Good day folks, Senor Serfas speaking. I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to remind Dawne that this trip is an adventure, not a vacation !!! Mancora was nice, but we don't have time to spend days relaxing on the beach and partying like it's Sprinkbreak. We need to learn stuff, see stuff, and do absolutely everything we can in the short time we have on the road. !!!
Once we finally left Mancora, I decided we needed to pick up the pace a little and make up for all the lost tme we spent on the silly beach ! I broke open the Lonely Planet and any other guide book I had and got to work, delicately planning our next steps.
We arrived to Lima around 2pm after an all night bus ride down the coast (18 hours). Buses are getting much easier to handle now, and the scenery (once it gets light out) is absolutely amazing ! On display this journey was more vast barren desert with sand dunes spilling into the bright blue ocean. It was breathtaking !! We spent the afternoon wandering around a nearby park, and checking out the very talented local artists and craftsmakers.
Day # 2 in Lime, I present you with "Dave's Delightful Full Day Tour:"
Itinerary
09:30 - 10:00 am - Breakfast ( let's be serious, no one likes tours that start too early ! )
10:00 - 11:30 am - Tour of the Monastario de San Francisco. The highlights here were definately the underground catacombs, where a suspected 70,000 buriels took place (skulls and bones everywhere!), as well as the library, which held thousands of antique books dating back to the Spanish conquest.... Including the first Latin American dictionary. Only problem is, I don't think they organized the books using the "Dewey Decimal System". We mentioned to them that we would send down Shirley and Irene to get the place whipped into shape !!! 
11:30 - 12:30 pm - Guided tour of the Central Plaza and surrounding historical buildings, including the Presidential Palace (guided by none other than, yours truely !) The guide was very informative, not to mention fairly good looking.
12:30 - 1:30 pm - Tour of the Museo de la Inquisicion. This was ok, but not that great (the tour was in Spanish, so we only picked up certain parts) BUT, there was a wax musuem which displayed the gruesome ways in which prisoners were tortured.
1:30 - 3:00 pm - Free time, and by free time I actually mean an advenure walk through the central market and China town. This was interesting to say the least. We toughened up, plugged our noses and took a walk through the meat market area, where you can actually buy anything you ever imagined. They certainly make full use of any animal slaughtered down here.
3:00 - 4:30 pm - Tour of Hauca Pucllana, an adobe brick pyramid of Lima culture dating back to 400 AD. This was really cool ! This pyrimid is right in the middle of the city and it only partially restored. The unrestored portion looks like a pile of dirt and rocks, but once they dug a few feet the pyramid was exposed.
4:30 - 5:30 pm - Walk back to the hostel and stop for a local Peruvian snack.
We both figured that was quite enough for one day, but we're very pleased with our accomplishment ! We would definately recommend this tour to our friends!
The next day we took it fairly easy. We did however stop by the mall which was built into the side of the cliff over looking the ocean. The view was incredible and we spent the afternoon drinking wine at one of the restaraunts built into the cliff. In the evening we went to a fountain park which was an amazing dispay of water and lights.
After Lima, I'm feeling like we're back on track with our adventure, but there's still no time to relax, and plenty of work to be done over the next several days !! There's just so much to see, and so little time !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment