The only downfall of staying overnight in Lima, is if you
are on the port side of the ship, because outside your balcony is a very busy
port, that loads and unloads cargo 24 hours a day.
As the hours ticked by I kept thinking that things would
shut down at 10:00, or 11:00 or even midnight, but no, the noise never ceased,
and after previously spending two nights in the Lima airport, and now at the
port I’m thinking Lima might not be a good place to sleep.
Apparently there have been attacks on tourists in Lima, and
the ship issued more than one warning aboot safety in the city. But Being pure
of heart mostly the worst thing to have happen was while visiting the city and
having an espresso at one of the of the local coffee shops, the coffee tasted
bitter.The second day in Lima we rode the prison bus to a museum. The museum was excellent. Rooms and rooms were full of pristine artifacts, and if you paid attention and read all the little descriptions attached to the artifacts your head would probably explode from Peruvian history overload.
Not wanting to have my head explode on holiday I stayed
outside the exhibits and concentrated on court yard birding.
Greater Yellow Finch
Image Rufous Tailed Atila
Once outside the museum our guide couldn’t locate the bus.
She spend a few frantic moments on the phone before realizing the bus was
around the corner.Once on the bus we proceeded at breakneck speed, for a snail through the city, on our way to Pachacamac Ruins. Gradually The tall buildings of downtown Lima gave way to smaller houses, then on the very outskirts crowded slums crawled up the hill sides.
Our time at the ruins was short. Mostly because we spent too much time at the museum, but also because most of the people on the bus couldn’t last more than a few minutes out in the sun.
Our guide never counted passengers as we left the ruins and
went on to our next stop Hacienda Mamacona.
The Hacienda is home to Peruvian Dancing Horses. Peruvian horses
pick up each leg individually unlike other horses that pick up two legs at a
time.
The horses and dancers were magnificent. Our lunch at the
ranch was wonderful. This is one of the better shore excursions we have been
on.
Back on the bus our guide decided to count the passengers,
and didn’t know if we were short or not. Again she made frantic phone calls and
after a while we started back to the ship that was scheduled to leave around
5:30. Waiting for passengers that weren’t on the bus to begin with didn’t make
any difference because once out on the Pan American Highway the traffic was at
a crawl, due to a major accident.
Once past the wreck of busses trucks and? our driver weaved
us through city traffic, and got us back to the ship only a few minutes late.
Nice!
ReplyDeleteThe crowded slums look like beautiful patchwork.
ReplyDelete