Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hey everyone!!
Finally got a move on and am now in Peru! My first impression of Peru, after arriving in Piura after crossing the border from Ecuador, was not good! Everyone was trying to rip us off ... taxi drivers, money exchange... everyone! There was rubbish everywhere, the food was horrible, the men were sleazy and the bus we had to wait 10 hours for to Lima was really expensive! :o( But apparanlty the driving and roads in Peru are even more dangerous than everywhere else so we decided its better to be safe than sorry and went with the more expensive, better company! We were on the top floor and had the panaroramic seats so by the time we got on the bus we were happy bunnies again! :o) Even more so, when for one of the first times ever since ive been in South America they put on English subtitles on the films for us! They really are crazy for films on buses in South America.... the bus never makes it out of the bus terminal before the first film is put on, and the credits are barely rolling before the next film is put on! The company
we travelled with was Cruz de Sol who I think are the only company who doesnt turn the volume up to full and only show horrific, bloody, death films! So it was a really nice change, and we even got meals on the bus! The only thing slightly disturbing about the journey was the big fat man sat across the aisle from us, ate like he was in a zoo, demanding the left-over meals and constantly sneezing and blowing his nose into the curtains!! GROSS! I tried giving him my most disgusted look on numerous occasions but he didnt seem to notice... but at least we now know to NEVER touch the curtains on a bus! :o)
We got to Lima first thing in the morning and found a cheap hostel which looked quite nice, apart from the guy running it was a weird old man and kept finding excuses to hug us and kiss our cheeks at every opportunity! yuk! :o( After showering and settling in we went to the supermarket to buy food for dinner (decided to cook in hostel) where I found Cadburys chocolate and nearly wet myself with excitement!! :o) Needless to say it didnt
last very long but I managed to turn Marieke into a Cadburys fan! :o) We then went for lunch, wandered around Miraflores, which is a really nice area, and then walked to the sea front! That afternoon we decided to do a bus tour of the city as it was really cheap but unfortunately we couldnt find the bus because there was a military parade going on in the plaza where the buses were supposed to leave from and nobody seemed to know where the buses were leaving! But we just wandered around the city centre - which is also quite nice actually, everyone said Lima is a bit of a dump but i quite liked it - walked to the plazas, looked around the shops and spent ages looking at an outdoor museum of all the "before and after" pictures of Lima which was really interesting! Lima is so much more attractive than it used to be, and a lot safer as there are now pedestrian crossings so people dont need to try and dodge the cars across the motorway-like roads anymore, however, there were quite a few pictures where we thought Lima looked much nicer before as quite
a lot of typical-looking traditional streets etc have been replaced with massive roads, roundabouts etc - it just looks more like America now in some places rather than Peru. That evening we watched Das Leben der Anderen in German with English subtitles with a few people from the hostel but I spent the whole time trying to translate as the English subtitles had nothing to do with what was being said so in the end we just gave up and went to bed! :o)
The next morning Marieke had to go and change her flight back to Germany and I had to go to the dentist as i manged to chip off about a third of my tooth on a lollypop in the Galapagos islands - luckily the one id had root-canal treatment on so it didnt hurt! :o) Dentists here are SOOO cheap!! We then had lunch in a cheap local restaurant and then wandered around for the rest of the afternoon, watched a Spanish film in the hostel and cooked! There were 3 little dogs in the hostel who were kept on a small concrete ledge thing where they hung up their washing and never seemed to
come down or go for walks (despite the owner telling me they did), I heard them crying after dinner and couldnt take it anymore so I asked if I could take them for a walk and 2 of the children came with me! We walked them for an hour and I practiced my Spanish with the girls and played in the park which was really nice and went to bed feeling like id done my good deed for the day! :o) Just before going to bed though there was a small earthquake which was quite exciting - dont think ive ever experience one before! Everything just rattled a bit and everyone came out of the houses! Im sure there was one more during the night but not sure whether or not i might have dreamt it! :o) The next day we got the bus to La Paz at 2pm. I liked Lima a lot more than I thought I was but there isnt really that much to do there - its just another massive city! However, it did change my mind about Peru and then Cusco, which was mazing, just sealed the deal! :o) Will try and do blog for
Cusco/Machu Pichu tomorrow! :o)
Muchos besos xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.039s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0203s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb