Lima, the cloudy city
Trip Start
Apr 18, 2011
1
11
51
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Happy Up Here Guesthouse
What I did
Saw the sights
Lima, Peru
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Our hostel was quite nice, although it wasn't exactly in a central location. This did allow us to practice our haggling skills with taxi drivers on a number of occasions. In Peru you have to haggle for everything, glad we took the Spanish lessons now! In winter, Lima is covered by a ever-present cloud that has come in from the Pacific, kind of like Glasgow all year round. We found Lima to be a very cool city, the central square, Plaza de Armas, was surrounded by the Government Palace, the Cathedral, the Archbishop's Palace, the Municipal Palace and the Palace of the Union. That is a lot of palaces for one square. It is also the birthplace of the city Lima as it is the exact location where Francisco Pizarro founded Lima on January 18, 1535. So we sauntered around there for a while, taking some photos before finding a nice wee restaurant that was offering a 3 course meal for 24 Peruvian Soles. This equates to around £6, for this we got ceviche for a starter, and either a meat or fish dish for a main, followed by ice cream. A glass of wine and our first try of the Peruvian national drink, Pisco Sour, were also included. Bargain :D
Once we had finished our meal, we hit Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee and headed on to Plaza San Martin. San Martin was a general who seemed to have liberated all of South America, you can't go to a city on this continent without him having something or other named after him. Again, there were a number of fancy buildings dotted around, with a big statue of San Martin himself in the centre. Underneath his statue was a smaller statue of The Mother of Peru, the Madra Patria. Funny story about this statue, when it was commissioned the Spanish sculptor had confused the meanings of flame and llama, both of which have the same spelling in Spanish, so instead of having a crown of flames on her head, she has a llama, hilarious.
After having a good laugh about the llama crown, we headed to another famous landmark on the Plaza San Martin, the home of the Pisco Sour, the Hotel Bolivar. We snuck in another cheeky Pisco Sour, far better than the first, before heading back on our merry way towards Miraflores.
Miraflores is the main tourist drag, with endless restaurants, tourist shops, bars etc. It was quite late by the time we arrived, so we got a quick couple of photos in before going for a drink with a random Colombian we met called Pedro. After that we wandered around for a wee while longer before heading up for our first Inca Ruin experience. These ruins were right in the middle of Miraflores, surrounded by apartments and very much hidden away from the beaten tourist track. There was an amazing restaurant that looked right over them, unfortunately it was a bit pricey for us, so we went to the restaurant next door, from which you could kind of see them in the distance. Still it was good food, and whetted our appetite for the numerous ruins that will come in the future!
On our second day in Lima we spent most of it organising our next move, as we wanted to move on from Lima and head up the coast towards summer and sunshine. We decided to go to Huanchaco next and Mancora after that. Once we had booked into our relevant hostel/beach bungalow, we spent the day eating and getting our gear/lunch sorted for travelling on the following day. We hit up the most impressive supermarket we have seen yet in South America, this badboy would rival most American/British supermarkets, got our lunch sorted, snacked on some free samples before heading out for a pizza in the surrounding area and getting our bags packed for leaving the next morning.
Once we were out of the hostel we got a taxi to the bus station, where we were told after a very long wait that there were no buses to Trujillo (the place we needed to get to for Huanchaco) until 9pm that night, and even then there was only 1 ticket. After a bit of panic, we got a taxi to another bus station (weird fact about Peru, they don't have central bus stations, instead each bus company has its own bus terminal, often nowhere near other ones, annoying) where we just managed to sneak on the next bus leaving for Trujillo. This was a fancy bus, with leather seats, wifi, multiple movies on numerous TVs as well as semi-edible meals. Best bus so far in South America. :D The drive itself was also pretty spectacular, huge sand dunes on one side, the sea on the other.
