Day 29 - Lima, Peru

After a 2 hour flight across Ecuador and half of Peru, we landed in the country I am most excited about exploring. I've been obsessed with Peru for at least 10 years now, and the chance to spend a month exploring this place is possibly the most exciting part of the trip for me. I'm loving it.

We´ve heard a shed load of stuff about how Peru is super dangerous. Shed loads of muggings (although you'll be pleased to hear that violent crime is practically unheard of) hasn't put us off, but the thought of losing all our stuff on the way out of the airport meant we booked a private cab from the hostel. So there we are, at the arrivals lounge, skipped the random bag search for drugs and bombs, and were met by a friendly little peruvian dude with a sign for "duncan" amid the masses of taxi drivers begging for our ride (and probably our digital cameras and credit cards).

The hostel we're staying in is practically a party town in itself, and we're staying in a 9 bed dorm. Yesterday, we met some canadian guy who was headed into town so grabbed a cheap cab ride with him. Lima central is dirty. dusty. sprawling. Its not nice. and the town centre is dull as well, despite the amazing architecture of every other building. But because of the high rate of crime, no decent pictures expect this that I ripped off someone else's flickr account.



We headed straight for the cathedral (I love religious art, don't i?) and pondered the obscure catholic images everywhere. There's a plague commemorating Francisco Pizarro, spanish conquistador, who founded Lima, and a set of remains which they CLAIM to be his, although this has never been proved and his highly doubted. Pizarro was a nasty piece of work, murdering thousands of Inca people. But in this cathedral at least (and in spain for that matter) he's regarded as a hero, bringing civilisation and knowledge from distant shores and founding the largest city in latin america.





There's also tonnes of images of baby jesus, some quite scary and a couple that appear to make out he was a little girl. And these immense nativity scenes the size of dishwashers, that fold up into a handy carry case so you can store them in your loft. Not that 'limeños' in general have lofts. This place is poor. There's also a wicked sculpture of some saint woman who can fly by riding on waves of babies heads. I love that stuff.







Tomorrow I'm leaving Sam to nurse her hangover whilst heading to the National Museum, to study pre-inca pottery. I'm not really that into pottery, but apparently is pretty impressive. We'll see. But not planning on staying in Lima too long. There's a dark edge to this city which gives me he creeps, so we're already planning our next stop - four hours away, 1,000m up and sand dunes bigger than you've ever seen before...