Southern Hemisphere: Lima, Perú

8 January 2009By Zhu 22 Comments

The Hill Over Lima

A 3 hours flight later, here we are in South America. Lima, Perú. This country makes me dream, just the name sounds poetic and full of adventures.

The flight was very straightforward and laid-back. By that, I mean that we didn´t have to remove our shoes, throw away lighters, matches, liquids and water bottles, that we were not questioned endlessly by immigration service and that we had real cutlery on board. No paranoia here and it was very nice to fly without feeling like potential terrorists.

Both San José and Panamá City were pretty run-down and dirty, and the architecture was very plain. Lima is nicer than I remembered, with a lot of colonial buildings and – gosh – traffic police. Which means we can cross the street without paying God. Isn´t it awesome!

Meanwhile, Lima is also really cheap. We are staying in a basic hostel with shared bathroom and we only pay $12. A nice meal in a Chinese restaurant (I owned it to Feng…) was $8 for the two of us, including drinks. Internet is 30 cents per hour… Food in Costa Rica was very expensive by our standards and it wasn´t much better in Panamá. Bu in Lima, there are tons of Chinese restaurants and cheap eats, including a brand new supermarket with a comida por kilo buffet.

We discussed where to go quite a lot. The logical way would be to head to Cuzco (the city the closest to Macchu Picchu). But we were there in 2002 and it is really expensive to 1) fly to Cuzco from Lima 2) take the train from Cuzco to Macchu Picchu. I think we will pass for now because we just don´t want to spend at least $500 each to get there. Instead, we are taking the Pacific road and heading to Arequipa, in the South of the country.

We enjoyed Lima these last few days. We walked around the historical center and went to Miraflores, the newer (and posher) suburb. The beaches are not that nice (nothing compared to Costa Rica) but it was fun. Southern hemisphere… here we are!