Lima

After almost 5 hours, we arrived in the capital of Peru, about which we had already heard many spooky stories. It was said to be ugly, dangerous, and currently there were many protests, so it was recommended to stay away from the city center and, in addition, the Plaza de Armas was closed. Fortunately, we could not confirm all of this, except for the last point. We had booked a nice hotel in Lima, as we planned to spend a lot of time there and plan the next weeks of our journey. And our room was really great, we felt extremely comfortable. Moreover, the city is almost constantly covered in a gray cloud soup, so it is not that difficult to stay inside 😄. On the first evening, we also ticked off the only real item on our agenda in Lima, we went to the cinema once again. This time we watched Philip's beloved Indiana Jones in English with Spanish subtitles. Interestingly, the first 20 minutes were almost completely in German - because Indy's enemies are mostly Nazis - so we were probably the ones who understood the most in the movie theater. The movie was really good, we stuffed ourselves with a huge portion of popcorn and slept really well in our huge hotel bed.

On the next two days, we actually only left the hotel to eat and explore the beautiful district of 'Miraflores', where we stayed. So far, we really liked Lima. Unspectacular but stable, nice restaurants, strangely many casinos, clean, wide streets, many people - just a big city, but not stressful.

On the last day, we booked a city tour in downtown, once again a Free Walking Tour 😉. In contrast to Miraflores, downtown was rather gray-brown and still unspectacular, but not ugly. The Plaza de Armas was actually really beautiful, but unfortunately it was preventive fenced off because of the recurring protest marches (against the arrest of the president due to corruption). Our guide told us something about the history of Lima during the Inca period and the Pacific War with Chile. In 1970, Peru had the worst earthquake in its history, and a large part of the buildings in Lima were also destroyed, which could be seen from the reconstructed church towers. She also explained that many museums and restaurants had to close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Peruvian cuisine is known worldwide, so it is even more sad that this industry suffered so much from the pandemic. The tour ended at an enormous monument of Francisco Pizarro, who led the advance of the Spaniards in South America and later lived and died in Lima. The monument was in a park overlooking a hill with colorful houses. We still found Lima really okay, definitely much more beautiful than Ica 😄 On the way back to the bus, we bought one of the traditional churros, which are very different from the dough sticks that we know from the Christmas market. They were more like sweet pastries, filled with a white cream, warm and delicious! The original version can be found in an apparently very famous shop, the line in front of it was unbelievably long. We went to the next door, where there was exactly the same churro from the outside - just one hour faster 😜 On the way, we also passed two protest marches. We had already seen police officers everywhere in the downtown area, who seemed quite friendly and idle, apparently just standing around preventively and partially blocking some streets. Therefore, the protesters were accompanied by the police in a 1:1 ratio, and we felt that everything went very peacefully. At no time did we feel uncomfortable, and after all the hype in the news and the stories we had heard in advance, we somehow expected more trouble. Fortunately, none of that happened on that day, and we were able to return to our hotel completely unharmed. We had left our luggage there in between because we were once again taking a night bus - but this time with luxurious 180° beds!

Next, we head north to our next destination, Trujillo.