Advertisement
Published: February 11th 2013
We woke after a comfortable night sleep to a delicious breakfast of some sort of banana french toast pancakes. We slipped out afterwards for a coffee, as Peruvians only really grow coffee, but don’t drink it. Tea is the hot beverage of choice, and they do have some amazing herbal teas.
We returned to the home after some shopping at the artisan market for some last minute souvenirs, and bid farewell to our host family. We would have loved to have stayed for a few more hours, but we wanted to catch a collectivo (shared taxi) back to Cusco and do some more sightseeing.
We checked back in to the Ninos Hotel, and signed up for their tour that evening to show their nearby facilities for the children. We toured the children’s before school and after school programs that feed them, provide them a place to shower, brush their teeth, read, receive medical checks, dental care and homework help.
For dinner we found an incredible vegan restaurant (Vegan Shaman)that had more character and delicious food than any we have ever tried in the US.
We left Cuzco the following morning and had a 12 hour layover
in Lima. We put our bags in luggage storage and grabbed a cab to the city center, almost an hour drive from the airport. As we flew into Lima over the ocean you could see the fifth and garbage littering the beach and water. It was no wonder Lima is not a beach vacation destination and swimming is not recommended due to the fecal content from sewerage contamination.
We strolled the Plaza de Armas area and its Spanish colonial architecture and cathedrals. We then went to the most highly recommended tourist sight, the St. Francis Monastery and Catacombs that date to the 16
th century. We enjoyed the cool musty air of the catacombs to the noisy, hot and humid city streets. Once we finished walking around for a few hot hours we realized that we never had another reason to visit Lima again.
Our flight departed at 2350, and with that, our trip south of the equator sadly came to a close. Time to start planning the next.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.177s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 22; qc: 79; dbt: 0.1s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
ron & lisa & rumi
non-member comment
blog!
I read your entire blog since we are planning a trip with our 11 y.o. son down to Peru & Bolivia in July for 3 months!! Reading about the Galapagos makes me realize that there's no going down to that area of the world without visiting the Galapagos and your blog made me realize that we can do it fairly cheaply by just flying in and winging it from there!! Thanks so much for the info and very nice writing! us in Flagstaff