Day 2: Lima

After a good night's sleep we woke up around 6 am. It was so early that breakfast wasn't served yet at our hostel. Still, we went to the kitchen to have a cup of tea while a young man was preparing some homemade pineapple juice, which we tried later (despite being nice, we didn't trust the water--travellers' number one enemy).

It was time to dive in and see what Lima had for us. We decided to stay only one day and devote more time to far more interesting areas (we were not very keen on big urban places this time).

Our hostel was in Miraflores, a neighbourhood by the sea and, according to what we read, the most touristy but safest area in Lima. And we did the right thing, taking into account that the most beautiful places for us were the seafront and the "Love Park" (which we'll talk about later). This area is quite far from the city center but, crazy and adventurous as we are, we dared to go on foot (well, actually we didn't know how the buses worked...there were no bus stops but guys leaning out of the tiny crowded buses shouting names of streets they went to). It "only" took us around 3-4 hours to get downtown, but it's good exercise to walk if you like hiking and nosing around to get a deeper picture of Lima's character. Well, the verdict was...horrible traffic and an incredibly polluted city. You couldn't breathe without feeling that toxic acid smell coming into your lungs. This is aggravated by the fact it never rains here. The taxi driver told us yesterday that he had never seen a single drop of rain falling down, which we could confirm when we checked how dirty the buildings were.



micros or combis



pollution


We popped into the many markets there were on our way until we came across a huge gastronomic festival that was taking place, called Mistura. We were tempted to go but there was a long queue ahead of us that even turned round the building (the length of a whole city block!), so we just went on our way downtown.

tiny stands

 

 

We arrived at Plaza de San Martín, a Frenchified square. There is a funny story about the landmark in the middle of the square: one of the statues placed on the base of the landmark holding the equestrian statue has a llama (the animal) on its head. Spain had ordered a statue to be dedicated to the motherland and instructed that the statue was to wear a crown of flames. The word flame is also llama in Spanish. It didn't occur to anybody to clarify this (they might have thought it wasn't neccesary), but the statue, instead of sporting a resplendent crown of flames, has a nice llama on it.

the crown of llamas

Paseo de los Héroes

Our stomachs rumbled, so we took a street off the square and had our first proper Peruvian meal, surrounded only by locals and background 80's hits. Most menus consist of a generous bowl of soup, main course (of whatever, with the omnipresent rice or fries) and chicha, lemonade or coca tea. We soon discovered how delicious their soups were! We also wanted to give the pisco sour a try, the national drink. Humm....Hell! Strong!! Definitely not the best option when you are sightseeing if you don't want to end up smashed and crawling into places (we didn't).

menus for 7 soles (around 2 euro/dollars)

pisco sour

Then we reached our final destination, Plaza de Armas, the main square of the city and whose name is the same for all cities' main squares in Peru. Nothing to write home about, but at least it was nice, flowered and colourful, contrasting with the ever-grey sky.

Plaza de Armas

 

main Street

After buying some extra warm clothes, we took a taxi back to Miraflores. We were dropped off at the Parque del Amor (Love Park), right on the cliffs by the sea. As we said above, this was our favourite place in Lima, a park dedicated to love whose design is very similar to that of Parque Güell in Barcelona (Spain), by Gaudí. The benches are colourful mosaics showing love messages and there's a huge central sculpture of a couple kissing. The views of the endless Pacific Ocean at the front and the long cliff on both sides are stunning. You can also see taking-off points for parasailers and surfers in the sea. It was definitely the best way to end the day.

 



"I will tie my heart to your hair like a ribbon"

Oh yes! And we got some papaya and tamales for dinner at the supermarket. The tamal is a mass of smashed corn and some meat all wrapped in a banana (or other) leaf. It's not as nice as it looks, but it hits the spot, and it's typical! The American noted that these tamales were much like the corn husk-wrapped tamales she's had in Texas, but were about four times as big as here, and the rich (and hot) salsas to dip them in were very savory.