We were astonished to get a letter last evening from the captain of the ship telling us to be very cautious in Lima due to the pick pockets and robberies that had taken place there in the past few weeks. It was suggested that we travel in small groups together and not wander from the tourist areas alone....so at 9:00am we met our new ship friends from Canada, Kate and Rick at the International Cafe. We had decided to spend the day touring together in Lima. Because the Callao Port was a very busy place...probably the busiest marina that we have been to...we boarded a shuttle bus at the dock to take us through the port and out to San Miguel Mall, about an hour ride. We enjoyed having front row seats on the bus so we really got a first hand view of the city.
Our first impression was...WOW...this place is really clean! It was the cleanest city that we have visited on this trip. Peruvians were actually out sweeping the streets and the sidewalks. There was absolutely no trash on the streets or city parks anywhere. Next we thought, this place is enormous! Over 10 million people live here.
From there we hired a taxi to take us to Miraflores, a upscale area with condos and homes on high cliffs and gorgeous views of the Pacific Ocean. Marvelous parks, bike paths, and sidewalks line the top of the cliffs. Here we saw the famous sculpture, "The Kiss".
The taxi took us to the city center where we walked through the John F. Kennedy Park . Amazing...a little corner of Americana.
Fabulous flower gardens, manicured green grass, sidewalks, statues... a bust of JFK ; as well as a large number of cats. Yes, the park was loaded with cats...healthy looking ones. The city puts the cats here and advertises them for adoption...can you imagine bringing your child through here....you just know one would go home with you ( one looked like Glebe and we fed him).
We found the Indian Craft Market. Hundreds of very modern, well kept attractive booths displayed the crafts of Peru...silver, alpacca sweaters, hats, pottery, leather goods, Peru mugs, hats, T-shirt, instruments, artworks, and......It was an unbelievable amount of things! We spent about an hour just walking around this and then went to grab a bite of lunch.
After lunch we toured the city hall. The guard there became very friendly and took us on a private tour upstairs sharing the board room and the balcony. Did we feel special!
From there we hopped on an open air bus double decker to get a tour of the city. We practically had the whole bus to ourselves. We drove through the city seeing first the archeological site of the Incas...right in the city. It was amazing to see this fine piece of history being protected. We learned that the Incas built their structures with space between the bricks so that they would survive frequent earthquakes....yes, hundreds of years ago they were doing this. Smart folks!
On we rode throughout the city...working on our tan on the top deck. Yes, the sun shone bright, but there was a cool breeze that reached us from the ocean occasionally. Traffic was unbelievable. Our bus driver did a great job! He was aggressive but provided us with a smooth ride.
We stopped at the Larco Herrera Museum. A rich 25 year old Peruvian decided back in 1926 to excavate precious artifacts from the Inca ruins throughout Peru to place in a special museum in honor of his father. The Larco contained Peru's largest private collection of Pre-Columbian art...45,000 pieces of gold, silver, textlies, ceramics and erotic art. Our guide did a wonderful job sharing facts about the Incas that were facinating. I did not know that the Incans were still around until the 1532....the Spanish exposed them to disease and they died very quickly after that year. Anyway the place had facinating displays and we were entertained for over an hour. Trip Advisor named this museum as one of the top five places to visit in Lima.
Back on the bus we visited several important historical sights in Lima:
The Cathedral and The Bishops Palace
The President's House
Palace of Justice, National Congress, the Lima Art Museum, the Italian Art Museum and lots of other interesting buildings.
We had a great time riding the open air bus all over Lima with Rick and Kate.... our tour ending at 6:00pm. The tour guide lead us to where we could find a taxi back to San Miguel's Plaza. That was a thrilling ride through incredible Lima traffic. When we got to the Plaza, it was dark...our plans had been to get back to the ship before dark, however, we rounded the corner of the plaza to find 3 shuttle buses to the ship waiting for us! After a long day of touring they looked mightly fine!
We boarded the bus and were back on the ship by 7:15. We had a delightful dinner on the back of the ship while watching the tall cranes still at work loading ships. We headed down to the theater to watch the Peruvian Show at 9:30, which was not completely through with the first seating. So, we decided that we didn't want to wait for the show to be over and for the auditorium to empty, having been up since 6:00am to see the sun rise and the ship coming into the harbor so we went back to our room where I almost immediately fell asleep! The day had truely already been full of plenty of Peruvian Adventures!
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