Fear and Loathing In Lima

Lima, Peru

I had a two day layover in Lima and decided to make the most of it. I was reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the time, which made me want to drink and gamble. So I figured I'd start with that.

I went out in the afternoon and found a bar stool at a dive bar called Ye Olde Pub. They had a 3 for 2 deal going on giant mugs of Cusqueña beer, and I opted for that.

Later when I was good and buzzed I stumbled over to a casino with a poker room. The only games they had going were a high stakes cash game ($2,500 minimum buy-in) and a low stakes tournament ($100 buy-in). I opted for the tournament.

The difficulty with the tournament was that they had a no alcohol rule. I've never encountered that in a card room before.

I didn't get much going before the first break. I went all-in on the last hand before the break and got called down super light and lost all my chips. So I trekked over to the bar on the other side of the casino and ordered and whiskey and a beer. Then I came back and rebought into the tournament.

I was able to convince the wait staff to give me a whiskey on one of the later breaks. But I also had to make a beer run across the casino a couple times and miss out on some blinds and antes.

At the final table I was all drunk and everybody except for me wanted to make a deal. They wanted $165 for the bubble. I talked them down to $135 but I didn't really want to do it at all and was surly about it.

Then with four players left the other three were desperate to make a deal. It was late. They had things to do in the morning.

I didn't want to make a damn deal. I wanted to practice my heads up game! I was taunting them with stuff like "if you don't want to try to win a tournament then why have a first place at all?" These tournament regs were so used to making deals at the end of every tournament that my refusal was quite an affront.

After I busted the 4th place guy I immediately made the deal. I received a bit less for 1st place than I would have if I had won it straight out but I didn't have to risk slipping to 2nd or 3rd.

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The next morning I was all hungover and went on a walking tour of Lima. I made good friends with a Scottish woman named Katie. We also collected an English couple by the names of Dee and Warren.

The walking tour was pretty meh but I learned a few fun facts about Lima.

Lima was always cloudy but never rained. It had a population of 3 million in the 80s but now had 10 million residents. Much of the growth had occurred in the favelas on the mountainside as rural farmers had fled from communist guerrillas.

The last two Presidents of Peru were Polish and Japanese, respectively. Lima had a large Asian population, and they didn't use chopsticks.

That night my three new friends plus a couple normal Americans went out to Pizza Street, the center of the gringo district in Lima. We ate pizza and guinea pig. Then I dragged them over to Ye Olde Pub, where everybody complained about how divey it was.

We ended the night at a karaoke bar. Dee and I sang Sweet Caroline. The karaoke slips at the bar had checkboxes for sing, dance, or listen. "Dance" was pretty popular with the locals, who just wanted to bust out their salsa moves.

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I managed to stay drunk or hungover pretty much my entire 48 hours in Lima, and I had a blast. I think HST would have been proud.