After our expedition in the Cordillera Blanca of the Peruvian Andes, we descended back to the coast and headed south to the Peruvian capital of Lima.  A massive city, we were already surprised about 60km north of the city by collections of shacks covering the desert landscape like subdivisions of mini-houses.  Along the road were also plenty of companies offering their services to construct these “prefabricated homes.” 

Predictably, we soon ground up against insane traffic full of dirty buses and vans, potholed roads, and a lack of signage. As we got closer to the city, the panamericana fortunately did become a proper controlled-access expressway, and we zoomed around the west side of the central core, catching a glimpse of the colonial buildings that make up the old town of Lima.  We tried to drive in to this area, but got stuck in Lima’s substantial Chinatown, where traffic-control barricades and completely gridlocked traffic prevented us from doing any drive-by tourism that day.  Instead, we made our way to Miraflores, the higher-end neighbourhood located on the Pacific beaches a few km south of the old city centre.

Seeing Miraflores once again reminded us of Medellin, and of the way Latin American cities are evolving.  Miraflores is clean, safe, has beautiful parks, modern stores, and an abundance of new condo developments, as well as a beautiful beach waterfront.  On the edge of Miraflores near the highway is a collection of modern office buildings. Here is the roadway down to the beach from the central park in Miraflores (Parque Kennedy).

We spent our first day in Lima surfing the beach in front of Miraflores, which was a little bit of a messy right-hand point break although with really dirty water. Later in the day, Ewa was flying in to meet us again so we drove out to the airport to pick her up, and then proceeded to actually check out the historical centre of Lima.

After we found a “Playa”, which in Peru means “Parking Lot” in addition to “Beach”, we decided to go for some ice creams to beat the summer heat. We had only a 50 sole bill (about $18 USD) and in typical ignorant tourist fashion tried to pay for a 1 sole ice cream with it. Big mistake: as we already know, getting change in all of Latin America is always a problem! In fact, the guy at the ice cream parlour was refusing to make change for our bill. Finally, he offered to make change but wanted to charge 1 sole for it. In the end, we got two more ice creams and he reluctantly agreed to make change for the purchase of 3 ice creams, albeit after some tough negotiating.

Eating our ice creams, we walked around the old town and checked out the key historical buildings in downtown Lima. The core is definitely full of beautifully restored colonial edifices…

In the evening we went back to Miraflores and went to hang out on the beach and watch another beautiful Pacific sunset…

A restaurant tout then found us and we accepted his offer of free pisco sours (pisco – a grape brandy made in Peru and Chile, lime juice, sugar, and egg whites) to dine at his restaurant, where we had some decent lomo saltado, Peru’s national dish. This is basically a stir fry of chopped up steak, onion, peppers, and fries. We’re not really sure how it ever got into Peruvian cuisine (Asian influence?) but it is delicious.