This time round we have 5 days in the more affluent Miraflores area. I wasn't looking forward to returning to Lima but Miraflores is a totally different prospect. It's only down the road from the dirty streets and fallen down blocks of buildings but has tree lined streets with various styles of large colonial houses and modern designs. Guards are all over the place protecting the rich and the tourists. It's strange at first but you get used to seeing them everywhere. They even have guards designated with certain streets, in their own small booth at one end of the street. Residents all pay part of the wages for 24 hour security. It seems paranoid but when you see the massive difference of living quality in Lima it makes sense.
It also seems that money isn't spread very equally between the more indigenous Peruvians and the Spanish descended Peruvians. In other words, most people round Miraflores look white and far less Peruvian looking and more European. That does have a knock on effect for me though, I'm less of a standout blonde freak here. Yes!
Our hostel is also pretty flash, it's an old colonial style sprawling house with a grassed sun trap of a courtyard in the middle. Unfortunately it's also popular which means we end up changing into different rooms almost every day. Our first is probably the biggest room we've had on the trip, it even has a sofa and a hammock!
Lima is the capital of Peru, in my opinion this shouldn't be the case at all. It's not really representative of the rest of Peru and certainly hasn't got the style and atmosphere of Cusco. Lima is also on the coast, which also means it's the end of high altitude living for us, now I've got used to it. The coast is moderately attractive and has some surf. Plenty of guys are braving the cold water to ride some waves but from the look of the water, and what I read about the pollution in it, I didn't fancy a go at all. It's no Australia that's for sure.
Cut into the rock shoreline is a new shopping arcade and restaurant area which is a bit crappy but rammed with tourists. It's funny because generally we walk everywhere taking in life on the street and don't see too many tourists. Clearly a lot walk out of their hotels straight into a taxi to this place. The food in Larco Mar, the name of the shopping arcade, touts itself as being a bit gourmet but in reality it's overpriced and dire. Much like the rest of our eating experiences here. In fact we only find one decent place during our stay, whereas Cusco and Arequipa could've kept us in quality living for a long while for a lot less money.
So we are paying more for the room, more for the dire food and there's a lot less to see here. Why do people even bother? If you came to Peru and only visited Lima you'd have a strange and substandard impression of Peru.
We do visit a couple of ancient ruins here though. In the middle of a housing estate is a Pre-Inca pyramid. It's not like a pyramid in Egypt as it's not totally triangle but it's still fairly large. Thing is it took to the 1960's for the government to realise this was a valuable asset for tourism. Then it became protected, only after a road had been built through the site and houses had been built. The site is large but only a third of the original site. Which is why across the road you can see someone still has part of the pyramid in their back garden! Crazy.
For a site that was built around 400AD you'd have thought there would be more importance placed on it's preservation, but no. Still, like Macchu Picchu, it's now being rebuilt. The pyramid itself is built out of mud bricks, Lima is a fairly dry place, that have survived for over one and a half thousand years through earthquakes and invasion. This is because of the clever construction, a library book style. These are small book shape bricks lined up like a library shelf which can move around in Earthquakes but not collapse.
Sacrifices where also made here, a few decapitated bodies have been found and there are probably a couple in that blokes garden over the road.
We're shown around by a guide with an extremely annoying Australian and a couple of Americans. The Australian seemed to be slightly mental but then I remembered what Australia was actually like. Not quite right.
Lima also gives us our first experience of a large supermarket in South America. It's quite upmarket, more so than anything Australia has for instance. The booze isle is an odd affair. Around 6 wine 'guides' await you to walk down the isle. They ask what type of wine you're looking for and explain the differing virtues of each one. Funnily enough they always seem to say the most expensive one is the best. Odd that. But as the most expensive wines are around £6 I can afford to splash out on the next to dearest.
At this point I'd had pretty bad stomach ache for a fair few days and the food here wasn't helping. Luckily we found a couple, literally, of decent places to eat. Whilst in one cafe late on a Sunday night a Peruvian couple came in who clearly had money to throw about. They were very well travelled and got chatting to us. They then invited us to a local club that isn't widely publicised. That's because it's a gay bar. Up until this point I hadn't thought about it much but it suddenly occurred to me what was going on. Most South American countries are very Catholic and that means being gay is really frowned upon. It's also a very macho society so this is also considered a weakness. But the gay scene is huge nonetheless. You just have to know about it. We went along and the club was packed out. No tourists here and it seemed that the blonde haired Englishman was an interesting prospect for the young Peruvian male. Either way it was a good laugh and we danced around like loons with a couple of the friends of our newly acquired hosts. I was still confused with the bar situation, having to buy a ticket for a drink at a counter and then take that to the bar, but still it was an interesting side to an uninteresting city.
The day after we lazily watched a marathon being held through the streets, one girl was running in flips flops.......flip flops!!! I mean come on! All of a sudden a couple we'd met in Arequipa came walking up to us with their backpacks on! They'd been to Pisco, briefly. If you don't know, and we didn't, Pisco was hit by a massive earthquake last year that flattened the city. 70% of the city was destroyed and 430 people were killed. This was a big deal. Once they'd arrived at Pisco they soon realised the magnitude of the destruction and the huge amount of rebuilding still needed. The hostel they'd booked was just rubble. So that meant a short time sandboarding, sounds ace, and a rest in Lima. We arrange to meet up later but one was ill so we put it off. It turns out that was when we found the best eating place in town.
Another pyramid in a far flasher area of town was another brief visit. It wasn't as interesting as the other and mainly just gave a good view of the classy buildings and nearby restaurants around.
On our last evening in Lima, and South America, we visit another area of the city. Barranco is touted as a classy part of town but seemed gritty and fallen down other than one square and part of a street. We eat great food and then visit a local drinking spot. This place was full of shelves with strange coloured bottles with odd labels on such as,'Cat's nails' and 'bark'. It turns out we'd walked into a natural alcohol bar. All ingredients were derived from plants, and seemingly, bark and the such! It blows your bloody head off. Along with the constantly made fresh popcorn given to you and the odd tasting booze I was off my face. It's a shame my bad stomach never quite left me though.
Lima, disappointing but not indicative of Peru. Good bits but hard to find. Not a place I'd want to go back to, there's no point. In fact, if I'd started in Lima and travelled around Peru after it would have only have been better for it. Unfortunately most flights go through Lima so my advice is to get out after 3 days maximum and see the real Peru!
On a side note, as we were having our last breakfast in the hostel we met a French guy and his Peruvian girlfriend. This quickly turned sour when he tried to make her say 'key' in English rather than Spanish. She didn't like this much and after a brief period of shouting from their room she left with her backpack, after giving him a few clouts first. And all because we were there, if we had not been there the French guy wouldn't have tried the language lesson with her. Ah well.
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