The Price of Gas in Lima

Visiting Lima by taxi allows you to forget little things like the price of gas. About four years ago in California gas topped $3.00 a gallon and boy did the media play it up for all it was worth. People were trading in their SUVs and minivans for a Prius or a Scion.





Funny thing, the media was very quiet a few months ago when gas topped $4.00 a gallon. I heard one quote from President Obama that he had planned for gas to hit $5.00 a gallon, but just not so quickly.




Each morning my hotel in Lima leaves me a copy of the USA Times. Thursday morning, buried on page 7, was an article that quoted OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri as saying "We are unable to reach concensus to raise our production" of oil, which caused oil prices to jump.









Then today as my taxi was returning to my hotel, I saw my first Peruvian gas station. Gas price

listed at 16.54 and my stomach churned. Over fourteen dollars a gallon for gas?






Then calm reason took over, I remembered that was the prices in soles, not dollars. And they sell it by the liter here not the gallon. OK, quick trip to a currency converter and that works out to 5.98841 USD. Well, that's a little better, but still pretty expensive. But wait, is that per liter or per gallon?





I will leave that for the audience to decide. I've reached my math quota for the day.