After a 3 hour flight from Panama we arrived in our first South America destination: Lima, the captial of Peru.

A city of 9 million and sat on the lowlands between the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Andes mountains to the east, it is a city of contrasts.

A beautiful historic centre (a world heritage site) comprising lots of very nice and sculptural palaces and churches that sit between standard office blocks and slightly run down facades. Crazy traffic (horns beeping allllll the time) and surrounding the centre are lots of shanty towns where most of the population live.

We arrived at the airport and were picked up by a nice Peruvian lady (Emily was excited to finally have a person waiting for her at an airport with a sign saying her name!) She then drove us through the outskirts and into the centre to our new hostal.

Called ´1900 Backpackers hostal´ it is a wonderful old building of classic French Architecture (Gustav Effiel was involved in the design) with high ceilings, well lit corridors around internal courtyards, a cool bar and tv room, and friendly owners (a nice change after our Panama experience!)

Feeling rather run down and tired after 3 months of travel, both are rather shattered and both have colds. So Dave and Emily mostly spent their time in Lima relaxing about, taking it easy (blowing their noses) and simply exploring the city.

Lima does not suit every traveler and many we have spoke to in the past are not impressed but we really liked it. It is not very touristy which is surprising for a capital, but its quite a pleasure just to mingle about in and out of locals going about their day to day business.

We did however find a rather cheesy tourist train that drives around the roads (it´s one of those fake trains that is actually an undercover car) and rattled around the city looking rather stupid, but it was fun!

The city has a reputation for pickpockets and thefts (even the restaurants have contraptions to lock your bag to the chair) so the SLR camera is keeping a low profile here, the advice is to not show any signs of wealth in order to avoid being a potential target. However there are lots of police all over the place (and a worrying amount of riot police armed and ready!). Saying that we have not noticed anything dodgy going on, although it does get very very crowded at times which is always a prime spot for thieves wherever you are in the world.

Lima was intended to be a stop over on route to our trip to Cusco but we stayed for more days than planned as we really did like it.

The food is great, one highlight is the must eat Peruvian Ceviche which was amazing (see photo gallery). Dave was rather confused when he asked for a Coca-Cola in a restaurant and recieved a bright yellow drink. He was thinking something was lost in translation when it became clear that a lot of locals were drinking this stuff. Turns out that is is ´Inca-Kola´ the Peruvian equivilent of Coca-Cola but nothing like it.

After some investigation we discovered that Peru is one of the very few countries in the world where Coca-Cola could not make an impression as the locals love the Inca version. And Dave can declare that it is very tasty! (Kinda tastes like bubble gum)

So that was Lima, tomorrow we board an aircraft to take us up into the Andes mountains and to Cusco. Going from 500 metres above sea level in Lima to 3400m above sea level in Cusco in a hour. Altitude sickness here we go.....