Day 4 Lima out of control

Today we experienced Lima out of control. We decided to be brave and tackle Lima on our own – without tour guides. Our plan was simple. Catch a taxi into the Mayor Plaza (featured yesterday) – explore around on foot and see where things led. It started badly when trying to communicate a place and price with one of Lima’s famous out of control taxis. We began to feel bad when it became obvious the taxi drove past the signs to the city. We felt a lot worse when the taxi veered into a district that a sensible tourist would stay well away from. Stories of abductions of tourists started feel real. Then there was a hope that maybe he had misunderstood us and we were heading for the airport. But then another detour through what could politely be called a shanty town delivered us to a large and quite reasonable shopping centre called Mega Plaza (almost Mayor Plaza). We recovered and found our way back to town where our adventure continued through downtown Lima, surviving a chicken lunch, which challenged notions of what a chicken looked like, to a craft market filled with colour and delight. After lunch another dose of the real Lima. A local overloaded mini bus to the Mount Cerro San Cristobel – from where we could see the magnitude of a city of 9 million – where squatters continue to colonise the flat and the hills. Dirty, dusty, amazing and out of control.

This was the real Lima – huge, out of control, poor and extraordinary. Finally dinner at sunset by the ocean seems a world away.