Escaping Pisco was a pleasure. I no longer felt like my stomach was being cooked in a microwave. In fact, by 8.30am Tuesday morning I even had an appetite. Our bread / eggs / juice / brown water breakfast did what it was supposed to, and I expected my craving for real food to be satisfied that evening. Had I known what was in store, I may have just headed back to Nanditos for the other half of my chicken.
Still, out the door and away! Flores bus terminal is in Pisco town centre, five minutes from the hostel, and there we pick up two PNS$15 tickets to Lima, GBP3.25 for a 4 hour journey. We keep an eye on some shady characters without chins, who end up getting on our bus with us, and spot a girl with child who are obviously leaving some boy behind to go to the big city. He waves forlornly at them as the bus pulls away. She doesn't look interested.
If Cruz Del Sur is the bus company of the depressing movies, then Flores is all about ACTION! We are treated, thrillingly, to the first three installments of The Fast And The Furious, movies which I have sworn never to watch. You are a captive on these buses. Its either stare at the Atacama Desert, or watch Paul Walker drive cars. Its not a great choice, much less when there is no air conditioning. We open the window a bit, and it sticks. Half an hour into the journey a woman stands up and (politely) demands we shut the window. With a bit of cajoling it eventually shifts over a bit. The man in front closes it all the way and begins to comb his hair using the aid of a little compact mirror. When the woman begins to fan herself in the stifling heat, an hour later, Sarah grins malevolently.
After a while we begin to hit the very edge of the capital, pass through a few beach resorts, see a few zones already closed up for the winter. Its hard to consider summer to be over when you can still get sunburned outside, but the shops in Peru are selling coats and jumpers. Someone must be buying all this alpaca wool stuff. I explain to people all over the continent how cold it is back home, but they don't really get it, nor should they. When I tell them we have two weeks of summer a year, they just laugh, presumably wondering why we all stayed in Ireland instead of going to somewhere nice instead.
Then come the expected suburbs of Lima, the shantytowns and barefoot kids, then a few nice neighbourhoods, and we stretch our knowledge of the map of Lima trying to work out exactly where the bus might stop. The Flores terminal turns out to be on the very periphery of Central Lima, the historic centre, and about 4km from our hostel, 511 Lima Hostel, located all the way down in new and shiny Miraflores. Ever wary about being duped, we pad around cautiously, but no one seems even remotely interested in approaching us, even to sell us a stale bag of popcorn or anything. We feel unloved. A security guard tries to phone us a taxi, but no answer, so we (against our usual preference) wait for the lights to turn red outside the station, and jump into the car of a willing driver.
This is how we met Ricardo who, after getting onto the freeway that runs down to the coast, was full of chat about Peru (economy good, beaches in the north not as good as those around Lima, south is good though, Cusco excellent) and naturally was more than willing to talk about the Peruvian football teams. The boy didn't even try to take us to a different hostel anywhere else in the city, so we retained his number for future service. Good honest chap, plus PNS$15 to get us down the road.
The hostel is nice and clean, great big house, quick phone call home, then out the door. What is nearby?
Miraflores is the very respectable face of the monster that is Lima. Great big apartment blocks tower along the clifftop seafront, 150m or so above the Costa Verde, which runs the length of the city. The back streets harbour beautiful bistros, proper coffee shops, boutiques and the odd nice bar, whilst the main roads have all your fast food establishments, banks and hairdressers (Peru must have more banks than anywhere else in the world, its nearly impossible to walk into the same type of bank twice). Unlike the rest of Latin America, where an Avenida is a big main road specifically, everything is an Avenida here, except for really small Calles or Paseos.
All technical details. Miraflores is beautiful in a way I couldn't have prepared myself for. Lima as a whole is not what I expected. A city I have known of since I was little, thanks to Michael Bond, in adulthood I knew little except that it was a city encased in a grey, formless cloud, charmless, and generally a stop in a trip rather than a highlight. In fact, as we arrived in Lima, we had yet to meet anyone who actually had a good word to say about the place.
Naturally, Sarah fell in love with it instantly.
