Activity Summary
Monday 18th September - Day 349
Travel to Lima
Dinner at El Jardín De Jazmín
Waitrose / Metro Supermarket
Tuesday 19th September - Day 350
Banco de Nación / Multired - free cash withdrawal, limit S/.400 per day
Hostel walking tour - Lima Walking:
Lima Main Square
Shopping street
Church of La Merced
Plaza San Martín
Pisco fountain
House of Peruvian Literature
Museo de Sitio del Parque de la Muralla
Comuna equivalent Peru
Pisco sours tasting
Catacumbas del Convento de San Francisco
Luke boot shopping
Wednesday 20th September - Day 351
Walk along Lima coast
Shopping for jumpers
Churros from Manolo
Thursday 21st September - Day 352
Hostel admin morning
Walking tour of Barranco
Plaza Barranco
Mural "El Aprendiz"
Escaleras de la Oroya
Love bridge
Barranco Puente Suspiros
Puente Montero Bernales
Coast finish
Friday 22nd September - Day 353
Travel to Paracas
Summary
Lima
We enjoyed Lima. The historic centre was nice, Miraflores as the middle class neighbourhood was also nice and we were happy just walking around as our entertainment for our time here.
Nothing too exciting by way of activity but the food is good (albeit expensive) and the city is chill.
The drivers in the city suck however. All are aggressive, the taxis we got were super reckless and Nicola had some serious fear of life. The 4 way crossroad by the hostel was certainly the most dangerous as we walked around.
Transport
Lima
Hotel called taxi to Iquitos airport
Flight to Lima
Hotel organised taxi pickup to hostel
Accommodation
Lima - Kaclla, The Healing Dog Hostel
Number of nights - 4
Price per night per person - £14
Positives:
Chill and quiet
Comfy rooms
Kitchen
Good location
Hostel arranged walking tour
Breakfast, despite the heavy peanut influence
Negatives:
Shared bathrooms on the ground floor only
Some seemingly weird lifers knocking around
No free drinking water
Rooms a bit dark
Not massively sociable or busy - depends on mood really
Recommend?
Yes
Diary
Monday 18th September - Day 349
Luckily for Luke, this flight was completely uneventful. Once down in Lima and through security, we met our hostel arranged driver and got our first taste of the savage Lima traffic. For a relatively short journey it took well over 30 minutes to get to our hostel.
Once checked in we quickly went out to wash our seriously stanky Amazon clothes and had dinner at El Jardín De Jazmín, a local vegetarian place chosen to appease Nicola’s volatile stomach. The array of fried food from the campipapas was probably not such a great idea for her.
What Miraflores did offer us was a fantastic supermarket much akin to Waitrose and of the likes we had not seen for an age. The Metro Supermarket was lovely, bougie and we could have spent a lot of money here. We did find however that it was a lot cheaper to buy and cook here than eat out so the iconic Peruvian cuisine was going to have to wait until post Lima. Cannot go wrong with a £4 whole cooked chicken.
Tuesday 19th September - Day 350
What seemed like a great deal with a hostel breakfast proved to be more complicated for Luke than anticipated. The breakfast form with ‘allergens’ on it was clearly ignored and when his muesli was peppered with peanuts he began having to have his first no bueno conversation in Spanish. He then got referred to as peanut boy by the cook from that point, but the yoghurt and banana was fine for our private stash of granola.
Our hostel organised for Lima Walking to pick us up and chauffeur everyone into the historic centre by metro bus. It only cost S/.3.50 but would require S/.5 for a card so it was so much easier having the guide tap everyone in and recoup the funds afterwards.
By the time we arrived in the Lima main square it was an 11am start.
The walking tour was decent, the guy interesting and Luke loved the pisco sour ending.
Of most value was finding out at the Banco de Nacion / Multired was free to draw cash but had the seriously low daily limit of S/.400. Most places took card (currently) but we did expect that to change going forward without any access to this bank pre-Arequipa and utilised every card we had over a few days to stock up on cash.
