It turns out that unlike what Paddington bear had told me in my childhood, Lima isn't, in fact, deepest darkest Peru. There's actually nothing deep or dark about Lima, apart from maybe the sky as its constantly grey and slightly drizzly!

My main reason for coming to Lima was to visit my lovely friend Erika who I met while I was staying in Santiago taking my Spanish classes, as she lives in Lima. As to why the others wanted to go, I don't really know! We had only intended on staying for a few days anyway, but ended up being there for a week because I got some kind of stomach bug and spent a whole day throwing up! The most enjoyable day we had in Lima was when Erika drove us to the city centre and we got to try a whole assortment of street food (that wasn't what made me sick, this was the day after!) and then to the fountain park.

The fountain park was AWESOME! and not just because I'm really easily impressed and love lights and water! The other three thought it was cool too! It has been named the 'magic water tour' and includes 13 fountains, all different, some with tunnels made of fountains, some that change to music, one that has a jet which shoots up to 80m! It was great. My favourite was a stream of fountains making up the shape and colours of a rainbow!

I also met up again with my cycling friend Nicky from La Paz, who was staying in our hostel in Lima, proving quite how slowly I'd been travelling recently, as he was currently ahead of me!

The beach in Lima was horrible, I'm don't even know how the sea and sand both managed to be the exact same shade of grey, but we didn't bother even going down to it anyway, just looked at it from above! The beach at the next place we stopped, Hanchaco, wasn't much better, slightly less grey though!

I forget why we stopped at Huanchaco, I think just to break up the journey from Lima to Mancora, but we only stayed one night, when we met up with a friend Sam who I did the Machu Picchu trek with, who was volunteering there. The town was kinda cute, with the little reed fishing kayaks the local fishermen used lined up along the beach wall, and the seafood was good, but there wasn't too much to do!

The main tourist attraction is Chan Chan, a large archeological site holding the largest pre-Colombian city in South America, built around 850AD. It contains ruins of many houses, community halls and various other buildings, lots of which are carved with representations of animals, which are pretty cool, and I especially liked the walls with diamond shped holes carved into them!

Next destination, Mancora, final stop in Peru, and hopefully increasingly nicer beaches!