Lima: From airport arrive at hotel at around midnight. What a strange feeling. Sometimes a person might feel lonely, but it´s not often that you truely are, and feel, alone. I don´t mind it, I know it just takes a little time to adust and then the following day, I´ll enter my room after a full day of touring and it will feel familiar and welcoming. The very first thing I want to do it Skype my boyfriend and family. I almost tear up when I can´t get reception. I end up crouching on the cold tiles of a long, dark corridor trying desparately to get reception. As soon as I take one single step towards my room, it drops out. I move to the common area and hear the voices of my loved ones. The best! Words can describe.
Lima: I have the option of a few tours. I choose a full day tour to Caral, the second oldest ruins/civilisation in the world. My tour guide meets my at reception. He immediately puts me at ease, he is fluent at English and is very funny. I like him! We get picked up by some driver and before I know it I fond myself driving at what feels like 148 kms per hour through the streets of Lima with two complete strange men. Hmmmmm. They say to trust your gut and my gut said its all good.
Never have I seen such poverty. The drive was a very long 6 hours in total. Although painfully long, it was a fantastic opportunity to see not only the city but the outskirts of Lima. It was jaw dropping. I felt like I was on a different planet. You go through such different emotions when you observe an alien country. To be honest, the city areas of Lima city we drove through felt threatening. I´m glad I was with my tour guide. The outskirts of Lima, I felt very sad for them, and slightly guilty. The drive was crazy. My tour guide tells me that we are about to go through smog. I think, no problems. However, they speed at what the drive was going did not decrease according the the level of visability (of which I would catagorise as non existent´ and sharp corners. It was on the way home that the fog had cleared, I looked out of the window and noticed a sheer cliff edge. The tour guide accompanies this realisation with some interesting facts about that particular road, that I would prefer not to mention in case my mum is reading this journal entry.
Caral was amazing! What a sight.
