Lima

Although our vacation was great, it would have been even better if I had not gotten blisters on my feet. The blisters limited what I could do in Cusco, so I rested up. Then we moved on to Lima.

Lima was a big city.  Our friends from Chile said this of Lima, "It is always overcast in Lima, but it never rains." When we got there, it was overcast, which was actually very nice. The hostal we had booked was in the Miraflores section of Lima. Our room was not ready, but Gonzalo (very cute, young guy) put our luggage in a room and sent us off to explore the city and have lunch.  We walked down the street and found a coffee place that had the World Cup playing. From there we walked to the Huaca Pucllana and ate lunch at the restaurant there. It was very nice. We spent a bit more money, but the food was excellent. We tried a bit of cuy - an appetizer. Then I had sea bass - yummy. The sun was out now and it was getting pretty warm so we had a couple of beers before heading out to see the ruins. We took the "English" tour.  When our guide began speaking,Toby turned to me and said, "Good thing we took the English tour." Our guide's English was a bit funny - maybe due to his high-pitched voice. Toby could not understand anything he said, so we were all repeating the guide's words. And the guide had a habit of repeating words his own words. It was entertaining.  The ruins there interesting, too.
We continued our walk - this time heading down the the Boardwalk. We watched the para-gliders - lots of them - floating all along the cliffs overlooking the ocean. So cool. I was glad that Jesse, Lindz, and Shay opted not to do it :)The Boardwalk was so beautiful! I loved it, but the walk was killing me.
Shay said we had walked over six miles. We were looking for some "bohemian" place which was suppose to be artsy. I guess we eventually found it - maybe. We stopped to have coffee and dessert and to ask directions. Then we took a taxi (yay!) to the Bridge of Sighs, which is suppose to be very romantic.  When the five of us packed into a small taxi, Shay pulled out his phone to use Google Translate to tell the driver to go to the Bridge of Sighs. Of course, the translation did not translate exactly like we expected. So Shay tried to get Google to say "romantic place." We all, including the driver, got such a kick out of the translations. The driver took us to the bridge easy enough. The bridge was lovely and fun, but it was more walking as we walked down to the ocean view again.Then we walked back to a little plaza where a chocolate festival was happening - that was fun!  We bought some chocolate! Imagine that!

By this time I was worn down and my knee was killing me. It was as if my body was saying, "Enough!" Toby and I took a taxi back to the hostal while the kids stayed to have fun. Our flight was at 4 AM, and I wanted to rest a bit before we had to go to the airport.

The flight home was pretty uneventful. TACA airlines always seems to make a pitstop in San Salvador. Last year when we went to Ecuador, we had the same airlines. We also had the same tense moments in San Salvador where they have people (no machines) go through EVERYONE'S luggage with only an hour lay-over. We actually had several interesting moments with our airlines - I don't think I have ever had to take so many buses out to the tarmac to catch planes. We also taxied through some interesting airport stuff, too. Even back in Dallas, we had some "third world" moments. What is happening with airports? Never a dull moment!