Lima

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Steve - The flight to Lima was pretty short which was nice and we got there early afternoon. It was a short ride to Miraflores our base in Lima in a taxi but pretty mental. The roads are crazy! There are no rules and the air is filled constantly with the sound of horns. They don´t seem to know how to use their mirrors so they constantly beep so people know they are there. Taxis beep you to see if you want to be picked up, cars beep to acknowledge one another, they beep if you drive badly, beep if you drive well, mental. And at the lights as soon as it goes green, cars that are 8 cars back beep immediatley to let everyone know its green. So glad we are not driving here!

Lima is a huge city and there are some very poor areas but also some really nice areas. We stayed in Miraflores which is one of the nicer areas and probably the best place for tourists to stay. Its pretty safe and really nice. There are plenty of restaurants, shops and cafes and it is also very near the Ocean so there is a nice seafront.

Lima could overawe you a bit but luckily we had Treeve to show us around. I have not seen him since we were in Australia 6 years ago so was great to catch up. Just a bit strange that it was in Peru. He now has a wife, Karina and a little boy called Lucas who is really cute. He´s got it pretty sweet here with a real nice flat, a maid who helps look atfer the kid (so he can surf whenever he wants) and a cool job teaching English to quite important exectutives which also has nice short hours so he can spend a lot of time with Lucas.

We had a really good day sight seeing with them. Firstly, to the Monastry which the highlight of which was seeing the bones of thousands of people who are buried underneath the monastry. The bones are all sorted in to types and kept in huge boxes - it is pretty wierd. The tour was in Spanish but we had Karina to do a bit of translating, you also weren´t allowed to take photos but I managed to sneak a couple off. Next we visited the county court - i think which had loads of torture equipment so that was pretty good fun.

In the evening we went and picked up Lucas and headed out to the Parc de Exposition which is a big park full of water fountains. It was a bit of a peaceful oasis in the middle of busy old Lima. It was really nice and included water fountains that were like mazes that you could play in but everyone that went in got soaked so we bottled it. There was also a lazer show put to music which was screened on the spray of the fountains which was quiet cool. The parc was nice and cheap so locals could afford it and is part of a wider regeneration scheme in the city whcih was cool to see.

I hadn´t heard many good things about Lima but we really enjoyed it - there is plenty to see and do and as long as you avoid the dodgier areas its fine. Although I don´t generally like cities it was actually nice to spend some time here after a month in Costa Rica with no one else around.

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Photos

Lima
The centre of Miraflores

A sculpture of people making out
Miraflores - Parc d'Amore

Horse and Carriages in Lima square
Really like the yellow buildings

Me and some saint
Chilling in the cathedral

Lima Monastary
It was absolutley covered in pigeons. Worse than Trafalugar Square. Disgusting

A box full of skulls
In the cellar of the monestary, there were loads of these boxes with all the different bones sorted into various piles.

Not sure why they have rearranged them like this
Apparently there are 70000 people buried under the monestary. They wanted to be buried there so they rested in peace but instead their bones were all sorted and tourists are shown around the place to look at them. Bit wierd.

A local Police car
Bit more serious than a mondeo

A police riot van
With a water cannon on the roof, they have these on every corner because riots break out so often