Lima, Peru

Due to protests, travelling around Peru by bus had suddenly become dangerous and hasselsome for the backpackers of South America. There are frequently such protests in Bolivia and Peru, from people who are unhappy because of incompetance with the governments. This time it was due to water charges. And protests here aren't what they are at home, its not just walking down O' Connell St with a plaquard, its blocking off all the main roads, causing mayhem, getting violent and throwing rocks and stones and buses for some reason. There were reports of this 18 hour bus trip taking over 40 hours, people trapped terrified for hours. So for all these reasons, we opted for flying, my first South American flying experience. For a continent so laid back, I wondered what flying here would be like, but its one thing they do pretty well. The planes are better than home, but you certainly pay for the privledge, theres no ryanair here unfortunately.

The flight was only an hour, and the funny thing about flying when you are already at high altitude to start is that your ears don't pop. In Lima airport Ducky and Desire made friends with one of the air hosts from our flight, Luigi who wanted to show us around Lima that night.

Originally Lima hadn't featured in my list of places to hit in South America, from what I'd heard, it was dangerous and had no real appeal for a tourist. However, passing through Lima is the only realistic way of making your way to Equador, and then, Colombia. So Lima it was, and I was pleasantly surprised. We stayed in what I've been told is the nicest part of the city, Miraflores, which was cosmopolitan, organised, clean and filled with chains I had not seen in months. I should point out these things are not neccesarily what I rate as important in a city when travelling but it was a nice change for a few days. Plus in the company of my three new amigos it was bound to be a laugh. We got a room in Pariwana, in the center of Miraflores and where the old Loki was located. For some reason no one could tell us where this Loki had moved to, not even tourist Information, so we settled instead.

Luigi the legend met us at our hostel that night, and despite initially being suspicious of his intentions on taking a group of gringos out, he was a very decent, nice guy and we all loved him. He taught us the words to the South American anthem, 'Rumba'.

Showing us the sights of Lima mostly consisted of us going to the supermarket a little tipsy and buying more drink and sampling as many tasters as we could find. We ended up going to a variety of nightclubs around the main bar streets of Lima but to be honest, I've kind of had my fill of Salsa, which is all that seemed to be going on here, so I don't rate Lima in my top ten nights out in S.A. This however didn't stop the fact that the next day I had a banging hangover that haunted me until I was cured with a Falafel and Coke.

Our time in Lima wasn't very eventful I'm afraid to say, and mostly consisted of shopping, the danger of travelling with three people about to leave the continent. I won't bore you with the details of our shopping escapades, and will leave things by saying that we stayed for 3 night, and then sadly I had to say goodbye to Merri who was going to Scotland to work, Desire who was returning to Sweden and Ducky who was going to Oz for the year to work. I continued my travels and ended up making my next stop Mancora, another unplanned stop, but a nice one, a coastal town in Northern Peru.