Lima, Peru - March 2015

Anybody who’s been reading my waffle will have picked up on the fact that I’ve just got back from a trip to Peru. It turned out that Peru had a few surprises in store for me. I had no idea that Peru was one of the six cradles of civilisation and the only one in the southern hemisphere, I knew a bit about the Incas before I left home, but it turns out that the Inca dynasty was only a very small, very recent blip in Peru’s history. Some scholars have suggested that there was human habitation in the Andes going back as far as 14,000BC although 8,000BC seems to be a more accepted date. Some of the cultures that pre date the Incas (and the Spanish) by centuries include the Nazca, the Paracas Necropolis, the Twianaku, the Moche, the Wari, and the Chimu, a lot of these cultures were very sophisticated for the time.

Central Miraflores.

So I thought I’d do a post on the first place I visited in Peru and that was Lima, I had three days there before I met up with the rest of our group and we set off for Cusco. I’ve been to Buenos Aries and Santiago before so I figured that I had a bit of an idea of what to expect in Lima, however arriving at Aeropuerto Internatacional Jorge Chavez at 1am on a Thursday morning was a bit more of a culture shock than it is flying into Chile or Argentina. Even in the early hours of a weekday morning it was (from my jet lagged eyes) chaos, there were cars going in every direction, bumper to bumper or more often than not bumper to door handle. It appeared that Peruvian drivers had never seen a bit of bitumen that they didn’t like, a three lane highway, no worries we should be able to get six abreast here easily. Likewise the most important control on the car was the horn and luckily everyone had one in perfect working order, once out of the worst of the traffic we motored down the coast to Miraflores, the suburb where I was staying for the next three days. When I say we motored down I figured that I’d just been dropped into a crazy video game as we flew along the dark coast road at warp speed swerving occasionally to miss the odd slower car, truck, animal or person that materialised out of the dark, just what I needed after 30 hours of flights. Checking into the Hilton at Miraflores it was like being embraced by an old friend, l was able to head to my nice room and the chaos outside was just a memory, something that I would get my head around a bit later after getting some sleep.

Parque Central with its resident population of cats.

The old and the new, Miraflores.

With a population of around 8.5 million Lima is a big and sprawling city, the suburb of Miraflores where I was staying is an up marked spot that blends the old with the new and modern. Waking up on my first full day in Lima I decided to head out and explore Miraflores and try and get a bit of feel for the place. First up I headed up to the CBD, quickly learning to keep an eye out for traffic coming from the opposite direction than what I was used to, quickly learning also that irrespective of traffic lights it would pay not to expect the traffic was going to stop for me. Reaching the CBD of Miraflores I checked out Parque Central and its resident population of cats, and then wandered through Parque Kennedy. After wandering around for awhile checking out some galleries and museums I slowly made my way down towards the coast.

A couple of the outdoor shops at the Larcomar Mall, the mall is built into the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Looking south towards Barranco.

Eventually I arrived at the Parque del Amor lookout, the lookout gives extensive views along the Pacific coastline and out to sea. Below the lookout, cut into the cliffs was the modern Larcomar Mall. With a wide range of restaurants and bars as well as plenty of well known retail outlets it was a contrast to the ‘old’ parts of Miraflores. Descending the steps from the lookout I spent the next couple of hours checking out the shops and people watching. If you're visiting Miraflores the Larcomar Mall is the place to go for outdoor gear. Eventually I got sick of the modern shopping centre and headed back up to the older part of town, stopping at a small restaurant to grab some lunch and making sure I had remembered how to order a beer in Spanish, uno cerveza por favor, I can now order beer in about seven different languages so I’m sweet:)

Looking north along the Pacific Coast, Miraflores.

The rooftop pool at the hotel, I was successfully easing my way into Peru!

Returning to the hotel in the late afternoon I had a bit of time to head to the roof top pool to cool down a bit. Lima is quite close to the equator but is nowhere near as humid and hot as I expected, the cold Humbolt Current runs up the coast keeping the sea temperature down which in turn keeps the land temperature low, at least close to the coast. Watching the sun set from the pool over the sprawling suburbs of Lima while drinking a beer life was pretty good.

