Lost in the catacombs where the Wi-Fi is non-existent, your footsteps echo, and the bones are very much... real.
So there I was, on my solo Eat-Pray-Panic trip through Peru. I had my bucket hat, my camera, and all the delusional confidence of a main character with zero directional skills. I had heard whispers of the catacombs under the San Francisco Church in Lima—bones, tunnels, spooky vibes? Say less.
I strutted in, booked my little tour, and descended into the depths thinking, “Ooo spooky history!” What I got was The Blair Witch Project: Latin America Edition.
The tour started out fine—dim lighting, bones stacked like Pinterest firewood, and a guide who kept throwing around words like “haunted” and “unexplained disappearance” far too casually. Naturally, I drifted to the back of the group to take pics and accidentally got distracted by a particularly photogenic skull pile (you know how it is).
And then I looked up.
No group.
No guide.
Just me… and 70,000 skeletons.
I called out, “Hola??” because suddenly I was bilingual in panic. But all I got in return was my own echo and the very real realization that my dumb self was lost in a centuries-old bone maze with 4% battery and no service (I was a teen and this was so long ago – I don’t even think wi-fi was a thing!). Cute.
I picked a tunnel at random—bad idea. Every direction looked the same. Dust. Darkness. Distant creaking noises. Probably ghosts. Maybe rats. At one point I swear I passed the same femur three times.
Then—plot twist—I thought I saw someone up ahead. I ran toward the shadow yelling “¡Perdón!” like Dora the Explorer on espresso, only to discover it was… a statue.
I screamed. The statue didn’t.
By now I had fully spiraled. I was sweaty, dusty, clutching my crossbody bag like it was holy, and mentally writing my will. I imagined my bones being discovered in 80 years, right next to a plaque reading “Here lies a tourist with no sense of direction.”
BUT THEN—like a sign from the travel gods—I saw a flicker of light.
I followed it, stumbling through a corridor that smelled like history and bad decisions. And finally, I emerged—straight into the middle of a choir rehearsing for Church service. In my dirty sneakers. Gasping. Covered in spiritual trauma and probably a little ghost dust.
An old woman who was on the tour clutched her rosary and looked at me disapprovingly.
I smiled weakly, did the world’s fastest genuflect, and moonwalked my dusty behind back up to the surface, swearing I’d never stray from a tour group again…but I kinda did…again..in Paris…IN THE CATACOMBS!
Nothing humbles you like getting lost in ancient catacombs and crashing a church service looking like a cursed Victorian orphan.
Moral of the Story:
Don’t stray from the group.
Don’t trust your sense of direction underground.
And if you're gonna get lost, at least be fabulous when they find you.
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