What? No Paddington Bear in Lima...?!

Lima was my next stop after Cusco in Peru. I wasn't planning on even visiting this city but the flight I bought meant a two day stop over before heading to Quito in Ecuador due to lack of flight availability. In hindsight Im glad I ended up staying here two days as the weather we had was gloriously hot and sunny which made a change from the cold in Cusco.


I was staying in the same hostel brand that Id stayed in Cusco - Kokopelli - whose dorms have the comfiest beds I think I have ever encountered in South America. The hostels themselves weren't too bad either.


The taxi ride from the airport was fairly quick and I was surprised to see that Lima is situated by the sea?! For some reason I hadn't even realised this prior to going which I felt a little ignorant about. Regardless it was a welcome surprise. Driving along the coastline reminded me of the road trip I did to California last year, albeit a much faster Peruvian taxi version!


Arriving at the hostel I met a lovely Aussie/Irish girl called Queva who Id met previously in my dorm in Arequipa. She had left Arequipa a few days before me but due to my flight Id managed to catch her up. We explored Lima together with a Flemmish girl called Stephanie who unfortunately had had her bag stolen from McDonald's the day Id arrived in Lima. I've lost count now of the amount of people I've met who have had their stuff stolen from them whilst in South America...


Our hostel was in an area called Miraflores which is where most of the hostels tend to be located as its fairly safe (with the exception of the above incident!). Having explored the area we took a taxi to the centre of Lima which randomly was almost thirty minutes drive away! Who knew this city was so big?

The cathedral in Miraflores

Turn off your mobile. You don't need this to talk to God...

The centre of Lima turned out to be much prettier than we expected, with beautiful colonial buildings surrounding numerous plazas (squares). One of which actually reminded me of being back in London!


We visited the Basilica de San Francisco - another UNESCO World Heritage Site - which is famous for its catacombs (buried bones!) under the church. The church itself was beautiful with courtyard walls covered in tiles that reminded me of Seville - funny that seeing as they did actually come from Spain...

The basilica

The most annoying thing about the tour (which happened to be sooo boring and all in Spanish) was that we weren't allowed to take any photos. None at all. I understand that taking pictures with flash can impact paintings, but not being allowed to take photos of courtyards and the building itself is just ridiculous. There was a library in the church which apparently contained twenty five thousand antique books some of which dated back to the fifteenth century. As you can imagine we weren't allowed to take pictures of these, but what I found most irritating was that they had all the windows wide open with sun light streaming in onto the books and the pollution from the street drifting in?! I doubt cameras cause as much damage to books as that... 

The one picture I managed to take without our guide seeing...

The last part of the tour was visiting the catacombs for which the church is famous for. I thought I would be fine visiting them, but as per our rather disastrous cave tour in Chile, I ended up freaking out a little - especially with all the bones piled up everywhere...Queva was way braver and coped extremely well despite my patheticness. 


That evening we celebrated St Patrick's day in the hostel - the staff had gone a little overboard in the decorations, going so far as having a St Patricks day piñata! (papier-mâché container that is decorated, filled with toys and/or sweets, and then broken as part of a ceremony or celebration). Being Irish, Queva got given a free drink along with a hat and scarf. I tried to pull the "I look Gaelic card" but failed miserable. We stayed in the bar a while, had a few "free shots" which were literally lemonade?! and then moved onto the rest of the evening in the bar next door...


The next day (feeling slightly fragile) we walked to the bohemian district of Barranco (Spanish for ravine) which is just up the coast from Mirasol. The walk there was mostly strolling by the sea until we came to a free way which wasn't easy to cross! The name Barranco was pretty apt as the area itself was in and around a ravine near a cliff overlooking the sea where loads of surfers were catching some waves. 


Barranco reminded me of Santa Teresa in Rio which was just up from where I was staying with my friends Tom and Manuela. It had similar coloured houses and interesting graffiti.  

The Pacific Ocean!

Lima´s own muscle beach!

The stairs which take you up to Barranco from the cliff edge

Barranco street art

The main square in Barranco

Two things (unrelated) we saw which were interesting were a tuk tuk and some black sweet corn!

Weird...

tuk tuk!

In the evening we went to a local sushi restaurant and ate the best sushi I've ever eaten! Im normally not that adventurous with sushi - tending to stick to salmon and tuna - but we ate octopus and some other random fish sushi. All for way less money than you would spend in the UK : D


Overall Lima was pleasantly surprising although I was disappointed to not have seen any trace of Lima's supposedly most famous resident, Mr Paddington Bear...