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Hi Everyone!!
So this is our first blog!! We have now been in Lima for 4 nights and have had a great time. We have been seeing all the sights and generally finding our bearings. It would be a massive advantage if we actually spoke Spanish!!! "How much ?? " and "The bill please" is about as far as our language skills have come on. Hopefully they will improve...
Day 1-
On our first day we headed to Plaza Mayor which is the main square of central Lima. You have the Lima cathedral and the Presidential Palace here, both are very grand buildings. The central square gardens are very well kept (no hose pipe bans here) and it looks great at night. In contrast however there are so many cars, pollution and horns which never stop!!! The roads here make london look pretty rural. We also went to the "Museo de la Nacion" where there was a photo exhibition of recent troubled times in Peru. Many of the photos showed corpses which were the result of mass murders caried out by the terrorist group "The Shining Path" (1980s).
Day2-
We woke up to rather a lot of chanting outside. When we popped to the shops to get some milk there were police with shields and guns monitoring the protest (which was actually very peacful). This was apparently related to a local housing problem. In general the police are armed to the teeth and there are absolutely loads of them (a few even have tanks!!!).
Later in the day we headed to Miraflores, a southern district of Lima. The taxi ride there was rather extreme, with almost half a dozen near misses and no seatbelts!!! In general the cars look like they have been used at a destruction derby, and a few are modified to deal with the day to day bumps they receive. The Miraflores area is more tourist friendly, with lush parks lining the coastline and a lot more white tourists. The peruvian markets are particularly good here. It has been fun trying to barter the price down on the things we buy and every taxi ride (but im sure they still take us for a ride). The conversion of currency is a great help here. For example a 20 min taxi ride is 8 sols which = 1 pound 20 roughly.
Day 3 -
In the morning we went to see the San Francisco church and catacombs. Really nice, but in the afternoon we ventured over the river to Rimac, the supposed "great music venues and bars" area. Hm, we got about 20 meters past the bridge before being called over by a policeman who asked us where we were going, before advising us to leave promptly. On the way back to the bridge we got some dodgy looks from the locals and a few "neck cutting" gestures for good measure . Wont be going back there in a hurry!!! To try and recover ourselves we headed to a really really nice Peruvian restaurant in Miraflores called El Senorio del Sulco. This was a lovely meal (we tasted ceviche).
Heading off on our Machu Picchu trip on the 12th, cant wait!!
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