At the first hostel we stayed in Lima, we made friends with one of the guys that worked the front desk: Jhony, pronounced 'Johnny'. Jhony is a guy around our age, whom has a degree in tourism and apparently was quite the expert on his fair city. One afternoon, he took us to his favorite ceviche restaurant and introduced is to his friends, two lovely European girls also backpacking through Peru. After a scale tipping meal and fun cross cultural conversation, we decided that we wanted to go to the Centro district of the city to see the underground crypts, under the Iglesia de San Pedro. It's a huge church just off the central square, right by the financial district in Lima. The church itself is, of course, beautifully ornate and historically significant. The draw, however, lays in what lies beneath. A while ago, archeologists discovered tens of thousands of skeletons and other remains of saints and other religious nobles. In fact, they now know that they have only unearthed one layer of the crypt, and they estimate thousands more skeletons are still entombed underneath the layer already opened. Fascinating huh?
Here's where it gets good:
So we are rushing through the city in order to get there before 1730, when the crypts close to the public. Despite our best efforts and fast paced nurse walking, we arrive about five minutes prior. Jhony tries to duck past them, but the security guard blocks him, and I immediately think our plans are foiled. But nope, Jhony turns around and instructs us to wait there, while he slipped inside. A few minutes later, he emerges through a crack in the gigantic door and motions for us to follow him inside, but discreetly! We scamper past the ticket counter and down into the catacombs. It's dark. The ceilings are low. There are gray brick enclosures everywhere... oh, and filled with human remains. Right, then. We run through the crypt, ducking under the freakishly low ceilings and peering into the vats of skulls, femurs, hand bones. Every so often, we hear activity above us, and Jhony points out that the church is right there, and audible through the floor grates. There is music and ceremony upstairs, and I finally ask Jhony "So, how did we get in here?" We were the only ones down there and it was quite apparent that there was something going on upstairs. Jhony then laughs and explains to me that, at this very moment, there was a priest who was being buried in the crypt. He gave the guards some sob story about us leaving Lima the next day, and they agreed to let us in as long as we went all the way into the crypt and didn't come out until after the burial was over.
Uh, what? Well, look at that. We peer past the brick columns and sure enough, song and incense are following a casket that is being placed into a wall inside the very crypt where we were trapped by a mob of priests blocking the entrance into the crypt. Aaron fell silent as his Catholic guilt erupted, and Nick and I tried to not gasp at the air of formality we were breathing in. Jhony obviously wasn't taking it so seriously. I accidentally catch the eye of one of the priests, and hope that he isn't too offended. They complete the ceremony and the priest waves at us to go before them out of the tomb. We oblige, and then are paraded through a crowd of priests, monks, nuns, and family, all staring at us as we tumble out of the tomb. There are no words for that kind of awkward, but I still felt oddly exhilarated having been witness to something I might never see again. Afterwards, Jhony sneaks us into the rest of the monastery, through the ancient libraries, cloisters and hallways. We literally hide from security guards as they march by, and Jhony somehow magically knew how to open all of those crazy doors.
We complete our haphazard tour, and just look at each other as we leave the church, amazed at what we had just seen. Undigestible at the time, but now brings feelings of both honor and embarrassment. A good story all the same.
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