Lima Peru 7 March 2012

We arrived in this city very late at night after our flight from Brazil; we managed to find our driver despite there being 6 planes all landing at the same time. On the way to the hotel the driver started telling us how they had just captured the last terrorist leader from the guerrilla wars of the late 80s and early 90s so driving through dark streets with lots of homeless people put us on edge.

Daylight presented us with a different view of this city of 6 million, whilst there is obviously a large population of poor people as there is all over South America; this is also a city that is growing very quickly. We were staying in Miraflores, which is the main tourist area and is very safe to walk; it is also quite modern and is on the seaside. A mist caused by the cold sea temperatures mixing with warm air covered the whole area of Miraflores until about noon and we were told this is quite common

Miraflores 

 The main square of the centre of town has some beautiful buildings that have obvious French and Spanish influences.

 Our guide today was Cecil, a trained teacher who decided it was more interesting to be a tour guide, his English was quite good and we enjoyed his company so much we took him to lunch after the tour.Food is incredibly cheap here, so we let him suggest a restaurant, he took us to a restaurant called Alfresco in Miraflores, which he admitted he would only go to on special occasions, as it was quite expensive. This was a seafood restaurant which had the best king prawns I have tasted for a long time, the 3 of us had 2 courses and coffee with a bottle of wine and bottled water for less than A$100

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The shanty towns

Touristy Miraflores