The parks along the cliffs are populated with Yoga classes, personal trainers, nannies with their charges (young and old), businessmen walking tiny dogs, and so many people in tight lycra jogging and running, you almost miss the tennis clubs, jugglers, families, well-to-do folk on their way to and from the beautiful shopping centre build right into the cliffside. Gazing back down the coast, east and south, you watch the town coming to a point under a giant glowing cross, perched on the side of a little mountain, one of many mountains that surround the whole metropolis.Up the coast, you watch the road run into the distance, you can see the boys and girls learning to surf amidst waves you can hear over the noise of the traffic, all surprisingly subdued thanks to expanse of water ahead of you. All this under a enormous, washed out, watercoloured blue sky that slides around thanks to the haze that thickens and weakens all day long.
Not hard to understand why Sarah loves it.
We are starving. At the humourously named Norky's Restaurant we spot an offer (not so common round here) for a post-work buffet for PNS$25. In we go. The place looks a little like Bewleys, lots of Art Deco stained glass and brass railings. We sit down, drowned in the sound of a bespectacle grump with his Korg electronic keyboard, playing Phil Collins with a samba beat. We receive our complementary pisco sour cocktails for our buffet. We go up to pick our food. Its like being at a wedding buffet. Skewers, chicken nuggets, crap salad, cold rice, little bits of meat-filled canelloni. All lukewarm. We laugh at ourselves. Thank God as we may have cried otherwise. The grump begins to play Volare. He is very loud and only plays the melody with his right hand. It is like my piece on the piano back when I was in Cub Scouts. We are at a very crap wedding. The boss of the restaurant is floating around in a stained yellow Lacoste polo shirt. The waiters are doing their best to be good. At 7pm, after we have attacked the buffet several times with little tiny plates, the food vanishes. That is clearly our cue to leave too.
Down to the coast we go, through the Parque Amor, and along to the Larcomar Shopping Centre. All sunken, with two huge gleaming metal candles outside to mark its location, it is 'nice' shopping at its very best. Lots of fancy clothes shops, though nothing too obvious, plus a theatre, and of course the food court, dominated by a huge Tony Roma's. We browse, nonchalantly, or so we think. It's no good, we reek of backpacking, probably for paying undue attention to the Happy Hour promotions.
We walk off our buffet, but try not to explore too much, as that is tomorrow's plan. Still, hard not to feel at home here. A week may not be long enough.
Still, out the door and away! Flores bus terminal is in Pisco town centre, five minutes from the hostel, and there we pick up two PNS$15 tickets to Lima, GBP3.25 for a 4 hour journey. We keep an eye on some shady characters without chins, who end up getting on our bus with us, and spot a girl with child who are obviously leaving some boy behind to go to the big city. He waves forlornly at them as the bus pulls away. She doesn't look interested.
If Cruz Del Sur is the bus company of the depressing movies, then Flores is all about ACTION! We are treated, thrillingly, to the first three installments of The Fast And The Furious, movies which I have sworn never to watch. You are a captive on these buses. Its either stare at the Atacama Desert, or watch Paul Walker drive cars. Its not a great choice, much less when there is no air conditioning. We open the window a bit, and it sticks. Half an hour into the journey a woman stands up and (politely) demands we shut the window. With a bit of cajoling it eventually shifts over a bit. The man in front closes it all the way and begins to comb his hair using the aid of a little compact mirror. When the woman begins to fan herself in the stifling heat, an hour later, Sarah grins malevolently.
After a while we begin to hit the very edge of the capital, pass through a few beach resorts, see a few zones already closed up for the winter. Its hard to consider summer to be over when you can still get sunburned outside, but the shops in Peru are selling coats and jumpers. Someone must be buying all this alpaca wool stuff. I explain to people all over the continent how cold it is back home, but they don't really get it, nor should they. When I tell them we have two weeks of summer a year, they just laugh, presumably wondering why we all stayed in Ireland instead of going to somewhere nice instead.
Then come the expected suburbs of Lima, the shantytowns and barefoot kids, then a few nice neighbourhoods, and we stretch our knowledge of the map of Lima trying to work out exactly where the bus might stop. The Flores terminal turns out to be on the very periphery of Central Lima, the historic centre, and about 4km from our hostel, 511 Lima Hostel, located all the way down in new and shiny Miraflores. Ever wary about being duped, we pad around cautiously, but no one seems even remotely interested in approaching us, even to sell us a stale bag of popcorn or anything. We feel unloved. A security guard tries to phone us a taxi, but no answer, so we (against our usual preference) wait for the lights to turn red outside the station, and jump into the car of a willing driver.
