Lima

  Lima, Peru
Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Lima (Miraflores) - Tuesday 20th Jan

Miraflores Park

We flew into Lima & enjoyed a scenic taxi ride along the coast to our hotel in the Miraflores district.
They are doing a lot of landscaping of the coastal highway - it is lined with palm trees with grass verges. Miraflores is by the sea & is a very clean, bustling town. It has dozens of restaurants but they include McDonald's, Berger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Magic Wok & many more western franchises - it was like being in Bracknell with pretty parks & no chewing gum on the pavements.

The wine is expensive in Peru; about 3 times the price of Argentinean but the food was about the same price. Although Peru is supposed to be safer, they still warn you against having your bag snatched - they even provide straps, anchored to the chair, to secure your bag.
In Palermo, waiters would offer to ty-wrap your bag to the chair for safety.
We didn't stay long in Lima - it was just a staging post for Peru.

Bus Checkin

We took a luxury overnight bus to Arequipa, a stopover on the way to Cusco. The Terminal was run like an airport. You check your luggage in, they wheel it 30ft & load onto the bus, your bus No. comes up on the electronic board, you go through full body search security, and then they escort you to your bus. I suppose you need security but I find the idea of someone hijacking a bus amusing (fly this bus to Havana - or I shoot).
The journey is down the coast & then inland - all of it through barren desert, apart from isolated oasis of green rice fields irrigated by rivers.

Nazca

The Spider

Our journey took us past Nazca, we did think of doing the Nazca Lines until I realised that they had nothing to do with the derivative of the Coca plant. Another traveller had taken a flight in a light aircraft over the Nazca desert but wasn't impressed with what she saw - I think these lines are best seen from space, as intended.

Spectators

The journey should have taken 14 hours but we were held up for 3 hours by a car road race on the main highway. We all got out to watch these road racers flashing past a few feet away at over a ton. The locals, especially the kids barely left room for the cars to pass. Safety, what safety!