Lima

Complete

We got to Lima early evening. We'd spent a good part of the day at the Santiago airport in a lounge. We arrived from the port of San Antonio about 10:30 AM and our flight wasn't until late afternoon so it was a boring day to say the least. Not having too many "free" lounge drinks was a challenge.

This is a view of Santiago, Chile as we're taking off for Lima.  We visited here for a few days a couple years ago before our Antarctica cruise. It's really a nice city with lots to see and do. Unfortunately there is a lot of political strife in Chile at the moment and some of it violent so it may not be the best time to visit.

Our hotel in Lima was the Belmond Miraflores. A great hotel in a upscale part of town.

The view from our room. There are surfers in the water this side of the long pier. The water is really cold due to the Humboldt Current. The hazy sky is present 8 months out of 12. The summer in Lima runs from December to March (4 months). I'd go crazy living in Lima.

We had a half day with a guide and driver in Lima. She picked us up around 9:30 and dropped us off around 2:30 at our hotel.

We didn't see an awful lot of the city - I got the impression from the guide that there's really not a lot of nice things to see.  We visited the main church downtown, and some official buildings around the main square. We visited a private museum that was quite interesting. It wasn't a real busy day and that was okay with us.

The traffic in Lima is as f#$%ed up as just about anywhere we've been.  I certainly wouldn't want to drive here.

There is very poor public transportation - no subway, no LRT, the city operated bus system is a joke.  There are privately owned buses that do not follow any particular defined route - a guy will rent a bus for the day and then pack as many people in as he can because that's how he makes his money - by volume.

There are also private cars - not Uber - they're called Collectivos - just guys who drive around and pick up people standing at the side of the street with their hand out. There's hundreds, maybe thousands - and they snarl the  traffic big time.

Below is the main church in town. It's located at the main city square.

In the church is a mural showing Francisco Pizarro arriving in Peru and I think he's sending some local people out to the ship. Anyway...Pizarro was the guy who conquered the Inca people living here at the time. If not for him all the people in Peru might now be speaking French or English or still speaking what they spoke when he arrived.

A shot of the main square.

And another.

Next we went to an old monastery. Kind of boring. The architecture was nice tho'.

This was the library where the poor monks would spend all day reading the bible. Poor bastards!

Then to Museo Larco which was pretty interesting. The Larco family has been collecting Inca and Aztec and other ancient people's art for decades and have created a private museum in their private estate.

There are gobs of these guys with handles coming out of their heads,

And so lifelike.  You feel you are looking at a face of someone who really exited all those hundreds of years ago.

In the afternoon we went to a shopping mall built into a cliff. The weather report was calling for rain in Cusco and surrounding areas so I wanted to get a better rain coat (which I did).

The view from the mall looking back down the highway,

The same view that same night. We came back to the mall for Chinese food.

That was pretty much it for Lima.