Sunday 24th November 2013
Miraflores & Centro Historico
We arrived in Lima in the morning, wrecked and ravaged by a two day journey. At Loja we had spent three hours at the worst Italian restaurant I have ever been to. At Piura we had spent 5 hours at the worst French restaurant I have ever been to. As the bus approached Lima, in my sleepy haze, I was mesmerised by what looked like huge mounds of dirt, in the distance, with houses on. There must have been millions of people living on these mounds which looked far from structurally sound. As we got closer to the centre, the mounds disappeared into the distance.
By the time we arrived in Lima, I felt the dirtiest I had ever been! Thankfully the hostel we had booked (the Lighthouse) was decent. It was in the suburban district of Miraflores which was supposedly much calmer than the historic centre and had a beach town feel. It was exactly what we needed. I had a shower and washed everything twice and was ready to go. Walking around Miraflores did not feel like we were in a big city at all. It was indeed calm and quiet. It was hard to believe that this was once the capital of Spanish America.
From our hostel it was 10 minutes walk to get to Parque Kennedy at the centre of Miraflores. Here traffic was well segregated from pedestrians; there were restaurants, shops, green spaces, a little artisan market in the evening, families and a little stall where I discovered churros. For the three days we were there, we became regular customers.
From Parque Kennedy it was 15 minutes walk to the coastline. The coast was made up of a golden cliff edge with the beach down below. On the coast there was a large shopping centre with cinema and restaurants looking over the Pacific (Ismael and I debated if that was a good or bad thing). Walking north along the cliff edge, there were a series of pretty parks and people paragliding. The parade along the beach was apparently not safe to walk for tourists and the water apparently not clean but, in the distance, one could see people trying to surf.
Almost every single meal we ate in Lima was lovely. It felt safe and calm and I could have stayed longer had we not had to head to Cusco for the Inca Trail. Miraflores is a more liberal neighbourhood in Lima. Everywhere we went we saw posters expressing no tolerance of prejudice in the area. It was clear it had a sense of pride and community.
Leaving Miraflores was hard and we had considered not visiting the historic centre at all, but weighing it up we felt it would be a shame not to visit what was once the capital of Spanish Latin America while we were in Lima. So, on the third day we caught the via express (buses which have lanes which are exclusively for them) into town and took a tour bus around the centre. It was much like we expected. Crazy hustle bustle, tourists, huge colonial squares with baroque style buildings and perfectly tended gardens containing beautiful flowerbeds. At one point the bus was close enough to the edge of town to catch a glimpse of the houses on the dirt mounds and I was able to take a picture. For us, the tour bus was enough to see what we wanted to of the centre and we headed back to Miraflores straight after for our last night there.
Ramblers Rumblings 