Round The World: Lima - sandstone cliffs and highlighted maps

Flying from Santiago to Lima with the Andes outside the window!

Lima, Peru is not known as the safest city in the world. The general consensus is that one should get away from the airport as quickly as possible. There are about 2 safe areas to stay in Lima, we chose Miraflores. You can kind of see why on the way in. Lima is really poor. It’s made up of dilapidated housing, but the Kernel (KFC) and the Golden Arches (Mc D’s) are still visible. Then in the good areas some pretty fancy housing. The taxi took us through the various districts and weaved through back roads. Eventually, we ended up on a highway with a sandstone cliff on the left side and the sea and beach on the right. Various staircases wended their way down the eroding cliff in various degrees of disrepair. Some of the buildings on the top of the cliff liked like they would be toppling over the edge sometime in the near future.

The pile of dirt ruin...

Getting to our hostel, all we wanted to do was crash and sleep. The owner of this hostel was a large man with a big heart. He obviously loved his city and loved the food there especially. But, he didn’t understand that our drooping eyelids and vague grunts meant that we needed an abbreviated intro to the city rather than the full one. We were staying in Lima for that afternoon and evening and flying out to Cusco early the next day. The hostel owner still gave us a map, and, with highlighters flying in multiple colours, took us through every area in Lima that tourists could possibly go with bright pink highlighted crosses around the areas that tourists should only go into if they want to be mugged.

The other side of the ruin.

The mud bricks that have survived.

Bus routes were in green, the stairs down the sandstone cliff to the sea were marked in blue with appropriate times that we should attempt it. Museums, markets and places of interest were in yellow and restaurants (of which there seemed to be about 10 recommended in each of the 5 tourist areas) were marked in orange along with the recommended specific dishes we should order at each. Of course all of this was surrounded by the pink crosses mentioned above.

I have to say that it was the most comprehensive city orientation I have ever had and I probably listened to about 10 minutes of the half an hour it took. At one stage I tried to hurry him on with specific questions. But he looked at me like a deer in headlights, confused, and then continued full speed with his rehearsed speech. At the end we had a very colourful and very full map of Lima that we should attempt in one afternoon. It was a good giggle.

The ruin

We went walking to find one of the many restaurants in the vicinity of the hostel. As we rounded the corner, we found an ancient ruin with tourists scurrying over it with guides. The ruin was an old temple of some description that was made up of thousands of sand brinks. JP wasn’t particularly impressed at the “pile of dirt”. I must admit, it was very ruined! The sand bricks were only just visible. Placards were around the ruin trying to describe what a particular space would have been used for.

The lovers park with plenty of lovers around every corner.

The restaurant ended up being attached to the ruin, so our table looked out onto tourists in wide-brimmed hats braving the heat of the day. The food was good, maybe a little on the pricey side, but definitely needed as we were starving!

While JP slept the rest of the afternoon away, I teamed up with another woman from the hostel and we went touring a bit and visited some of the view-points of Miraflores at night. It may not be a pretty city, but it has some charm.