Lima, Peru

After a couple relaxing weeks in Roscommon, MI (and Chicago, IL and Sacramento, CA) I am back in South America. It feels great to be back on the road, although I do miss drinking out of the tap and flushing my toilet paper.

I arrived in Lima, Peru just before midnight on Monday but didn´t end up leaving the airport until nearly 2 am. This was because I had to wait for every single bag to be unloaded before hearing an announcement that 21 bags had been left in Houston, including mine. They would not be able to make it to Lima until the flight the next day that was also supposed to arrive just before midnight and then they would drop it off at my hotel the next morning. Lucky John (and his lucky dorm mates) got to wear the same clothes for 3 days straight before my bag caught up to me. I frequently wear the same clothes over again, but the forced wearing of the same clothes was a bit of a pain, especially since I was wearing some heavy pants (it was below freezing and a blizzard when I took off from Traverse City, MI) and it was in the 90s in Lima.

Continuing the having a bad day theme, besides having my luggage left in Houston, within the course of 36 hours I also locked my keys inside my security locker (with my camera, passport and money inside as well) and was denied entrance to the Bolivian embassy. At first it was because I didn´t have my passport. I did have my Michigan driver´s license though, and was hoping that would work. After about 5 minutes, the guard finally got permission for me to enter without my passport, but was then told that because I was wearing shorts, I would be unable to come in. I would have to go change into long pants and return. And all I wanted to know was what I needed to do to get a visa for Bolivia. Que será, será.

Besides that little hiccup, my time in Lima was amazing. I was only going to spend two nights or so in Lima but ended up staying an entire week. Before coming I only heard negative things from travelers about Lima. I was told it was dirty, unsafe and that there wasn´t much to do. While one can find dirty and unsafe areas in just about any major city, I found Lima to be great. Although I stayed in Miraflores, the ritzy, super modern, fancy area, I also was able to explore several other less prosperous districts and found them to be quite enjoyable. One bad thing about Lima is that it is hot and there seems to be a constant foggy haze along the coast. Oh well, compared to winter in Michigan, I´ll take it.


On my first night in Lima, I met up with Marcos, a friend of my first grade teacher Sra. Johanson. Marcos came to my hostel and picked me up and gave me a brief tour of Lima in his truck before treating me to dinner. After dinner, Marcos, who is in the Peruvian Air Force, brought me to the Air Force Officer´s Club to treat me to my first pisco sour. Pisco is a type of liquor made from grapes and is produced in Peru. Anyways, it was rather tasty. Gracias Marcos.


The next day Marcos sent his friend Tony to take me into the center of Lima to check out some of the historical sites. Among the sites visited was the Plaza de Armas (the main square), the cathedral on the Plaza de Armas and the Palacio de Gobierno (the Presidential Palace). I also took a tour of the San Francisco Church and Monastery. This church and monastery was built in the late 1600´s and has lots of original art and woodwork however the best part of the tour was exploring the catacombs. Below the monastery are several tunnels that they believe house the remains of around 70,000 bodies. They have excavated several of the bodies and have the bones on display. What was interesting about it was that it wasn´t whole bodies, but each type of bone was grouped together. All the femurs in one pile, all the tibias in another and the skulls in yet another. Kinda creepy but very interesting.

After touring the monastery, I visited the Museum of the Spanish Inquisition and Congress. An interesting combination to say the least. Anyways, this was a pretty boring museum, but I rather enjoyed the torture room where they had lifesize wax dummies being subjected to different types of torture. I loved the expression on the face of the guy getting choked by a rope (notice how much slack is in the rope).

I also found the masked man subjecting a woman to water boarding rather amusing. I wanted to believe that it was Dick Cheney beneath the black mask. Also funny that the torture the US uses seems to be exactly what the Spaniards used 500 years ago.

A great day being led around by Tony. I am very grateful that Sra. Johanson put me in touch with Marcos so that I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with people from Lima.

Another day I visited the pre-Inca site of Pachacamac, a few kilometers south of Lima. From a distance the site looks like several sand dunes, but once you get close you can see that they are pyramids and buildings that are mixed in with the sand. There were also great views of the ocean from the main Temple of the Sun, the tallest pyramid at the site. Although not the most impressive ruins I have seen, they were still interesting nonetheless and glad I made the effort to get out of Lima for the day to see them.


Besides the typical touristy stuff in Lima, I spent a lot of time just wandering around various parts of the city with people from the hostel looking for interesting places to hang out (and usually eat). This isn´t the first time that a city has sucked me in and kept me for longer than anticipated and probably won´t be the last.

I have decided to save northern Peru for another trip and I will begin making my way south very soon.

As always, there are more pictures of Lima in the Peru album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren