Day Nine … Lima our way!
(Ian here) After the schemozzle that was yesterday the 7.30 alarm brought a new day with new hopes. But my stomach is still far from well so breakfast was a pretty simple fare (2 spoons of dry cereal, 1/2 a small sandwich). Jacqui had black coffee, a small piece of bread with avocado, and 2 small squares of cheese. Fuelled for the day (@#$%) we set off on our first adventure.
The 1 hr drive south to the ruins took us through some of Lima's different neighbourhoods (there are 43). San Isidro is upper middle class - which you can tell from the houses, the restaurants and shops, and the quality of the roads. Next along the Pacific Coast is Miraflores - also upper middle class but with more high end retail and commercial buildings. And lots of parks! Miraflores means "looking at flowers".
Barranco is the smallest city neighbourhood, only 63,000 population, and has a quite vibrant artistic scene - poets, artists - and fine restaurants overlooking the ocean catering for the tourist traffic.
Churillos, home to 700,000 people, on the other hand is low SES. The roads are patchy, tuk tuks abound, there's a prison and a military base, a cement plant, roadside stalls and accompanying stray dogs. And finally, Villa el Salvador, 1M popn, the southern outskirts of the city, half completed dwellings and a big oil refinery surrounded by residential areas.
We loved the drive. It showed us more of the city than you can ever see if you just turn in toward the centre.
So ... Pachacamac. A 5 acre archaeological dig that has been going for 130 years and is at least a century from being finished. It was the religious centre for the Lima culture 100-700 AD, the Wari 700-1100 AD, the Ychma 1100-1470 AD and finally the Incas 1470-1533 AD. Funny how everyone knows the Incas but they only ruled Peru for 63 years. You see the Spanish arrived, took the gold and silver, tore down the temples, and gave the natives Catholicism. End of story.
Anyway, 30 minutes in the museum to get all the history and goggle at some of the most beautiful and ornate indigenous artefacts we have ever seen. And sensational scale models of the dig site - 3 temples, a cemetery, administration and other buildings and 16 PCRs. No, not Covid tests ... Pyramids con (with) Ramps, which beautifully showcase the evolution of building techniques over 1,000 years.
Then, watched by 24-hr armed guards positioned in high spots across the site, Carlito drove us from station to station, where Marabelle did her guiding thing. (Kids in school excursions have to walk the entire circuit! Child cruelty.) And finally, we walked up the hill to the Inca Temple of the Sun. Which gave us spectacular views, sea breezes, and a chance to observe labourers wheeling barrows of adobe bricks up to a restoration site.
All up we spent 2 hrs at this place less visited, but if you are ever passing through Lima on the way home from the club, drop in to Pachacamac ... it won't disappoint.
30 minutes back to Barranco where we said goodbye to Carlito and started our walking tour just opposite the Bibliotheca (library). A lovely neighbourhood, historic homes, superb street art in a myriad of styles, views of the ocean surfers and the coastal highway below the cliff, and The Bridge of Sighs - a supposedly romantic spot to make a wish, currently uncrossable due to renovations. So we pledged our undying love for one another for the 6th time this week (what ... only 6! says Jacqui) and carried on.
And that was a wonderful morning! Thank you Marabelle.
Jacqui here ... Saying goodbye to Marabelle, and reassuring her that we would be fine to get ourselves to our next destination, we grabbed a coke for a cool drink and then, with our fingers crossed, ordered an Uber. After last night's Uber experience we decided to get to where we needed to be BEFORE we tried to find something to eat. We were lucky this time as our driver arrived promptly and drove efficiently and smoothly to where we needed to be in Miraflores.
Our afternoon activity which we had booked through Get Your Guide, was a three hour bike tour around Miraflores and Barranco. Having located our meeting point we headed to KFC for some toilets and something simple for the stomach … small fries and a small container of popcorn chicken. (If I do not lose weight in this adventure I may scream!). After a toilet stop we headed back to the meeting point to wait for our guide Gaby.
