Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
And so here we are.........last day in South America, in Lima, capital of Peru. This is Peru's largest city and the fifth largest in SA. With Callao it's neighbouring port it makes up a mertropolis of 9 mil. people. A third of Peru's population live here and it is loud, noisy and tiring. It was part of the Inca empire until taken by the Spanish conquisadors in 1532. Now it is home to a great many multi national companies and the busy port sees in the vast majority of imports and some exports for the country.
If I'm honest I'm a bit tired and ready for home and could give Lima a miss but this is the very last day and it would be unthinkable to duck out now. So onward we go. Out into Lima amongst the noise and traffic we set forth to visit the historical centre and the main buildings of the town.............. Cathedral,Palace of Justice, Supreme Court, Congress, Mayors Palace. Mainly Spanish colonial and pretty nice buildings. We spend quite abit of time here and then lastly we go off to visit the gold museum. This is a private collection donated to the country by one Miguel Gallo, businessman, traveller and collector. Much of the gold is pre inca and made into pendants, rings, goblets etc. many inlaid with turquoise. Amongst the jewellry were some gold teeth caps which looked pretty gruesome! Makes me think of how ideas of beauty change and then I saw some nose rings and thought, then again maybe not. Mummies too were often covered with gold. But the gold is only a small part of the collection. There was also a good collection of textiles mainly from southern Peru ( best jewellry comes from the north and best textiles from the south) which was amazingly colourful considering it's age and lastly a couple of rooms full of guns, armements and uniforms up to 19th cent. Not sure about the last bit! He was certainly an inveterate collector if a bit indiscriminate. Generally it was worth the visit but did feel we were squeezing out our last bit of curiosity for this one. Then it was time for shower, sort through cases yet again and 'the last supper'.
And that was our trip. 5 countries, 21 hotels, 19 flights, 3 trains, 2 ferries, 1 week on a boat and many car journeys.
People I know are going to ask me what was the best, the most memorable which is hard to say. Machupicchu must be a strong contender but then I remember the Amazon and then find I can't forget the Atacama desert nor the miners graveyard beyond..... And then there was the amazing preserved Oro Preto and of course the lovely little town of Colonia del Sacramento..........................see what I mean. Impossible to see the trip in that sort of ordinal way. So many memorable places.
Many of my memories are also of the more ordinary. The women who we saw in her weaving shed in the Pisac region showed us the natural dyes they used from plants and crushed beetles to colour the garments they made. They were so incredibly bright.......I think there is a photo.........gorgeous colours, crimson, orange, emerald green, purples and blues some more subtle hues of pinks and peach but on and on. A variety and depth of colour you just wouldn't expect.
Our airport experiences were pretty memorable too. Most of them have blurred into one now. One disorganised mass of wrongly numbered gates, panics over fluids which were never spotted anyway, Dad doing his usual embarassing sprint through customs and security, screeching round the corners with me scuttling behind, head down in embarassment as we pass everyone. So we generally make good time onto the plane but only to be delayed again everytime we landed. Here the staff had to have their little arrival ceremony where the cabin crew insist on kissing the ground crew hello before letting any of us off the plane. 'Ola Maguil.' mwa mwa. ' 'Bon dia Elen,' mwa mwa. Very funny. Dad didn't think so. Told him he should be glad the whole plane wasn't expected to do likewise.
I see in my notes I've written dogs and football as a remindernot to miss. So then, the dogs. Every town we visited seemed to have loads of stray dogs. And strangely not mangy old things either. Some looked like pedigree dogs, spaniels, german shepheard, corgi, others like pretty respectable crossbreeds and in the main looked well fed too. We were told in Santiago that the people collectively and hotels usually fed them and they were welcomed rather than being seen as a nuisance. But still there were a lot of them and bound to reach crisis point soon you'd think. And then of course football. Everyone here loves the football. Most towns had a big stadium and several little community pitches. Football tops were poular dress for the kids and most of the bars seemed to have permanent matches on TV. Drivers and guides didn't need much encouragement to chat footie and were extremely well informed about the game in general and for our benefit British teams in particular. One of our drivers, in Peru it must have been, was a Ncle United supporter and was very excited to tell us about a Peruvian named Solano who used to play for Ncle. Always a popular topic of conversation wherever we went. And then Brazil, of course, hosts the World Cup 2014 of which the Brazilians are extremely proud. So..............new stadiums all round then and damn the cost! It seemed almost wherever we went there was some kind of game going on. Even in the depths of the amazon. Our trip there was generally devoid of any human habitation but we visited this small isolated village on the riverside where the local people were making moves towards a more western way of life with serious inroads into better health, education etc and what was right in the centre? Yep, a big football pitch. And what was every young person in the village doing? Playing footie of course. It looked like about 20 aside. Total mayhem but everyone very happy.
I think I must stop now. I can't tell you eveything and I've probably gone on too much anyway. Hoped you enjoyed this in the main. We did. A great trip.
- comments