This morning we wake up and I have a killer headache. I must not have had enough water the day
before on the hot bus. I take a couple
of panadol and keep the water flowing throughout the day. We take the bus into town, it costs about 2
soles each ($1NZ) and we were on the bus for about half an hour with all the
locals. When we arrive into the city
centre we head to the Plaza de Armes which is the main area of town. Here there is a cathedral, the Priest’ Palace
and the Presidents Palace. It is a
really nice area. The reason we are not
staying in the city centre is because it gets very dangerous after dark so it
is best to stay away. Apparently
Miraflores, the suburb where we are staying, is the safest suburb in town. We walk into the Cathedral as there is a mass
on, good timing coming in on a Sunday morning.
The mass is being played on a loud speaker and can be heard throughout
the Plaza de Armes. It is a special mass
as there is some 50 year anniversary with this church as we are given a flyer
about it, but we can’t read anymore of the brochure as it is in Spanish. We then leave the cathedral and walk down a
block to the Inquisition Museum. Here we
get a free tour of the old judicial system of Peru. We also are shown the room where prisoners
were tortured. They were often stretched
on the rack, had gags put in their throats and water poured down to suffocate
them or they were given the death penalty by being strangled with a rope around
their necks. There were life size wax
sculptures showing how these torturous procedures were carried out. Pretty freaky really. We were also taken into the basement where
they still have the original cells where the prisoners were held. After this we walk back to the main square as
we are keen to see the changing of the guards at noon at the President’s
palace. We wait for half an hour,
switching from different places as we wern’t completely sure where about’s the
changing of the guards was going to happen, but then we saw a good crowd gathering and waited until
midday, when the guards finally marched out and the old ones marched away. After this we go to the San Francisco
Monastery. This costs us 7 soles each
(3.50) and we get a guided tour. We have
four Americans with us on our tour. We
are told at the beginning of the tour that we are not to take any photo’s. These American’s however were thinking
something different because the whole tour they are sneaking photos. This
convent was built in the 1500s.. In the
main stair way there is a fantastic wooden ceiling that has been carved
out. Lima has been hit by a few
earthquakes and we are told that this ceiling has fallen a couple of
times. This is not reassuring as we are
currently standing underneath it! We
then walk up into the choir box and look down at the cathedral below. We then get to the good part of the tour
which is going underground to the catacombs.
This is the reason why we have come here. 25,000 bodies were buried underneath this monastery. In the 1950s, they decided to pull out all
the bones and count how many people were buried here. However, when they counted, they couldn’t
find complete bodies. We walk through
the mazes underground and there is just cell after cell of bones. One cell contains the femur, one cell contains
some skulls and so forth. The guide
tells us that there are doors that they haven’t even opened yet, but they
assume there are more galleries of bodies in there as well. At one point we come up to a 10 metre well
that is just fill of human bones. It is
here that the guide gets sick of the American’s and tells us that we have five
minutes to take as many pictures as we want.
So we get a couple of pictures of the bones in the wells. Every now and then you look up into the
ceiling and you can see a grate that leads into the main church. The guide said that some of the galleries
were originally private and they had a direct link to the church to show their
faith. As we are leaving the monastery,
we run into a couple who we walked the Inca trail with. We stopped and chatted for about half an
hour. They tell us about a church a
block from the main plaza that has good views of the city from the bell
tower. We decide to go there. As we are on our way back to the main plaza
we see there is now a big parade on. One
of the alters from the main church has been taken out and they are walking it
around the square. We walk past this and
continue on to the church. We get to the
church and find that it is closed because of the parade and that it will open
in an hour. While we wait we decide to
walk down the pedestrian street from Plaza de Mayor to Plaza San Martin. This street is just one big mall. When we get to Plaza San Martin we take a
seat on a bench. This plaza is beautiful
and all the buildings are made with white stone. After 15 minutes we decide to head back to
the main plaza. We stand up and Ann
notices something is up her shorts.
After a bit of jumping around a centipede drops to the ground. We think nothing of it until a couple of
locals come up to us and say ‘no bien’, which means no good. Ann doesn’t know if she has been bitten or
not so starts to freak out and we head back to the hostel so she can speak with
someone in English. We google the symptoms
and speak to the hostel manager. We
realise that she hasn’t been bitten and everything was going to be ok so we
relax. Ann is not too keen to head back
into town so we go for a walk in Miraflores and head to the supermarket. We get some food to cook up for dinner and a
couple of snacks. After dinner we watch
a couple of movies in the common area at the hostel and then head to bed.
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