Overnights in Lima

Week 43

Day 296

Puerto Lopez Ecuador

1.5667° S, 80.8167° W

Wrapping up an awesome two weeks with my mom and dad in Chile, it was  time to head to Peru.

We had a couple brutally early wake up calls in a row.

The first at 3:30 am to catch our 6:30 am flight to Lima.

Lima

Landing in Lima, we met the driver our hostel arranged for us for 55 Soles ($20) to take us to our hostel Ekeko Hostel (email is the best way to book them.  I found them on hoselworld.) that we had booked in Mira Flores.   We later found out accidentally that you can get cheaper.  The starting price for Taxi’s to Lima are 60 Soles (a $.01 inflation of the current exchange rate for $20 our hostel hadn’t kept current with exchange rates for this expense.)  Remembering the number 20 vs. 55 I was convinced that we could do better so Tom and I had our bargain shoes on.  We were able to convince a taxi driver to take us to Mira Flores for 30 soles ($10) if we agreed to let him take one more passenger.  Finding this acceptable we waited about 10 min before he returned saying he’d leave then for 35 Soles.  After time to look up our great deal, we agreed!

A good friend who had spent time in Peru advised us Mira Flores is the only location of Lima we’d want to stay.  While I can’t attest to the other areas, I was very happy with her recommendation.

Ekeko Hostel at $32 a night for a private room was decent and we liked the location as we wouldn’t have known about Huaca Pucllana had it not been right across the street.

If you have a couple days there are lots of activities to be had in Mira Flores, the most popular being to Paraglide off the the Mira Floes Cliffs onto the shore line below.

We didn’t do that but we did have a great time exploring the town.

The early wake up called allowed us enough time to get quite a bit done with our one day before we headed to cusco (on another early wake up call) the next day.

Being a major city, we weren’t surprised to find McDonald’s and Starbucks lined streets; but hidden amongst the commercialized streets was a very large art market, a parked FILLED with cats, and the ancient ruins of Huaca Pucllana.

Our favorite activities were browsing the street artists lining the Parque de Centrel (the park with the kitties!)

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We found a great little family owned restaurant on PJE Los Pinos for lunch where we had our first Lomo Saltado, (and the best Lomo Saltado we would have!)

For dinner I was crazing hummus and literally right after I told Tom this we walked by an Arabic restaurant on Diagonal Street across from the Parque de Centrel.

After dinner we headed back to our hostel to rest up as we had a 4:30 wake up call this time to head to Cusco.

Our second and 3rd trips to Lima were equally as short as we used it as a place to kill time from 10am to 10pm before catching our bus to Huaraz and then finally for a day after we got back from Huaraz before we flew to Ecuador, but we had that amazing plate of food pictured above each time!

Next stop Cusco!

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