We started the morning with an amazing breakfast. Breakfast is served on the rooftop of the hotel with beautiful views of the Lima coastline.
There was a bit of fog, but still a great place for breakfast.
We met our guide, Mirabel, at 9 and took off for a tour of Lima.
Lima is a city of about 11,000,000 people, with no real public transport system. Maybe we should have them talk to Advanced Transit in the Upper Valley to learn how it's done. Consequently, when combined with the narrow, haphazardly placed streets, the traffic is horrendous. In addition, traffic laws here are merely suggestions! Real glad I was not driving.
Our first stop was to see one of the many archeological sites in the city, Huaca Pucllana, an adobe and clay pyramid built from seven staggered platforms. It served as an important ceremonial and administrative center of the Lima, a society which developed in the Peruvian Central Coast between the years of 200 AD and 700 AD. The site had been buried for years and had been thought to be just a hill in the middle of Miraflores until archeologists made the find.
From here we drove to central Lima.
We left our driver and set off on foot with Mirabel. Our first stop was the Monastery of San Francisco.
The monastery has been run by Franciscan monks since the 1600's and was one of the few buildings to survive the massive earthquake of 1746. Some of the highlights included a library (looked like a set from a Harry Potter movie) with 20,000 books many of which are centuries old, catacombs where 25,000 people were buried beginning in 1546, beautiful tile work, and an ornate vaulted wooden ceiling whose pieces fit together so as not to require any nails or glue. Photography is strictly forbidden here, so, sorry, no pics.
From here we walked to the Cathedral de Lima in the Plaza Mayor or Plaza de Armasin in central Lima. Along the route, there was a huge amount of work going on restoring old buildings to there original beauty. I'm pretty sure that Peru does not have an OSHA.
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| Plaza de Armas |
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| Catedral de Lima |
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| Catedral de Lima |
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| Catedral de Lima-Francisco Pizarro's tomb |
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| Catedral de Lima |
Here we find the Government Palace as well, and we caught a bit of the changing of the guards. The music played by the marching band for the ceremony was not your typical changing of the guard marching music. More like a Ricky Martin concert.
Luis, our driver, picked us up at the other end of the plaza, and we were off to the Larco Museum. This is a private collection of Peruvian art started by Rafael Larco Hoyle in 1926 The collection includes 50,000 ceramics, weavings, gold and silver ornaments from Moche, Nazca, Inca cultures.
After we returned to the hotel and said goodbye to Mirabel and Luis, we strolled along the cliff walk that passed in front of our hotel.
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On our way to dinner, we stopped at kiosk (thanks to Nancie Severs-saved us about 1/2 hr waiting on line at a Claro (cell phone company) store) to by a SIM card for my phone. 3 GB plus, we think, local phone service, for a month for 13 bucks. Somehow, I don't think we can get that same deal with Verizon. Can you hear me now!
We got to Aamz,the restaurant, a bit earlier than we thought, around 5:30. As it was, or 6 o'clock reservation put us in line for the early bird specials- most people don't dine here until 8 or 9, and most restaurants are open until 1 am! We were alone in the restaurant for about an hour. Amaz is local Peruvian Amazon cuisine. The waiter suggested a fixed price multi-course (about12) dinner. Can't tell you what we had, but it was great. One dish, though, was a fish called Paiche. This is a fish native to the Amazon region. It is the largest freshwater fish in the world getting up to 9 ft. in length and about 450 lbs.
Tomorrow we are off to the Amazon. Wheels up at 6:50, so off to bed.
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