The places we walked were:
Lima Main Square
Shopping street - a whole lot of big brands of shops had hidden signs due to UNESCO requirements
Church of La Merced
Most of the buildings were yellow, being the official city colour of Lima
Plaza San Martín - here the bank was and also caught the end of the changing of the guards
Pisco fountain - apparently this fountain 13 years ago was turned into a free to drink Pisco fountain for 1 day a year before the church and police stopped it
House of Peruvian Literature
Museo de Sitio del Parque de la Muralla
Comuna equivalent in Peru - similar concept where the poorer working classes in society lived in these poorly connected areas
Pisco sours tasting - Luke was such a fan of the pre-made lemon pisco sour he bought a bottle for a reasonably priced £8. Should last him a week or so.
We sat for some lunch in the centre of the Plaza San Martin before heading to the Catacumbas del Convento de San Francisco. For £4 it was an alright tour and worth the cost/time reward. No pictures were allowed.
Sadly Luke’s wonderful Meindl walking boots had decided to pack it in as soon as we started up travelling again in Colombia. So rather than replace like for like back home he was required to try to find a suitable pair elsewhere. Selection was pretty limited in Lima but he managed to get a pair for £150 that were more specialised for climbing and and scrambling but hopefully would see him through some mega walking to come.
Back at the hostel Luke cooked a vivacious red rice dinner, clearly not using paprika to flavour the food, which was adequate at best but reasonably priced and would feed us for the next 3 nights.
We are really trying to keep costs down now to fund a rather large black hole in the finances for Patagonia and beyond…
Wednesday 20th September - Day 351
We had a slow start to our day, quite happy milling around the hostel as Luke continued on his millionth iteration of our Torres del Paine, Xmas and NYE plan. An absolute pain in the ass to organise for a whole host of reasons. But at least Luke will get to do the W hike, just in 3 days rather than 5.
We spent the next few hours walking up the coast of Lima, through the many parks and even a Chinese garden blaring supposed zen music.
The weather was grey the entire time we were in Lima but the cool 20 degree weather was great.
After lunching in a coastal park we spent the afternoon shopping for warmer clothes for Nicola. A cheap jumper rather than a super expensive and bougie alpaca jumper was the sensible option.
Churros were everywhere (also found out that a good looking guy/girl are called a churro/churra in Peru) so on recommendation of a blog we got some from Manolo. Tasty but expensive for what they were.
Luke started his Pisco sour bottle and we had leftovers in the hostel.
Thursday 21st September - Day 352
At 8am Nicola continued her job seeking process with an intro phone call while Luke pottered around planning some more.
We did very little with our day; shopped at Waitrose, Nicola called Tilly and Luke continued planning. Luke was chased out of the room while Nicola was on the phone who seemingly needed to drop the kids off at the pool as he got bored sitting by an open doorway for fresh air.
Lima walking did a free walking tour around Barranco, another district of Lima and given we had done very little with our day and it started at 4pm figured why not.
It was a short taxi ride over and we spent the first 20 minutes sitting in the Plaza Barranco people watching (saw a guy actively watch his dog shit on the grass, ignore it and then get rumbled by the police which was great) and working out whether there were others that wanted to do the tour. Walking tours with limited numbers of people in attendance suck but thankfully there were a few.
The guide was a weirdo. Shit chat, boring walking tour and so not worth it if short on time. We barely walked anywhere and were only happy doing it because we wanted to get out a bit.
Plaza Barranco
Mural "El Aprendiz"
Escaleras de la Oroya
Love bridge - an enjoyable tradition / superstition was that if in a relationship you had to hold hands, cross the bridge and hold your breath until the end otherwise the love was doomed to fail. Luke didn’t help Nicola when he started skipping halfway through and she nearly failed by laughing. But we made it so it’s all good.
Barranco Puente Suspiros
Puente Montero Bernales
We finished on the coast for a typical non-sunset finish, were quick to part ways from the guide and got a taxi home for another chill evening doing very little.
Friday 22nd September - Day 353
For a nice change of pace, and a little luxury we decided to book all our transport through Peru on the PeruHop bus. A bit like the Greyhound in Australia, the bus would stop at all the places we were interested in Peru but in comfortable buses, pickups from hostels or at least a nearby local point, with easy to arrange activities and some free ones.
We were so down for the low stress lifestyle for the next 3 weeks and it would also take us across the border into Bolivia. Apparently it wasn’t massively more expensive than doing it independently and at £200 each we were pretty happy with it.
The bus picked us up from our hostel at 6.50am and we were on our way to Paracas. The takeaway breakfast provided by the hostel had some serious structural integrity issues sadly and did leak all over the bus - more work than benefit.
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