We arrived in Lima quite late, and took a taxi direct to a hotel. We awoke the next morning to birds singing and sunny weather and made our way to our apartment. We opted to stay in Miraflores, one of the nicer districts out along the coast. We had this beautiful view from our 15th floor apartment.
Lima itself really surprised us in how clean and nice it was, lots of blogs mention they just skipped it in their Peru tour, but we really enjoyed our 4 days here and easily could have stayed longer. We spent most of our time wandering the streets, checking out different neighborhoods and its myriad of food options. Besides Miraflores, Burranco was our favorite. It had less apartment blocks and more colonial buildings which had been converted to shops, restaurants or bars. It’s walls were covered with street art. I especially liked the path down to the sea, a great place to find a terrace and people watch. We walked back to our apartment down along the sea, they have recently renovated the beachfront, but it was pretty empty. I wonder if its because it’s new or if it’s because it is so hard to get down to from the cliffs above.
Both neighborhoods border the sea, and sit on top of cliffs that lead down to the sea. The top of these cliffs are lined end to end with little parks, sport courts, and a walking / bike path. This was a great place to watch people, but also to watch the paragliders catching updrafts from the cliffs and apartment buildings. We were also lucky one evening to catch a band playing near the Love statue as the sun set in the background.
We spent a day checking out downtown, we took the metropolitano line. Which was a cheap way to get downtown, though it was a bit cramped. Downtown was a bit different than Miraflores, we headed to the market area which was super busy. Many of the streets were without traffic but full of walking people instead. There were people everywhere selling everything you could imagine. A good place to grab some lunch, we had ceviche in the fish market area at one of the many stands. Plaza de las Armas, the main square was beautiful surrounded by palm trees and well restored colonial era buildings.
Downtown was also a good place to watch people, I caught this pic of a guy getting his shoes shined.
Lima being in Peru also had it’s share of archeologic sites. Huaca Pucllana is a pyramid created by pre-Inca Lima culture and used as a burial and sacred site. They buried it before the Inca conquered the area, so it is well preserved. There was a great tour given as part of the visit, it was great to learn more about this culture and how they survived in the desert, but also to see the contrast between the ruins and the city.
Overall Lima was a beautiful city, and much cleaner and modern than I expected. I do wonder how the city changes as you get to the outskirts. Definitely worth adding some time to the end or begginning of your trip to Peru.
