Start of the BIG adventure!

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Landing in Lima

After a very pleasant flight from Panama city we arrived in Lima around 2 pm and managed to reach our hostal just in time to see the 2nd half of the champions league final. We heard Lima was subject to a constant grey mist for 9 months of the year and we weren’t disappointed. For the full 3 days we stayed in Lima I don’t remember witnessing a mere 10 minutes of sunshine. Although I have to say I was relieved to stay somewhere cool after the torrid heat and humidity of panama. I finally got to wear the jumper id been carrying around for the last 4 weeks! One important thing to note on arriving into Peru is to keep the piece of paper they stamp at the passport control as we found out when we later crossed into Bolivia if you do not retain this form you must pay $25 to enter Bolivia.

We stayed about 15 min walk from the city centre. The city itself has a couple of nice plazas, St. Martin being the most beautiful, and a very good shopping street. We were fortunate enough to stumble across a religious festival/parade outside the main cathedral on the Sunday. It was more like a circus than a boring, solemn march. They had a couple of lively bands, acrobats in brightly coloured outfits and masks danced and jumped about, even performing a human pyramid at one stage! They should really introduce some of this into Sunday morning mass back home, the attendance will sky rocket!! On more than one occasion whilst me and Yvonne wandered around the plaza we were asked by some local tourists to stop for a photo. We assumed that they just wanted us to take a photo of them but to our bemusement they wanted photos of us for some strange reason! At one stage a whole class of Peruvian school children and their teacher asked us to pose in a photo with them. Weird.
The one thing id recommend you do if you ever find yourself in Lima is to visit the ‘Magic water park’ on the south east of the city. It only opened a couple of years ago so isn’t in the Lonely Planet yet but its well worth the visit. You really need to go at night to see it at its best, aim to be there around 8 as it takes about hour and half to walk around etc. Basically it’s a huge park with loads of different water fountains in various shapes and sizes all lit by multicoloured lights. There is a very impressive water and light show every half hour or so as well as the highest water fountain in the world. The most fun is to be had at the place where you’ll find all the kids; 4 or 5 concentric circles of water spouts come on and off at random intervals and you must reach the safe haven of the centre and get back out again without getting soaked, great laugh!

Nice Nazca..
On the third day we decided to bus down 8 hours to Nazca to go and see the famous Lines. We opted to go with the famous Cruz Del Sur bus service, the oldest, safest, and most comfortable but most expensive bus company in Peru. As we would find out later on it is much better value to go with other companies like Wari and Cial.

We arrived in Nazca in glorious sunshine which was most welcome after the gloom of Lima. The town itself has obviously undergone some drastic facelifts in the last few years, financed no doubt by the huge influx of tourists. The town square is the best example of this and is a good place to sit and watch the locals rush about. We were undecided on arrival whether or not to shell out the $60 each for a flight over the lines but on talking to the owner at our hostel we opted on the cheaper option. Apparently, 2 weeks before, one of the small planes that do the fly overs had crashed killing the 4 people on board. After this tragedy the local council introduced new stricter regulations for the flights like always having a co-pilot on board, service check before every flight etc. This was all well and good but on the down side it meant that the cost for the flights was now completely non-negotiable and you won’t get a flight for less than $60. The alternative is to get a bus out to the mirador viewing platform where you can get a reasonable view of two of the markings; the hands and the tree, all for the much more wallet friendly sum of about $3.

The surrounding landscape is beautiful in itself with sparse desert sweeping up to huge rusty coloured mountains in the distance. To my surprise some of the lines are right next to the edge of the pan-american highway with only a small fence and warnings of landmines to deter the curious traveller. If you really want to see the lines in all their glory then obviously the flight is the way to go. After 2 nights in Nazca we got on our first night bus to Cusco and Machu Picchu….

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Photos

Plaza san martin
HUGE square in lima, theres a cool sports bar with statues of maradona, ronaldo etc.

Presedential palace lima
well guarded

The good, the bad and the really bad
Amateur film making under a bridge in lima, looked really crap!