Erik MH:

In which Mau hits a homerun

I’ve used Airb­nb extens­ively since 2015 for lodging, in loc­a­tions close to home that I know well and fur­ther afield in Edin­burgh, Prague, Par­is, and more. Only once before, how­ever, have I ever booked an Airb­nb “event” (a day-long cruise along the cost of Mar­ti­nique). It was a suc­cess; and, based on that suc­cess, I thought that find­ing the “right” experience(s) in Lima might serve as a use­ful intro­duc­tion to the city.

I picked A magic­al walk­ing tour on the bohemi­an side of Lima, hos­ted by an artist (act­or and author) named Mau, reas­on­ing that someone with that kind of interest and back­ground would be able to tell me more about what I wanted to know about the city than the usu­al sort of tour guide with a mem­or­ized spiel. It didn’t hurt that her descrip­tion of the event rein­forced that idea, or that she had an astro­nom­ic­al 4.98 rating.

Non­ethe­less, I was unpre­pared for the joy, the pas­sion, the incis­ive take on his­tory, or indeed the love with which she presen­ted her home dis­trict of Bar­ranco. There were only two oth­er vis­it­ors in the tour group, a delight­ful young couple I’ll write more about shortly. The tour was sched­uled to take about three hours, but we kept pep­per­ing Mau with ques­tions and obser­va­tions, and we were all hav­ing such a good time that three hours had turned into four before we knew it. ^{1 1} The work of Jade Rivera, quite rightly, figured prom­in­ently in the second half of our tour.

My only regret is that I was liv­ing in the moment so much that I neg­lected to take more than three pho­tos. I hope that Camer­on or Kar­en would like to go on this tour so that I have a good excuse to do it once again.

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