Colonial Lima, Desert City...

Yet another stunning view from our flight. This time, over the snow-capped Andes which stretched as far as the eye could see. The incredible view caused many gasps from the passengers on our LAN flight between Buenos Aires and Lima.

The first thing that strikes the traveller about Lima is the weather: heavy, low clouds shroud the capital of Peru giving this city a dull and dismal air. On only one of our four days in Lima did the sun break through this fog-like atmosphere and offer some relief to the dreary outlook.

Despite the somewhat Mancunian skies, Lima did not disappoint. I must say that homesickness had been getting the better of me during our final weeks in Argentina - I think the long bus journeys between far flung destinations hadn´t helped. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to visiting Peru whose culture, according to everything I´d read, would dazzle and really interest us.

Lima is the second largest desert city in the world - I hadn´t even known Peru was home to dusty landscapes, let alone that it´s capital city resides in the middle of a desert. Research has since informed me that Lima is beaten only by Cairo, Egypt as the largest desert city in the world. It´s actually the fifth largest city in Latin America and around a third of all Peruvians live here.

Chris and I stayed in the upmarket Miraflores district and tried our luck with a hostel that was part of the Che Legarto chain: we´d enjoyed their brand new El Calafate hostel, though their branches in Montevideo with Monica and also in Buenos Aires for our final two nights had been slightly disappointing due to their (only slightly) rundown state, especially in terms of the dorm rooms. This time, due to it being low season I suppose, we were lucky enough to get a whole dorm room to ourselves including a private bathroom and even cable TV! Score!

The Miraflores suburb is impressive, with it´s swanky high-rises,upmarket cafes and restaurants and clean plazas. The guide book warned that this wasn´t representative of the rest of Peru but we enjoyed our stay there none the less.

We spent our days ticking off the few attractions we wanted to see in this city: it takes around 40 minutes to reach the old centre of Lima from the Miraflores suburb,by public collectivo. Collectivos work in the same way that the dolmus does in Turkey from what I could tell. These cheap, privately owned mini buses stop anywhere along the road that a passenger wants to hope on and off. They end up full to the brim as they bounce along the roads to your destination. Our trip began with an exciting clash between our bus and a taxi whose wing mirror somehow ended up entangled with that on our bus - the driver began a chase through the suburbs (completely apart from the bus´s normal route) in an attempt to reunite the taxi driver with his mirror!

Our first stop was in a traditional cake/coffee/fresh juice/fast food shop that Chris had read about: we soon learned that Peru was going to be a lot kinder to our wallets than Argentina had been, even if it was a lot more rough around the edges. Following a fresh fruit juice each, we headed to the famous Plaza de Armas, or the main square, where a multitude of historical buildings lie. This city is so rich in colonial history and it´s buildings reflect that.

The police were out in full force when we walked around the Plaza de Armas. While we suspected strikes and hurried out of there so as not to get caught up in any riots (we wouldn´t want any trouble, now would we!) it turned out that the Equadorian president and his entourage were visiting. The Plaza was thus buzzing with armed and shielded officials who took the occasional break to text or call a friend on their mobiles.

It was in 1535 that modern-day Lima was founded by Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who, we later found out, founded many of Peru´s modern day cities (mainly building them right on top of existing Inca cities, using the solid foundations of Incan engineering genius). The history here is fascinating and from my very first day in Peru I knew that, as a history geek, I was going to have a great time over the next few weeks learning about the influence of the 16th century conquistadors, the cities these Spaniards founded and also the Inca Empire and the Pre-Incas that came before that. This area of the world is a history-lover´s dream!

Plaza de Armas
(photo courtesy of flickr)

The Spanish named Lima as the capital of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and its administrative rights stretched all the way to Brazil. There are some incredible buildings still standing from the 16th and 17th centuries despite the huge earthquakes of 1687, 1746 and 1940 that continued to destroy the city and rip to shreds its mainly "Adobe" built structures (basically mud bricks).

Lima´s Cathedral
(photo courtesy of flickr)

We visited the Museum of the Inquisition which, you guessed it, was the headquarters for the Spanish Inquisition. Along with the one in Mexico, this building was used to try Spanish heretics from around the whole continent, proving what an important city Lima once was.

The Museum of the Inquisition was used by the Spanish Inquisitors between 1570 and 1820. Only Spanish Catholics (heretics) were tried; no Indigenous person was ever questioned or tortured in the same way because even though the Spaniards converted the whole continent to Catholicism, the Indigenous people were never considered´true´Catholics and so couldn´t be tried as heretics.

We also visited the monastery of San Francisco, very impressive since it was built in the 17th century. It´s an absolutely beautiful building to add to the list of impressive, surviving colonial buildings in the city such as the cathedral and the Presidencial Palace at the Plaza de Armas. It´s famous for its catacombs which are home to 70 thousand buried bodies! This was the cemetery during colonial times. The bones and skulls have been arranged in cicles which made this visit even more exciting. There was also a wonderful library with books dating back from the 1600s.

San Francisco Monastery
(photo courtesy of flickr)

Aside from architectural ruins from Incan and pre-Incan times that I expected to see in this country, I hadn´t known to expect to see such beautiful and well-maintained buildings left by the Spanish from so long ago. You don´t see this kind of thing in North America and it got me to wondering... why? I suppose the Spaniards got started on South America a lot earlier (a whole century?) than the Brits, Dutch, French etc did with the North of the continent. Plus, I expect Catholicism had a lot to do with it. So much money was spent on building churches and converting the indigenous people to this religion and with help from Incan foundations, these structures were built to last. Whereas in the United States and Canada, there was no such rush to indoctrinate the locals with Catholocism as these territories were to become the lands of the free - it was a bigger preference to kill them, I suppose. And thus, a whole century after the Spaniards began founding cities and building churches, less money was spent on building lasting structures in the English speaking North. Maybe? I don´t know. I´m sure I will be proven wrong - this is a subject I am completely ignorant about, to be honest. I no nothing about native Americans (northern), only that I have never seen one; whereas Lima is full of indigenous looking people. I am also mightily impressed that so many historical buildings from 16th and 17th centuries are still standing here in Lima as it is something I have yet to see on my (granted, very few) visits to North America.

We stopped for lunch in a swanky (yet cheap - their lunch menu of three courses was only 4 British pounds) restaurant ran by a French convent of nuns. Their delicious, slow-cooked food reminded me of my grandma´s cooking - this food had been prepared with care and patience.

Another exciting day in Lima was filed with a trip to Huaca Pucllana in Miraflores. This pre-Incan structure from 400 AD was absolutely fascinating and is well worth a visit. It was only in the mid 20th century that archeologits began excavating after it was discovered that this big mound in MIraflores was more than just a mud hill. It´s a pyramid structure made from Adobe bricks and the most interesting thing for me was that the people spent around a whole century covering it with mud and land... why? Our guide couldn´t give us a reasonable answer, speculating only that it was a holy place that they didn´t want found by others. But why leave it in the first place? They can´t have left in a hurry due to an imminent threat of invasion because it must have taken decades to cover it. This remains a mystery to me. Any trip to Lima must include a visit to this site, if you ask me.

Huaca Pucllana
(photo courtesy of Perugoldenshuttle.com)

Lima had made for an extremely interesting visit; neither of us could wait to explore the rest of this country and see what its historical and cultural delights had in store for us next...

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Some of the photos on this blog are not our own: we didn´t take our camera out on a few occasions and I can´t find pictures of the places I was describing. I have made sure to comment on those not belonging to us...