Lima: The City of Kings

Or so it may be sold to you as. A more apt description may be the City of Eternal Haze owing to the oppressive grey skyline that is an almost constant feature of this vast city. You can easily forget what a clear blue sky looks like if you spend too long here (unless, of course, you're lucky to be visiting in the small 2-month window over Summer when the fog lifts and Mr. Sun is able to poke his cheerful head through).

Blame the Humboldt Current.

Perhaps that is a little unfair. It is certainly not Lima's fault that it happens to be in a very unfortunate geographic position that sees it turned to grey for most of the year. Or that it rarely rains at all and so everything in the city, including people if you stand still for a little too long, become covered in a fine brown dust. And it may be true that the severe beating we took from the traveler's enemy, Jet Lag, could have clouded our judgement of the city (no pun intended). And we were actually lucky enough to experience a few glorious hours of partial sunshine while we were there, so it wasn't all bad.

However the truth remains: Lima is a very grey city. Which the council seems to be attempting to make up for with the proliferation of gardens that are to be planted on any free patch of dirt. It does make me wonder though, for one of the world's driest cities, where are they getting all the water from?

A bright(er) part of our stay in Lima was living in Miraflores for a couple of days and having a wander around and checking out the nice parks and walks along the ocean, and occasionally getting slightly lost. It was super safe and easy to get around and definitely one of the more attractive areas of the city. The guards on segways were a nice touch.

Also, if you're that way inclined, you can head down onto El Parque del Armor and get your love on like these two here.

We also managed to make our way without too much hassle to the Huaca Pucllana ruins in the middle of Miraflores. An ancient pyramid in the middle of an upmarket suburb of a capital city sounds pretty intriguing, doesn't it? And it was. Well, at least I thought so, especially when you were standing on top and you could imagine it a very imposing structure in its hey-day when there were no other large buildings around. And it's hard not to appreciate all the work that went into it, making all those damn little mudbricks.

We also navigated our way (badly) into the city via the new Metro bus system which probably shouldn't have confused us as much as it did. When we finally managed to make it to the Plaza de Armas after a bewildered detour downtown where we blindly wandered about with no more direction than 'Those buildings look old...maybe it's over there?' we had to take refuge in a cathedral and scour our guidebook trying to figure out where on Earth we were actually meant to go to look at old bones and get some food. The second part of which was made a lot harder since the place we were looking for didn't seem to exist anymore and menus everywhere else were heavy on the 'ol meat. But we managed not to strangle each other, I found a vegetarian restaurant (practically like finding the Holy Grail over here!) and we stumbled home. After waiting on a platform for a time a bus that was never to come.

Post-script:

Lima is like every single piece of Parramatta Road rolled into a smoggy ball.

Regards,

Chris.