Hola Amigos,
When a taxi driver in Lima says put on your seat belt then he means it! Maybe it was that he wanted more for the fare or maybe it was just the way he drove normally. High speed driving. Missing cars by very small distances. breaking at the latest possible moment before crashing into another vehicle. Vanessa and I had a white knuckle ride back from the Larco museum which was a fascinating museum of south american gold and pottery housed in a spanish mansion built on a pre columbian pyramid. I only recently realised that pre columbian is pre christopher columbus rather than pre columbia the country. doh. Some of the pottery was erotic and funny. There was the museum of anthropology and archeology which was a blue line and 1.5km way with a convient supermarket for a snack along the way. Also an excellent museum. Visited the national museum earlier which was particularly disappointing with a large building, small exhibition and a special exhibit featuring the potato. Not just a potato but thousands of them. We got out of there quick smart...
Have to say that today the taxi drivers won. We went to just about every museum in lima and they ripped us off big time. When we say ripped us off we are talking about less than 1 australian dollar. We will try and get them back today. There are thousands of taxis in lima and quite lucky for us as we got lost as usual in a less than desirable part of town. The decision to stop walking and get a taxi was made by a friendly drunk chasing us around calling us gringos looking for at least a handshake. Took about 2 seconds to wave down a taxi and get the heck out of there...
Went to the museum of inquisition early in the morning. Not good to be accused of heresy in the 18th century. Not enough torture equipment to keep us interested for long.
A shark taxi driver took us to the oro (gold) museum and then tried to arrange for his own benefit a private tour for us to an old city ruin. Was hard to get rid of him and we were glad he was gone when we had finished looking around. Strange museum. Upstairs was an exhibition of weapons and uniforms from all over the world and downstairs was the south american gold, pre inca and inca, jewellery and ceremonial objects. Also included some mummies.
Museumed out....
Met the new people coming onto the tour last night. They seemed a bit shell shocked. Guess we had been to 2 for 1 cocktails happy hour before hand but that probably had nothing to do with it.
Something useful out of our museum trips. The inca enpire was only in power for about 60 years before the spanish arrived. Yet the south american archeology extends for thousands of years before hand. The inca empire was really just a consolidation of the tribes through the regions.
Adios,
David and Vanessa
