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Published: April 3rd 2010
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After 2 long bus rides from Loja in Ecuador, I arrived in Lima a day before I had to be at the airport to meet my friend Hannah, who was coming over to spend 2 weeks with me travelling across southern Peru. In the meantime, I had a day to explore the city, starting in the Plaza de Armas (main square). This is surrounded by the cathedral, Archbishop’s Palace, Presidential Palace, City Hall as well as other ornate buildings, and it really does make a nice central square. No traces of the Inca city remain; most of the buildings only date back two centuries at most. The actual city centre is relatively compact, with most of the central attractions only a five or ten minute walk from the main square. The main shopping street, the Jirón de la Unión, leads off the Plaza de Armas up to the Plaza San Martín, where our hotel was located, and luckily the staff their didn’t mind me dropping off all my things a day early. As Lima has no metro system and only a rather chaotic minibus network, the streets are also jammed. There are so many taxis it’s unbelievable. 1 in 7 cars
registered in the city are taxis, but on the street taxis must make up around a half of all cars. When a taxi driver is looking for fares, he seems to just keep tooting his horn at a regular 10 second period to let people know the taxi is available, but this just helps make the city very loud!
During my first morning I visited the Spanish Inquisition Museum, which is housed in the building that was the headquarters of the Inquisition in South America during the colonial period. Interesting if not somewhat graphic! Nearby to this museum is the central market, which like most South American markets, proved to be busy, cheap, but very smelly. I visited some of the colonial churches and ended up having lunch at a vegetarian restaurant on the main street (I was the only customer). But for just over 1 pound, I had 3 filling courses, and I’ve been back a good many times since! It’s funny how the shops and markets seem to be organised into sections - walking down one specific street, on both sides there are opticians as far as the eye can see, whilst in the next street there will
be a market devoted entirely to stationery. I would have thought it would make more sense to mix things up a bit, but that’s the way it is. And no matter where you are in the city, someone on the street will try to sell you something, be it fruit, plastic globes, hot water bottles or virtually any product known to man. You see people carrying the strangest items down the street asking every pedestrian and every driver if they would like to buy what ever they have to sell. Something else noticeable in Peru as a whole is the emphasis they put on their cultural heritage. In Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela history was no where near as visible as here. In Peru, the Incas are everywhere. From “Inca Chicken” restaurants, to Inca Pharmacies, to Inca Kola (Coca-Cola’s main rival in Peru), the Inca name is everywhere. But I guess that’s understandable given the country’s history.
Anyway, as there are no tourist buses to the airport and taxis are quite expensive, and I was getting bored of walking around Lima, I decided to try and walk to the airport, as it’s only about 12km out of the city centre. In
the end it took about 3 hours, including a stop-off at an internet café, though the roads there weren’t very nice to walk along. So I got to the airport in the early evening and managed to sleep quite well on a row of seats until early morning. Luckily the airport is actually a proper airport, which although not big, has all the usual facilities. I was slightly worried it might be like Caracas airport, which was more like a warehouse than an airport, but it was safe and comfortable enough to wait for Hannah’s plane to arrive bright and early the next morning.
Meeting Hannah was obviously a high point, and soon after her plane landed we were in a taxi heading to our hotel in the city centre. Thanks to a nice online deal, we actually had pretty much the poshest hotel in the centre (nearly all the best hotels are located in the Miraflores district rather than the centre), and this made a nice change from the hostels I’ve been used to staying in. Despite both of us being tired, we explored the city centre, culminating in the Changing of the Guard at the Presidential Palace at
midday, which happens every day. A band played whilst some soldiers marched antagonisingly slowly - standing to watch this under the baking midday sun was in hindsight really not worth it.
After a good night’s rest, and a nice breakfast at the hotel, the following day we headed to the district of Miraflores (after eventually figuring out which minibus we needed and where it left from). This area is full of expensive shops, fine-dining restaurants, luxury hotels, as well as all the usual global brands of Starbucks, McDonalds etc. One unusual feature is the Huaca Pucllana, a giant pre-Inca adobe temple in the middle of a residential zone. The tour of the site, even under the baking midday sun, was really interesting. After the Huaca, we headed for lunch. On our Miraflores map there was a buffet restaurant advertised, so we decided to head there. When we arrived, I was amazed at the prices - lunch was 50 soles, which although not expensive for UK standards (about 12 pounds), it’s about 10 times the price of a normal Peruvian lunch. But it was definitely worth it. One of the best quality restaurants I’ve ever been to. The buffet basically had
several sections, including pastas, pizzas, sushi, Argentinean grill, a roasting section, salads, starters, desserts etc., and the chef cooks your food in front of you whilst you wait. After we had finished our late lunch, we explored the Miraflores promenade, which runs along the Pacific Ocean, but the beaches are hardly worth writing home about. And as the currents on the coast have come up from Antarctica, the sea is really quite cold bearing in mind how close we are to the Equator. But with the unusual cliffs, it still made for a pleasant afternoon stroll. In the evening, we ventured to a Jazz club, where there was a Jazz-Reggae fusion night, which was different. We had to return back to our hotel at a reasonable hour however, as the following morning we had a rather early flight to Cusco, from where the blog will continue in the next entry!
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