Lima also marks the end of my quite substantial involvement with the Pan American Highway, a 29,800 mile road - or, more accurately, network of roads - from Alaska all the way down to Argentina. This road is immortalised in the song 'Turn That Heartbeat Over Again' by Steely Dan ("Yeah, this highway runs from Paraguay / And I've just come all the way...").
See below for photos of Lima. I'm staying in a rather lively hostel, where the craic is OK and fortunately none of the annoying people are English. Indeed I've only met a handful of Poms / Limeys since Quito. It's much easier to tolerate annoying people from countries other than one's own, because at least the annoyance isn't multiplied by shame and embarrassment.
Lima is much the biggest place I've been to so far - about 8 million people in all. Parts of the city are distinctly rough, but I'm staying safely in an upmarket neighbourhood called Miraflores. It's a bit more expensive than what I've experienced so far, but it's still pretty good value. Indeed it’s a cliché, and a vulgar one, but everything is so darned cheap over here. It’s almost impossible to get rid of one’s money. When I checked out of my Quito hostel the bill only came to $46 for three nights’ accommodation - and that included my bar tab. The bus to Cuenca, a trip of some 300 miles, was $12. I got a week’s worth of clothes washed for $1.30. And so it goes on.
The downside is that everybody seems to be on the take. As well as the short-changing taxi driver mentioned last time, there was the guy in Subway in Quito who tried to short-change me by $10. And today, in Lima, the young girl serving in the supermarket tried to unburden me of 20 soles (just under a fiver). It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying and dispiriting. Needless to say, all these would-be Dick Turpins were unsuccessful.
I'm very conscious that I haven't been able to do photographic justice to everything I've seen. The bus rides have been stupendous, but I just can't seem to capture it in a photo. However I've shot a few videos out of coach windows, and when I get a minute I'm going to make a video compilation of the highlights and put it up here, bandwidth permitting (today Sunderland 3 Norwich 0 was hugely pleasing but I just couldn't get any kind of internet stream to view any of it. All I could get was BBC text updates at five minutes' delay. The sacrifices I make...)
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| This would have been more topical in Quito, but better late than never |
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| Lima. Getting quite hot. |
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| Lima. Beginning to perspire. |
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| Lima. Leaving sweat trails on the pavement |
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| Lima. Feeling like the unlucky Nazi at the end of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' |
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| Lima. Not looking forward to getting back up that cliff. |
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| The global appeal of Coronation Street (only applicable to people old enough to remember the 80s) |
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| Lima's Centro Historico |
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| Statue of Don José de San Martin, Lima |