Gaby was a lovely, young, enthusiastic guide who welcomed us warmly, hooked us up with our bikes, gave us the instructions … fist up is stop, hand lowering down is slow, left and right, Vamos is Let's go … and then we were off. It took me a little bit to get my bike legs (I don’t ride very often … actually at the moment I only ride in foreign countries). Miraflores and Barranco have great bike paths so we were removed from the madness of Lima traffic for most of the ride … only having to negotiate the cars when we needed to cross roads or turn corners. The bigger issue is the locals whizzing up behind you madly ringing their bell, calling out “on your left” repeatedly! Pedestrians who just decide to cross in front of you also posed a challenge.
Our ride took us to several parks and viewpoints in both districts. To save the commentary … we rode to Point A, got off, walked around, got on, rode to Point B, etc. … I will just list them and their key highlights.
Parque 7 de Junio … named for the Peruvian combatants who died in the War of the Pacific in 1880. It is also known as Kennedy Park (yep … for JFK). It is also colloquially named Cat Park due to the large cat population that inhabits the gardens. Following incidents of terrorism the government decided to bring cats to the park in a bid to bring people back to the gardens. They have their own little houses to sleep in at night, are fed and watered by the park staff. The gardens are beautiful.
Abutting the park is the Parroquia La Virgen Milagrosa … a Catholic Church built in 1930 in a neoclassical style. It is open to the public so we were able to pop in for a look. Next to the church is the Miraflores City Hall.
Next stop was the Love Park … Parque del Amor. A beautiful landscaped park overlooking the Pacific Ocean with a huge statue of a man and a woman kissing. There is a series of stunning mosaic walls in the style of Gaudi inscribed with poems of love, and names of well known lovers like Romeo and Juliet, Elizabeth and Darcy, I&J.
On to Parque Alfredo Salzar which sits on top of a local shopping centre. It has a statue of Paddington Bear.
We passed a building which was a Medical College ... with photos of the doctors and nurses who died during Covid.
We crossed the Puente de La Paz … a newly opened pedestrian walkway and ciclovia (bike path) that connects Miraflores to Barranco. I pedalled super hard to get up to the top on the other side!
We pedalled to Barranco (which we had visited in the morning with Marabelle). We parked the bikes at the local ice cream shop where a young man came out to take care of them. Gaby purchased ice creams for us (and for our bike sentry). We chose two flavours we had never tried before … Turren which was nougat and Magdalena which was vanilla, chocolate and jam!
We then went on a walking tour with Gaby, covering some of the same territory as we had earlier in the day with Marabelle. It was interesting though to listen to a different guide's interpretation of what we were seeing and to have her point out things that hadn’t been noted in our earlier walk.
We then popped on our bikes for the last time and cycled all the way back to Miraflores to deposit our bikes back in the garage, say goodbye to Gaby and catch an Uber back to our hotel. The ride was fine, but I did have to get off my bike to push it up the bridge hill (legs just couldn’t do it) and the very narrow bike lane in the last kilometre was hair raising with locals whizzing along behind you and bikes coming towards you also ringing their bells! We made it though … and got back to our hotel to drink several bottles of water, have a shower and collapse in a heap.
I popped to the local pharmacy to collect some medications to hopefully ease Ian’s stomach (mine is all settled) before we depart Lima in the morning. The pharmacy staff spoke no English so I felt a moment of sheer panic until a lovely young man asked if he could translate for me. So with the help of an angel (who had to hear things no stranger should) I have come away with a cornucopia of drugs … which I will use Google translate to work out what I am dosing Ian up with!
And so ends our time in Lima. Not how we imagined it to go … but it has left us with wonderful memories of a truly remarkable place!
Tomorrow … the Amazon! [But first to make sense of the mess that is our room and pack our things for the next few days into one suitcase].
Comments
Post a Comment