Lima

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Blogger Bec

We´ve arrived!

Day 1 (real) of our Peru trip saw us take in the sights of Peru´s capital, Lima.

We spent most of the previous afternoon in bed watching Nadal beat Federer - we were going to see the sights, really! But when you have the world´s best tennis players slugging it out on the world stage, you have to go with the flow...

We mostly just walked around the capital, taking in daily life in the affulent suburb of Miraflores. The highlight of the jaunt was visiting the Inca ruins which lie smack bang in the middle of the suburb - the ruins once took up over 12 city blocks but due to rapid expansion and greedy property developers, the site got gradually eroded over time until there is just now one city block left. The sight was protected 28 years ago and ever since, a team of 38 archeologists, anthropologists, manual workers and various other lackeys have set about restoring the site to it´s former glory.

You can tell the difference between the restored and the original ruins by the set of the bricks - one is neat and the other haphazard. Or so it would seem - the Incas actually built it that way as Lima is on a fault zone and the alignment of the bricks actually prevented the structures from falling down during tremors. The current restorers figured this out recently when their painstaking work was destroyed in a recent earthquake - they then realised that neatness was not the ultimate goal!

We were taken around the ruins by a very experienced and proud guide called Alejandro who was passionate about Inca history. He worked as a tour guide in Cusco and loved telling us all about the ruins. The team had set up some areas of the ruins to replicate the conditions of the original construction which was fascinating - the Incas were so small yet so strong!

It was absolutely wrenching to be in the middle of a city yer standing atop ruins that are over 500 years old, very incongruous.

Til next time...

P.S please check out my post on the mini-Galapagos, I actually hit the wrong button which quietly published the blog. That meant you all didn´t get an email telling you I wrote something...

Ruins

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