The bus journey from Guayaquil to Lima was the longest that we had done on this trip, but it was bearable, due mainly to the fact that we had booked executive tickets with big seats and great movies! There was of course the usual and inevitable discomfort when crossing borders by bus of having to get off the bus twice, once to clear Ecuadorian and then to go through Peruvian immigration. As usual we sailed through these formalities with the good old British passport.

We arrived in Lima at around 6pm which was perfect timing as it allowed us to get out of the bus terminal, into a cab and to our hostel before darkness set it. Whilst we'd been on the bus there had been WiFi so Gemma and I had been doing some Facebooking on her iPod touch. We had hardly checked into our hostel when we received a message form our ex-work colleague Madeleine, informing us that she and her husband were in town and suggesting we meet for drinks. How could we refuse! We quickly got ready, wolfed down our dinner and met them in a cafe-bar close to Parque Kennedy in the Mirafloes area. We talked for the rest of the night, they telling us all about their Machu Picchu trek and Colca Canyon visit and us trying to get through all of our travels. This was the second time we'd met someone from back home on travels and it was really good to catch up.

Our hostel was situated in the Miraflores area so our initial exploration of Lima took place around there. Parque Kennedy is attractive enough with its many pubs and cafes, although the heavy traffic around the park counts against it. We went to the pre-Inca adobe mound called Huaca Pucllana. Basically it is a big pile of ancient bricks in the centre of Lima, but nobody really knows what it really was! The guided tour was quite good fun though. Our evenings centred around Parque Kennedy as food was relatively inexpensive and we eventually found pizza street with its numerous bars. We avoided having any big nights out though in an effort to save some money.

Craig had a telephone interview while we were in Lima so that took up one of our mornings while he prepared and got his cv ready. In the afternoon and on our final day we ventured over to the Centro or Old Town of Lima, aware that we'd already seen a lot of the things that it had to offer. To our surprise the Centro was quite interesting, the two main squares, Plaza Mayor and Plaza San Martin were pleasant enough, the Museum of the Inquisition was closed on both days we tried to visit and the Cathedral and Jesuit church were much of a muchness. The really interesting parts of the Centro were firstly, the tour of the church of San Francisco with its magnificent, ancient library and its catacombs which supposedly hold the skulls and bones of 70,000 people, many if which are in view. Secondly there was the archbishop's residency which were temporarily open to the public. It was fascinating seeing the office, dining room and private chapel, as well as the reception rooms of the archbishop.

Lima has a reputation for poverty which we were not exposed to during our visit, probably because of the areas that we visited. Only staying in the city for 3 days, we really did just stick to the well-worn tourist areas and didn't explore much further afield. In reality we probably didn't give it much of a chance having stayed in so many large cities on our visit to South America, as soon as we arrived we really wanted to head on to our next destination of Cusco and Machu Picchu. It was only when we caught our taxi at crazy o'clock in the morning to fly to Cusco that we saw some of the poorer areas of Lima and what life is really like for people living in the city.