bath, the hostel is located smack in the middle of old town Lima.   I 'paid with a pre-paid voucher, so didn't cost me extra, yet.  Many buildings are two or three hundred years old, and some even older next to many that appear to have been built in maybe the 1950's, with a few more modern ones thrown in here and there.  The hostel is very clean, and one of the 'historic' ones; but a rehab job was done on it, maybe in the 50's judging from the style of the updates.  My room is next to an under roof, but without  a back wall, all steel stairway, and no air conditioning.  Most older buildings: stores, restaurants also are air conditioning-less;  these latter ones are everywhere, many 15-20 feet wide but maybe 100 feet--give or take a few feet--deep. Most with three walls, two sides and the back wall, but the front is completely open to the narrow two lane street and narrower brick or stone paved pathway and have a metal pull down solid gate for their front wall and door.  Many are one way); with a smattering of two way streets--there are more pedesterian 'mall' type streets every three blocks or so, same narrow width, but packed with people: poor, rich and business types milling around on both sides and the middle going in every which direction.   These frequent 'mall' streets run at least a mile long, north & south as well as east & west.  I really don't know who to feel sorry for the van, truck, car, bus and other drivers or the folks on foot at the intersections of these 'mall' 'streets' and the vehicle streets.  Everyone, drivers or walkers, darts out when ever there is the slightest gap in that sides flow of traffic-- a rushing river of traffic wheeled or shoed weaving and swerving  around one another.  Historic buildings are everywhere, a huge number of them being churches, religious, goverment or cultural buildings.  The upper scale stores are mainly on these mall streets.  I went out this morning looking for a walmart type store, and picked up a smaller wheeled suitcase, that I can carry on board the aircraft.  One trip from Des
Moines to Lima proved the foolishness of trying to carry both a back pack and a hand held sachel, and pull tjhe full sized suitcase, too much for this old geezer.  When I got to the hostel I found that my large suitcase as well as the backpack were more than moderately damp, so every thing was spread out to dry off.  The damp suitcase is the airlines fault, must have been sitting out in the rain or some other water source, but the backpack is my fault, I was in a rush to cram it into the overhead compartment, and forgot to put the water bottle upright.  I was in a panic, because the supervisor at the loading gate was a rule reader / enforcer.  I bleed easily on my hands and arms, and had bumped my left hand on something and it was bleeding, oosing, and she wouldn't let me board the plane plane  in fact I was the last person to be let aboard, just as the gate was closing.  Guess I was going to contaminate everyone aboard.   Uck!  It's almost five now, and I want to see some more.  This is my preday, the tour begins tomarrow, I'll have the morning free, then I have to transfer to the tour hotel.  My travel agent usually tried to book me into the same facility, but couldn't this time.