This is a mummy of a five year old who died in 8th century AD.

A Chancay funerary bundle head, basically a 'false head' placed on top of the mummy to provide a face of the ancestor to which the deceased belonged.

The ancient Peruvians also practised skull surgery using primitive copper knives. The person on the right is thought to have survived the surgery judging by the bone regeneration.

The object on the left is one of the primitive copper knifes.

Chimu gold ceremonial bowls from around 800 AD - 1300 AD.

Waking next day I grabbed a taxi and made the relatively short trip over to Museo Larco. The Larco Museum is housed in an old colonial mansion and the lush manicured grounds were in stark contrast to the suburban streets surrounding it. The museum itself should be a must see if your visiting Lima, it holds a lot of artefacts from the Moche, Chimu, and Chancay cultures and was great place to learn how much I didn’t know about Peru! The museum holds around 50,000 pieces of ancient pottery, along with gold, silver and textiles exhibits. There is also a separate section exhibiting a large selection of erotic themed artefacts, I might have to start a pay per view section on the blog I reckon. After catching a taxi back to Miraflores I went for another stroll, I was already starting to feel a lot more comfortable and at ease.

Gold and silver were important in the ancient Andean cultures for the power that they were thought to represent, gold symbolised the power of the sun god.

The beautiful gardens of the Larco Museum.

From what I can understand no one is one hundred percent sure on the reason that the ancient Peruvians created this erotic pottery, it may not have even been seen as erotic back when it was created.

That night I went on a night tour of Lima, getting picked up just before dark we headed out into the chaos that is peak hour in Lima. The night tour was a great experience, after driving into Lima Centro we jumped out and strolled around the streets checking out the beautiful colonial architecture. After respectfully checking out a couple of old churches we made our way to Plaza de Armas which was an old Inca market and meeting place, tonight it looked it was a place for the locals to chill out and socialise with each other. It seems every reasonably sized town in South America has its own Plaza de Armas and on my travels I seem to have visited quite a few of them. In the centre of the plaza there was an impressive fountain and colonial buildings lined its borders, the most impressive being the Palacio de Gobierno ( the Government Palace ) and the Cathedral, an old church that dates back to 1534, although due to earthquakes this one only dates back to 1758, still pretty old for someone from Australia to get his head around. After strolling around for a couple of hours it was back into the van for our trip back to Miraflores, we even got the authentic Lima experience of a minor traffic accident on the way back, not that it worried our driver, he didn’t even stop!

And we're off into peak hour, Lima style.

There was around 5 lanes of traffic with every car wanting to go in a different direction, at least they all had working horns.

Central Lima.

There plenty of people out on the warm night.

My last full day in Lima was a pretty chilled out affair, the main objective for the day was to move to the hotel that our group for the trek was meeting at that night. So, after relocating a couple of kilometres up the road, I had the rest of the afternoon to grab any last minute supplies that I thought that I might need on my trek.  Meeting up with Rose later that afternoon, who was one of the ladies that I’d be trekking with, we decided to head off to a small side walk cafe to celebrate our last night in Lima.

Plaza de Armas.

The Cathedral in Lima Centro.

The Dirt.
Lima isn’t a place that normally comes to mind when planning a Peruvian holiday but it proved to be the perfect spot for me to acclimatise to South America, once I was on top of the huge bustling city it was pretty easy to get my head around the smaller towns and cities in the Andes that I’d be visiting. I stayed at the Hilton in Miraflores, a great hotel with an awesome roof top pool, and in hindsight a great place to ease me into Peru. Miraflores is a very cosmopolitan suburb with plenty of restaurants, galleries, museums, shops and parks to keep me interested. The highlight of my short visit to Lima was the Larco Museum, its definitely worth a look and helped me to understand a little of Peru’s culture and history.

My room at the Hilton Miraflores, it was quite a soft introduction to Peru, but then I am 'soft'.

Uno cerveza por favor.

Sunset from the pool.