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!

A Red Bee­tle Plaza De Las Armas

Local Chicken Buses

Empty Streets

Sell­ing Can­dles In Front Of The Cathedrale

Guard­ing The Government

Plaza San Martin

Plaza de Las Armas

The Beach In Miraflores

A Mall On The Cliff

Related arti­cles:

1. Perú To Bolivia
2. The Food Saga: The Sweets
3. The Food Saga: The Drinks
4. Our South­ern Neighbours
5. Por La Car­retera — Arequipa