|
Once reputed to be the most beautiful city in Spanish America, Lima today retains some of its charm, despite its rather shapeless expanse of modern suburbs and dusty pueblos jovenes shanty towns that run for many miles in each direction along the Panamerican Highway. Long established as Peru's seat of government, the city is home to more than eight million people, over half of whom live in relative poverty without decent water supplies, sewage or electricity. This is not to say you can't enjoy the place - Limenos are generally very open, and their way of life is distinctive and compelling - but it's important not to come here with false expectations. There is still a certain elegance to the old colonial centre, and the city hosts a string of excellent and important museums, but Lima is not exotic, though the central areas have been cleaned up in recent years - streets swarm with orange-uniformed sweepers - and are packed with colonial relics and twenty-first century features. The pollution and the ever-increasing traffic remain, though environmental awareness is rising fast. The area immediately around Lima offers plenty of reasons to delay your progress on towards Arequipa or Cusco. Within an hour or so's bus ride south is the coastline, often deserted, lined by a series of attractive beaches. Above them the imposing fortress-temple complex of Pachacamac sits on a sandstone cliff, near the edge of the ocean. In the neighbouring Rimac Valley you can visit the pre-Inca sites of Puruchuco and Cajamarquilla , and, in the foothills above Lima, intriguingly eroded rock outcrops and megalithic monuments surround the natural amphitheatre of Marcahuasi . Further afield, high up in the Andes, lies the quaint mountain town of Huancavelica and the pleasant provincial capital of Huancayo , which is connected to Lima by El Tren de la Sierra, the highest rail line in the world, which has happily restarted regular if infrequent passenger services. Just over the Andes, you'll find the high Amazon rainforest, the ceja de selva, which you can explore from bases such as the strikingly situated Tarma , hidden among towering limestone crags, or the small tropical towns of San Ramon and La Merced , at the gateway to the forest. If you're adventurous, you can complete a circuit through the mountains from Huancayo through Satipo , firmly located on the wild jungle frontier, then back to Lima via Tarma. Alternatively, you can travel south beyond Huancayo towards Ayachuco and Cusco, a popular if arduous highland trail, frequented once again after being abandoned between 1985 and 1994 due to guerrilla activity.
Your Tip for Lima and around
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Lima and around - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Lima and around - visit the main Lima and around forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Lima and around webguide section below! Thanks.
|
