Lima - Metropolis on the Pacific

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Gianna and her siblings Lukas (older, younger brother) and Fabio (older, older brother) attended the Swiss school in Lima for 8 weeks. During regular operation, we visited the school while Walter told a story about each building.

The very well-maintained school building is up to date. About 2/3 of the students and teachers are from Peru and 1/3 are from Switzerland. The Swiss sponsorship can hardly be denied with the many Swiss and, above all, Thurgau flags!

After the interesting school tour, we were all very hungry and made our way to our favorite restaurant (Tiendecita Blanca). As always, the food was excellent. The place is run by a Swiss person, of course, a friend of Walter (Gianna's father). I have the feeling he knows almost every Swiss person here 😜.

We quickly gave up our plans to visit the city center of Lima as the lady at the travel agency kept us waiting for quite a long time. Communication in Spanglish is a bit difficult because English is about as popular here as vegetables (In South America, it is hard to be a vegetarian. Very hard!) We had planned a trip to Huaraz, a city in the Andes (3100 meters above sea level). But since the weather there is not cooperating, we decided to take a trip to Ayacucho.

We will travel by night bus and hopefully arrive relaxed! But before we leave Lima, there was another very important event. The visit to the restaurant El Hornero - the best steakhouse in the world!! With Walter, we have an expert gourmet by our side who knows the best places in Lima from his numerous visits! And once again, we were not disappointed.

The beautiful house in the Chorillos district was very stylishly furnished. The food exceeded all our expectations and my 450g steak was perfectly cooked. Even Gianna liked the meat exceptionally well - that says something!

It must be mentioned that we have never eaten such good meat as in South America. Australia was also very good, but in South America, every piece of meat was soooooooo delicious! The main dish in Lima is Lomo Saltado. Meat with rice and onions.

In general, a lot of beef and chicken is eaten. Vegetarian options are not always easy to find.

All this meat must, of course, be digested. Being as smart as we are, we squeezed ourselves into a Toyota Yaris with five people to save some money on taxi fare. No one told me that Gianna would sit on my stomach for the whole way and that we would have to struggle through the traffic jam for a whopping 45 minutes 😰.

At least the taxi didn't rip us off. When visiting the city center of Lima the next day, Walter wanted to buy 2 tickets from a street vendor. The agreed price of 20 soles (7 Swiss francs) was already a lot, but then the good gentleman gave us way too little change! Gianna (who wanted to become a prosecutor earlier) finds it hard to suppress her sense of justice, and I had to make sure she didn't punch the vendor in the face. 😬

He quickly disappeared and so Walter paid 40 soles.. You have to be very careful here, otherwise you will be taken advantage of like a Christmas goose!

Lima and Peru in general are quite rich in history with many churches, old buildings, and many different ancient cultures. The influence of the Spaniards and, of course, the people from Thurgau is visible in many places 😉.

In the city center of Lima, we visited some very beautiful churches, monasteries, and even catacombs with creepy skeletons. The many buildings from the colonial period give the large parks a very special atmosphere.

You can read about how our bus ride went and what the national dish in Peru is in the next blog post 🇵🇪😎!