Peru -before the tour

---

A new day and everything is looking much better. Even though the hotel is a bit basic it’s right in the middle of Miraflores and within walking distance to everything. We are all enjoying Lima. I suppose it’s because after only seeing desert for the past week we are now seeing green grass, green trees and lovely flowers…not to mention what the folk in Lima call rain but to us Aussies it’s probably not enough to settle the dust.
Did the tourist things about town and went and saw Pulcannia and the other pyrmanids. In the Pulcannia area the developers had bulldozed 11hectares of ruins before the govt stepped in and declared it a national treasure. Saw a native Peruvian dog…somebody has to love it….a dark skinned, hairless dog with just a tuff of orangey red hair on its head and end of the tail. Had lunch in cute little mall lined with all different types of restaurants….more overeating. The servings are enormous, we are going to have to order just the one dish and share.

Found this fabulous shop called Vivando …just exudes ambiance and the quality of the foods are first class. We bought fresh cooked bread rolls, avocado, tomatoes and brie and went back to our hotel and this was our dinner. From our little walk about town we found the Atlantic Casino and they just happened to have a jazz band playing so Malcolm and I spent the evening there. The jazz band was headed up by an 80year old Irishman who has been living in Peru for 53 years but still retained his Irisah accent.

Sunday 17

Tour starts today. We transferred all our bags to the San Augustin Colonial. What a difference in quality. We have stayed at so many hotels now that you just learn to go with the flow. Managed to get an early check in, then we headed to downtown Centro. Assaulted by shoe shops, DVD shops, electronic shops, clothes shops guess you could get just about everything. After our shopping to buy bags for our tour we headed over to San Martin plaza where there was a huge presence of police, tanks etc.
Walked to San Francis Cathedral and they were holding a huge religious parade. All the people from different regions were dressed in their very colorful native costumes and were all dancing in a street parade. Ran out of time to watch all procession as we had to be back at hotel for our tour orientation.

Our guide is Fernando Salardi…and as you would expect a very nice young man….easy on the eyes. We had a full tour with an interesting bunch of people. 5 Brits and 7 Aussies. Had a ‘get to know you’ tour dinner…if this is how we are going to be eating on our tour we are all going to be rolling on and off the bus. Early night as we had a 3am wake up call, breakfast at 330am, on the road at 4am.

---

Photos

Masonry at Huaca Pucllana
In the last earthquake the bricks that they restored collapsed and the original remained standing....mmmm says something about modern techniques

Native Peruvian dog
Someone has to love it!

Lesley standing at Huaca Hullamarca
Pre Incan

Native costumes
different costumes for different areas