Seasons Greetings

The Allan Gardens greenhouse decks itself out every holiday season with poinsettias and other pretty foliage. 

In the central palm house the gardeners usually make a special display.

This year, the gardeners have made homage to Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead for an effect that is both festive and creepy. 

I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday with no zombies.

Thanks for reading! Have a Happy New Year!

Karen

... Aaand We're Back

Huaca Pucllana - At night, by the restaurant where I had guinea pig for an appetizer

Every week Air Canada runs a non-stop flight from Toronto to Lima, Peru, taking off at 5:30 in the afternoon on Saturday and landing in Lima about eight hours later on Sunday morning. Once on the ground, the plane disgorges its passengers, refuels, takes on another load of passengers and lifts off back to Toronto at 3:15 a.m.

These two flights - AC80 and AC81 - were the beginning and end points of my recent trip to COP 20, where the world met to talk and, as always, at the very last minute, pull together a document they will talk about at the next COP.

On the surface, the conversation is about climate change, reducing emissions and averting the sure disaster that will arise of we don't stop spewing C02 into the apple-skin-thin layer of breathable gases that envelopes our lovely home.

Ever so slightly below the surface rages every conceivable dispute you might imagine could arise among 190 of the world's nations. Rich versus poor. Free market versus controlled economy. Socialist versus capitalist. The whole megillah.

At this COP there was a new set of opposites: the difference between what non-state actors (provinces, regions, cities) are doing and what nations are doing. The former group are reducing emissions and still growing their economies while the  latter, with the exception of the EU, just sit around, as mentioned, and talk.

I was Ontario's "super delegate", the joke-inducing title given to provincial and territorial officials who can roam freely among the real delegates, but who can't negotiate or claim to represent the actual party to the agreement, in my case Canada.  

During the week since I returned from Lima, when asked what my trip was like, I've answered there were three big parts to the story. There was the COP story, which has been reported in the newspapers, so I won't trouble with those details here. There was the Ontario story, which also got some ink, so I'll let that go too.

And then there was the Lima story - the things that registered on me and did not make the news at all.

These were, in no particular order:

Traffic

I took this shot from the second level of the double-decker shuttle bus that took me from my hotel to the COP venue. If I caught the 7:00 a.m. shuttle, it took 25 minutes to travel the 9 kilometres to the temporary installation on the CGEP base. If I caught the 7:15 a.m. shuttle, the trip took an hour and 15 minutes. After I'd taken this shot, the young Peruvian sitting next to me asked, "Do you like traffic?"

Global Retail

Directly across from our hotel was a large retail mall built into the side of Lima's stunning seaside gravel cliffs. Sadly, I felt right at home.

Boy bands and Plants vs. Zombies.

The Differences in the Similarities

Smooching mannikins.

Post-colonial bureaucratic residue. 

The River That No Longer Flows Through Lima

This bulldozed gravel ditch is all that remains of the Rimac river. When I arrived in Lima seventeen years ago, the Rimac was a sewage-stinking muddy trench lined on its banks with shanties. Now, the private company that provides water to Lima, unconstrained by anything as elaborate as an environmental assessment regime, collects all the water before it even arrives in the city. The City of Lima is in the process of turning the dry riverbed into a park.

The Stunning Gravel Cliffs

Past Prosperity

For at least 2000 years, Lima has been an important centre for many different civilizations. The past 500 years have seen severe swings between tremendous plenty and astonishing collapse. It shows.

Interior courtyard, featuring an 180-year-old ficus tree, of a home continuously occupied for 500 years by the same Lima family.

Interior courtyard of an 18th century home largely fallen into ruin and currently occupied by forty families - 260 people - squatting on the property, using electricity stolen from the hydro lines outside and sharing three toilets. There is no other running water.

These remarkable views of the two sides of Lima were brought to us by Ronald Elward who owns and operates Lima Walks. If you are in Lima, you must arrange a tour with Ronald.

Work

We were accosted by beggars very rarely in Lima, and mostly in the vicinity of our hotel. In the city centre, everybody works. They sell Chicklets, or juice, or churros on the street.

Other economic activity in Lima's historic centre clusters in categories. Ronald took us through the printing sector, where tiny presses, surrounded sometimes by dozens of people, crank out mountains of paper flyers, billets, tickets, broadsheets, brochures, posters and other crap. The Internet has not come to Lima so all this paper provides employment, for the time being.

Christmas in Lima

A hatless Santa launched in the lobby of the JW Marriot hotel. He is made all of chocolate.

This Christmas Paneton cottage is life-sized, but I never saw anyone go in, or come out. 

Together in the same roundabout boulevard, a green sphere  showing the size of a tonne of carbon dioxide and an even bigger Christmas tree.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Have You Packed Your Bags Yet?

The title of today's post is the question I was asked most this past week. It's nice that people are interested. But I had to say "no" each time.

In fact, even as I write this, I am not packed. 

But I'm working on it.

There are clothes in the dryer that I'll be putting in my suitcase.

I've done a reconnaissance of my closets to make sure I have the things I need.

It's hot and humid in Lima. Word is the conference venue is cramped and close.

So it's summer dresses and flats for me. These don't take a lot of time to pack.

Other than that, I have to do a run to a pharmacy to fill a preventative prescription for antibiotics because my dentist didn't like the look of the shadow at the base of a tooth that troubled me for a day or two last week. I'll get other useful small-sized products, too.

Around 2:00 p.m. I'll grab a cab to the airport and will be airborne by 6:00 p.m.  I will land in Lima in the middle of the night, about four hours before Google gets this to your mailbox.

To complete your The Week's Picture experience today, here's a link to an old post. The pictures are sunny, there's lots of useful information and I like the tone.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen