Saturday, June 1, 2024
Thankfully, there was no reason to get up with the chickens today. We have absolutely nothing planned and the hotel starts serving breakfast at 7.
We got ready and sat down to breakfast right at 7. By now, it was the standard fare. Scrambled eggs made upon request, with ham, cheese, yogurt, bread, jam, juice, coffee and fruit. I brought my Peru book with me so that we could hatch out a plan for the day. There’s a pre-Incan site within walking distance, so that is an option. I went up to the front desk and asked the super friendly guy working if he had a map, and he pointed out a bunch of parks and where the restaurants were, and told me it would take about 40 minutes of walking to get to the pre-Incan site.
We each packed a bag for the day, and set out into the Lima gray gloom. Since it’s winter here, there is no sun, only solid gray skies, gloom, and dampness.
We didn’t make it very far before we reached a coffee shop, and since it is not warm and the dampness makes it worse, we opted for a small cup of coffee (to be honest, Nathan needed a restroom break already).
We continued walking to Parque Kennedy with all its resident cats, and then continued walking to Huaca Pucllana, the pre-Incan site. We bought tickets and waited just a few minutes for the English tour to begin. The tour lasted an hour, and we walked all over the site, learning about the three cultures that used this site, and how they constructed it.
It was 10:30 or so by the time we were done with our tour, and we had sorta decided to make the additional 40 or 50 minute walk to a museum about the Shining Path and MRTA leftist guerilla groups that terrorized rural Peru in the 80s and 90s. I noticed a few men selling bakery sweets from bicycle carts, and we asked what a few things were. I bought a puff pastry with caramelly goo for Nathan and I to share for 3 soles, but after one bite I decided he needed his own. It was delicious. No idea what it was. The seller told us several times, but none of the words were anything I could recognize in Spanish.
Our walk to the museum took us past all sort of fancy Lima apartments, up and over the highway at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and along the Ocean, until we reached the museum.
Entrance to the Lugar de la Memoria museum was free, and the signage was only in Spanish, but there were numerous spots where we could download an English explanation of the exhibits. Some 70,000 people died in the conflict between the guerilla groups and the Peruvian military. Most of the dead were rural country folk, but also political and community organizers, LGBT individuals, and the general public. The Shining Path also killed dogs in public displays, so the terror was pervasive and intrusive even when human life was spared.
After the museum, we decided to start walking back to the Parque Kennedy area to get lunch, with the hopes that a taxi would come along so we didn’t need to walk the whole way. One did, so we cut our time down and quickly got back to the central Miraflores area and had lunch.
There were a bunch of people milling about where the restaurants are, and we discovered that everyone is in this area to watch the soccer match between Real Madrid and Dortmund. It made for an entertaining lunch because the crowd was SO into it.
After lunch, we walked through a little artisan fair and walked away with two small llama paintings. From there we walked down to the Parque del Amor, which has a very Barcelona Gaudi Park Guell feel.
We went back to the hotel for a few minutes to rest, before heading out to our last Peruvian dinner. I’m sad to be leaving, but after the last week being damp all the time, I’m sorta ready to be in Colorado again and not damp.
Tomorrow we get up at 3 am (again!) for our long journey home.