We arrived in Lima not expecting much. People that we had met on the way said Lima was a dirty, dangerous and boring city.

I was thinking that it was likely we'd be mugged, and worse stuck in the hotel room all day, but we were pleasantly surprised when our tour guide took us on our short orientation walk of the historical centre.

Lima has done a lot of work in the past couple of years to maintain and restore the historical buildings in the centre. Therefore the historical buildings were well maintained and very interesting to see. There were also a lot of policemen in the main areas and the city had a very safe feel to it.

There was a large statue of the guy who helped give Peru independence from Spain on the the statue a little Llama is sitting on top of the ladies heat. Our guide told us that in Spanish Llama can mean fire, or an animal and when the people making the statue were told to put a Llama in it they thought they meant the animal when the people ordering the statue meant fire. So now there is a little Llama in the statue.

The government palace where the president lives is in the centre of the historical part of the city close to where our hotel was located.

We did spend one day relaxing in the hotel room, catching up with washing, watching tv and catching up with internet.

Another day was spent in the richer part of the city (Minaflores) which was an hours taxi drive away. Its closer to the ocean and a lot of rich shops are in the area. We enjoyed lunch in Cafe Cafe right on the ocean and wandered around some of the shops.

Scariest part was catching a taxi back to our hotel. Our guide book said that the yellow taxis were the safest so we managed to hail one on the side of the street. The guy didn't seem to know where the hotel was but we said its "centro" and he quoted us 8 soles. This seemed a little low as we were told 10-12 is the norm, so I said well pay you 10 soles. He seemed pretty happy with that (who wouldn't be?), so we jumped in.

He was nattering away in Spanish and we said no espanol, but he still kept on chatting away. When we stopped at lights he started talking to the other taxi drivers and all I understood was gringo's (tourists) and then he'll laugh away in this evil laugh. I was thinking that we were going to be mugged for sure, or chopped up into little pieces but thankfully he dropped us on our street and we managed to find our way back to the hotel in one piece and with all our cash.

A few days in Lima was a nice way to end the tour.