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Greetings from Lima
I arrived here yesterday after a 20 hour bus ride in which I didn´t sleep a wink - the guy next to me kept singing and generally looking dodgy and the road was so so bumpy, it was like being on a poorly constructed disneyland ride! But I still arrived in one piece and am I glad I did! Lima is a fantastic city, full of colonial and traditional architecture and the nightlife is just as wild as Cusco!
As I only had one day here I took a taxi downtown and checked out the San Francisco Convent. This is one of the oldest cathedrals in South America and is famous for the creepy catacombs that lurk below it. I took a guided tour (in spanish! - I´m getting the gist of what people are saying to me now, but replying without oscar-worthy handgestures and gurning is still impossible!) and the guide took us around the whole cathedral. The library was absolutely amazing! It looked like it had just been set up for a Harry Potter film, the books were hundreds of years old, handwritten and covered the walls - floor to ceiling. I would have happily spent a week in there but we were ushered out before we could get our grubby touristic hands on the priceless antiques! We were shown around the different prayer areas and in each one there were seats set up around the room to represent each saint concerned with the catholic faith. The art work hanging on every wall was just breathtaking- because of the little light that reaches the indoors of the cathedral they have been preserved with incredbile detail, you can see the colours and strokes as though the artist painted them yesterday. After admiring the art work we were hearded through a tiny door and down a steep flight of steps into the catacombs. There is no way to put this place into words - it sent a chill down my spine. The bones were not buied as they shoudl be - i.e in human skeletal form, but instead they had been taken apart and layed in different patterns and places. There were pits and pits of femurs laid in a herringbone fashion, I have no idea just how many people are buried down there, all dismembered. The skulls were stuck into the walls or placed in little circles on top of the other bones. I couldn´t understand what the guide was saying about the catacombs so there may have been a religious significance to this strange ritual, but to me it was just plain sinister. Leaving this underground world we went up into the courtyard garden which was just such a welcome relief! The herbs smelt amazing after the musty air of the catacombs and the gardens were layed out in a very french style - just like in Priory park close to Nelson´s favourite fountain.
I then headed back to the hostel where I bumped into Eric and Dennis who I had met in Cusco and we wandred down to the beach and watched the surfers bobbing on the waves for a while before headed out for Peruvian style mexican - which we discovered does not come with salsa, just copious quantitis of beans! After dinner we went back to the hostel and met up with Andrea and Angelica who are two Peruvian girls we all met and partied with in Cusco and they took us to a local reggatone club which was fantastic! Reggatone is huge over here - it is like a serously bassy version of RandB and great to dance the night away to - so we did just that, pisco sours and red bull in hand, surrounded by locals.
So today I am off on another loooong bus journey to Tacna (18 hours), from there I will get a taxi over the border to Arica in Chile, where I will arrive tomorrow. I´m looking forwards to Chile but I am also so sad to be leaving Peru where I have had the most incredible time - I will absolutely come back here one day.
Until next time
Charli xxxx
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