Lima Bean there done that...

Leaving for South America made us very excited. Although we had been on our travels for a couple of months, it wasn’t until now that we were entering the unknown. Not like Christopher Columbus obviously but so far our trip seemed more like a holiday. Being in English speaking countries and knowing so much about the countries we had been too had made it very easy.

Now we were heading to a mainly Spanish speaking continent and apart from the little we knew about major cities, the countries we were visiting were pretty uncharted territory.

That is until we got to Lima… which was exactly like Mexico City.

Yup – it seems the capital cities of South America have more in common with Westernized cities than the Amazon.

We got to our hostel in the very trendy and cool neighborhood of Miraflores and found that globalsation doesn’t just bring the world closer together; it also makes it more and more boring. We could have been anywhere. Of course we enjoyed exploring the city and the art and architecture but the sprawling high rises, factories and endless shops just made us a little sad.

Lucky then for us that we had found ourselves a very sociable hostel where we met some lovely people, enjoyed good food (and a few good drinks!) while we planned the rest of our trip around Peru.

Lima certainly had some wonderful architecture and interesting areas to explore but unfortunately for us we had arrived at the end of summer and a sense of grey pervading everything I tried to take pictures of.

There was one pretty random thing that we were informed was very Peruvian and that was the October festival of Jesus called Senor de los Milagros (Lord of the Miracles). We didn’t mean to but ended up right in the middle of the procession which involves a huge painting of Jesus being carried on a litter weighing about 2 tonnes (!) carried through the streets of Lima v e r y s l o w l y. We were waiting for an hour to catch a good glimpse. Not too sure why but we very much enjoyed the beer we had after it!

All we can say about Lima (and the many globalised cities around the world like it) is if you have to visit, make sure you try and find something quirky to see or do that defines the city more than shopping and bars.

pn.