Impressions of Lima
I arrived in Lima at around three o’clock in the afternoon so I thought that I had plenty of time to see the city before it got dark. My hotel was in the Los Olivos district which was in the North of the city so I decided to take an Uber down to a fortress called Fortaleza del Real Felipe which is on the sea front and around which I presumed the old part of the city would be located. Due to the traffic it took me about 40 minutes to travel 5 miles.
On getting there soon I realised that it was just a military base and there was nothing else near to it. I decided to walk East in to what looked on the map like a busier part of the city but the further away from the sea front I got the less comfortable I felt. I was definitely not in a nice part of the city. I flagged down a passing taxi and once in the driver asked me what I was doing walking about in that area as it was not safe for me to do so. This area of the city is called Callao.
Anyway he drove me to the historic centre of the city and this again took about 40 minutes to go 4 miles due to the heavy traffic congesting the roads. I arranged for the taxi driver to collect me at my drop off point in an hour so I walked around this part of the city before getting picked up just as it was getting dark. Once again heading back to the hotel for the night took the taxi about an hour to drive just five miles.
The next day I headed back to the historic centre of Lima to have a proper look around. Once again the one hour taxi ride was frustrating but unavoidable. Once in the centre of the city I wandered about for a while and although there were a lot of older buildings, which obviously had been build by either by the Spanish or influenced by Spanish architecture, the place had a very antiseptic feel about it.
Although it was very clean and picturesque, although there were lots and lots of police and lots of tourists about, and although it felt very safe it also felt very false. To me it was as if the centre of the city had been purposely sanitised for public viewing by tourists, something which the rest of the city had certainly not been as I had seen during my taxi journeys. I took the usual bucket load of photographs as I wandered about.
I wandered across to the other side of the river to the East of where the historic centre of the city was located.
The touristy bit spills over a little in to this part of the city but not by much. As I was sick and tired of sitting in the back of taxis in stationary traffic I made the decision to walk back to the hotel after I had gotten my fill of the touristy bit of the city. I then set off on foot to the North and I estimated that my journey would take about an hour and a half as my hotel looked to be about 5 miles away. As I walked along the main road out of the city I was again reminded of the littler problem.
The road along which I was walking also came very close to one of the city’s poorer “Barrios” (neighbourhoods) and as can be seen in the following photographs the houses in this Barrio are not much better than hovels.
As I continued to walk I saw that most of the streets that ran off of the main road had security gates which are obviously locked to try to restrict unwanted access to the houses and cars by local criminals.
As I continued to walk out of the city I encountered a huge indoor market which was directly adjacent to a huge modern shopping centre. From the upper level of the shopping centre the impoverished Barrios could clearly be seen clinging to the hillsides of the mountains to the the East of the city.
Since starting this trip I have never seen a more clear illustration of the difference in how some people live as opposed to how others live in certain countries. I know that all countries have such social and economic disparities but here in Peru those disparities just seem to me to be vastly greater and more obvious than elsewhere that I have so far visited.
As I previously mentioned my hotel was located in the Los Olivos area of Lima and from what I could see the area seemed to be very safe with local non-police security personnel patrolling the area on foot and small bikes. As I was sitting having a coffee and a cigar outside a restaurant I saw something that I have not seen since I was a child, a man wandering the streets plying his trade as a knife sharpener.
And speaking of coffee that is another strange thing that I have noticed here in Peru. Coffee is served as a mug of hot water whith a small jug of liquid coffee concentrate, very odd.
Also on this trip I have been experiencing some trouble in ordering plain black coffee because as I change countries so does the name of a plain black coffee. In Central America it was called Cafe Negro. In Colombia it was called Cafe Tinto. In Ecuador it was called Cafe Americano. Here in Peru is it called Cafe Pasado. It would also appear that if I do not use the exact name for it in each country and I use one of the others, such as asking for a Cafe Americano here in Peru, the cafe or bar staff just look at me as if I am speaking to them in English. Again all very odd.
As I needed to get a few housekeeping items attended to such a s laundry, a little bike maintenance, and blog updates to be written and published, I decided to remain in Lima for a few nights before moving on South to the border with Chile. At a restaurant near to my hotel I saw “Spicy Guinea Pig” on the menu. So as they … “When in Rome”.
It tasted like a cross between chicken and rabbit and it although it was nice enough there was not much meat on it and I don’t think that I will be having another one unless there is nothing else available.
In conclusion my overall impressions of Lima is that the historical centre of the city has been deliberately kept and maintained in a completely different way from the rest of the city. My own thoughts as to why this has been done is because I believe that the Peruvian government want to create a favourable picture of the city which to present to the world and to the tourists who come to the city and in this respect it is certainly different from any city that I have yet been to.
If someone wants to visit Lima as a travel destination where they can enjoy a clean and safe tourist experience then then I would recommend flying in to Lima, staying for a few days in the historic centre, and then flying out again. However I have seen more of the city than most other tourists have and although I have enjoyed my time here it is a city that I neither have any reason nor any inclination to return to.
Whilst I was in Lima and writing this post I saw this video pop up on YouTube. A lot of what I saw in Lima outwith the historical centre is in this video and it also explains why I never venture out after dark in most of the places that I visit including this city.