My first days in Péru

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I arrived in Lima on the 4th of June ... the weather was cold and cloudy, the streets buzzy, the trafic to die in but my compagny was great! We spent four days in this capital and I took the time to let my body recover from the exhausted trip. During the day we took our time to visit some places, to get my yellow fever cab, to arrange the next bustrip and to cook the most delicious meals!

More than 400 years ago, the Spanish conqueror ("conquistador") Francisco Pizarro named Lima the City of the Kings ("Ciudad de los Reyes"). Nowadays, that same city, which rose from the lands of the native chief Taulischusco, is a metropolis of over 7 million people

Lima is, in my opinion, a nice and pretty clean capital with lot of things to see and to do. The poverty doesn´t hide itselfs and it is everywhere... The streets are cleaner than I had in my mind and the people are really friendly. If you want to visit "some" churches, than Lima Centro is the place to be. A church at almost every corner! We did our best and visited some of them, but during that night I was suffering some nightmares because of the explicit and bloody images! Really childfriendly that catholicism... worse than a horrormovie...

Marco found a really nice hostel in Miraflores, a very clean and nice area in the suburb of the capital. The hostel was brand new and had openend 15 days before! there was a kitchen and after all this months of Indian restaurants I ( euhm, my stomach) was really relieved with some home cooked food... Our spaghetti a la improvista was mmmmmmmmmmh delicious! Everybody in the hostel was curious because of the smell of champigñones and mozarella, and jealous when they saw in the pots... hihi, but we were the only lucky ones!

We visited lots of places, but most of the time we were just scrolling around the streets and to get some impression of the citylife... Here are some interesting places:

* The placa des Armas is a really nice mainsquare and especially at night, when it becomes a meetingpoint. All the old buildings and colonial facades are enlightened and that gives the square a magic touch.

* One of my favorith places is the monastério San Fransico... no I have no planes to become a "non", but the thousands of bones and the skulls were really fascinating. I got addicted to them and we saw more skulls in Peru than I had ever seen in my whole life!

* There is also plenty of Inca and Pre-inca ruines to find in Lima. We visited one of the huacas, which is a sacred place where hundreds of young women were offered to get benefits from the gods. Our guide was a young girl who was studying to become a guide in Peru, just like thousands of other students. Tourism is one of the main income of Peru and there are guides everywhere! She did speak English and told us a lot about the purpose of the Huaca, but also about some problems and real life in Peru.


We left Lima on the 8th of June and took a bus to Pisac, ´only´ 5 hours driving. As soon as the city was behind us, the desert capured us... It was beautifull and it did fit completely with the image that I had in mind of what Peru would be....

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Photos

Church of the Monastério de San Francisco
This monastery is famous for its catacombs and its remarkable library, where you can find thousands of antique texts, some dating as far back as the conquistadores. I didn´t have to time to read them all...

the kids Librería on the street of Lima
It was really nice to see how dedicated he was to his bookcollection. He was arranging and reordering the books as a real bookseller with a marketing strategy!

the mummie of Huaca Huallamarca
At this sacred place, for ceremonies and burials, were found hundreds of skeletons of young women, offered to the gods. Sometimes they were found without heard and/or legs, but up till know there is no reasonable explanation for.

huaca Huallamarca
this pyramidal structure in the middle of the city of Lima is dating back to AD 400 and remodeled over 3 centuries. It became a sacred place after 700 Ad for ritual offerings and burials. It hides hundreds of graves of young women, who had been offered for the gods.

Iglesia de Las Nazarenas
A shantytown inhabited by liberated black slaves once sprawled on this site, and it was here that an ex-slave painted an image of the crucifixion of the Christ on a wall that miraculously survived when the area was leveled by an earthquake.

Iglesia de Las Nazarenas
A shantytown inhabited by liberated black slaves once sprawled on this site, and it was here that an ex-slave painted an image of the crucifixion of the Christ on a wall that miraculously survived when the area was leveled by an earthquake.

This is what we found in the catacombes of the monastery of San Fransisco
The underground catacombs are the site of an estimated 70.000 burials! Amazingly... spooky!

even skulls in a nice circle
this weren´t the last ones that we saw on our trip through Peru...

the bustrip from Lima to Pisac
Very early in the morning!This first bustrip was also almost my last one, I was really happy that the breaks of the bus did work properly... When we arrived in full speed at a crossroad, another bus did the same, and that ended almost in a Crash Boom Bang! But I´m still alive, so don´t worry...