This is how we met Ricardo who, after getting onto the freeway that runs down to the coast, was full of chat about Peru (economy good, beaches in the north not as good as those around Lima, south is good though, Cusco excellent) and naturally was more than willing to talk about the Peruvian football teams. The boy didn't even try to take us to a different hostel anywhere else in the city, so we retained his number for future service. Good honest chap, plus PNS$15 to get us down the road.
The hostel is nice and clean, great big house, quick phone call home, then out the door. What is nearby?
Miraflores is the very respectable face of the monster that is Lima. Great big apartment blocks tower along the clifftop seafront, 150m or so above the Costa Verde, which runs the length of the city. The back streets harbour beautiful bistros, proper coffee shops, boutiques and the odd nice bar, whilst the main roads have all your fast food establishments, banks and hairdressers (Peru must have more banks than anywhere else in the world, its nearly impossible to walk into the same type of bank twice). Unlike the rest of Latin America, where an Avenida is a big main road specifically, everything is an Avenida here, except for really small Calles or Paseos.
All technical details. Miraflores is beautiful in a way I couldn't have prepared myself for. Lima as a whole is not what I expected. A city I have known of since I was little, thanks to Michael Bond, in adulthood I knew little except that it was a city encased in a grey, formless cloud, charmless, and generally a stop in a trip rather than a highlight. In fact, as we arrived in Lima, we had yet to meet anyone who actually had a good word to say about the place.
Naturally, Sarah fell in love with it instantly.
The parks along the cliffs are populated with Yoga classes, personal trainers, nannies with their charges (young and old), businessmen walking tiny dogs, and so many people in tight lycra jogging and running, you almost miss the tennis clubs, jugglers, families, well-to-do folk on their way to and from the beautiful shopping centre build right into the cliffside. Gazing back down the coast, east and south, you watch the town coming to a point under a giant glowing cross, perched on the side of a little mountain, one of many mountains that surround the whole metropolis.Up the coast, you watch the road run into the distance, you can see the boys and girls learning to surf amidst waves you can hear over the noise of the traffic, all surprisingly subdued thanks to expanse of water ahead of you. All this under a enormous, washed out, watercoloured blue sky that slides around thanks to the haze that thickens and weakens all day long.
Not hard to understand why Sarah loves it.
We are starving. At the humourously named Norky's Restaurant we spot an offer (not so common round here) for a post-work buffet for PNS$25. In we go. The place looks a little like Bewleys, lots of Art Deco stained glass and brass railings. We sit down, drowned in the sound of a bespectacle grump with his Korg electronic keyboard, playing Phil Collins with a samba beat. We receive our complementary pisco sour cocktails for our buffet. We go up to pick our food. Its like being at a wedding buffet. Skewers, chicken nuggets, crap salad, cold rice, little bits of meat-filled canelloni. All lukewarm. We laugh at ourselves. Thank God as we may have cried otherwise. The grump begins to play Volare. He is very loud and only plays the melody with his right hand. It is like my piece on the piano back when I was in Cub Scouts. We are at a very crap wedding. The boss of the restaurant is floating around in a stained yellow Lacoste polo shirt. The waiters are doing their best to be good. At 7pm, after we have attacked the buffet several times with little tiny plates, the food vanishes. That is clearly our cue to leave too.
Down to the coast we go, through the Parque Amor, and along to the Larcomar Shopping Centre. All sunken, with two huge gleaming metal candles outside to mark its location, it is 'nice' shopping at its very best. Lots of fancy clothes shops, though nothing too obvious, plus a theatre, and of course the food court, dominated by a huge Tony Roma's. We browse, nonchalantly, or so we think. It's no good, we reek of backpacking, probably for paying undue attention to the Happy Hour promotions.
We walk off our buffet, but try not to explore too much, as that is tomorrow's plan. Still, hard not to feel at home here. A week may not be long enough.
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