Lima is huge! Its not as big as Sao Paulo, but its still big. As we drove through the outer suburbs it looked like a pure kip and I'm wondering to myself why anyone would ever want to come here. Has it any beauty at all I pondered as we drove further into the city? Its dark when we arrive also, so being a bit biased but I make my assumption that it doesnt look like much. The bus station is in a dodgy part of town and with Friday nights traffic bustling all over the place, it proved rather difficult at first to hail a joe-maxi. Karly, Chi and I decided to check into Loki in the upper market Miraflores area of Lima. I had stayed in Loki before during the first six days of my time in La Paz, so I knew what to expect. You can fly by the seat of your pants and rock up to some random place once in a city to try and get a bed for the night, but its always better spending the few mintues the night before finding a nice place, for the right price and in a good part of town and then booking online. You'll always meet a few though that will tell you that they got a place for cheaper than what we paid, probably by less than a dollar but its way off the beaten track. Each to their own I suppose, I'm quite happy in the best place in town that suits my pocket. The grim area's of Lima soon faded as we entered the Miraflores area. It looked and felt more westernised with well-to-do people about so we felt a lot more comfortable in our surroundings.

Loki in Lima was alright but it didnt really light my fire after spending four days there. The rooms were good, the food was alright, the nights were always hopping but it just had this immature, OMG - I was like - OMG, kind of a feel to it. Its also one of the most popular places in South America for people to fly into from Europe, and that brings with it a lot of young people who have just landed on the continent, super eager to start their trip a proper. I met one young lad from the UK on the first night I was there but god help him, he was so excited and didnt know what to say or how to start a conversation, so what he did was ask everybody their ages and then we asked him in return. Thats fine, nothing too strange about that, but the fact that the young chap was born in 1995. 1995. Thats a year after Ireland beat Italy 1-0 in Giants Stadium in New York! He was that young or I'm getting on, one or the other! I'm used to a more mature crowd and this place didnt do it for me. Lima for me wasnt a highlight. It was a place where we went to have some good food, to go shopping for normal clothes and to go out the odd night, in my eyes, it really should only be a transfer city. On the brief mention of food, we went to a spot to eat not too far from where we were staying called Anticuchario, a small place where you order at the till and grab a seat somewhere once its vacated. There was plaques on the wall and photos of the lady owner for her famous restaurant that we we're in, so we obviously struck gold. The recipe to her success it seems was to keep the menu simple and by simple I mean, one dish. Do you want it big or do you want it small? What is was, was marinated BBQ'd meat that was served with choclo, which is a variety of corn in South America with huge kernals. The meat was delicious but I couldnt put my finger on what cut it was or what animal it came from, for that matter. Between the plaques, they had little cupids shooting arrows through hearts painted on the walls. My suspicions increased after noticing this and sure enough when we asked the waiter what it was, it was heart. It was so delicious that I'd go back for some right now!

Apart from eating well and getting sloshed each night (the only reason we stayed there as we we're too hungover to leave), the only real highlight for me was when we went and visited a park called Parque Nacional where within the walls of the park stood a huge area called Circuito de Aguas Magicos. What it consisted of was 18 different types of water fountains, the biggest one shooting 800metres in the air. They had ones that lit up, ones that danced to music and ones that burst out of the ground intermediatley. It was really good fun once the sun went down and in the dakrness of night the whole place was lit up with different colour patterns and light installations. The only downside to our visit to this park was that I got saturated with a little water jet which I didnt see, as I tried to jump into the middle of the dancing fountain. My own fault I suppose. Lesson learnt. Your not seven anymore.

As I said, four days was way too long I thought to spend there. You can party until the cows come home but after that there's not a whole pile to see. We went and did some of the tourist things one day for a few hours but its nothing to write home about, I'd be spending my time elsewhere in the country if I was to come back to Peru. I wasnt going to miss the inescapeable damp or garua, a cloud that covers the coast of Peru and Ecuador for nine months of the year. You think the Irish suffer bad from SAD disorder, well the poor Limon's (what I'm calling people of Lima J) have it way worse! AND you have an awful job drying the clothes on the line!

I had had enough of Lima, so we said goodbye to Chi and David, his friend that just flew in. The boys were heading to the Amazon to head north into Colombia. Karly and I were now heading north east to a small city called Huaraz, to get back to nature and to challenge our hiking skills once again on the beautiful Santa Cruz trek!