Lima Arrival

Day Zero (it's a travel day and makes it easier to follow the actual trip itinerary)

I found the ocean!

It feels a little surreal that the trip is finally here.  At this point 17 days feels a little daunting but I'm ready for the excitement.  On the plus side it's 2 moderate flights to get here, 4 hours to Houston and then 6.5 hours to Lima.  Due to the fact that the flight to Lima arrives at 11 pm we're going a day early so we can rest up and wander around Lima for most of the day.  Which was a nice idea when we got to the hotel and saw that the majority were arriving at the hotel at 9 pm to get up for a 5:30 am departure the next morning!  (To my tour mates, we did feel bad for you!)

Hotel by the breakfast area

The Jorge Chavez airport is a very busy place in the evenings, we had to circle a few times before being able to land, which even showed up on the flight status screen.  The driver from the airport was really good with answering the 3000 questions Cindy asked.  He told us that minimum wage for a monthly salary is 850 soles, or 333 Canadian Dollars.  And they have an astronomical underemployment rate of 45%, which explains the sheer volume of people selling random Peruvian junk on the streets and markets.  We finally rolled into the hotel around 1 am after waiting forever for our bags.  It's always such a terrible feeling when everyone else grabs their bags and bolts and you're just waiting.

View from the hotel

Our hotel is 6 lovely blocks away from the ocean.  No elevator so the poor bell boy had to carry the heavy bags up to the third floor.  Not a job for me!  Strangely for this cold weather girl there is neither heat or AC, only a floor fan to cool things down a bit.  But this is typical for Peru, no heat or AC.

Day 1: Day In Lima

Our first full day in Lima, the weather is fabulous for me, we arrived to 28'C last night and it's been just as nice all day.  As we don't meet until 4 pm we have a good portion of the day to wander.  We headed up to Kennedy park for a free walking tour but bailed when the tour guides didn't realize that the bus was running differently on the weekends.  Sometimes what you pay for is what you get!

Kennedy park with all the cats

Instead we wandered around Kennedy park, which is also the cat park.  The neighbourhood had a stray cat problem and the solution was to fix and spay the cats and feed and water them and they stay in the park now.  They had to have been dozens of them in there, hidden in all the gardens, on the sidewalks and just out in the open walking and laying everywhere.  They were really docile as we saw people randomly picking them up and carrying them around.

Ocean from Larcomar

We then headed down to the Larcomar, a shopping mall built into the cliffs along the ocean.  They had some truly fabulous views there.  And we are so close you can smell the beach on the balcony.  There wasn't too much exciting about the mall, just typical American stores but it was close with some restaurants having a great ocean view, which is hard for me to pass up.

Plantings in the park along the malecon

Along the Pacific ocean there are high cliffs from the beach level.  I noticed marks on the sidewalk saying we were a mere 3.4 m above sea level.  I saw them again at the end of the trip and it was a real sign of all that we did and where we went!  It was a big drop and difficult to get down to the beach so we just meandered down the malecon, which is the path going along the ocean from the mall.  They had lovely scenery and lush gardens along the way.  And they've covered the cliffs with netting and have vines of morning glories growing all over them.  So jealous.  Also, it is a big surfing ocean along here as you could see the ocean littered with surfers so it wasn't a wander in the wake of the waves sort of beach.

We are staying in the exclusive and affluent area of Miraflores in Lima, and it is filled with greenery and people meticulously cleaning the streets.  There was less horn honking and erratic driving that soon became the norm of Peru.  On the way to the hotel from the airport our driver pointed out the electric fences on the tops of the gates and the terrifyingly sharp spikes to keep people out of yards and buildings.  There was still some of that in Miraflores but was hidden in with the greenery a little bit better.

It's a smaller group than I'm used to with 13 of us plus Diana our guide.  Aside from Cindy and I it is all people from the UK, which meant that I had a few days of being at home thinking, hey nobody has an accent here.  But now I'm ready to continue with the real excitement Peru has for us!

Another beach shot