Starting really early in the morning, we took a taxifrom hotel in Galapagos and drove towards the airport. There were giant turtles crossing the road early in the morning and the taxi driver helped getting the turtle off the road again.
We were a bit on the late side in terms of time and the taxi went really slow as it wasn’t the greatest truck.
We managed to get to the airport but Tanja and Anais took a different bus as people were pushing to get on the busses. You can not imagine how we are travelling – with 6 bags and a mountain buggy. Everytime we take transportation taxi drivers and airline staff just look amazed how big our bags are.
The flight with avianca was ok – I liked Tame much more as they upgraded us which avianca denied. Ok flight was full. We had a 4 hour stop in Guayaquil, I stayed at the airport and Tanja went off to do some short sightseeing. The last hours of our time in Ecuador.
We arrived late evening in Lima and we booked a good taxi to our Airbnb in Lima, district Jesus Maria. We arrived at a really nice place and first I was not amused. Tanja had booked the airbnb totally tired the night before, it was dirt cheap (USD 20 per night) and it was a nice place but it was kind of not suited for a 1,5 year old toddler. Lots of stairs, lots of opportunities to fall down, a huge dog and the mountain buggy did not fit through the door (it fits but you had to open both doors every time and put the stroller half on the stairs).
The Airbnb was with a retired professor of anthropology and it was like back to the 80’s. The house was filled with old stereo’s with cassette decks, VHS video tapes, the old school stuff. It had three levels and the Coco the professor and his wife rented it out. We were with more guest in the house which was nice but I personally did not have a great connection with the other people: a swiss student and a older french couple.
The breakfast was great and plenty though. The other thing what i really need while travelling is a private bathroom. I hate sharing bathrooms and we shared ours with the swiss student. It was a double access bathroom (double door access from both rooms).
The thing is that the house was build for cooling with cooling shafts running through the house and Lima is hot, humid and full of smog. So all windows open all the time and there was no airco and you because of this you could hear everything what happened in the house. Including shower and bathroom noises. The rest I leave to your imagination but I like to keep my bathroom noises as private as possible. Especially the big job noises.
The next day we had our first Lima discovery day. We first took a walk around the house and the district Jesus Maria. It is a mid – upper class neighbourhood with lots of restaurants, shops and a plaza with a park and a church of course. We had great food a restaurant Maria Pastor and we tanked a full liter of Sangria to celebrate our next travel chapter: Peru.
The food was really great and much better than in Ecuador. We then took a taxi Miraflores – and other district. It was about 20 minutes in the taxi and you must understand that Lima is has 10 million citizens and at least 10 million cars. The traffic, noise and the heat and the smog caused by cars was taking its toll on us right away. Anais had dirt black clothes every night we returned home. I could see us living in Lima but only if we get free gas masks.
We did some nice sightseeing in the two districts. The Banacras is really nice and Bohemian and the Historic district is nice as well. It was just walking around and looking at stuff and taking pictures.
Sleeping in our room was challenge. If you open the window there was a lot of noise, if you close it you get a heat stroke. We had a small fan but that wasn’t really helping.
The food in Lima, we really enjoyed on the other hand. We had many great meals with cocktails and a lot of times great seafood ceviche. We went to a restaurant in Miraflores that Sonja Turek who we met in Galapagos recommended and I must say I really loved it. We did order way too much and once we left I felt like I had just beaten the tuna steak challenge from Galapagos by factor 20.
One night in Pancras we had dinner and the Tuna (which is a student band) played a serenade for Tanja. We had of course many pisco sours and enjoyed ourselves a lot but we were not beating us to do all the must do stuff in Lima. We kind of just took a city trip without obligations.
Just walking around provided enough stimulus for our brains. The same night Tanja got a serenade from the Tuna we enjoyed great street artists: samba bands, classical music, dance performances. Lima is a metropolis and it sometimes we thought we are in Istanbul. When 10 million people come together, there are quite a few nut heads around. Like the guy who was doing some acrobatics with machetes on street crossing trying collect money at a traffic light for his performance. Or a guy holding a weird sign out of his window while driving. Ot the lady at the cathedral chanting some stuff i did not understand.
Indication that Lima isn’t peaceful was the riot police we saw at the historic district with a huge water gun truck. Trump would like that truck I am sure.
We did enjoy Lima but I was glad when we left – next time we will take a room with air conditioning and air filters and maybe come at a time when there isn’t such high levels of humidity.
Tanja took a bus to Pancras to fly over the nazca lines and she took a sand buggy tour I am sure we will post in a separate post all about it. That day I went to a tavern near the museum of anthropology in Lima and then In took a guided tour to learn more about the history of Peru. the Museum focuses on the pre-colonial times and it was quite fascinating and funny that I was in museum showing off the mummies with their burial gifts and Tanja was probably sand buggying through the same desert at the same time. I learned a lot about the Peru culture from 6000 BC to about 1500 AD (when the spanish came and killed 20 million Incas). I won’t bother you with too much details but I must say that I felt quite depressed knowing that a great culture just got erased for the sake of gold which you can not eat and you can not make weapons from according to the Incas.
Lima is much like Spain in terms of people. And there are a lot of shoe retailers so if you a bringing your wife or girlfriend or daughter – they will love it.
Good bye Lima – i am sure we will see you again but we booked our Star peru flight to Cusco to get close to the next highlight of trip…..