¡Hola from Lima!

Phew - we finally made it to Lima after a bumpy and long journey from Miami. After a taxi ride playing chicken with other cars we arrived at the hotel which, according to the taxi guy, wasn´t in the best of areas and we were not to walk anywhere in the dark under any circumstances. Ace.

Turns out it wasn´t so bad and we headed to the local market on Sunday - the BBQ´d guinea pigs on weren´t tempting us although give it a few weeks and you never know ...

Traffic is absolute madness and you dice with death everytime you cross the road - a beeping horn is as much notice as you get before you have leg it! There´s also a permanent mist (garúa) that covers the City duing most of the year and it makes for a pretty damp atmosphere and plays havoc with the hair. I´m currently sporting a massive barnet.

Spent a couple of days downtown and realised that there isn´t much to keep you entertained save for a few churches and museums. Lima Cathedral is pretty spectacular inside though - we did seem to be the only tourists doing the rounds from what we could see.

View from the hotel

Had a hour to kill before the bus to Miraflores on the coast so decided to pop into the Museum of Italian Art as it only cost 60p. It consisted of two rooms and about eight paintings all of which looked like they´d been nicked fom someone´s loft. We managed in total to kill about 12 minutes.

Miraflores dos the trick in terms of bars and places to eat so has satisfied us in the food and drink stakes over the past couple of days. Only problem now is that the buses down the coast are full so we´re stuck here until Thursday afternoon. Am slightly scared that we´ll end up here for the whole year!

Not spied many other travellers here either apart from a few holidaying Americans - Lonely Planets recommndation of a hostel "in the beating heart of Miraflores" and "jam-packed" are slightly off the mark. Only people we´ve seen in the hostel are two chain smoking girls who watch dvds all day and a geezer who spends hours on the one computer with dial-up web access. They enticed us in with promise of free internet as well. Gutted!

We´re itching to leave Lima now - the Limeños are all really friendly though and are tolerating our current lack of Spanish, which hopefully we´ll sort out after hitting Spanish school in a few weeks.

Next stop Nazca via Pisco.