Lima, Peru

We had a lovely, if brief, visit to Lima as a stopover during our trip to the upper Amazon. Some highlights:

Museo Larco

Our last evening featured a tour of this fantastic museum followed by the final dinner with our fellow Amazon travelers. The museum is housed in a 18th century mansion surrounded by beautiful gardens, all secreted behind tall walls.

The museum was founded by Rafael Larco in the 1920s – the Larco family owned many plantations in northern Peru, and Rafael’s father had collected a number of pre-Columbian artifacts. Rafael also added other wealthy families’ items to the collection.

It amazed me how many of the pieces looked absolutely pristine, certainly not from 2000-3000 years ago.

There is an “open storage” section of the museum that makes it clear how jaw droppingly extensive the collection is – this is just one shelf of dozens!

Tour of Lima with Amalia Alayza

For our only full day in Lima, we toured with an excellent guide named Amalia Alayza. She was a lot of fun and gave us insights into Peruvian history as well as current culture.

For example, the statue above represents a tapada limeña, a woman covered entirely except for one eye. This style lasted from the mid-1500s into the mid-1800s and allowed the women of Lima to move about anonymously, giving them much more freedom than they’d otherwise have enjoyed.

We visited Casa de Aliaga, the oldest home in Lima owned since 1535 by a single family (Amalia, also from an established Lima family, knows them personally).

Amalia also showed us around the Plaza Mayor, with the cathedral on one side and the presidential palace on another. We timed it just right to watch the changing of the guard, complete with a full marching band!

Belmond Miraflores Park

Our hotel was the lovely Miraflores Park, located away from the city center overlooking the ocean. While it meant we had a long drive to see the main sights of Lima, I think it was worth it to enjoy peaceful views over the coastline.

Of course, I had to have a pisco sour – and the one at the hotel’s Belo Bar was superb.

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