The ugliest and most beautiful city so far!

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We arrived in Lima from Iquitos after a 2 hour flight. We were on the other side of the Andes now on the Pacific Ocean and the climate was slightly different! After 2 months in sometimes lovely, sometimes oppresive Brazilian heat we were back to the cold! The shorts and vest I was wearing didn't really do the job! On the taxi trip to our hostel I had my first ever view of the Pacific Ocean, but it was dark so I could only see the waves crashing on the shore. The view of it in the morning was not something to write home about though! The coastline of Lima is not pretty and the pollution that engulfs the city is choking and very visible. Our hostel was very nice though, run by a British guy from Essex and one of the best we have stayed in and in a safe part of Lima too. To be honest though, after Slavador and Rio de Janeiro, anywhere is safe! I won't bang on too much about Lima mainly because there isn't that much to write home about and also because we only had 2 full days there. Most of Lima is very ugly, very dirty, ugly buildings and some locals are ready to rip gringo like us off at the drop of a hat, but they don't realize that we have been off the gringo trail for a while and it has definately toughened us up. We ain't no pushovers! While it is mostly very ugly it's also got some of the most magnificent buildings and churches I have seen in the whole of South America and even Salvador and Beunos Aires struggle to come up to par with Lima on the architectural front. The San Francisco church was breathtaking and had fascinating though slightly morbid catacombs full of humans bones! The central plaza was magnificent and the buildings that had been cared for where very special and well worth visiting. Some buildings were very beautiful, but needed a lot of care and attention, but Peru is a third world country and I agree that money should be spent on solving social problems here above maintaing buildings. We visited the museum of the Spanish Inquisition (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) and what a bunch of very mean bastards they were! I'm going to leave it here, but I am now in Cusco, the navel of the world and the most fascinating city I have ever visited, but I will fill you in on the serious lack of oxygen and consequent altitude sickness, the great people we have met and my Spanish teacher that I have fallen madly in love with!

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Photos

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
This is the room where the Spanish Inquisition decided the cruel fate of anyone not a Catholic!