Ah yes, the traditional post that comes a few days after I return because I was too busy/lazy/absorbed in reading a novel to update the blog đ In my defense, the hotel wifi in Lima was nearly useless, making it significantly more difficult to post.
We took our fancy bus back from Paracas to Lima, complete with a meal, squishy reclining seats, and a bathroom. Oooh, ahh. It was the nicest bus I had ever been on, and for once we avoided my bus curse. Bus was not late, did not break down, and I did not have a crippling ailment of any type.
Lima was, in many ways, the opposite of the entire rest of our trip. High plains and Paracas: unrelenting sun. Lima: a blanket of perpetual low, thick grey clouds (known as garĂșa locally). Puno and Cusco: unfinished houses and steel rebar. Lima: modern apartment buildings and convenience stores. It’s hard to believe this is the same country we’ve been traveling around for the past two weeks.
We spent most of our time in Lima’s affluent and trendy Miraflores district, which is on the Pacific coast. Miraflores is perched atop green, round cliffs that drop straight down to boardwalks and gravelly beaches. The incredible updrafts near the cliffs keep paragliders and birds floating just above our heads as we walked along the clifftop parks.
We wandered the city for a few days with no particular purpose in mind.
Kennedy Park
Kennedy Park was near our guesthouse. It was surrounded by restaurants, tourists, and a cacophony of traffic.
Kennedy Park is home to about fifty abandoned and feral cats, and has been for twenty years. The cat population changes regularly, while groups that provide care and homes for the cats compete with superstitious and malicious people who try to harm and kill the cats of the park.
Clifftop Parks
Touring the clifftops took us through many vibrant parks, vendors, and tourists enjoying the mild winter weather.
Food
Lima is a huge foodie destination – which is something I filed away in my “things I never would have expected about Lima.” I spent a considerable amount of time googling restaurants, only to find that many of Lima’s restaurants were in lists of restaurants in South America and the world.
We hit up one of the top restaurants in the city, a Japanese-Peruvian fusion place named Maido. Even after a year of living in Japan (as a student…), I can say this sushi was the best I have ever had!
We also found a fantastic NYC-style sandwich shop on Kennedy park, which served fantastic NY-style sandwiches, shakes with south american fruit, and fries.
Huaca Pucllana
As our one old Peru thing we did in the city, we visited the ruins of the Pucllana pyramid.
Pucllana was built around 500 AD by the Wari culture and is smack in the middle of urban Miraflores. It is made of hand-made bricks, and each of the layers of the pyramid’s platforms contained human sacrifices.
On our last day, we had a late flight out of Lima, so we walked around the parks some more ahead of our 8-hr flight home.
And we saw…SUN!
Farewell, Peru. It’s been real.