Monday, October 31, 2005

In the footsteps of Paddington Bear


Every morning I pass through Paddington Station on my way to the office. The station's name recalls childhood memories of my favourite Michael Bond books chronicling the life and adventures of Paddington Bear. He was so named after being found huddled in a corner of Paddington Station, fresh off the boat from Lima, Peru. Garry and I can claim to have retraced the steps of London's most famous bear after spending two days in Lima while en route to the UK.


We flew into Lima mid-evening on 27 October after departing Toronto and transiting via Miami earlier in the day. With a solid night's sleep under our belt, we spent our first day in South America exploring Lima's old colonial district on foot. It’s an area full of colourful plazas and ornate churches. 

The Catedral de Lima was particularly impressive. It's an incredibly ornate building replenished in classic gilded Catholic style. It was built between 1602 and 1797, but surprisingly, is actually the third Cathedral of Lima, built in this location.  

This "modern" edition incorporates a range of hidden architectural quirks designed to improve its earthquake resilience. For example, the ceiling is supported by Gothic ribbed vaults made of wood and stucco rather than stone thus reducing the weight that's carried by the surrounding walls.


Look! Don't touch!
Watching the changing of the guard outside the Presidential Palace was a spectacle that almost defies description. Try to imagine brilliant red, yellow, and blue costumes, a jazzy brass band, plenty of goose-step marching, and a ring of heavily armed police officers keeping the crowd at a distance. Picture this and you have a sense of the drama that unfolds in central Lima every day.


The ornate yellow stone facade of the Basílica and Convent of San Francisco was another memorable highlight. This church, together with the Sanctuary Nuestra Señora de la Soledad and the Church del Milagro, anchors one of the more welcoming and artistic corners in Lima's old city district (thank you Wikipedia for such a delightful description of the local area).

We spent more than an hour exploring the Basilica's grounds including the cloister gardens and the Chapter House lined with intricately carved, dark-paneled chamber benches. However, an enormous painting of the Last Supper by the Jesuit Diego de la Puente was probably the most compelling highlight of the guided tour we took inside the complex. This painting, completed in 1658, fills the rear wall of the church's rectory dining room.

Our tour also stopped to view the convent's library. Its contents are as old as they look. For example, the first Spanish dictionary and rare Incan texts predating the Spanish conquest form part of the library's 25,000-volume collection.


However, the amazing library and art aren’t the main reasons to visit the convent. The key attraction here is the catacombs! They believe there are anywhere in the range of 25,000 to 75,000 bodies stored here. The bones are arranged by type and stacked in some weirdly gruesome arrangements. This includes a well with skulls and long bones lining its walls in an orderly pattern.


We finished our walking tour with a quick stop at Plaza de San Martín. This plaza was inaugurated in 1921 on the occasion of the centenary of the Independence of Peru. It's dominated by a statue of General José de San Martín on horseback. 

The buildings surrounding it were once the central gathering place for members of Lima's elite. At their height, images of these buildings were synonymous with Lima. Although truth be told, an outdoor gallery of artwork we discovered near our hotel on our final night in Lima was far more memorable. The gallery was part of a lively night market that pops up on Calle Virgen Milagrosa, a pedestrian street bisecting
Parque Kennedy in Miraflores.


For our first two nights in Lima, we based ourselves at the Sheraton Lima Hotel & Casino in the centre of town. I used Starwood loyalty points to score us a couple of free nights. Despite being a freebie, the hotel gave us a phenomenal room.  The view was incredible. We looked out over the Palacio De Justicia De Lima (Palace Of Justice), Peru's Supreme Court building. 

The hotel's central location also meant we were never more than a couple of blocks away from the city's old district and its classic tourist sights. Our final night was then spent on the city's coastal fringe where we joined the tour group that guided us through the next two weeks in Peru.


We recommend the goat!
While in town we were bold enough to try a few local delicacies including goat (delicious), alpaca (tough and tasteless), and ceviche, a marinated dish of raw fish that rapidly became our favourite meal (Garry says it's more my favourite than his). In keeping with our cultural theme, we also booked ourselves seats at the cabaret performed each Friday evening in our hotel. The show was a flurry of colourful costumes and amazing dance moves from almost every South American genre.


The artifacts aren't the only fakes
Sadly, our most definitive memory of Lima was a classic tourist rip-off. For our last full day in town, we visited the infamous Gold Museum, home to one of Peru's most notorious scams. Several years ago, almost all of the museum star attractions were found to be fake. They say the items now on display are the genuine thing. They certainly are beautiful pieces, but one still can't help wondering if the local artisans have simply been hard at work.

However, it appears that we were victims of the museum's latest scam. After paying our admission fee, the cashier gave us our change using fake currency. This was no accident as the man insisted on rounding up the final sum, thereby enabling him to hand over fresh, clean notes. Afterward, our taxi driver became most upset with us as we tried to pay our fare! We thought he was trying to pull a scam by refusing our money until a shop assistant at Pizza Hut also rejected our money! 

In hindsight the forgery was obvious. After the second rejection, I noticed that the small "holographic dots" on our fake notes were peeling away from the paper. To add insult to injury a few were already stuck to my hand. A handy $20 lesson in local forgery printing skills.


Our final evening in Lima was spent watching hang-gliders soaring over the Pacific Ocean in Miraflores, not far from El Parque del Amor (the Park of Love). This iconic park is renowned for its statue of intertwined lovers called The Kiss, or El Beso, by Peruvian artist Victor Delfín. This is definitely not Victorian England!


We were surprised to discover that Lima actually sits on a plateau. Access to the coast is blocked by the cliffs of Chorrillos towering more than 70 metres above the shoreline. Along the rim, a scenic walkway called El Malecón follows the Pacific coast for almost 10km. 

We emulated the more active locals and walked the curving clifftop pavements for several kilometres, starting at the bustling outdoor teeraced, cliffside mall of Lacomar, passing through El Parque del Amor and finishing at Faro del la Marina, a blue and white striped iron lighthouse in Parque Antonio Raimondi.

 
Not far from El Parque del Amor was the hotel where we met members of our tour group, including Gwen, our guide for the next two weeks. She was an English lass, full of beans, who took the time to connect with everyone on the tour, making it a most memorable experience. Garry and I took her out for a night on the town the last night the group was together. As the evening wore on we soon discovered that Gwen loved to tear up the local dancefloor with some rather fancy moves.


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