Lima is Peru’s capital city and it is where we started and finished our two-week tour of this varied country. Our first stay was for 2 nights which included a full day guided tour to show us around the city and give us a brief introduction to the history of the country.

We had a brief photo stop at a very modern looking mud brick pyramid called Huaca Huallamarca. We were told that this actually dates from around 200AD but it looked more like it was built yesterday. In fact it is the victim of a rather over-enthusiastic restoration project. Sadly, we were only allowed to view this from outside the grounds through the fence before we were whisked off for a quick tour of the National Museum (Museo de la Nación).

Our tour around the museum reminded us of when we were taken around a similar museum in Mexico City during our tour of Mexico. This wasn’t because of the similarity in the relics (although there certainly was some). The similarity was in what we weren’t shown! In Mexico, our guide deliberately avoided talking about the Aztecs as they were just the dominant race when the Spanish Conquistadores arrived and hadn’t really contributed as much to Mexico’s rich history as their less well known predecessors (like the Maya for example). Similarly, our Peruvian guide deliberately avoided the Incas as they too were just the dominant race when the Spanish arrived and we were going to find out all about the Incas when we visited Cusco and Machu Picchu later on in our tour. We were told how difficult life in the Andes was for the Peruvians and how this had led to a higher rate of cultural and technological advancement compared to their neighbours who had a relatively easy life.

After lunch, we were taken for a tour around the Plaza Major which is the main square in Lima. The square is dominated by Lima’s cathedral which contains the tomb of the Spanish Conquistador, Francisco Pizarro. We were shown around this cathedral and then had chance to wander around the square for a few minutes to look at the other impressive buildings around the square. These included The Archbishop’s Palace (Palacio del Arzobispo) and The President’s Palace (Palacio de Gobierno). We were then taken to the Monasterio de San Francisco followed by the Iglesia de Santo Domingo which we think were both far more impressive than the cathedral.

The Archbishop’s Palace...	...and The President’s Palace, Plaza Major, Lima

We stayed in Lima on three separate occasions during our tour but we didn’t really have chance to wander around by ourselves until our final visit. Our flight back home to England wasn’t until 8pm so we had almost a full day to explore Lima and we decided to do some last minute souvenir hunting at the Indian Markets. These are on the south end of Ave. Arequipa in the Miraflores district. This was about 2 miles from our hotel so we decided to walk. However, the directions we had been given by our guide were slightly flawed and we needed a little help from some of the locals to find the right place. There turned out to be quite a few Indian Markets along this road and they were packed mostly with T-shirt stalls but they also had a good selection of local handicrafts.

A couple of very impressive altars in one of the churches we went into in Lima

While we were trying to find these Indian Markets, we came across an archaeological site that we thought might have been the pyramid that we had seen at the start of our tour. It turned out to be a different site called Huaca Pucllana which was still at the fairly early stages of its excavation. Somebody spotted us looking through the fence and invited us in and showed us around the site. It is an old pre-Inca settlement from between 200-700AD and included a pyramid that had still to be excavated.

When we were planning this trip, we read the various travel advisories for Peru which highlighted some risks particularly in Lima. Obviously these warnings are based on real incidents but we felt quite safe during each of our stays in Lima and that’s not because we went around in our tour group all the time because we didn’t. We actually spent more time wandering around the city by ourselves. Our hotel was in a relatively up-market area (San Isidro) and we noticed that the expensive looking residential properties nearby were built like fortresses and often had armed guards on the doors so there must be some truth in the warnings.

We are normally very good travellers and we usually adjust to a new time zone very quickly by adapting to it as soon as we arrive. However, during this tour we would have been better off sticking to UK time (which was 5 hours ahead) because there were so many obscenely early starts. The first of these was when we left Lima for the first time when we had to get up at 3:30am to catch an early flight to Iquitos. We were going to spend a night in the Amazon Jungle which you can read all about on the next page...