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Published: September 10th 2011
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We had been to Lima before, four years ago. This was to be the first place we went back to on this trip, and on the last trip we hadn't seen a whole lot. Still, it was at least familiar. The bus from Trujillo was pretty good again – so far Peruvian buses were good. We then tried to find the Flying Dog Hostel. This wasn't so easy, as there were three, but we found it. It wasn't a bad hostel, but it was a typical hostel. Had a bit of an argument with the bloke at the desk. We had paid a deposit for the room online, and he had no record. This wasn't the first time this had happened, but every other time the people had been nice about it, and taken our word for it. Our word, and a copy of the receipt from the website wasn't enough this time.. This guy, to be frank, was a wanker. This coupled with the busy backpacker feel of the hostel means I'm breaking my rule about negative comments – find another place to stay in Lima.
One plus, though, was the location. The hostel was in Miraflores very close
to restaurants, bars and shops. Also right across the road from a lovely park, stuffed with stray cats. Hundreds of them, big small, fluffy, scrawny; they were all there. The park had become the dumping ground for unwanted pets and quite the community had grown up. The large signs warning that dumping of pets wasn't such a top idea and was punishable by flaying or some such wasn't entirely ineffective – they provided nice shade for the relaxing felines. Cats sleep 50% of their lives, the rest is spent alternatively harassing and ignoring lesser species, like sparrows and humans.
On our previous visit we hadn't gone to see any museums or the like, so we needed to rectify that this time. The museum in Lima – the Museo Larco - was supposed to worth a visit, and that turned out to be the case. A huge array of Incan and pre-Incan artefacts were on display in a beautiful old building, and displayed to good effect.
Interesting jewellery, very well made, and a lot of it would be familiar these days – necklaces, broochs, even silver and gold ear flesh tunnels. I've yet to see the reemergence of gold
beak looking things for your nose, but they can't be too far away. In another part they had there the world's highest thread count fabric and next to those - pre-Colombian Orchy bottle bongs. The surgery section had some slightly disturbing trepanated skulls, and apparently brain surgery was quite advanced under the Inca.
There was an entire wing devoted to adults only art – thousands of p0rnographic clay figurines with hetero, same sex and solo featured. Peoples' thoughts have never strayed all that far from shagging.
Penis drinking cups were common – you have to go a lot further back than that to get away from tacky hen's parties, it seems.
The Plaza de Armas in Lima was one of the best I've seen and, even better, they'd found a use for the leftover yellow paint from Trujillo. If you went early in the day the sky was clear and the day beautiful, the bright blue sky providing brilliant contrast with the buildings. Inevitably, though, come mid morning a fog started to roll in; a result of the Humboldt current flowing up the West coast from the south, bringing cold water. It causes the fog and brave local
surfers to freeze their nipples off.
Those surfers we could see from the flash development of Larco Mar, again, for a couple hours in the morning. By the afternoon the fog had reduced visibity to less than 100 metres.
The national drink of Perú is Pisco, and we remembered with fondness drinking more than our share of Pisco Sours last time through. Accordingly, I bought a bottle of Pisco, and a decent bottle it was, too. Tasted like crap straight, though. It was no rum, no tequila.
I was stuck – really couldn't be bothered leaving the hostel to find something to mix it with, so I made do with a bottle of drinking yoghurt – Latin America's favourite drink – et voila! A new drink was born; Yopisco. And it was actually pretty damn tasty. Revelling in my creativity, I got maybe a bit carried away, and next morning created the world's first Yopisco hangover.
In the end we had a pretty good time in Lima. It was big city, polluted, crowded, dangerous in parts. But you need to look past that sort of stuff or you miss out on the good bits.
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