Lima

On the way back to Cusco from the amazingness of Machu Picchu, we met a French family. One of the sons told us some crazy travelling stories of him being robbed, held at gun point and kidnapped. This is important to understand our mental state afterwards, i.e our super paranoid state.

We were running out of time to get to Lima as Hannes was flying out from there. So we had to skip the places in between Cusco and Lima and we took our first flight. The plane to Lima was delayed a bit and was quite small (14 rows). Hannah and I both got anxious as we had had a bad experience on a small plane when we were in Asia. The flight was fine though, just left us a bit shaken. When we arrived to Lima, we got into a taxi to take us to an area with lots of hostels (one of the only times we hadn't pre-booked). The cab driver tried to convince us to go to a hostel he had ties to and got angry and raised the price when we rejected his offer. We were already in his car with no knowledge of where we were so his quick change in attitude kinda freaked us out. We were already paranoid from the French guy's car stories and shaken up from the flight. Looking back its quite funny because all three of us individually started coming up with scenarios of how to kill the driver if he kidnapped us. Turns out we were a greater danger to him than him to us.

He actually took us safely to where we wanted, albeit with the higher price. In the end, the first few hostels we tried were fully booked (why, Lima??) and then Hannes's small backpack got lost on the way to our final hostel. Overall, a shaky start to Lima. 

Thankfully, Hannes didn't have anything too valuable in his backpack. And our hostel, 511 Hostel in the Miraflores area of Lima, was awesome! Best hostel Ive seen and run by three cool guys.

From that point on, Lima was great! Miraflores is a really nice, clean, safe, wealthy area on the coast of Lima, kinda reminded us of Singapore. Its a little utopia with parks, people jogging, dogs and kids running around, loads of surfers, nice restaurants and all the big commercial brands. It was a little bizarre to find all this in a city in the middle of the dessert but we embrace the comfort when we find it.

On our second day in Lima we left our utopia to explore the other areas. We found a funky cafe for lunch, walked through the popular Kennedy Park and bought some small paintings at the artisanal markets. Then we took the bus to Centro, a more hectic area of Lima but also home to Plaza St Martin and Plaza de Armas (they aren't too original when it comes to naming places). The plazas were really pretty, surrounded by white colonial buildings, and of course, demonstrations.

And out of the millions of people in Lima, we ran into our German friends, Philipp and David. What are the chances!! So we all went out for dinner and pisco sours in the Barranco area to mark Hannes's final night with us! (Big awkward hug x)

The next day, it was cloudy and grey so a good day to tour the museums (joined by our new friends, Joachim and Jihye). Museo de Larco is a really well put together museum to learn about Peruvian history and culture (beyond the Incas). I had also heard that the fashion photographer Mario Testino (who's Peruvian) had opened a gallery in Lima, so we went from the historical to the contemporary. 

Some graffiti

After three days, we were ready to leave Lima. We wanted to head to the north coast of Peru to Mancora for some beach time, and from there we could cross into Ecuador. But, we cant always have everything we want. Prices from Mancora to Quito (Ecuador) were silly, over 200 dollars for a bus. So we had to cut that out and decided to fly straight to Quito instead, still expensive but at least its paying for a 2 hour plane ride rather than a 40 hour bus ride! It was a Sunday though so finding a travel agent was difficult. Eventually we found one and booked a flight out for later that night.

We went back to the hostel to relax and pack, and there the Ecuador-related difficulties started. The agent called to say she had cancelled our one-way (paid for) flight as immigration in Ecuador might turn us around if we didn't have a return or onwards flights booked. We explained we had flights from Colombia to London in a few weeks so we would clearly need to leave Ecuador for that. In the end they accepted that, but by that time the flight prices had gone up even more so we had to postpone the flight to the next night. An extra day in Lima then, not too shabby. 

We walked by the beach on our actual final day, watching the surfers and then had a long buffet lunch and some final ceviche.

 Ahh that lunch ended up being my downfall. To be continued...