WEDNESDAY FEB 12 DAY 17

Stop 11

So our 2’nd day in Peru and we have sailed south 300 miles to Lima. We were suppose to go to another archeological site today but we had our fill of archeology yesterday …so I opted “out” …..

and opted “in” for city browsing …. (code word for shopping) …..and in Lima that means lama sitings… not the real ones…. but every creative expression of a lama can be found in the city center.

But for today I promise ….the post will be shorter, more pictures and less words. No churches, no monuments and no artifacts.

As I mentioned in my last post, Lima is the capital of Peru with a population of 9 million, ….the third largest population in the Americas and like most big cities it has its’ very poor areas and very affluent.

Primary industry here is finance and manufacturing of textiles and ….you can sense… it has an economy that is prospering.

The native language is Spanish with some limited English, and unlike Trujillo the area is extremely clean.

Coming into port you immediately sense a thriving economy.

So we headed into the city…the outlying areas are still quite poor but very clean and the areas feel safe.

As we get closer to downtown the homes look nicer, there are more plantings, and individual homes are intermixed with high rises

The streets are lined with Palm trees ad the green spaces are all tended to.

The city has a vibrancy…. the waterfront area is a big draw with a beautiful shopping center overlooking the water.

In many ways it feels like a European city ..here the contrast of the old and new can be seen with the backdrop of the JW Marriott

Bikes and scooters are readily available for public use

Or you can ride a lama

…goods from lamas/alpacas are everywhere…

you also get delicious fresh fruit on any street corner.

Lima is known in the culinary world as the gastronomical center of the America’s … a fancy way of saying it has “very good food” …featuring multi country cuisines. Several restaurants in Lima are ranked in the top 50 in the world.

And of course it would not be a big city without its chains, including Starbucks and many other well known American and Spanish brands

And in the process of getting lost, I stumbled upon something I had never seen before ….can u guess what it is? I couldn’t…. I thought it was some kind of shed for city workers…. but it is actually a charging station for your iphone ….the 21’st century version of a phone booth. We need to adopt this in the US.

So time has runout and I have to be back at the ship …with a few less dollars and a few alpaca sweaters……

And on our return we drove past some of the most spectacular coastline I have seen….

with miles and miles of pristine beaches, continuous parks and recreation facilities … it is exceptionally beautiful …. reminds me of the California coastline but carefully planned out for recreation and manicured parks that are maintained for miles and miles

It is a beautiful city, sophisticated, cosmopolitanism and at the same time casual and easy going. I would come back and spend more time in a heartbeat.

Next stop Pico, Peru