A yellow start to 2012
Trip Start
Sep 22, 2011
1
26
36
Trip End
Mar 09, 2012
Where I stayed
Lima, Peru
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Located in the heart of the Miaflores district the hostel was down a nice quiet suburban street, just a few blocks from the centre. After the usual settling in we headed off to see the town and find Vanessa who had arrived here the day before and was staying in a party hostel. The center of Miraflores is dominated by a huge park with plenty of trees full of squawking parrots, surrounded by restaurants and superstores. After all the stories we had heard about how careful you need to be in Lima it was a pleasant surprise to see how clean and tidy it was all kept, with an army of street sweepers and rubbish collectors removing the detritus, all watched by a myriad of police and other security officials. It was definately tourist time as the restaurant touts try to get the visitors to partake of their fare. We needed food so we decided to brave the onslaught and headed into restaurant land, and as luck would have it Liverpool were playing on the big screen tv in the restaurant, Neil was a happy bunny. Food gone and match finished we returned to our hostel and had a rest in preparation for the evenings festivities.
Vanessa caught up with us and told us that there was a variety of parties going on that night in several hostels, all quite close to one another and we would join a hostel crawl to find the best. We had our plans and all we needed to do was eat. We set off together in search of food passing by Vanessa's place to collect a few more revellers. We headed to restaurant central to be hassled by the touts and evetually picked what looked like a decent place to chow down. Food ordered drinks in hand we watch the world pass by as the year faded away. Our food came in fits and starts, with the first one getting a meal then another some 10 minutes later, by the time we came to eat everyone else had finished and nearly an hour had passed since our initial order. When we tried to take this up with the old lady in charge all she would say was tough basically, so when we said well what about a free drink she said fine but it comes out of the waiters wages! We left and hoped the rest of the evening was going to be more auspicious.
The evening was the planned hostel crawl, each with varying degrees of 'yellowness', yellow is a considered a lucky colour in Peru and so the new year celebrations revolve around this in the hope to add to the luck for the next year, including but not restricted to yellow balloons, yellow paper flower necklaces and even yellow underwear! We saw in the new year in the 'Loki' hostel where quite a few of the inhabitants had the obligatory fireworks, and not to be excluded Neil had brought along a small handfull of chinese crackers which he obligingly set off in the middle of the street, along with everyone else. The celebrations continued for a couple of hours more including traipsing to another party hotspot for another selection of drinks and the remainder of the night. By 2.30am we were all partied out and returned to our somewhat more sedate digs for a well earned rest.
New Years Day turned out to be a beautiful sunny day so Hannah and Vanessa joined the thousands of other people and headed towards the beach. Peru isn't famous for its beaches and we were warned not to expect much in Lima but it turned into a pleasant stroll along the pebble beach with the obligitary toe dip in the Pacific which with an unexpectedly large wave did its best to soak the rest of us too! Walking back along the cliff tops it was very apparent that Miraflores is not only the tourist district but also the upmarket area of town, huge appartment blocks and grand houses lined the streets. Neil remained back at the hostel to spend a little more time recovering in preparation for a gentle evening and the hope of some nourishment. As with most places on new years day there was little open, just a few restaurants and the occaisional street stall so food choices were going to be limited. Not that it put us off, with Vanessa we headed to the restaurant district and found a few establishments serving food.
Our last day in Lima was spent preparing to catch the bus that afternoon to Mancora, a Northern Peru beach and surf town, where all the Peruvians go to work on their surf techniques and sometime tans. But before we left we found a lovely restaurant just round the corner from the hostel, which at first we thought was a swimming pool, but proved to be anything but. Hannah had the traditional Peruvian 'Ceviche' a sushi like fish based dish a spicy Thai sauce while Neil settled for half a chicken BBQ style, our best meals in Lima.
We headed off to the Cruz del Sur bus station with Vannessa as well, all of us going to Mancora and the next stop in our whirlwind tour of northern Peru.
