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About Lima

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

I ran out of blogging gas at the end of my trip, so I never really mentioned anything about Lima.  In hindsight, that’s quite appropriate.  I approached Lima a lot like I’d have approached Oakland during a week long trip to the Bay Area: you spend 6 days in San Francisco, and then one day you find yourself in Oakland trying to figure out why you’re there and what’s worth visiting.  From what I saw – and admittedly, I wasn’t there long – Lima is a city that doesn’t have a lot going for it.  There’s great seafood.  But also squalor and poverty rivaling the shanty towns of South Africa.  Lima is not a bad place, but given an additional 5 days I’d have much rather visited La Paz.

Food aside, the highight of my Lima stay was the ancient pyramid at Huaca Pucllana.   Imagine a pyramid dating back to the 3rd century… way before the Incas.

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And this thing is right smack in the middle of an upscale, downtown residential neighborhood!

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The site was badly neglected between 1930 and 1960, when – among various other things – it was used as a motocross course.  Back then it mostly resembled a dirt hill.  Now they’re taking care to uncover the entire site.  Some walls needed to be recreated with new bricks, but many others are original.

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It was pretty amazing seeing this pyramid rising up in the middle of the city.  And it’s older than anything else I’d seen in Peru.  Not a bad way to cap my visit.  But once I got to Lima and saw TGI Friday’s, Starbucks, and a KFC delivery moped… well, let’s just say I knew this wasn’t the place for me.