Christmas in Lima (Peru)

After my flight from Mexico City started with a delay of 2.5 hours, I finally arrived in Lima shortly after 8pm after a 6-hour flight and a total of about 32-hour journey since Isla Holbox. My friend Moni should have arrived there by now as well. I quickly logged into the airport WiFi and was shocked to find out that it only lasted for 30 minutes. Oh ohhh, that means her WiFi access must have already ended if she landed as planned at 7pm. Waiting at the baggage carousel, I luckily reached her via WhatsApp and found out that her flight was also delayed, so she had landed only about 20 minutes before me. She was also at the baggage claim and even in the same area, so we quickly found each other between the baggage carousels and waited together for our backpacks and then went to look for a taxi after withdrawing money from the ATM. We were both pretty exhausted, so we didn't care that the 'official' taxi driver in a suit and fancy car wanted a whole 60 US dollars from us for the 30-minute ride to the hotel. But we had treated ourselves to a super fancy hotel there for two nights. There was a welcome drink for us at the hotel bar: Pisco Sour. A typical national drink of Peru. Pisco is a grape brandy from Peru. It's mixed with lime juice, sugar syrup, and egg white. I really enjoyed it.

With our own whirlpool bathtub, fitness room, sauna, heated swimming pool, and breakfast buffet, we treated ourselves well. And at the same time, we planned how to continue because nothing had been planned at all.

After some research on our smartphones, we decided to travel to Cusco. Ok. But how? We looked for buses but they were all fully booked. And the flights were extremely expensive because of Christmas. 200€ per person. We bit the bullet and booked anyway. After all, we wanted to go from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Due to the high altitude of Cusco (about 3,500m), it seems you need a few days to acclimatize to the thin air. So we didn't want to waste any time. We used the rest of the day to explore Lima. We went to Miraflores and walked down the street towards the coast. It was very crowded. Many people sitting in the parks or walking along the path. Just like a big city. I think Lima itself has about 8 million inhabitants. Not counting the suburbs. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our trip, even though it's not as warm as in Mexico anymore. We already had long pants and a jacket with us. At the coast, we had a great view of the surfer beach. And there were cool paintings on the walls everywhere.