I did not have a match today, Tuesday, and do not have one tomorrow…so my tournament will be packed into Thursday/Friday/Saturday, if all goes well (and I have a flight out Saturday night!).
Today I hit at 6:30 in the morning, the only time there are courts available for practicing other than around 9pm. Marc Pepin from Canada was nice enough to get up early and it was barely light when we started to hit, and misting lightly…then heavily. It’s much cooler this year than last year (it is nearly winter here) and has been overcast and a bit gloomy. They are using Wilson extra duty balls this year and they are absorbing all the moisture…as if they were made for hard and not clay courts.
I ran into Graciela Donoso and some other Argentine players when I went to meet up with Toni Novack at the club.
After hitting I did my normal hour workout then met up with Toni Novack (she won her 75s RR match) and we walked down to the ocean promenade to a mall there, filled with normal mall type stores…Gap, H & M, North Face, Patagonia, etc. (We also walked by my apartment and I showed Toni “the staircase”…she made it up then had rest on the stool outside the door! We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Pacific (the water is now about 62 degrees here and there were lots of surfers out…but the waves were missing).
I had ceviche for lunch…my second day in a row (and the second time in my life)…turns out I really like Peruvian ceviche. Then I went to the store to buy some Peruvian cocoa and chocolate (cocoa is grown in Peru). I saw that it’s not only milk that is sold in bags here…yogurt, sour cream and even evaporated milk are in bags. Not sure where it’s supposed to go once opened.
Services are inexpensive here…a massage at the club is 50 soles an hour or around $13. Since I don’t play tomorrow either I guess I’ll do that tomorrow. Since the club is fit between streets and rows of high rises, much of the club is underground…the locker rooms, massage facility, and the pool. The gym though is on an upper level. I went in to use a dumbbell when I walked by. It’s always busy. And below is one of the three restaurants on site (not including the street food).
The tournament has more booths than ever this year. They added a whole bunch of what they call “Peruvian Street Food” booths (seems like alcohol and junk food but I’m sure it’s delicious) down stairs from the center court, and some other booths behind another court…there are 773 players this year, or double the number in Mont Tremblant despite there being no consolation events offered. About 700 seem to be men (slight exaggeration, but 650 may be accurate). Matches start at 8am and the curfew is midnight.
And that’s a wrap on Day 2 of the tournament in Lima. I should play by Thursday (Day 4).