Lima
Saturday, August 8th, 2009My Uncle arrived at my hostel the next morning, and after a brief lunch and walk around Barranco we caught a bus into Central Lima to see the main sights here. The bus ride to the centre took about an hour and was interesting, on an old US school bus colourfully painted. The people in this city do drive like complete maniacs and use their horns very liberally. When we got the the centre, we missed the initial place to get off, (there are no “bus stops”) and ended up on the bridge over the river. The other side of the river looks like a very different place..
Central Lima is busy and pretty crowded, like most large cities. It has a number of old churches and other various buildings. The main square, plaza de armas is nice with the cathedral, govt palace and city hall surrounding it.
Next we stumbled across the monastery of san francisco, which has some catacombs underneath. It’s a nicely built monastery, the library in it has a large collection of historic books. The large one on display had some original medieval music displayed, cool stuff. The catacombs were what catacombs are, crypts full of bones, 5 meters deep apparently. Some arranged by the caretakers interestingly…
After wandering through some more of the centre, going by most of the buildings of note some very busy pedestrian streets and the other large square, plaza san martín the light was starting to fade so we got a bus back to Barranco.
For dinner in Barranco we ended up at the same restaurant I’d eaten at the night before, this time with fish in mind. Cebiche is a local specialty which is raw fish, served with corn, sweet potato, onions, lime juice and some chili. We had that as an appetizer, delicious. Fish for the main dish in some sauce, I have no idea what it was but the fish and sauce were both good.
Considering all I’d heard about Lima before I arrived from other travelers was to leave as soon as possible I’ve been very pleasantly surprised that there is actually something to see here and some nice areas. It’s not the best of cities, but the central district has some very worthwhile sights and I’ve had some great food, staying in a laid back area full of nice buildings and good atmosphere.
The next day we had to change hostels since the one in Barranco was full, moving to one in the Miraflores district, in the heart of touristy mayhem. The hostel was nice, but the area was full of gaudy shameless international chain restaurants, people trying to get you eat at their place/buy something and not much else. Only here for 1 night though since we’re catching a bus to Nazca tomorrow. We walked around, trying to get away from all the tacky stuff, wandered to the top of the cliffs and watched a load of people surfing and parasailing from there. Not much else to see though as the district seems to be either hotels and restaurants/bars or modern apartment buildings. Made me very glad with my initial choice of hostels in neighboring Barranco and also eager to get on a bus to somewhere else. At night it was even worse, with people everywhere pouring in and out of the places with large neon signs everywhere.
Adam