After about a week in the Sacred Valley, our oxygen-starved bodies returned to Lima, the coast, sea-level, 0 feet! The oxygen filled air, however polluted, was abundant and never tasted so sweet. For whatever reason, we never realized the 8 million of people of Lima lived right on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. I guess that, on some level, we imagined that all of Peru was situated in the mountains and only indigenous cultures existed. Not true. While the majority of Lima can described as slums, the area of the city we visited was quite Westernized. Miraflores, the upscale neighborhood of Lima, sandwiched between the coast and the historical center, could have been any coastal city in the United States or elsewhere. Full of American restaurants, Las Vegas-style casinos and shopping malls, Miraflores was a
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