April 12, 2005
| November 11th, 2009I got my first chance behind the wheel last week. I’ve driven in Lima before, but I was always following somebody.
Well, we were visiting the Hutchison family and decided to take the two oldest daughters out for some ice cream. (The Hutchisons have adopted 5 Peruvian sisters. More about them later). Anyway, Cliff said I could drive his car, because it was kind of a long walk. So here we went. Me, Amanda, and two Peruvian teenage girls. Everyone was a little nervous getting going . . . especially after I tried to take off with the parking break on.
I know my way around this part of Lima pretty good . . . walking. But this is different. For one, I was driving. Two, it was night time. Three, you can walk the wrong way on oneway streets, but you CANNOT drive the wrong way on one way streets.
Anyway, to make a long story short: twenty minutes later (it should have taken about 3 to get there) we ended up in the middle of Arequipa Avenue (a MAJOR road) with the car alarm squalling, the car had died and wouldn’t start back up, Amanda laughing, two Peruvians yelling “Yo quiero mi mama!”, cars backed up as far as the eye could see HONKING, Peruvians yelling non-encouraging things, and me sweating.
Phew! That was some hard-earned ice cream. I got three scoops after that! Dinay, the oldest, new the secret button that had to be pushed to get the alarm to stop and the car to start.