Monday 25 January

Lima

Today’s excursion was a bus-and-walking tour of downtown Lima. We went to Central Lima, which is the old part. Here are many old buildings, built by the Spanish. Lovely carved wooden verandahs looking over the street, old stone churches, the Presidential Palace, the Palace of the Archbishop. 

The Archbishop's Palace next door to the Cathedral

 

Archbishop's wooden verandah in detail

One end of Presidential Palace

Presidential Palace

Yellow building signify the city of Lima

Police on duty sending off a suspicious woman

Queue of people to do their banking

street sellers

We had a tour of Convento de San Francisco, the Franciscan monastery, looking at old paintings explaining the story of St Francis to the Peruvians Indians. 

We also went into the catacombs under the church – like all churches of the 15-16^th centuries, the local people were buried under the church. Archaeologists have estimated over 10,000 people were buried under this church. The catacombs have the bones laid out by archaeologists largely thigh bones and some skulls because the bodies were laid one above the other with layer of limestone between. The limestone damaged and destroyed the finer bones, reducing them to dust. Due to the earthquakes in the region the builders of the church built curved ceilings, and circular wells to absorb the tremors, and stop collapse of the church above. No photos were allowed, so the following two photos, of the bones in the bottom of the well, were Googled!

We walked around an area of housing dating back to the early 20^th century (Miraflores), which is now popular with artists and crafty folk.

Large ant of woven natural fibre

church undergoing restoration, in the old way (bird on top are vultures)

large woven cat

Peruvian electrical wiring leaves a lot to be desired - this is common throughout!

We then had lunch at a restaurant, with a tapas first course, then mains. Once we got back to the hotel we were free to do our own thing. A group of us walked to the shops some distance away to get some necessities, then walked to the olive tree park. This was popular with many families sitting under the old olive trees and enjoying nature. 

small but noisy demonstration against corruption in something on the way to the shops

Near the hotel is a pre-Incan pyramid-style structure called Huallamarca. It looks so out of place in the city. Unfortunately it was closed but we walked around it. Google says it went through three uses – firstly as a temple, secondly s a funeral place, and thirdly as a village with people living on it. It is made of adobe bricks (no stone in this area), with three levels and a ramp leading to the flat top. It has survived so well because it was buried under soil, and also because Lima has a low rainfall so the adobe wasn’t washed away.

We have learned to order only one meal for dinner and share it. The servings are really big, but the food is delicious. They have lemonade that is the old-fashioned stuff made with real lemons (more like limes) and water. No bubbles! Really nice.

Peruvian police seem to be divided up into different sections, much like Aus, but they have different uniforms for different functions. We have noticed that traffic cops seem to be women, with bright lime green gloves that they wave constantly, and they also blow whistles constantly! Motor cycle cops are both male and female, but the females wear jodhpur-style fawn/beige pants that are very tight (tucked into long black boots) and are perhaps a little too revealing! They don’t seem to mind though. They have guns in white holsters on their hips. Stylish! In major cities there were tourism police, who had fancy uniforms and seemed to be there to help tourists and make sure they weren’t attacked or something!