Lima

I arrived back in Lima, a city I'd already spent a week or so in before heading to the Galapagos. I was staying in Miraflores, an area that is considered the most safe, but is not that interesting. It has a nice malecón, or promenade along the coast. Unfortunately with it being mid-winter there was also a near constant cloud coverage so it all looked a bit grim. On the occasional day that the sun was out it all looks so much better, and everybody is out enjoying it. Its like a different city when it's sunny. One thing that i did love about Miraflores was Parque Kennedy, a public park that is filled with cats. They aren't your typical stray cats, they are fed well looked after by local groups. There are boxes and cat houses with blankets dotted around the park, and every night they are fed and watered. Despite the constant clouds, Lima is one of the driest capital cities on earth so the cats seem pretty happy living in their cosy cardboard houses. If you sit in the park a cat will eventually come over to sit on you, after all a warm lap is nicer to sit on than the floor! People love to come to the park just to play with the cats. On weekends people also come to the park to dance and many people also gather around to watch.

I then checked out some of the other sites in Lima, such as the Huaca Pucllana, ruins from the pre-Incan Lima culture. The ruins are from 200-700 AD and were almost completely destroyed for urban development before 1981 when they were protected. Since then they have attempted to preserve and reconstruct the pyramids, and there some pretty interesting reconstructions of tombs and other parts of life in this period.

I also visited the historical centre which is chock full of beautiful colonial buildings, as expected. I also went around some of the markets to taste some of the local produce, including coca leaves, which were nicer than i expected but just left me with a numb tongue. I couldn't bring myself to try the cuy, or guinea pig though! Peru has great food, probably the best in Latin America after Mexico. One of my favourite dishes is cerviche, raw fish marinated in lime juice with slithers of red onions, chili peppers, and coriander, served with corn and sweet potato. I ate this every chance that I got, it's amazing! Another peruvian classic that i was a fan of was the pisco sour, a cocktail made from pisco, lemon juice, and egg white. After visiting the markets for some food, i went to a bar in a historic hotel for a pisco sour cathedral, basically a large pisco sour with 6 shots of pisco! Later that evening i had to deliver the postcard that I'd taken from the barrel post box in the Galapagos. Feeling tipsy after all of that pisco, I delivered the letter to what turned out to be some kind of community centre. The guy that had sent the postcard was there and very excited that it had made it to the centre. That night they happened to be putting on an improv show and invited me to watch. I obviously had no idea what was going on as it was all in Spanish, but it was still quite funny seeing the slapstick moves and telenovela style acting. Although i think the pisco sours helped!Les mer