Day Six in Peru - Lima

Today we are going into Lima to spend the day.  We start out by enjoying breakfast at the hostel.  Mister ordered me some fruit since I was quite a lazy bones and didn't want to get out of bed this morning.

The fruit bowl is wonderful and I am lucky enough to try a few new fruits.  The first is a Chiramoya which is excellent and the second are bananas that have fruit that is a bright orange in color.  Mister has scrambled eggs, bread, and coffee - the coffee is served almost like espresso and you add hot water to add to it.  Interesting.

After breakfast, we are out the door and heading down the street to the bus terminal. where we meet the most helpful attendant who helps us get the ticket and then points us to the bus we need.  The bus is almost like the metro rail back home in that it runs in a dedicated lane away from all traffic.  We board our bus and find ourselves packed in like sardines holding onto ceiling loops for dear life.  It takes about 25 minutes to get to Lima and we miss our stop (the only one with no name) and go a few blocks further than necessary.

We start to walk in the general direction that our map shows to get to the Plaza de Armas (yes same name again -- it means Plaza Major or main square) and pass a church that we pop into and Mister is able to take some indoor pictures which have been pretty elusive thus far in Peru.
   

From there, we continue towards the Plaza when Mister remembers that he had wanted to go to the Flower Market and it is only open in the morning.


So after consulting the map, we realize we need to backtrack and we go looking to where it should be.  We ask a couple of lady security officers and one gives us directions, warnings (rough part of town, put camera away, etc.), and as much information as she can and sends us on our way.

We are crossing foot bridges over the river and hear a person running to us and it is the security officer. Don't take the first steps down to the street level, but the second, and her "companion" will be at the other end to help us.  Really?  How cool is that.

We continue to the end and take the stairs down and sure enough another officer is there and he not only gives directions, but offers to walk us the first block there.  We continue on and hit a corner and are not sure if this is the one we are supposed to turn on when a local man asks if he can help us.  We simply say "mercado de flores" and he points to the next block and sends us on our way again.  How nice.


We round the corner and sure enough -- a big sign over the entrance indicates we are there.  It is a wholesale flower market on one side and the other has stalls filled with flower arrangements in all shapes and sizes.  They are as fascinated by us as we are by them.  They laugh when we say we're from "Estados Unidos" as if to say -- look at the silly Americans down in this part of town.

The colors of the flowers are intense and we see bucket after bucket of different dyes and white flowers of all kinds soaking up the colors.  It is a spot of beauty in a dump if that makes any sense.  When we finish looking around, we retrace our steps back towards the Plaza and find the first security officer again to say thanks.  We laugh about the conversation that must have taken place between her and her companion.  Imagine - "Be on the lookout for two redhead gringos that seem to think they need to see the flower market".  Obviously it is not a hot tourist spot.

We continue to the Plaza and notice that security has gotten a little more powerful.  They are now carrying machine guns. We round the corner into the Plaza and stop in awe of a magnificent building.  We ask what it is and are told that it is the President's Palace.

A restaurant touter comes up and says that at 11:45 the changing of the guards at the palace takes place.  It is now 11:15 and so we decide to just hang around the Plaza for 30 minutes and watch it.

We take a stroll around the Plaza and find a bench that faces the palace and sit down to wait.  Within minutes, the guards clear the front of the building and asks everyone to cross the street and watch from there.

We stand and claim a spot on the curb with the crowd that is forming.  Soon, a band starts marching out and continues until they are right in front of the fence on a raised platform and play several songs for us.   

We laugh as it is not the type of music that we expected, but rather lively and festive.  When they finish, they march to another area and a flag corps and group of guards march around until the guards are changed and everyone leaves.  The whole thing takes almost an hour -- wow, not what we had anticipated.

During the "show" we kept hearing honking horns down the street and what sounded like people yelling. and so we go that direction now.

As we get closer to the noise, we notice that the police are all set up blocking the road to the palace with guns and riot shields in place.

They are just standing as a human blockade if the crowd were to try and head that direction. Otherwise, they were not doing anything aggressive.  As we get closer, we stop in a store for a juice and discover that it is a labor protest for higher wages in front of the Department of Labor.

It breaks up within minutes of our arrival and soon the street is clear again.


We continue down the street towards the Monasterio de San Francisco where Mister wants to see the catacombs.  As we are walking down the street, I spot a little shop with an interesting looking food on the counter and stop to ask about it.  It smells divine. 
We start to leave, but I decide that I want to try it and so we go back to get one and discover that it is a form of Churro and they just sold the last one and it will be 10 minutes for the next one.

