Lima

Our last stop in South America was Lima, the capital of Peru. We had heard that it wasn't a place we would want to spend too much time, so only gave ourselves two days there. The evening we arrived, we went down to Larco Mar, the trendiest mall in the city, situated on cliffs next to the beach. The view was nice, but the restaurant we ate at was crappy and expensive. The first full day was a write off. I had really bad stomach and bowel problems, so spent most of the day sleeping. In the evening, we went to see Funny People, so it wasn't a very 'Peruvian' day.

The second day we walked around central Lima and looked at the colonial architecture. Lima was the chief city of Spanish South America during colonization, only rivaled by Buenos Aires much later, so has a lot of beautiful stone buildings. One funny thing we saw was the statue of the Madre of Lima. When the Spanish benefactor commissioned the statue, the said to give her a crown of flames. However, the Spanish word for flame is 'lama', so the sculptor put a little llama on her head instead.




The only building we entered was the Monestario/Cathedral de San Francisco. Beneath it are catacombs, with graves which contain piles of bones up to seven meters deep. As per usual, all the other museums (and the zoo) were closed for whatever reason, so that was pretty much all we did. We also met a New Yorker of Peruvian descent who works at the MOMA. She told us to drop her name for free tickets, which saved us some money once we got to New York.

Perhaps the most major glitch of the day was when we tried to collect our laundry. The laundry mat was closed because it was Sunday. As we were leaving that night, we had no choice but to leave the laundry. I guess somoe one will look pretty good in their new outdoor adventure duds :-). That night, we took an overnight plane to New York.