Lima, Peru

We made it! Our final destination for the South America leg - Peru's largest city by a long way, Lima. This city is seriously big and consists of a number of neighbourhoods over a vast geographic area. Unforetunately it's not really built for tourists, but more about this below.

We caught a crappy cheap local bus with Soyuz from Ica to Lima to save some pennies. Total cost was s/22 per person for the 4 hour journey.

As mentioned, Lima isn't the most tourist friendly city. There really isn't much to do or see that you can't do or see bigger and better elsewhere. We stayed in Miraflores which is an upmarket, afluent suburb outside the centro. It is typified by big houses and new apartments, most of which have huge security fences and private security guards. Very reassuring. Given the demographic, everything in Miraflores is overpriced (by Peruvian standards). So what is there to do and see in Lima? Well, as mentioned, not much.

More plazas - Plaza San Martin and yet another Plaza de Armas. Like most Peruvian centres, Lima's was again in reasonably good condition.

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More exciting is the Polvos Azules market just on the outskirts of the centro adjacent to the freeway. Here you can buy almost every DVD or video game ever created in pirated form. On top of this, there is a plethora of cheap electronics, clothes and all sorts of other stuff at discount prices. Word has it if your camera is stolen, you can buy it back the next day from Polvos Azules. We're uncertain if there is any truth behind this. Regardless, if you're in Lima, it's definitely worth checking our Polvos Azules. It's not as though we really stretched ourseleves, but it was the most intersting thing we did in our 5 days there.

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At the end of the day, Lima is just a big city. If you want an intereting 'big city', it's probably best to look somewhere besides Lima in my opinion.

The rest of our time was spent doing administrative tasks for our upcoming USA and Europe legs.