Lima, Peru

Sunday to Tuesday, 10 - 12 February 2008

When originally booking this trip, we tried to get a flight to Santiago, the direct route into South America from New Zealand. However February is a busy travelling month in South America. It's Carnaval, the 4 day pre-Lenten celebrations, that start on a Saturday and end on Fat Tuesday (Mardi-Gras). We have no choice but to go the roundabout route to Lima via Los Angeles.

We arrive in LA a half hour late. We had only 2 hours to get on the onward LAN Peru flight to start with, so the already tight transfer begins to look tricky. With the Mission: Impossible score banging in our heads, we jog-walk through US immigration and customs and check our luggage onto the connecting flight. In fairness, we had expected Post-9/11 Fortress USA treatment from staff but there is none of it. Once we explain our situation in our least threatening "top of the morning to you and begorrah, sure aren't we only simple Irish folk" manner, they are very helpful and jump us quickly through the queues. Although we manage to get on to the plane by the skin of our teeth, we have our doubts about the luggage. These doubts are confirmed when we arrive in Lima at midnight. After waiting hopefully for an hour, we are two lone souls at the baggage carousel. The LAN Peru staff are friendly and tell us that the baggage will be on the flight from Los Angeles the next day.

Resigned to wearing the same clothes for another few days, we run the gauntlet of taxi drivers in the arrivals area and look for a sign with our names on it held by a driver from Hostal Iquique, where we have a booking for the night. No such luck. We call the hostel and an inconclusive 10 minute conversation (us in Spanglish, them in heavily accented, fast-forward Spanish) gave us the impression that that the driver may still be in the airport somewhere. We circle the melee a couple of times and finally find a sign saying "Senorita Arrington" in Times New Roman Font 1.5. Our man is not attached to it but we find him eventually and get into his battered taxi and head towards town. We are glad to reach our lodgings for the night although Hostal Iquique is not the quietest of places. A guy in the room beside us alternates between snoring at foghorn levels and then taking calls on his mobile with a ring tone like a sonic boom.

Suffering from a bit of jet lag, we start late the next day. We go for a walk to Plaza San Martin and Plaza de Armas, the two main squares in the city centre, which have a few impressive buildings. Everything that we have heard about Lima is negative, that it is a dangerous city and that we should spend as little time as possible here. A friend from Lima, Milagros, says that we would have been better getting a hostel in the more upmarket suburb of Miraflores. We try to be hyper-vigilant: walking in a two-person phalanx, keeping our bags close to us and only taking the camera out for quick snaps. Because of this paranoia, we don't really enjoy walking around. As gringos, we stick out and feel that we are being looked at constantly (as in Asia, Leahanne, with her "yellow" hair is stared at alot). We are happy to get back to the hostel before darkness falls. But maybe alot of this has to do with our perception of things, as we do not have a single moment where we are threatened or approached by scam merchants. Our impression of Peruvians is that they are a friendly people and are delighted when we try to use a few words of Spanish. The food in Lima is good, particularly for Leahanne, the world's biggest potato fan. Apparently all of today's potatoes can be traced back to a single spud from Peru. We have a patatas dinner in Azato on Arica St. At US$5 for two you can't go far wrong.

The next morning there is no sign of the missing backpacks but then we get a call from LAN Peru who say that the bags are on their way from the airport. The predicted arrival time is no more exact than "sometime this morning" which leaves us with an anxious wait as we have to head off to the bus station at 12.30. At 11 o'clock the bags arrive and we (and anybody who has come within 10 yards of our BO) are delighted to be able to put on a changes of clothes for the first time in 3 days and use deodourant. We get a taxi to the Cruz del Sur company's bus station at Avenida Javier Prado. This is a newly built station for its 1st class "Cruzero" service and has plenty of security guards around so we are a bit more at ease. We enjoy one of the most comfortable bus journeys ever - there is plenty of leg room; a main meal and snacks are served; and the in-bus entertainment includes bingo and Hollywood movies with Spanish subtitles, giving us a chance to increase our Spanish vocabulary. The outskirts of Lima, some of them slums, stretch out into a grey desert. There are not many large towns along the Pan-American Highway, which runs southwards parallel to the coast, before our stop at Nazca.

We arrive at Nazca late in the evening and check in to the Hotel Alegria, which turns out to be very swish by comparison with Hostal Iquique. It's too good to be true though - somewhere in the building they keep basic rooms for budget travellers for approximately US$7. However we booked the room by phone and were either accidentally or wilfully misunderstood and put in a comfy room for US$30 a night. Big difference and lesson learned.

For more photos click here.