Day one: Arrived in Lima early in the morning after not too much sleep. And dove straight into the walking tour around the Miraflores district of town.  Apparently this is one of the safest areas if the city. Its pretty little area. It has a nice beach which currently has a pretty decent surfing competition. And there is the JR Kennedy Park where heaps of cats of been abandoned so now they are everywhere!

Went with the girls to go shopping at the malls, before realising it wasn't that cheap (some even more than New Zealand) so headed to the markets. Bused to the old part of to to do another walking tour here. All three big churches had weddings happening, the back doors were just open and people were walking through their ceremonies. It felt very intrusive. One church had a catecome under the grate in the floor, very creepy! Stopped at the Rinconcito Cervecero bar to have a Pilsen Trujillo beer from peru. Also had some fried pork and a stick of sweet breadwith chocolate in it called a churro. All very yummy!!!! 

Freshened up a bit and then went out to the Casino to lose our money with Rebecca,  Simon and Nadine as Rebecca and Kieran leave the tour today. Sad to see them go. Hopefully we meet up again. One new girl has joined us. Her name is Niyoshi and she is 4 days younger than me.She is from Mumbai in India. VERY big day,  desperate for sleep.

Day two: Walked down to the beach. More of a effort than we could have imagined. Lima city is kind of built on a cliff face, the beach is about 30m below. Took us a while to find some steps that took us down. The beach was made of small rocks, had a large slope at the start, the waves didn't carry you very well and there were hundreds of people trying to learn to surf. But the water was amazing,  a warm NZ water temperature. I could have swum all day. But of course it was time to get on another bus. This time we travelled 4 hours from Lima to Paracas.

Interesting sites along the way. All of these shanty like towns, in desert areas. People apparently go and occupy random bits of land together, eventually they get it for free or very small cost. They will only go to it once a month to show they still love there etc, as they already have their house and job in the city. Once the land becomes theirs they sell it off. Apparently it's quite a good way to make money. There are sometimes that the people actually need the land but not very often.