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Published: July 13th 2007
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Arrived after a horrible trip down from Trujillo on the first bus out after the strike ended. Still quite worried we'd hit rocks in the road or something but we arrived without incident at seven in the morning and asked to be taken to the hostal we'd chosen only to be told it was too dangerous to stay in Central Lima and we should stay in Miraflores instead. Fair enough we thought except this then entailed an hour's drive around and a twenty soles fare trying to find a hostal that didn't charge a ridiculous amount. I know it's high season but even the writers of the Lonely Planet seem to have some interesting ideas of what 'budget' entails putting $25 a night hostals in. Finally settled in at one which was nearer central Lima than Miraflores anyway and went to sleep for a few hours.
Ventured out and walked an hour to the market (it really didn't look that far away on the map!) Definitley worth it though and I could easily have spent all day there just in the jewellery section. Lou didn't do much of a job of restraining me so I did spend around a
It's culture, I promise!
Pre-Colombian pottery in Museo Larco week's travel budget in under two hours!
Decided to be slightly more cultured so caught a taxi to the church of San Francisco which was incredibly expensive again. Think we're just going to be walking everywhere here! Went around the museum and then into the catacombs where there are apparently an estimate 70,000 bodies which some conservationist came up with the truly bizarre idea of using to arrange the skulls and femurs into patterns of concentric circles. Personally, I think they just had too much time on their hands! Headed to the Plaza de Armas where there were a scary number of police with riot shields so we pretty much took photos and left for Plaza San MartÃn to see the statue of Madre Patria who, due to a translation error when she was commissioned, has a llama sitting on her head instead of a crown of flames! Got to love it! Sampled the Peruvian cocktail of choice - Pisco Sour which we were both less than impressed with before heading in search of food stopping off at the Plaza de San Martin on the way. This seems to be famous purely for the rather unusual statue in the
centre of the plaza. It is of General de San Martin astride his horse on a pedastal - the only slightly odd thing about this is the statue of the Virgin Mary standing on the pedastal. The statue was commissioned in Spain but made by Peruvian craftsmen in Peru. Therefore, the 'llama' or crown of flames that the Spanish wanted on Mary's head unfortunately became an actual llama!!! Look very closely and there is a tiny metal llama just standing on her head. Now I know we've had some translation problems since we've been here but you really would think people making a statue to go in a public plaza would double-check something like this!
Got up late the next morning so had to skip the national museum in favour of Museo Larco which houses the record breaking Paracas weaving with 398 threads per inch as well as the largest collection of erotic pottery in Peru. Yes, the Pre-Colombians did make everyday pots, as the Lonely Planet puts it, 'illustrating with remarkable explicitness, the sexual practices of Peruvian men, women, skeletons and animals in all combinations of the above'! Seems Peru was as crazy then as it is
now! My thanks to Ellie for providing the title to this blog by posing a rather intriguing question that I think would be better left unanswered!
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Ellie
non-member comment
Query ...
Um ... can skeletons actually *have* sexual practices?!