Hasta Luego Peru

Speaking of going, our time in Peru was about to end. We spent one more night in Cuzco and flew back to Lima for a day. Lima was the one place in all of our journey that I was not looking forward to going. After hearing stories of petty theft, pollution, bad weather, ugly buildings, who would want to go. We are pleased to report that we had a really good experience in Lima both times we were there. One thing of note for Lima as ugly and full of pollution that the city is (which it is, no argument there), they spend an extraordinary amount on trying to keep their city clean. There are people like the one below everywhere dressed in full combat gear and armed with a broom. We have never seen more people sweeping than in Lima. And it works, there is not very much trash laying around at all.

On our day in Lima, we went to the Plaza de Arms. Our cab ride was quite entertaining with a patient and talkative taxi driver who kept wanting to know why we wanted to go to the plaza when there were good museums to visit. Between my Spanish and his patience, we had a lively conversation for almost the full hour that it took to get to the plaza. There was jam packed traffic on the way. In fact, there is so much traffic that an entire industry has developed for people stuck in traffic. There are people walking up and down the highway (6-lane big highway) selling everything you could imagine to people in cars stopped in traffic. The most entertaining was the Q-tip sales guy (we were sorry we didn't buy any), the CD salesman, and the guy selling tennis balls. Commerce at it's best. When there is a captive audience, you can sell them anything...

At the plaza we arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard. This was very entertaining as it was kind of like seeing it in London, but much shorter, cheesier, and a little less together. For example, the band playing the serious ceremonial changing of the guard music was awful. They didn't play together and they sounded like a bunch of guys who had been handed instruments and told to go play without any previous experience.

We had a great lunch at the "Club de Lima" a place that looks exclusive and fancy, but really had great food for cheap prices. We stayed in a hotel that was the nicest we had stayed in, and after our just passable hotel in Cuzco, it was a welcome change to have both hot water and electricity at the same time. The hotel we were in, had a little sushi bar in it and we had surprisingly good sushi and the best roll we've had- fresh crab, cream cheese, eel, and avocado. It was delicious. And most of all, after going out for every dinner, it was very nice to be able to eat and not have to go somewhere else to do it. All in all a very pleasant end to our time in Peru. We enjoyed our stay and were ready to move on to the next stop- Easter Island.