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9/24-25 Arrival in Lima!
9/24-25 Arrival in Lima!
Our overnight flight put us arriving at our hotel at 10 am, 5 hours before check-in. Sorry 5 hours before non-early check in and boy oh boy did I jump at dropping another 20 dollars to check in early. We crashed and went over our list of museums and restaurants, neighborhoods and day trips, and walked to a nearby dinner before an early night.
Breakfast at the hotel before a walk around the Miraflores neighborhood culminating with lunch at a local Chinese place filled our second morning and early afternoon.
In the afternoon, we headed to what was listed as a museum that ended up being a gallery. In hindsight, the name, La Galleria, should have probably given it away. It was small, but had an interesting showing from the artist Eduardo LLanos which focused on skin and connection. Going to a gallery with Kaia is always enjoyable, until she suddenly, and earnestly, begins selecting the piece that we are going to buy and ship back to the states. Luckily the selected piece was too far above reasonable, and we escaped with a business card (and an intact budget!) after sharing a grin and a chuckle with the docent.
We wandered back through the San Isidro neighborhood past the Huaca Pucllana site. The pre-Incan adobe and clay pyramid is a massive structure that we hope to fit in a visit to the inside before our time in Lima is up.
The rest of our walk back was filled with stops at parques (parks) and various clusters of trees to try and identify the new birds we were seeing. Parakeets (we couldn't tell if they were white-eyed or red-masked), Saffron Finches, Scrub Blackbirds, West Peruvian Doves, and Bananaquits were all happily chirping and feeding throughout the city. Well they were at least chirping and that made us happy. I suppose they could have been any range of emotions from angry to horny and been inspired to sing out about it.
We settled into an evening of leftovers from lunch after some vegan treats on the way home.
Ceviche was invented in Peru! We were not adventurous enough to try the traditional fish ceviche so opted for the mushroom ceviche which was delicious!
Huaca Pucllana from the outside! We stopped by while it was closed in the afternoon but are hoping we'll get back to see the interior before we leave town.
9/26
9/26
After breakfast in the hotel, we set out to explore the barrio Barranco. Lima is divided in 43 barrios or districts that all have their unique architecture, layouts, and feel. In the cycle of cities that happens everywhere (area is cheap/poor, people who don't have money but have gumption move in and make it nicer, rich people move in afterwards pushing out the people that made it cool, rich people live in luxury recent builds that are on lots that used to have local businesses with interesting architecture and complain that the neighborhood is no good anymore), the Barranco is somewhere in the 2-3 range. Lots of restaurants, small boutique clothing stores, a cliff side walk with views of the surf and the surfers below, our walk through the Barranco was visually varied and felt less "Americanized" than our location in Miraflores.
We started at the Museum of Contemporary Art, spending most of our time at the Ramiro Llona exhibit. Large horizontal canvases falling solidly in the realm of abstract expressionism occupied us for well over an hour. This time was definitely extended by the process of: first trying to read the supplied analysis text in Spanish and translate it ourselves, then going through with google translate and trying to improve our translation, before finally reading their provided English translation. Which still took a good amount of deciphering, because it appeared they had simply put it through google translate as well (whose literal approach to many aspects of translation can make technical texts slightly....obscured)!
Afterwards, we walked the length of the district, stopping for a snack at a cafe, looking out over the sea, and ending at a well known "cevicheria" (El Muelle). One constant in our stay here in Lima has been over-ordering food. I maintain that prior to this early dinner we were not to blame for the unexpectedly large platters of food at very reasonable prices, but here, I just got carried away and spontaneously ordered an extra dish. It was delicious and provided us a snack later in the room though, so I have no regrets. Mushroom ceviche (we were too chicken to try the raw fish version), Chicharrones pescado (they're cooked! its different!), and causa con verduras refueled us after our day of wandering.
Between the Hermitage of Barranco and the Paseo Chabuca Granda sits a famous, but underwhelming, bridge of sighs. A much more spectacular sight: dozens of black vultures perched atop a church, the Hermitage of Barranco, that has been closed since 1974 due to damages from an earthquake.
As we made our way back to the hotel, our urban bird watching continued. While attempting to picture the Blue Gray Tanagers we had heard but not seen yesterday, a pair of Bananaquits started swooping and loudly cawing at a palm frond. As we watched, a Harris's hawk took off and fled its two tiny attackers, swooping not 20 feet above the center of a main street through the barrio. We couldn't possibly have looked more tourist-y if we tried, but we pointed and gasped as we followed the pursuit for several minutes, which we can only suppose is commonplace as measured by the lack of response of anyone else on the street.
Special thanks to the Samsung S22 Ultra for its bananas(quit) zoom capabilities. Here is the (unbothered) Harris's Hawk and the (quite bothered) Bananquit
Flowers and architecture of the Barranco district (the SOHO of Lima, if you will)
Taking in Ramiro Llona's large-scale works at the Museum of Contemporary Art. We spent a while translating the didactic panels and then started to work on deciphering which classical paintings Llona was interpreting in his works.
The roof of the abandoned Hermitage of Barranco, apparently home to dozens of Black Vultures.
Mushroom ceviche at El Muelle (we're still building up to trying actual fish ceviche) and also a Peruvian dish called causa!
9/27 - Final day in Lima, Huaca Pucllana
9/27 - Final day in Lima, Huaca Pucllana
We had our next week in Cuzco relatively tightly booked and then only 3 days in Santiago before we would head out to Rapa Nui, so we finalized our diving and tour plans there and also looked ahead to our plans in Mexico. After lunch, we headed to the Huaca Pucllana site museum with plans to follow it up with the famous Larco museum. But a longer than expected visit at HP and an even longer than expected cab ride to the Larco museum (rush hour is no joke in Lima!), we had to put it on our list for our return and headed to get dinner (para llevar) to eat in the room while we packed up.
While we missed out on the Larco, the Huaca Pucllana museum was amazing! This clay-brick step-pyramid temple built over 300 years around 1000 years before the Inca civilization existed served as a temple, and sits in the heart of a busy Lima barrio.
Some fun facts:
it remained hidden underneath a hill in the center of this district until 1981, and is thought to have been intentionally hidden by its last users!
the clay bricks would be severely damaged by prolonged rain, but Lima (despite being overcast for 9 months a year) averages <1 inch of rain per year! (Lima's last rainstorm was in 1971, it rained 10 hours would have been bad for temple, if it had not been covered by the hill at the time)
instead of being laid lengthwise as we are used to seeing bricks, they are upright and have gaps between successive bricks, the current hypothesis is for it to be more resilient to earthquakes
1000 year old petrified trees used as posts for shade covers
Our guide through the exhibit, Percy was a font of information outside of Huaca Pucllana also teaching us:
Peru has had 30 civilizations, 6 in BCE and 24 since, and the Inca are the 29th,
Peru is the country with the most intense sun owing to its position in the world and elevation
the evening tours of the temple don't have the full tour of the top because there is no guard rail and people drink too much!
Isaac, pictured here in his "It's easier to not touch anything if I hold my hands behind my back" tour stance. Also pictured, our guide Percy.
Cat houses for the dozens (hundreds??) of cats that call Kennedy Park home!
Church of the Virgin Milagrosa opposite Kennedy (yes, referring to JFK) Park
Huaca Pucllana
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