You can't tell that this is a city of over 8 million people, right in the middle of a desert. The centre is packed with historic buildings: 400 year old churches, places of government and plazas. There's a considerably built up business district reminiscent of somewhere like Sydney, with modern sky scrapers and all the big industry names plastered everywhere. There's greenery here, too: Trees line the paved and cobbled foot paths, there's plenty of beautiful and well kept parks and not a hint of pollution in the air. Everything seems to move so fast though, like no one has time for you, or anything else. There's a massive Western influence here as well - everything is ultra expensive, big and loud, and everyone wants your money. Lima feels like home away from home and it doesn't. It has the familiar sense of a busy metropolis with fast talking people, yet there's millions of shanty homes bordering the centre from the desert like a 3rd world country, and ruins dotting the lanscape that are thousands of years old.
This is somewhere we could live.
We stayed at a decent hostel - the first we've come across that had room service. Score! This was also the first place we tried some pisco sours. These are made up of pisco (grape brandy), lime juice, sugar / sugar cane, whisked egg whites and finally garnished with a little nutmeg. You end up with a sweet, frothy foam layer on the sour pisco. Tastes great! During one of our walks through the many open shopping malls, we noticed a Christmas sale on: Toshiba netbook for about $200 AU. Yes. I want this. The iPad was getting to be too much of a hindrance for us - can't upload photos from it, most websites around here have flash and Google Blogger (edit: IOS5 fixed Blogger support - we had to buy a PC to make the Mac work) refuses to work with it. Sorry Hometrack guys!
There is a creepy old Franciscan monastery that we visited. Over 70000 monks have been buried there since it was built, the most recent only having been laid a couple of weeks before hand. There are many, many pits in the catacombs with thousands of bones on display. There's a very quiet, heavy feeling down there that puts you on on edge. Just trying to imagine that many corpses laid out is almost incomprehensible. It's almost twice the capacity of the Sydney Cricket Ground. We also happened to be around for the changing of the guards ceremony at a central government building. Multiple, heavily armed guard are there to ensure you don't take photos of the soldiers. While in front there was a family that wanted to grab a photo of me with their kids because of the size difference - I quickly checked my pockets after the pose. Nothing gone. Phew. It had also occurred to me by the end of our stay that I was too busy gawking at random things to take any photos - so there is a lack of anything really showing off this city.
We weren't supposed to be in Lima for another couple of weeks, but I'm glad things didn't work out for us up at the border otherwise we wouldn't have come to central Lima. We'll be back here soon, but over on the coast to a place called Miraflores. Our next stop is up the coast to a place called Trijullo, to hopefully try some good ceviche.
One of many plazas...
Some monks (you didn't see this)
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