Two local men smile and point at the bench they are sitting on for us to join them.  We "communicate" for a few minutes until our treat is finished. When we say we're from Texas, one man smiles and says "the Alamo". They offer to let us have the first one and so we buy theirs for them (one sole each).  We take our hot treat and head towards the monastery.  We are having trouble eating it as it is soooo hot, but goodness it is yummy.  It is filled with some type of pudding-like filling and the outside is sprinkled with sugar after deep-fat frying it.  We sit on a bench at the monastery and try to finish it without burning ourselves.

When we are done, we go into the building and find out that there is not another English speaking tour until 4:00 that afternoon and so we buy our tickets and head back out to return later.  We walk back towards the Plaza and decide to go to the Catedral and so in we go to purchase our tickets.

The architecture here is similar to that of the one in Cuzco, however, the decor is much better and we are able to take pictures.

We leave the Catedral and take a seat on the stairs out front to map out where to go next.  I look through our guide book and see something called the Museo de la Inquisicion that looks interesting and is in the general vicinity of where we have to go back to the catacombs for our tour and so we gather our things and head that way.









As we walk down the little side streets again, we pass a shop with chickens roasting on an open spit and they smell oh so good.

The "chef" is a friendly guy who says they roast for one hour, and tells us to take a picture. As Mister gets his camera, the man runs to the oven and poses. We laugh as he wants to see the picture afterwards. We continue on our way and as we near the Senate building where the museum is housed, we see a park with a fence all around it and guards at the gate.  There is no one in it so we ask if we can go inside and they gesture to go ahead.  There is a statue in the center and something similar to our "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" and I wonder if that is why the guards are there.

From there we go into the Senate building and ask for tickets to the museum.  It is free but they tell us that the only tours today are in Spanish; however we are welcome to join in and so we do.  This museum sits above the place where prisoners were tortured during the Spanish Inquisition.  Peru was the second largest site for the Inquisition and a large number of people were "questioned" here.

The indigenous people were exempt though as the Spanish determined that they didn't know any better.   We go through the museum catching a little bit of what the guide is saying, but enjoying the artifacts anyway.  As we enter the area that leads down to the torture chambers, she indicates that we can just go and explore on our own, which we do.  We weave our way through small tunnels and see torture rooms and very tiny jail cells.  Pretty sure nothing good happened down here.

We leave the museum and start back towards the monastery for our tour. We are early, so we pop into Toque Criollo (right across the street from the monastery) and order a drink.  Mister decides that he has waited long enough for his ceviche and orders that as well.  They bring us our beers, a Cusquena and a Cristal (local Peruvian brands), and a little snack of maiz chulpi - roasted corn kernels. They are soft with a light crunch and we munch away while we wait.

When the ceviche arrives, it is very pretty and very large.  Mister only has a few minutes now to eat before our tour begins.  I feel bad for him because he doesn't get to truly take his time and enjoy his treat, but he declares it excellent and loves every bite of it and does manage to finish on time.

The tour starts and our guide speaks decent English with a very clipped cadence and we giggle at her repetitiveness of "and now we continue" each time she wants us to move.  As we go through the monastery, she gives a great deal of historical information and it really is interesting.  Finally, we descend underneath the monastery and are in the tombs, which are basically open pits full of bones. They buried over 25,000 people down here and just piled them in one on top of another.  Someone has cleaned the bones and sorted them -- that's right, you read that correctly.  There is a container of skulls, one of leg bones, etc.  At one point there is even an open round well in which they have created some sort of weird "art" out of the bones. I am disturbed. Time to go.

We exit and see an old lady walking along the street selling flowers. She looks like a small wicked witch of the west, and Mister has to give her some change..

We make our way back through the Plaza and to the bus depot as it is starting to be dusk and we want to get back to Miraflores before dark.  We buy our tokens with the help of a nice young man and enter in only to discover that this station only has buses going the wrong way.  He helps us get off a few stops later so we can board and go the other direction.  We get on the right bus and start back to Miraflores, packed in like sardines again.  Another delightful young man talks with us on the way back and "practices his English" on us.  It is very broken, but he is trying and we learn that he is actually an English teacher.  Too funny.

We reach our destination and stop at the hotel for a quick stop and to get a recommendation for dinner.  Apparently, we are doing Arabian tonight and so we walk the few blocks until we are there.  We order an assortment of hummus, baba ganoush, and another mixture that I don't really care for, a shwarma, and a liter of sangria.  When the food arrives -- there is way too much and we cannot possibly finish it all.  We are stuffed and decide to walk a little and so go around a few blocks and see that the Parque Kennedy is once again bubbling with action -- apparently it is a nightly event.  We work our way back to the hotel and check on our flight for tomorrow before heading to bed.  Only one day left -- time to start home.