Lima

Lima is the capital city of Peru and our next stop. I had never been to South America or anywhere in the Southern hemisphere so this was the most exciting leg yet. What made the trip even more fun was that my grandfather and his spouse, Ditta, were with us but going to Peru has always been my grandfather’s dream. 

I didn't really know what to expect but what surprised me the most was how badly all the houses were built. Coming from Iceland I'm used to good sturdy houses that are all built to certain rules. Some of the houses here looked as if they were stacked up on one another and would fall a part at any moment. Others were only half finished and looked old. Almost all the houses were very colorful and that did make them look more lively and fun. 

When we were driving to our hotel from the airport we got a big afraid that it was going to be sloppy and disgusting but were relived when we saw it. The hotel looked more like an apartment than a hotel. It was on three floors and only had one long table for people to sit and eat breakfast. It gave you the opportunity to talk to other guests in the hotel that you would usually never do. We met a group of people that were traveling around Peru like us and they gave us a lot of good tips for our trip. 

We'd only be in Lima for a few days’ before heading off to Cusco so we decided to use those day's to explore the city and enjoy ourselves. 

Downtown Lima is really weird but you walk down one road and all you see are stores that sell paper. The road next to it sells glasses and the one next to that, fabrics. It was all set up in a way that if you needed something you'd just go down one street and have a billion options to choose from. When we were walking through China town we found a maze of pots and forks and bowls and all kinds of thing for your kitchen. You could easily get lost in there cause all the stores looked the same. They all crammed their stuff into one small space so you could hardly see what they were selling. 

One of the things we did was take a tour around a church and go down into catacombs that lay underneath it. It was.. scary, creepy and gross. A few hundred years ago people believed that if you were buried under a church your spirit would go to god, so all the rich people paid a lot of money to the church so that when they would die their body would be buried there. It's sounded to them like a good deal but what they didn't know was that after they would rot their bones were taken and sorted, by size. There were numerous boxes that were between five and fifteen meters deep and held a certain type of bone. In one there were only leg bones and another only skulls. All the bones were lined up very neatly and I can't but help feel sorry for the poor bastard that had to go down into those boxes and sort the bones. The families weren't allowed into the catacombs so no one knew about the process. There are catacombs under every single church in Lima and there are a lot of churches there. There were bones of 25 thousand people in the catacomb we went into so you can just imagine how many are overall in all of Lima. 

We also went to a water fountain park and saw really cool show water and lasers going into every direction. There was also a fountain that sprayed water into the air and then stopped at a random time. The goal was to get to the middle and back without getting wet. I of course tried it and besides getting one foot wet I did ok. It's probably a lot more fun on a hot day when the sun is shining cause it got a bit cold walking back to the hotel. 

From Lima we went to Cusco, a city a bit further into the country. You can both fly and take a bus there and we chose to take the bus. Cusco is a lot higher up than Lima and taking the bus was supposed to help us get used to the high altitude. It's sounds a lot better when you think about it that way but the bus ride took 22 hours and 15 minutes of complete boredom. We drove through the night so you could sleep but I kept waking up and got carsick so it was a very long drive. The landscape was beautiful and we saw a lot of animals on the way but looking out the window made me get a headache so I had to close the curtains and try to watch a movie. When we finally got to Cusco we just ate and went to sleep and tried to get over the bus ride.