Exploring Lima, Peru

I have to be honest, I was not super excited to visit Lima Peru but it seemed the natural thing to do if we wanted to visit Machu Picchu. We booked 3 nights here and I got a say, I kind of like it. There are 11,400,000 people here and normally that would turn me off but somehow Lima manages to make it work. People are friendly and we felt safe. We wake up to a mist over the ocean every morning as the warm desert air collides with the cool water streams of the Pacific Ocean. Slowly the mist almost burns off throughout the day.

The large rock never clearly came into focus. The green rock cliffs that are throughout the Miraflores area and beyond. Darren and I did a Cliff Walk from Park to Park.

We arrived later in the afternoon and settled into our hotel the JW Marriott. I have always wanted to stay at a JW and I got to say I love this place. It does not hurt that I am now a Titanium Elite member and we get free upgrades, free full breakfasts and complimentary JW Lounge entrance all day, which includes free food and beverages all day. We have a corner unit with floor-to-ceiling windows and we overlook the Pacific Ocean. We have great views, great food and an oh-so-comfortable bed. This all may have added some allure to Lima, but I don't actually think so.

JW Marriott

We set out on a 40-minute walk to Huaca Pucallana an amazing archeological site in the middle of the Miraflores area of Lima, Peru. It was a large pyramid with 7 staggered platforms. This large ceremonial and administrative center was made out of clay bricks built and used between 200-700 AD. This Inca culture was a bit whack and did such things as sacrificing their newborn babies. When you died if you survived being sacrificed then they placed you in a sit-down crypt with a clay face to give you a new face in the afterlife. Nowadays people just go to Palm Springs for that. It was well worth seeing which included their small museum entrance for 15 sols and Darren was half that for 60+.

The juxtaposition of 1800 years in the past and the current

Picture taken from on top of the Pyramid.

Strange burial practices of a sit-down crypt/coffin with a new face for the dead.

Bricks were mortared in length-wise.

An intact clay urn that could almost fit me in it creatively depicted shark teeth which was a main source of diet for these Inca people.

Lisa and Darren twin Bucket Hats.

On our way to the Archeological site, we walked by many beautiful buildings and a park.

The park had artists who were selling their paintings. I would have bought many of these if I had the walls to put them on and the weight in my luggage to buy them. I have never seen so many artists in one grouping that I liked so much.

Many cats were wandering around and people were feeding them. Once kitty sauntered out of Saturday mass, which looked so cute.

We had a bit of a tough time trying to get internet to order an Uber so that we could get to Plaza Mayor de Lima which is the main plaza of the city and many of the things that we wanted to see were in this area. The taxi ride was 45 minutes from the Miraflores district where we stayed and where the archeological site was. Lima is a really big city!

The Flamboyance Tree is a show-stopper.

The Plaza did not disappoint, it is one of the prettier ones that I have seen and I have seen countless ones in Europe. I was shocked that a South American city was this beautiful. The architecture was just as nice as Buenos Aires and maybe even more so.

Horse-drawn carriages were prolific on Saturday in the Plaza.

With all of the surrounding beauty of the Colonial buildings, we were once again reminded that it was a South American city and protests are common in Peru. This was just one group of Riot Police that we saw making their way over to a very boisterous person on a loudspeaker.

In the upper left corner is the city clawing its way to the top of the mountain.

Elaborate Buildings in the Colonial Plaza area.

Traditional Islamic Boxed Balconies were proudly displayed facing the Plaza. These were some of the prettiest most elaborate Boxed Balconies that I have seen. When the Spanish came they brought this tradition with them from their Muslim roots. Undoubtedly this helped to earn The Plaza area UNESCO World Heritage status.

My favourite.

We made our way to Museo Convento San Francisco y Catacumbas or St Francis and the Catacombs. This was also surprisingly interesting and awe-inspiring. This old monastery founded by the Franciscan order was very large and I saw some things that left me inspired. In the choir room, there are 130 individually carved wood seats and seatbacks that are all joined together and run around this large room. Each seatback has a beautiful 3D carving of a person and all of them are different and they are quite large. I couldn't get enough of this and we were not allowed to take photos anywhere inside this museum. There were stunning wooden coffered ceilings that were begging to have their picture taken and I so badly wanted to ignore the rules and snap a pic. That perturbed me. Best of all there was a Black Vulture in this Choir room and he was perched up high staring down at us and it freaked Lisa out. Vultures are endangered around the world so I just felt bad that he was stuck in that room.

This was the greeting room to the Church and Catacombs and we could snap a few pics here. This tile was extraordinary and was on every wall. One beneficiary donated this to help beautify the church and it is all still intact which is incredible.

We made our way around the beautiful old Monastery with the tour guide and then she took us down to the Catacombs where more than 25,000 bodies were placed. Archeologists have dug up everything creepily rearranged the bones and separated the child's skulls from their parents which I thought was wrong. The Catacombs were very claustrophobic but super interesting but all the same, when I came up to the surface there was a sense of relief.

We left the Plaza area to find a nice spot to enjoy a Pisco Sour, Peru's National drink. They take quite a long time to make because egg whites are involved but they were worth waiting for, delicious.

Saturday night the whole family takes to the streets around the Plaza for some time together. This is a traditional Peruvian thing to do.

The Ice Cream treat wagons are plentiful.

We ordered another Uber and then another and then another and all 3 cancelled on us which is common in Lima. We knew that we wanted to get out of that area before it was too dark as it is an undesirable place to be. I used my Spanish to talk to a Taxi driver to get us back to the JW Marriott and it ended up being a bargain and a very quick 20-minute trip without traffic.