First Impressions - Lima, Peru

Well, we arrived in Lima safe and sound. A rather uneventful flight, however, the fact that Air Canada actually fed us and our attendant acted like she wanted to be there renewed a small amount of faith in the fact that the company doesn;t suck completely.
Our first few hours of Peru were spent roaming around the airport wondering if our hostels taxi would actually show up to get us as promised. After several calls in Spanish, and many attempts by touts to lure us into their taxi, a fella showed up that knew our names, so we decided to go with him, and off into the smog blanketed traffic of Lima we went. For those of you who have travelled alot in the tropics, you will understand this next bit. You know that smell of the tropics? It;s the same everywhere I´ve been - Fiji, Thailand, India, and even Hong Kong. That warm, sweet, humid, spicy and smoggy smell. The second you step from the plane, in that small gap between the plane door and the vaccuum tunnel of the airport, you get a wiff of it. It;s wonderful, and it always puts me in a good mood. So our trials at the airport were quickly forgotten.
Despite the small glitch in plans at the airport, the last couple days in Lima have been great. The sights are great (ancient Cathedrals galore), the weather is perfect, and most importantly, the people are very friendly. One thing that I;ve come to wonder in the last couple days is why on earth we in Canada do not have Peruvian restarants (or none that I know of). The food here is brilliant, and incredibly cheap. With our lack of Spanish, the last few meals have been a point and shoot kind of deal, and everytime its worked out great. Everything is served with rice, with some sort of meat - chicken, beef strips, seafood, whatever you want, or whatever you can pronounce.
I have a horrible tendency while being here to compare everything to India and South East Asia. I knew it would happen, no matter how hard I try for it not to. Asia is what I know, and to me this is a whole new world that needs to be compared. So here it goes - The traffic is the same (they even drive tuk-tuks), the restarants are identical, the noise is the same. However, I;m glad to see that everything else is different. The streets are clean, spotless even, the people are much more orderly, women can dress how they please and can walk down the streets solo (granted we are staying in the ritzy area of town), they are Christian here which changes so much about the culture, the history is different (spanish rather than British colonialism) which changes much as well. It´s all very exciting and new to me here, and I can´t wait to explore more.