AmyBlog: Peru truly last - What to do with Lima stopovers
I miss everybody and we´ll be home tomorrow, I'm glad
So if you have to stop over in Lima... this is common because flights from Cuzco are only reliable in the morning due to afternoon winds sometimes canceling flights, yet all international flights leave in the late evening or early am (ours goes at 00:40)... two years ago, we took a tour with Monica´s tours, she is listed in a lot of the guidebooks and has email, but it was very expensive like $70 or maybe $70 a person. What we did today I would definitely recommend instead.
We took the 10:30 flight from Cusco, to Lima at noon, checked our bags at the airport, and only went to this one neighborhood, Pueblo Libre, that is not that far from the airport but has the best museum (the Rafael Larco Herrera museum). There are 2 museums worth visiting, and a good local restaurant.
Bag checking is easy, right next to local arrivals, costs $4. US a bag or $8. for a locker that might hold 3, for all day. We took a secure ´green´taxi from a stand inside the airport, for 25 soles or $7, to the Museo Nacional de Archaelogia y Antropologia, in Pueblo Libre, on Sucre avenue.
The Museo de Archaeologia is a small, one level, fairly complete museum, a great intro to all the cultures of peru, has great stone stelae and some very nice ceramics of all periods. We were doubly entertained because this is still Peru´s national field trip time so there were crowds of young adolescents doing tours. Quite funny to look at the erotic pottery from the Mochica period in the company of young boys. Since we had plenty of time to kill we probably spent 2 hours there looking, and drinking cappucinos. I can´t remember how much this museum cost, I think 15 soles each.
From there, if you turn right as you go out the door, there is literally a ´blue line´on the sidewalk that takes you on a 10-15 minute walk. north and west, zigzagging through a middle class neighborhood over to the Larco museum--- the guards at the first museum deny that the blue line exists, and it is quite faded over in the Archeology neighborhood, but not hard to follow. The blue line also takes you right by a good restaurant, El Bolivariano, which is a favorite Peruvian place, we had ceviche and fried calamari with chicha, they have a long tasty looking menu, it is in an old house from the 1800s.
Then we followed the blue line across the street and past a chain of small parks to the Larco which is fabulous, the best, incredible collections of ceramics, textiles and gold. He was a great excavator, and a huge collector, so you can see the regular exhibits which are really well laid out and designed, and you can also walk through glass cases, floor to ceiling 8 shelves, of everything the museum owns, really fun, with little labels like ´here are all the mochica pots with hunting scenes´. It is so intimate. So many of the ceramics would be fabulous in any era, the Peruvian sense of shape, form, humor is legendary and the Mochica culture especially has trememdous sculptured, human faces and animals in very tender, lifelike positions. The gold & silver artifacts displayed at the Larco were actually beautiful, not just shiny, with fine detail and good design. The fabric collection is small, only a roomful of it on display, but what they have just glows, and they have a small piece of cotton cloth with 378 threads to the inch, and a very beautiful wall-sized tapestry of reds and blacks in intricate design. The Museo Larco also has a great little store with nice quality replicas of the best pots. The Larco costs 25 soles each.
There was a cab driver waiting at the Larco, I don´t think it would have been hard for them to call us one either, and another 25 soles back to the airport, we probably could have bargained it down.
So anyway our little tour cost the two of us about 130 soles or $40. Yeah,we didn´t get to the Museo de Oro or the Museo de La Nacion which are also nice but very far and not nearly as magnificent as the Larco. We missed the tour of downtown Lima but as far as I´m concerned that doesn´t miss much! it´s grimy, dingy and compared to other colonial cities not very special.
That´s it! xox miss you, Amy
So if you have to stop over in Lima... this is common because flights from Cuzco are only reliable in the morning due to afternoon winds sometimes canceling flights, yet all international flights leave in the late evening or early am (ours goes at 00:40)... two years ago, we took a tour with Monica´s tours, she is listed in a lot of the guidebooks and has email, but it was very expensive like $70 or maybe $70 a person. What we did today I would definitely recommend instead.
We took the 10:30 flight from Cusco, to Lima at noon, checked our bags at the airport, and only went to this one neighborhood, Pueblo Libre, that is not that far from the airport but has the best museum (the Rafael Larco Herrera museum). There are 2 museums worth visiting, and a good local restaurant.
Bag checking is easy, right next to local arrivals, costs $4. US a bag or $8. for a locker that might hold 3, for all day. We took a secure ´green´taxi from a stand inside the airport, for 25 soles or $7, to the Museo Nacional de Archaelogia y Antropologia, in Pueblo Libre, on Sucre avenue.
The Museo de Archaeologia is a small, one level, fairly complete museum, a great intro to all the cultures of peru, has great stone stelae and some very nice ceramics of all periods. We were doubly entertained because this is still Peru´s national field trip time so there were crowds of young adolescents doing tours. Quite funny to look at the erotic pottery from the Mochica period in the company of young boys. Since we had plenty of time to kill we probably spent 2 hours there looking, and drinking cappucinos. I can´t remember how much this museum cost, I think 15 soles each.
From there, if you turn right as you go out the door, there is literally a ´blue line´on the sidewalk that takes you on a 10-15 minute walk. north and west, zigzagging through a middle class neighborhood over to the Larco museum--- the guards at the first museum deny that the blue line exists, and it is quite faded over in the Archeology neighborhood, but not hard to follow. The blue line also takes you right by a good restaurant, El Bolivariano, which is a favorite Peruvian place, we had ceviche and fried calamari with chicha, they have a long tasty looking menu, it is in an old house from the 1800s.
Then we followed the blue line across the street and past a chain of small parks to the Larco which is fabulous, the best, incredible collections of ceramics, textiles and gold. He was a great excavator, and a huge collector, so you can see the regular exhibits which are really well laid out and designed, and you can also walk through glass cases, floor to ceiling 8 shelves, of everything the museum owns, really fun, with little labels like ´here are all the mochica pots with hunting scenes´. It is so intimate. So many of the ceramics would be fabulous in any era, the Peruvian sense of shape, form, humor is legendary and the Mochica culture especially has trememdous sculptured, human faces and animals in very tender, lifelike positions. The gold & silver artifacts displayed at the Larco were actually beautiful, not just shiny, with fine detail and good design. The fabric collection is small, only a roomful of it on display, but what they have just glows, and they have a small piece of cotton cloth with 378 threads to the inch, and a very beautiful wall-sized tapestry of reds and blacks in intricate design. The Museo Larco also has a great little store with nice quality replicas of the best pots. The Larco costs 25 soles each.
There was a cab driver waiting at the Larco, I don´t think it would have been hard for them to call us one either, and another 25 soles back to the airport, we probably could have bargained it down.
So anyway our little tour cost the two of us about 130 soles or $40. Yeah,we didn´t get to the Museo de Oro or the Museo de La Nacion which are also nice but very far and not nearly as magnificent as the Larco. We missed the tour of downtown Lima but as far as I´m concerned that doesn´t miss much! it´s grimy, dingy and compared to other colonial cities not very special.
That´s it! xox miss you, Amy
posted by Craig and Amy at 3:43 PM
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