Today I have a full day ahead. Paola and Tom gave me a selection of places to visit around town so I´m up at 8.30 with a sense of purpose. I take a taxi to the suburb of Rimac just north of the centre across the Rio....... 5 mins from the Plaza Mayor. Here I visit the Convent de los Descalzos, a Franciscan house built in the 1590´s. The monastery, little visited now, used to house up to 100 friars. Nowadays there are around 30. Most of the monastery has been vacated and is now preserved as a museum. Yet it looks as though it were vacated only yesterday. It was a fascinating view of a once prestigious monastery which is bypassed by all the guidebooks. Descalzos houses in the region 300 works of art some of which are fantastic works. One particular painting of the crucifixion holds a tragic story in which the artist, in an attempt to achieve an authentic vision of the suffering Jesus endured on the cross, tortured and accidently killed the model. I was the only visitor on site. After the tour my guide strongly advised taking a taxi back to the centre as it was unsafe for me to walk through this district.
Back in the Plaza Mayor I kept an eye out for buses departing for Cerro San Cristobal, a hill overlooking the centre which has panoramic views over most of the city. While I waited a military band appeared in front of the city Hall. A crowd had congregated, separated from the band by a line of riot police. The band proceeded to play. By now the Plaza was cordoned off so there was no hope of heading for Cerro San Cristobel. Armored cars stood guard on either side of the Hall, a fairly impressive display of force in the main square. I headed for the Moansterio San Francisco which held a crypt containing hundreds of skeletons, the skulls decoratively arranged together in concentric circles.
By now it was lunchtime. I found a small restaurant close to teh Plaza Mayor which appeared very popular with the office workers who worked in the vicinity. I got a cracking wee unch for 8-10 soles (e.u.2-2.50). First up was a hot soup complete with alphabetical pasta. This was followed by banana and spinach omelette. Yep, I was certainly trying something different today but it was on the menu and it was surprisingly good. Afterwards a dessert of jelly was washed down with a fruit juice.
By now all was back to normal in the Plaza. The band had finished and raffic was back to normal. I found one of the buses I was looking for, paid the cinqo soles fare and joined 20 or so Peruvians on board for a small tour of the centre before heading for the cerro San Cristobal through the colourful streets of Rimac. We stopped fro 20mins at the topand the views over Lima were breathtaking. The whole of the city lay stretched across this desert plain and I got an idea of just how largea city of 7 million really is. By the time we returned to the Plaza it was late afternoon.
I want to go t Puno on lake Titicaca tomorrow, another long journey. I got a ticket with Civas, the company I traveled with to Lima from Chachapoyas. They don´t go direct. I have to go to Arequipa first and then switch buses. This is no problem, however, as I know from my time there that there are frequent departures to Puno. The memory of a small toddler imitating the calls of "Puno, Puno, Puno!!" is testament to that.
In the evening I met up with Paola and Tom in a bar near the Hostel in Miraflores. This suburb is so different to the centre. Lima´s centre is old and rundown. The old colonial houses in many places are vacant, rotting and collapsing. Miraflores, however, is modern, affluent, very European looking. The shops and restaurants are trendy, there´s a MacDonalds, the first I´ve seen since Buenos Aires.
Listening to Paola and Tom it was funny to hear them flick effortlessly between English and Spanish. A friend of Paola´s, Sylvia, was there as well and I felt guilty not having conversational Spanish. Sylvia ended up having to speak English. Still, it was good evening. Nice to be in a bar as part of a group for once. I was a little sad when we split up at the end of the night. I had been looking forward for a couple of weeks to meeting up with Paola and Tom. Now it was back to going solo again...... Time to hit the road again.
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