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Published: June 17th 2008
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...30 hours later....
So, the flight was quite good, apart from the roof of the plane shaking...and we mean shaking! LAN v´s Garuda, its on! Nahh actually it wasnt too bad. Food was good.
Ok, after a long time we got into Santiago, Chile via an amazing flight through the Andes. To arrive at "our" airport, as we like to refer to it, seeing as we were there for an 8 hour stopover and we became good mates with everyone. Never been so excited to see a starbucks frappuchino in our lives. All was good except Kath thought her book about guns and violence in Brazil had to go, so Allende was adopted instead.
We officially arrived in Lima, Peru at 11pm at night, and while prepared for a difficult immigration process, we got quite the opposite and breezed through. Next stop...finding a taxi. We went with the official green taxis, and managed to find a driver who was very nice and insisted on showing us the towns ´sites´. A word about Lima, it is dirty, poor, noisy, and they seem to have a flashing casino on every corner. A weird introduction!
Our "tour" was conducted in luxury. With even
our own tv screen in the taxi, screening nothing other than ´flashdance´. yay! Although this was a bit of an overload after our 30 hr flight... our lighbulb moment occured when we realised we´d been locked into our taxi. Not because we would be a flight risk, but rather to keep us safe... hmmm. That said everyone is incredibly friendly and like to practise their english on us. We have also discovered our high school Italian has come in handy.
So, our hostel... We´ll start by saying that we have one of the "better" rooms, however we are between the front door and the toilets/shower. The soundscape consists of constant car noise, car alarms (which when quiet, seems abnormal), walky talkies, honking, different languages, front door opening, toilet flushing.... yet, we´ve managed to sleep (yippee). And at least we have it better off than those whose rooms are in the laundry or kitchen...yes, thats not an exaggeration... ahhhh.
Day 1: Lima, downtown MIraflores
Its cool. We walked to the coast, and walked along the cliffs (yes, Amy managed the heights..) and were greeted by many paragliders hovering over our heads. At first it looked very cool, but on
further investigation we saw that a lady was pushed by the wind off the edge (accidentally) and quickly changed our minds.
We found a cliffside mall, the Mariott hotel was nearby, so we knew we were in tourist town. It was quite different to what we´d seen before, so we decided to splurge on the tourist prices and stay for lunch. MMM good beer and amazing seafood. Happy girls.
Kath did still manage to get sunburnt, her penchant for burning in any situation is truly amazing. Amy was very very happy to see that the Schnauser was one of the most common dogs of the area, Colins everywhere!´Full and content (and sunburnt) we fell asleep. Needing more food when awaking, we went exploring, but alas we could only find a Chinese restaurant.
Day 2: Lima sites and tourist things
That night we both had a good sleep´(repeat aforementioned soundscape..) to wake up for the hostels huge (and we mean huge) cups of coffee.
We charged up and headed to an archeological site, called Huaca Pucllana. A temple that predates the Incan period, and completely made out of clay. Trust us it was pretty amazing.
From there we caught the
dodgiest taxi into the city centre. We thought the floor of the taxi was going to fall out from under us, but he was very friendly.
"Amy & Kaths instructions on how to get a Peruvian taxi"
1) Haggle over price
2) Ensure you understand price in Spanish, if not, wave first taxi on, then refer to phrase book.
3) Learn numbers in Spanish
4) Hail down next taxi, and act completely calm and collected and refuse any other price unless you recognise the word.
5) put your life in your own hands, and keep fingers crossed that you arrive at your destination.
That being said, we got there and started at the Plaze de Armas. The town square, with the Cathedral of Lima, and a whole lot of Palaces. Francisco Pizarro is buried at the Cathedral, he was the Spanish"invader", who founded Peru in 1535. While in the square trying to look cool and in control, a nice elderly gentleman came up to us to tell us about the square (we think we screamed tourist), he was very nice and informative. That being said there are police and security everywhere, ie on pretty much every corner throughout Lima.
At first this was nerve racking, but now its reassuring.
Our next trip was to the Museum of the Spanish Inquisition. Very gorey. Probably also very informative if one could read Spanish. We then haggled our way home and headed to a restaurant. Again not being able to read Spanish we decided to be adventurous and attempt to guess something off the menu. And voila we ended up with BBQ meat and red wine arriving at our table. sorted!
So, tomorrow we begin out tour and meet our tour group. Tonight we have planned an exciting agenda of figuring out laundry, getting our hair washed(if u saw the queue and the state of the water pressure, you´d feelfor us), plus sorting out another meal.
Ahhh all is well. Miss you all, and hope to hear from you.
Kath & Amy
xox
Just to let you know, we added a few more photos this morning
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elizabeth Cordina
non-member comment
re, our adventure so far.
It's so good to see that you are having so much fun. It seems that you've gathered enough info to write your own travel guide. I love your rules for catching a taxi *smile*. Waiting for the next installment. Lizziec X