A quick four hour bus ride and we were in the capital of Peru....good old Lima. Staying in Miraflores which was the nicer area of Lima (as we`re snobby backpackers!) we had a cheeky look around with this pretty cool looking bull chappy looking over the small park there.
Knowing that we wanted a bite to eat for dinner, we walked around for ages and did our usual trick of not deciding where to go. So with Jen refusing to choose where to eat and getting annoyed we couldn`t find somewhere without faffing about, I took the role of the decision making man, a man who made the wheel (thanks Ron Burgandy) and picked a little Turkish joint as it had nice looking kebabs inside. However upon perusing the menu we decided upon some stuffed vine leaves as Jen`s mum cooks this up often as they are traditionally Cypriat and also had some lamb skewers. The food was bad ass. If you`re ever in Miraflores, Lima.....go to Taboush!
After doing not a whole lot that day, we went back to our hostel and grabbed some happy hour cocktails and chilled out.
The following day, I was keen to go football shirt shopping as I fancied one from each country. There was a mall kinda thing the other end of our area by the sea so we headed towards there taking a detour past the "park of love" seeing as it sounded interesting. Turned out to be a normal looking park but it did have a statue of a canoodling couple which is probably where the name comes from!
Following the park of love, we swung by the mall, which turned out to be pretty poo in comparison to some of our shopping centres. Expecting some sports shops, I was disappointed to only find an adidas shop so only had a limited selection of footy shirts, none of which I really wanted and were also pretty expensive!
Onwards and upwards though as we swung back via a chocolate museum where we read about the chocolate making process from the cocoa bean. They also offered choccy making classes but they were pretty steep so we just settled for the look around.
After Jen was keen on a sandwich place she read in the lonely planet guide, we went and munched there which turned out to be pretty mediocre. O well, at least we got to eat in a place founded by the odd combination of 3 chaps from Peru, Spain and Scotland.
After wondering around aimlessly we decided it was time for the mandatory cultural activities so we went to a pre-Inkan archaeological site which sadly, the Lima folk had lost as they decided to build on quite a lot of it, nowadays they don`t really know how big it would have been. But anyway, it was still really interesting, seeing their method of building pyramid like structures using mud blocks, layed in a specific way to withstand earthquakes.
There was a mock up of a dude making the mud blocks and you can see the style of wall a little better in this photo. They also found some mummified bodies in the structures here.
Following this, we tried to sort out our visas after the douche bag border control guy only gave us 30 days, when we should have had as many as 183! after looking around for ages where it was located on the map, we finally found it hidden under a roundabout in the middle of the road where you had to go underground to get to it. Stupid place for an immigration office if you ask me. Anyway, after seeing the queue for it we decided to just risk it as we were told that it would only cost a dollar a day to stay over the visa period.
There were also lots and I mean lots of little market areas in Miraflores which sold all the usual tourist stuff. This is an example of just one of the stalls, with each market probably having 30 or so stalls and there must of been markets about 6 or 7 different market areas. And so it was back on the football shirt buying mission ....but the football shirt copies here were so pants that I wasn`t gonna buy one of those!
Getting back to the hostel we decided to munch there for dinner as there was an offer on for 2 courses and a drink for like 3 quid. Putting our orders in we waited for our food to come over a free cocktail. Didn`t think we`d end up waiting for an hour and a half though! To be fair, it was just one guy there running the bar and cooking behind there on two mini stoves. With the bar guy ran off his feet, the hostel owner had to come in and help out, who couldn`t even make a pisco sour, the nations drink! Everyone kept ordering them off the bar guy and refusing to order off the hostel owner! As it turns out the food was pretty tasty but not sure it was worth waiting that long for it!
After a good old sleep we headed back out into Miraflores the next day for a quick lunch which turned out to be their version of a fast food joint called Bembos. With me struggling to order in Spanish the clown behind the till put through our order of burger chips and drink meal seperately so we ended up paying loads as we had each item seperately. What a douche, even with the language barrier, why would we order it all seperately. O well!
After receiving instructions from our hostel receptionist as to where a cool museum was, we hopped on the metro bus and got off where he said. His instructions were "you can see the museum when you get off here, its a block away". Looking around there was no museum, turns out he sent us a whole stop away from the nearest stop, which we also discovered was then a 30 minute or so walk away fromk the actual museum. After 20 minutes or so with no museum in site we decided to call off the search and instead head into Lima central for a look around. Getting to the main square we took some snaps.
...and posed in the throne-esc seat.
We also asked the guy behind the hostel reception where a supermarket was for a cheap dinner. Turned out that was a mistake as again he gave us wrong directions and we had to walk an extra two blocks to find it. Oddly I was craving a Dr Pepper which I never thought I`d find but this place had them. Result! Taking our pasta ingredients back to the hostel, we found that it had the worst kitchen ever, the oven burnt everything and there were only a few hobs working and it took about an hour just to boil some water. We drowned our sorrows over a cheeky beer!
Our last day in Lima and I was determined to find a football shirt, so foolishly I once again returned to Mr poo directions behind the hostel reception and asked where I might find one. He told me about a big market called Polves Azules and said it was in the centre by the big government building. After loosing my trust I decided to google where it was which turned out to be in a completely different district of Lima, but the douche had at least highlighted the right market.....it was bad ass. Jumping on a minibus, we got to the actual place and had a look around a park which had a museum fair on which excited Jen. But we werent there for that, it was footy shirt time. After crossing the most crazy road we had come across (a cross roads which didnt have an actual crossing or pedestrian lights so we had to time our run between two sets of traffic coming through) we arrived at the market and I was in footy shirt heaven. Shirts everywhere. I had to purchase a Allianz Lima shirt which oddly looks like the WBA shirt, and also a Santos shirt with Neymar on the back (who has since annoyingly moved to Barcelona). Jen also bought some amazing fake Ray Bans for about 2 pound 50 (cant find the pound sign on these crazy computers).
After my giddy excitement at finding all the football shirts we went out for a super awesome meal and it was then time to say goodbye to Lima (for now - as we would later have to return)....next stop Huanchaco.
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