barranco: all easy listening soft jazz covers of the 80s, all the time

let me tell you something, dear blog readers.  lima is a 3 day city, 4 days max.  we've kinda run out of stuff to do.  but that hasn't stopped us from having a fine time.  yesterday we ventured out to the suburb of barranco, which is a very pretty little town built into the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean.  pretty nice, right?

after walking around for several hours the bolshevik and i went to this little restaurant with patio seating and a fantastic view.  they also had happy hour.  turns out that translates in spanish.  as soon as we sat down i noticed that an odd, sort of bossa nova style version of Madonna's Like a Virgin was playing.  well that suited me just fine.  i heart the 80s.  then when i received my cuba libre, which turns out is just a fancy name for rum & coke, i noticed i had an 80s themed stirrer, complete with portrait of the rock band Queen!  (the bolshevik's stirrer just had the name of the restaurant.  lame!)

as the night went on, we heard covers of The Cure, A-Ha, Tears for Fears, Pet Shop Boys, etc.  at first we thought it was some sort of novelty group doing these cover songs, but then we heard a commercial in between songs and realized it was actually a radio station.  now let me interject right here to tell you that these covers were not actually good.  oh no.  they were not fun interesting takes on already well-known, well-crafted pop-songs.  they were slow, emotionless versions of already inoffensive songs.  it was as though someone thought "oh i like Sade's Smooth Operator but how can i make it a little less provocative and less in-your-face?"  and apparently there is an entire radio station in peru devoted to this.  thank you, peru.

but my favorite part of the evening was when a young girl walked up to our table selling candy. she was in what i thought was a sort of girl scout uniform, but later the bolshevik explained it was a catholic school uniform. anyway, thinking that she was some sort of peruvian girl scout, i bought some candy from her. then she was suddenly quite taken with our drink stirrers. (our drinks were empty at this point so don't worry, we were not contributing to the inebriation of minors) and of course the girl didn't speak any english, so the interaction went something like this (i will translate for you)

girl: what are those?

me: they are for drinks. they are for, how do you say "mixing?" (then i mimed mixing with the stirrers)

girl: [blah blah blah unintelligible spanish]

me: i'm sorry, i don't understand

girl: [blah blah blah more unintelligible spanish]

me: i don't speak much spanish

and then dear blog readers, that cute little peruvian girl scout girl grabbed my freddy mercury drink stirrer and walked off with it! i would have protested, but she really was cute. and she seemed so taken with the drink stirrers. she was beating them together like drumsticks as she walked away ... possibly to the tune of a lounge lizard version of Tainted Love.