South America Day 58 - Lima

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Today we are going sightseeing in Lima. For the first time in days, no early morning alarm or eating breakfast with one eye on the time. We have the luxury of a lie in (minus the texts from daughter number 2 at 3 am).

The old man wimps out of using public transport, so we take a taxi into town. We start at the art museum (MALI) which takes us on a brief chronological tour of 3000 years Peruvian art. The Spanish colonial art is fun; indigenous artists weren’t allowed to sign their work, some got round this rule by painting their faces into the picture. It’s like playing a religious game of ‘Where’s Wally’?

Then we walk the length of the old city through Plaza San Martin to Plaza de Armas where we stop to visit the Cathedral.

The Cathedral mixes macabre with gaudy. On entering, you encounter the Chapel of Francisco Pissarro (the Spanish conquistador who conquered of Peru). Here, his bones are laid on display together with a description of his various injuries (he was stabbed multiple times by the son of someone he had executed).

We pass several chapels decorated on the theory of ‘more is more’ brightly coloured, festooned with statues and balloons and flowers etc. Then we descend into the crypt with more bones and mummified corpses on display.

Back in the plaza, we pass the Government Palace, where I upset a man with a large gun by taking a photo through the railings, and move swiftly on.

We round our day off with two more churches; Santo Domingo and San Francisco with its bone lined catacombs. We are done for the day, five hours sightseeing in the heat is ample, add on another hour for a taxi ride through Lima’s nightmare traffic back to Miraflores.

We are back in time for dinner in the chicken shop before calling it a night with a pack of Oreos and a couple of beers from the corner shop – we know how to live it up!

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