By the time we arrived in Lima, it was late at night and we were exhausted.This left us somewhat unprepared for the madness outside the aiport terminal, where taxi drivers and shuttle buses were all vying for our business.We had no idea where we were staying and since it was a Saturday night, we figured that most places would be pretty booked up.We got chatting to a guy who was heading to a hostel in the district of Barranco, where two of his friends were staying, only to find out that he was from Chesham and born at Northwick Park Hospital, just like us!!!We decided to share a taxi, and see if we could get into one of the hostels on our list, otherwise we would just head out to this other hostel with our new friend.The taxi ride was supposed to be almost an hour, but ended up being a bit of a nightmare and took much longer!Firstly, there were the views.All on a long strip were millions of hotels, casinos, clubs and bars, and the whole thing was ugly and Americanised.It seemed like a cross between the tacky touristy Floridian resorts, and the bright lights of Las Vegas.This was not at all what we had expected of what is supposed to be a very traditional, cultured country!!Secondly, the driver tried his hardest to rip us off, especially when the hostel we wanted was full, and we are almost certain that he was falling asleep at the wheel at points too!He had no idea where he was going, but somehow we finally made it to the hostel in Barranco, arriving at close to 2am!!The hostel was basic but nice, and since it was so far out of the way, there was only the five of us there!That made it kind of personal because we had the staff's full attention, and a kitchen, terrace, tv room and free internet all entirely at our disposal!!Absolutely shattered, we slept late into the next morning, before finally emerging to go to the supermarket for food!We spent the day pretty much lazing about, and in the evening we went to a bar above the hostel for a few drinks, which was very picturesque as it overlooked the sea from a cliff. Later that evening, one of the girls cooked us all a fantastic meal, complete with wine, which we sat on the terrace to enjoy.We then decided to go and see Pirates of the Carribean 3 at the cinema, and even that was an experience!!We went to the Larcomar, a huge shopping mall, again full of cinemas, bars and restaurants, and very very Americanised!To be perfectly honest, it was bigger than the cinema at home, and until the movie ended and the people sitting behind us began speaking in Spanish, we had totally forgotten that we were on the other side of the world!!!The next day, Rakhee and I decided that we had better actually see some of Lima before we moved on, and headed out to Lima's Old Centre, which was supposed to be where all the action was!! Over the next two days or so, we took in all the major sites, and were relieved to find that some of the Peruvian culture had been preserved and not totally lost as the capital city continued on its quest for westernization/modernization.The areas that we walked were a maze of modern hustle and bustle, markets, cobbled streets, churches and other colonial and neoclassical buildings.The main plaza - Plaza Mayor (original!) - was absolutely beautiful, immaculately landscaped, and bordered by the Governer's Palace, the cathedral and the municipal building. The cathedral was probably one of the nicest that we have seen on our travels, and that's coming from two people who are sick to death of churches and cathedrals!!We were also treated to the sight of the changing of the guard, which was absolutely hilarious as they do this ridiculous march which involves kicking their legs high in the air as they walk! The accompanying band, however, were really good and we were very impressed by the grandeur of the whole act!!We also made a small foray into Chinatown, which was remarkably like Chinatown in London! There is a very big Chinese population in Peru, and nowhere was this more noticeable than in Lima, with every third restaurant we came across being a "Chifa" (Chinese restaurant!).Of the museums we visited, a few spring to mind!First there was the Catacombs Museum, which was attached to the San Francisco Monastery.It was inside a church crypt and contained the skulls and bones of almost seventy thousand people!!Apparently the Franciscan monks believed the site to be holy, and therefore continued to bury their dead there, even after it was outlawed and a city cemetery was built!!It was a little bit eerie, especially as some wise person had arranged the bones into funny patterns, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless!We also visited the Museum of the Inquisition, which contained life-sized wax/plastic exhibits of how the Spanish had tortured the Peruvians to make them convert to Catholicism, when they invaded in the sixteenth century.Marisha found this absolutely hilarious, as you'd walk into one room to find a man lying on a table being stretched over a fire, then look over your shoulder to see a man hanging by his neck from a noose in the corner!Needless to say, Rakhee wasn't quite as impressed!!Of all the museums however, the museum with erotic pots takes the prize! After room and room of boring and repetitive pre-Colombian ceramics, we happened upon a room full of nothing but rather explicit and imaginative pottery!We won't say anymore, and simply advice you to take a look at the pictures, since they pretty much speak for themselves!!!After all of our adventures with modern Lima, we decided to see how the poorer citizens lived, and headed over a bridge crossing the Rio Rimac, into the district of Rimac itself.The change was remarkable, with everything being much more rundown, basic, and noticeably seedier.As much as we wanted to experience this other side to Lima, neither of us felt particularly safe as people stared and hissed at us, and it was not even ten minutes before we were quickly back over the bridge to the safety of the old town! We settled instead for walking along the seafront, back towards our hostel in Barranco. The beach isn't that nice, and Lima is covered by a coastal fog at this time of year, but nonetheless it was beautiful in it's own dark, grey, stormy way.At the very least, it didn't seem to stop the surfers from trying to catch waves in the freezing cold water!!After a very mixed few days, we decided that it was time to move on, and arranged to catch a flight down to Cusco early one morning?