We got here, whew. That last bus ride of 10 hours was making our joints stiff despite the extra leg room that the Peru buses provide.
Quite different from the centralized bus stations of Ecuador and Colombia, every single company has their own station. The companies all serve different regions with some overlap, but often you need to leave one station walk down the street and to another station if you are transferring between regions. It is quite a hassle comparing prices, drive times, and destination possibilities.
I enjoyed being back here in Lima. It's been 9 years since the last time I was here. I made it a goal to take my time this time because last time I was quite rushed.
I wanted to show Rob the creepy catacombs of San Francisco. We navigated the 301 bus from Miraflores to the historic center. We were adopted by a tour group, unbeknownst to the guide, and snuck into the museum while they were piling in. We had to stay close to avoid security but far enough away for the guide to miss us.
Rob and I enjoyed the creepy dark tunnels with neatly arranged bones of 25000 people or more.
We headed back toward he Backpacker Family Hostal in Miraflores. The police presence was noticeably higher as we entered the Plaza d'Armas. We settled onto a bench in front of the palace for the 5:55 pm changing of the guard ceremony.
The gentleman of the color guard marched in a far from perfect cadence brandishing their swords, shiny silver helmets, and black knee high boots. We laughed as we saw them struggle to find their common beat.
We walked from the square down the pedestrian mall toward the plaza of San Martine in front of the magnificent Simon Bolivar Hotel. We intended to grab a pisco sour at the hotel because they are known as the original creators of what has become the drink of Peru.
More and more police with increasing armaments as we got closer to the square. Now the cops were in full riot gear with body shields. Tanks were rolled out in the square provocatively.
The square was full of demonstrators, or campaigners or strikers we couldn't really tell why they'd collected. We decided a Pisco could wait and that we had no desire to be caught if a skirmish did occur. We left and walked the remaining five or six blocks to where we could catch a bus home.
Rob naturally wanted to go shopping for a minute rather than hop on the bus. Once we arrived back to the bus stop we realized there'd be no busses tonight because the demonstration had left the square and was heading straight for us. We could see the mobs police escort's lights flashing and the shop keepers frantically trying to close up for the night before the group got there.
We started walking the 3.5 miles home. The route was easy enough to navigate but was complicated by a metropolitan works project that had the roads completely closed for blocks.
One of the most invaluable tools we have found is a free application for android called Maps.Me. The map program allows you to view offline entire country maps that use your phone's GPS to navigate. Rob forgot about this glorious application and started to go into super serious, panic, and lost mode. I, on the other hand, was confidently striding down an alternate course around the construction.
We circumnavigated the construction and as I hoped, the busses realized they needed to go around both the mob and the construction, and were resuming their courses just as we had reached ours. We hopped aboard for the last mile and a half.
By the end of the night, our step counter said we'd walked over twenty miles in the days adventures.
