Stop Over in Lima

10 to 13 June in Lima, Peru

Hello everybody

We just had grilled scallops, fried salmon and snapper, jumbo garlic prawns and home made fish soup. Everything super fresh off the boat and out of the clear waters of Vancouver Island, Canada. The salmon is so fresh, it is still moving when you buy it and costs 3 Euro the kilo. No joke. Tomorrow we are getting Oysters also straight out of the sea here in Comox and as big as my hand at 75 cent each...I really don't like those slimey things that look like snot and taste like a bad mouthful of oily harbour water. But I am sure Nicole will enjoy them very much. 

Anyway, I thought I write a few lines about our time in Lima, and it really will be a few lines only because we stayed no longer than three days. Ok, I can already hear some of you complain, three days? not more? why? First of all, If we wanted to spend 2 months in every country that we want to visit then you would not see us for another 5 years. Second, we were on a stop-over flight and it was either those three days or two hours whilst changing planes to El Salvador. So we took the three days. Happy now ? :-) 

When we landed at some ungodly hour like 5am in the morning it was grey in grey with low clouds and drizzly rain. The miserable weather stayed with us for the entire three days. Considering that we had only experienced blue skyes, sunshine and a minimum of 25 degrees the previous three months, we didn't complain.

As is usual in South and Central America, if you are a foreigner and don't know your way around, taxi drivers will really take you ten times around the city before dropping you somewhere you don't want to be, and then get angry if you don't give them a big tip on top of the 500 dollar you just spent on a taxi ride that costs a local probably no more than 10 dollars. Clever as we were by then (and after numerous unwanted city tours before;-) we had pre-booked a taxi pick-up service for a few dollar, the cheapest we could find. At the airport we were greeted by our taxi driver that looked like a mix between James Bond in black suit and tie, and a well trained Guerilla fighter from the Peruvian jungle (he had a massive scar across the back of his head but I did not dare asking him what from). Very politely he easily took our three bags in one hand and me by the other hand, pulling us to and into a massive black limousine with black tinted windows and no number plates. And now we are actually not in Canada but hidden, locked up and blind folded somewhere in South America. And we need you to please send 1 Million dollar to our taxi driver Mr Rodriguez who turns out to be more of a Guerilla fighter than a James Bond. 

Okay, Mr Rodriguez was actually a really nice guy who took us exactly where we wanted to go, and he didn't even expect a tip, so of course we generously gave him a dollar. In our defence, I did tell him that we were on a trip around the world and on a really tight budget and sorry we could not give him more. He seemed very happy with the dollar anyway and took us back to the airport a few days later. 

As for Lima, it is a very modern and well functioning city although it also still shows a lot of old tradition and history, which is great. And in comparison and contrast to African and SouthCentral American cities, Lima reminded us a bit of Germany. Everything more or less works how it should. I let you decide whether this is good or boring. We stayed with a young and very nice surfer dude in Miraflores, which is an upmarket, trendy and safe part of Lima. Safety was a nice but rare change from South Africa, Buenos Aires, Rio and San Salvador:-) But our host told us also of a few rough areas in Lima that you should not go to after sunset. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to visit them to get our daily dose of excitement. Apart from once, when we took the wrong bus and drove deeper into the not-so-nice zone and people started staring at us, already counting the dollars they would take off us. Nicole really wasn't happy but we managed to sneak back home with all our belongings still in our posession. 

In the end, we did not have time to visit those places in Peru that one must actually have seen when over there, but what we saw in Lima we liked. And on a final note, the food is really really good. I have to admit I never knew that there was such a thing as Peruvian cooking, but it is fantastic with colourful varieties of fish, crabs, prawns, squid, octopus, vegetables, soups. And of course Ceviche, a dish of raw fish marinated in lime juice and spices to slightly "cook" it just through the acidity of the lemon, no real heat involved. We could have eaten this for breakfast, lunch and dinner and never found a better Ceviche than the one we had in Lima. Muchos lecker! 

Here are our Lima photos https://picasaweb.google.com/110475049385279629687/LimaPeru2014?authkey=Gv1sRgCNXWvtevt5ez7gE&noredirect=1