Lima

Monday the 25th of October 2010
Immediately after the Santa Cruz trek and the same day (Sunday) we took a night bus to Lima where we arrived at 7h in the morning. We were not fully ready for the busy capital of Peru after spending 4 days in the beautiful and quiet scenery of the Cordillera Blanca. For a minute we debated if we would not just continue to our next destination, but in the end decided to give Lima a chance. It certainly turned out to be the right decision. Many travellers we had met before didn't find Lima that interesting, but that is probably because they focussed on the modern (and North American like) Mira Flores. We stayed in the old, colonial part of the city that can easily be visited in one day, if you skip the museums. This part of town is not too busy and is flocked with nice colonial buildings, pleasant plaza's etc. At 12h we watched the change of the guards at the presidential palace together with a large amount of tourists and local. We saw the guards that were there before leave the terrain, but did not see other guards come in. It looked like the disappearance of the guards to us more than to the change of the guards.
The afternoon we filled with a visit to the Fransico-church with catacombs where you can still see thousands of bones. We further took a mini-van to the top of the San Cristobal Mountain that offers nice views on the entire city. Before returning to our hostel we had, as it should be in the capital of Peru, a pisco sour. We had really enjoyed Lima and would tell another story to the people that we would meet further on than the one that was told us.