Lima

South America Day 2

Mira Flores

After a bit of a sleep in, we went downstairs of the hotel for breakfast. We met a few others from our tour (Mike, Vixi, Nic & Polly). We decided to explore Lima for the day as a group more because we were scared little tourists in a strange land. Turns out that it wasn't so scary after all.

We wandered around the commercial district of Mire Flores where we were staying. That wasn't so interesting, so we headed for the ocean. Mira Flores sits at the top of a decent cliff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean (pictured). There's a very westernised tourist oriented shopping centre at the top. Our first Tourist Trap for the adventure. We had a cool drink at the garden restaurant (just next to Kerri's left elbow in shot).

San Francisco Church 

Around midday, we jumped in a couple of cabs and headed to the San Francisco church near the Lima city centre. The cab ride was an experience and a half! The Lima drivers (particularly the cabbies) are nuts! They have no idea about road rules or courtesy lane markings are more of a guide than anything & I don't think I saw a speed limit sign. Most cars are bombs in complete disrepair & have dings & rust everywhere. Hardly surprising when you see how they drive. The idea of maintenance isn't exactly prevalent.

Eventually we arrived at the church after out eventful ride. It's not an overly intriguing church, but nice enough. There is one particular aspect that makes it a well visited church.

The Catacombes
This would be the reason behind the popularity of the San Francisco Church. Under the church is a labyrinth of catacombs where residents of Lima were buried for a couple of centuries. It's a bit odd because the display as it is today is as a result of archaeologists excavating what is basically a cemetery & arranging the bones in neat piles. Pictured is a well of sorts that was used when the catacombs were full. Again, the archaeologists excavated & re-arranged the remains. It's all very macabre. As it turned out, it was by no means the last church called San Francisco that we visited on our trip.

These became a familiar sight in Peru & Bolivia. They're the equivalent of you're suburban council bus. The difference is that they're in no better shape than the taxis & are driven by mad men! We were warned not to use then because of pick pockets & muggers. I was more worried about other more dangerous issues like deceleration trauma (vehicle accidents).

That night we met the rest of the GAP group we were going to spend at least the next 21 days with. We also met out tour guide for the first half of out adventure. Our 45 day GAP tour from Lima to Rio was made up of 2 shorter tours. The first one is called "Andean Discovery" (see map below). It's pretty much a lap around Peru crossing into Bolivia on the last day and finishing in La Paz.

After the little meeting we all went out for diner & got to meet everyone. Most of the clan were U25 English girls. Add Mike (the single guy), a couple (Melissa & Richard) from London, a school teacher couple from Western Ireland (Nora & Vincent) and us, & you have the group of 14 for the first leg of the trip. It turned out that most were going on to Bolivia & Brazil as well. More on the individuals later.

South American Adventure

<edit: By the time I had time to write about our South American odyssey, four months had gone but. I only hope I can remember enough to make it interesting. We did keep a diary for the six weeks, so hopefully I didn't miss too many important details.>

Above is an overview of our South American adventure. We started in Lima, Peru (left of map) and finished in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Day 1 - Travel to Lima, Peru

Today we set of from Calgary and being late in September when the leaves have already dropped off the trees. So the long brown of winter had started and it was getting a bit on the cool side. Our flight took us through Houston, Texas and over the Caribbean (unfortunately late in the evening by that point). We arrived in Lima around 11.30pm local time & were quite relieved to finally get to bed around 12.30am. That wasn't until after our first taste of crazy South American driving from the airport to the hotel (more on the crazy driving later). We'd been awake since 4am Calgary time (about 1hr behind Lima).
There's nothing particularly interesting to note from the day other than we confirmed that Texans are true to popular belief... They're huge (obese) people!