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Latin America - part V

Lima, Nazca, Arequipa, Lake Titicaca, Cuzco, Machu Picchu

Hector Yague
2005-10-11 22:18:12

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Lima

On the 6th of January 1535 the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Lima, and on the 29th of January 2005 Hector Yague, meaning me, landed at Lima's International Airport in the morning.

I was expecting my girl-friend from London, Branimira, to land at Lima herself too that very day to travel during the following two weeks with me in Peru. Her plane was arriving late night, so I had the entire day at my disposal to explore Lima. We had decided to skip Lima in favor to the more glorious country side, so basically that would be my only day here in the capital.

So, after booking a double room in a hostel downtown, I set off to beat the pavement. My first destination was the Plaza de Armas, the city's center point. As I came to note, all the towns here in Peru follow the typical Spanish pattern as far as the distribution goes: the city springs up from a central square (always called Plaza de Armas or Plaza Mayor) fronted by the cathedral and the cityhall. From such square, streets bloom out in a parallel and perpendicular web. That central plaza is quite nice and alive with both tourists and locals walking about or sitting in the benches.

However, I must declare that as soon as you step out of that small central historical district, Lima loses all its appeal. I hopped in a sight-seeing bus to have a brief general glance of the city, and the bus drove us all the way a nearby hill where a disheartening 360 degrees overlook knocks your spirit down: endless fields of half-collapsed shanties clustering upon each other all over the outskirt hills are really a depressing sight to the eyes. I didn't know Peru was so poverty-strike and there's really little of interest or beauty to the visitor, just another 9-million-soul smoky, dodgy, gray non-charming city.

At night, I hired a taxi to drive me back to the airport ...