I previously had a day and a half in Lima when I passed through on the tour but I was sick and in bed most of that time and consequently I didn't get to see much of the city. I liked what I had seen so I was very keen to go back and explore some more. In these five days I was lucky enough to meet up with a few friends and go to some nice places while, in between times, I was organising a trip to the Amazon Rainforest in the north of Peru.

I was sitting on the plane at Cusco airport, about to switch off my phone for take off to Lima, when I received a message from Julio asking who was going to pick me up from the airport - I had been planning to take a taxi into town and then figure out what to do but he said he was in Lima and could borrow his friend's car and come to pick me up, which was great. So he was there when I landed and we went to his parents' house where I met his dad and he showed me lots of photos of him as a baby and growing up. We went for lunch in a little local cafe and he was able make some helpful recommendations for my Amazon trip because he had trained as a guide at a jungle lodge there. Lima was so much hotter than Cusco had been and it was nice to be able to ditch the jacket and scarf and wear a skirt and t-shirt again.

In the evening we went back to the airport to pick up two guys that were coming from Cusco to stay the night with Julio. This meant that I got to go to Starbucks in the airport while waiting for them to arrive - I was happy because I hadn't had a Starbucks coffee for ages!

The visitors were Julio's friend Dennis and Mariano - an old shaman from the small Q'ero community in the mountains near Cusco that Dennis works with. They were fascinating people to get to know - Dennis was really friendly and intelligent, he spoke many different languages. He worked closely with several of the shamans and part of his work was going to conferences on mysticism around the world and explaining the shamans' beliefs and powers, which is why he and Mariano were coming to Lima to obtain visas for travelling abroad. Mariano was a very small man and his official age was about 75 years old although they said he was in fact much older (he didn't look it though - he could have passed for 55). He wore the traditional clothes of the mountain people, including a funny knitted hat in a myriad of bright colours. He spoke the indigenous language of Quechua, he had just a few words of Spanish and no English so Dennis organised the trips and translated for him. Mariano had such a beautiful, almost childlike, sincerity, innocence and enthusiasm and a good sense of humour - I felt quite honoured to spend time with him. He comes from such a different world - trips like this must have been intimidating for him.

After Dennis and Mariano had sorted out some photos for their visas, we all drove down to the beach in the Miraflores district - it was pitch dark at this point and, unusually for Lima, there was a clear sky so we could see lots of stars - it was beautiful Mariano had seen the sea before but not very often and he was so excited - he was actually applauding the sea! Showing respect for Pachamama (Mother Nature) is central to their beliefs so this was quite an important thing for him.

We went on to the house of Julio's sister Carola in Barranco because she and her husband, Carlos, wanted Mariano to do a reading for them. I think the reading is a bit like that of a fortune-teller but it is more focused on the present - interpreting problems and, crucially, giving advice on how to fix them. While they were all off doing that, Julio and I played with Carola's five-year old daughter Valentina. I already knew quite a bit about 'Vale' because Julio talked about her all the time - he was a very proud uncle! Vale was very cute, bursting with energy and so funny - she was doing lots of different animal impressions for us and singing songs - she wanted to show me the songs that she had learned in English, including Barney the dinosaur's "I love you, you love me, we're a happy family...". It was good fun.

Then Julio, Dennis, Mariano and I went to a great Chinese restaurant for dinner. They told us lots of funny stories about their previous trips abroad, like the first time Mariano went on an airplane and he looked at it in awe and said "great condor, amazing condor" (like the big bird that lives in the Andes and is considered sacred); or when he was chatted up by foreign women and didn't know how to react! His honesty was quite funny - like telling Julio in all seriousness that he needed to find a wife. While we were at dinner we had a call that Carlos's mother wanted Mariano to go back to their house and do a reading for Carlos's brother - Mariano had revealed some issues that Carlos didn't know about but they turned out to be true and his mother and brother were very worried about them and wanted Mariano's help. So after dinner we went back and Julio and I chatted to Carlos's mother and had a drink with her while the others were doing the reading. She was a nice lady and it sounded like she had had a difficult time.

The following day Julio took me to his favourite ceviche restaurant for lunch and in the evening we went to a kooky little bar in Miraflores with his friend Beto and Beto's girlfriend Julissa. Julio kept trying to encourage me to speak in Spanish but I was too embarrassed. Beto was very sweet, speaking to me in English anyway. The boys kept giving Julissa a hard time about her midnight snacking habits!

The next day I met up with Pamela, who had travelled up to Lima from Cusco for a few days for work. We went for drinks and dinner at the Mangos restaurant in the Larcomar complex - we had a table outside with a perfect view of the sunset - it was lovely. I had a Pisco Sour cocktail (which normally I don't like but they tasted great there) and my favourite dish - lomo saltado. Pamela was in the middle of flat-hunting in Cusco and suggested that I come and share a flat with her there - it was so tempting to go back to Cusco! She was also trying to persuade me to go for a reservations job that was available in Intrepid's office in Lima but I didn't feel like my Spanish was good enough. It certainly was nice to toy with the idea of staying in Peru though!

I spent the next day wandering around Miraflores and Barranco, where I visited the nice little gallery/museum Museo de Arte Virreynal Pedro de Osma - it is set in beautiful old buildings and has some strange things in the collection, I liked it. In the evening I met up with Phoebe who was staying in Lima with a friend of a friend, Blanca. We went for dinner and to the cinema at Larcomar where we managed to pick the only film that was dubbed in Spanish rather than subtitled! So after about five minutes of not understanding anything, Blanca persuaded them to let us go into another screen with a film in English - we ended up seeing In Bruges, a weird film but funny.

I did some more museum trips the following day - to Museo de la Nacion (a very big building with not a lot inside - it was in an awkward location as well and wasn't worth the trip) and Museo Rafael Larco Herrera (a fantastic place). Bizarrely, when I flagged down a taxi and asked if they knew Museo Larco, it turned out that the taxi driver also worked at that museum as a guide! His name was Francisco and he had his museum pass and leaflets about it in the car. It was quite a long drive to the museum in the Pueblo Libre district of Lima so Francisco told me lots about it along the way, and about other attractions in and around Lima. Museo Larco is relatively expensive to get in to but I could see why - it is well worth it. It has stacks of interesting pieces (including, oddly, a whole section on erotic ceramics), which are well displayed and very well explained in several languages. They had thousands more pieces in storage as well. I really enjoyed it and could have stayed longer but it was closing.

Then I had to pack up my things and head to the airport at about midnight for my 4am flight to Iquitos.