Our time in Lima had a lot of firsts for me – first time in South America, first pisco sour (yum!), and first time fully understanding the benefit of staying in a hostel! On the other hand this wasn’t even John’s first time in Lima, so not quite as momentous of a location for him but still a great time. Our hostel was in the Miraflores neighborhood, one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Lima, and was surrounded by restaurants, stores, and the large Kennedy park. John had described Lima to me as feeling like an American city except everyone speaks Spanish, and I have to say I agree!

Everywhere we’ve been so far has been way more intense on Covid protocols than the US, but Lima seems to be especially strict. If you’re not wearing a KN95 mask you need to be wearing two masks in order to go inside anywhere, and pretty much everyone (except tourists lol) wear masks outside as well. You have to show your vaccine card to go most places too, but the most intense was when we had to show our vaccine cards just so we could use an ATM. Aka it would be super inconvenient to live here and not be vaccinated!

Walking Tour

On our first morning we got breakfast on our hostel’s rooftop bar/restaurant and learned they put on free walking tours everyday, which sounded perfect to us considering we had made absolutely no plans for what to do in the city yet. We made friends with the guy sitting near us who was also planning to go on the tour, so we were sold. The first place our guide took us was a nearby fruit market so we could try all of the local fruit that is uncommon internationally. Now I would consider myself a fruit fanatic, but this was the first time that even I hit my fill of fruit. We were each given a pretty large slice of over 10 types of fruit. Highlights were definitely the tuna (not the fish, they call that atun in Spanish), the maracuya (aka passion fruit), and the Pacay. Some more unusual fruits were lucuma, which tasted like a sweet potato on vacation, and cocona, which is like a tomato that stopped pretending to be a vegetable and committed to being a fruit.

After our fruit buffet, our guide showed us how to buy a bus card and we all bused to the central part of downtown. We got brief history lessons of the famous plazas, churches, and historical buildings, and were shown some of our guide’s favorite restaurants and food carts that he recommended we try. We ended the tour with a Pisco tasting, which is a type of alcohol made in the region of Pisco just south of Lima. It was the perfect intro to Lima for our first day, and we made a group of friends along the way that we ended up spending almost our entire time in Lima with!

The City Sites

Lima is a huge city – we looked it up and it is bigger than London and New York City. So we really only saw a small part in our time here. Most notable is the waterfront – the city sits on a beautiful coastline with large cliffs above the sea. It made the city pretty foggy most days we were there, but still beautiful!

We visited the famous catacombs under the Basilica de San Francisco. We got there right in time to tag along with the English tour, so we got a nice history lesson of the church construction and art as well. The catacombs themselves were pretty interesting – there are several vents/skylights so you can see into them in the cathedral or while you walk along the garden. There are 25k people buried there, and the ceilings were built to be low enough that you have to bow your head as you walk through as a sign of respect to the dead. What we found strange though was that the bones had been arranged in the catacombs into kind of geometric designs – and our guide made it clear that was not how they were originally buried but was done for tourism. We would have much preferred they left the bodies as they were rather than entertain (?) us with the designs. They don’t allow pictures inside so no photos to share unfortunately!

One of the most unique things we saw was the water show at the Circuito Mágico del Agua. This park is full of water fountains, and every night they transform one of their fountains into something like a movie screen made of water and put on a show. Too difficult to take pictures, but we did take some videos we can share!

The neighborhood of Barranco is another popular neighborhood due to the large art presence. We went and walked around the area and actually watched someone paint a mural for a while.

Kennedy Park is the large park next to our hostel, and is notable because it is full of cats! There are probably 20 cats or so that live there and seem to be fed by the caretakers of the park. We saw an adoption booth near it, but it was unclear to us whether you could actually adopt a cat and take it home or whether it was more of a “donate money to feed a cat that lives here” kind of thing. Either way, we made a point to walk through it and say hi to the kitties whenever we were walking that direction.

The driving

Rules of the road here are loose at best. 2 lanes on the road but 3 cars would fit? Sure why not. Turning left but you’re not in the left lane? No problem! Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t have to drive at all, and also that our time in taxis was limited.

The Food

Two of the main foods Peru is known for are ceviche and empanadas. The ceviche we had here was very different from Mexican ceviche we’ve had – the fish is much more raw because it’s not marinated in the acid as long, and it’s served with toasted corn and sweet potatoes rather than tostadas. One of our guides told us that Peruvians don’t eat ceviche after 4pm or so – by that time the morning catch is past its prime. We broke the rules once or twice with no regrets. It’s delicious!

We had a couple empanadas as well, though they’re harder to find than we expected. They didn’t blow our minds, but they were tasty!

Pisco sours on the other hand you can find everywhere. They typically come as the classic lemon flavor or maracuya (passion fruit). I love any cocktail with egg whites, so I was a huge fan!

Inca cola is as common in Lima as Coca Cola, in fact those are usually your only two options for soda. Neither of us drink soda in general, but Inca Cola is such a thing here that we felt we should at least try it. We found the tiniest bottle we could purchase and wow, it exceeded our expectations for how bad it would be. It tasted like the bubble gum mouthwash they give you at the dentist as a kid, heavy on the fake bubble gum flavor and fluoride. From what we can tell tourists tend to think it’s gross, and locals love it.

Time to get out of the big city!

Christine