September 6, 2024
On September 1st, Mom and I started our Inca Adventure to Peru. This trip had been a long time coming. Years ago I promised her that we’d hike the Inca Trail together to Machu Picchu, because she wanted to experience one of these multi-day hiking trips that I’ve done. Last year we settled on doing a trip in September 2024, and that was when the planning began. I would act as travel agent for the trip and for the most part, she’d just hand over money when I asked. During Christmas of last year, I surprised her with one surprise feature of the trip: a 4 day, 3 night Amazon River cruise. So this trip became a hiking and cruise trip, but then to make sure we were acclimated to the higher elevation of the Andes, we added a few more days before the hike began, and then a few more. Before I knew it, the trip rounded out to 20 days.
At 4:00 am on September 1st, we used the Dad Taxi Service to get to the airport. Our first flight to Atlanta was right on time. Following that we had a 6 ½ long layover before getting on our flight to Lima. During the flight I watched a few movies, and we got a surprise supper…I swear it had said only snacks would be provided and food could be purchased, but a meal we got. Our flight landed in Lima and overall customs was really quick and easy. We waited for a while for our bags to appear, but the important thing was they did. Then we headed out the door to where we had a driver waiting to take us to our hotel, Hotel El Tambo Dos. The hotel was quite nice with a good breakfast. It was in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima and nicely located for what we had on the docket for Lima. The travel agent did good. ;)
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| Huaca Pucllana |
On our one full day in Lima we did a ton of walking. We started our day walking up to Huaca Pucllana, a historical ruin site. The site was first built by the Lima people who lived in the area from 200 CE to 700 CE. After them came the Wari People. They created a pyramid at the site that was only found in 1981, which seems crazy because it is literally in the middle of Lima. They had no idea something existed under that giant mound of dirt. They are still working on digging it up. They’ve found pottery and things like shells and fish bones in areas that lead them to believe that the ocean and oceanlife were the main deity for the people. The structures on the site were made of what looked like giant bookcases of mud bricks. The bricks are about the size of a dictionary. It made for an interesting look for a pyramid. Very different from the stones you see at other sites.
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| Parque el Olivar |
From Huaca Pucllana we set out Parque el Olivar, a park with a bunch of olive trees that have been growing there for over 400 years. There were some young ones and some old ones, none bearing fruit this time of year (remember, Peru is south of the equator so it is actually early spring here…like early March). At the park we took some time to sit down, have a snack, and watch people around the pond in the park.
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| One of the old olive trees in Parque el Olivar |
Up next we wanted to see the Pacific Ocean as this would be our only chance. We never actually went down and felt it though; just appreciated it from 30 ft away. The beach was more of a large pebble beach, no sand. And a bunch of surfers. Lima is sort of built up on a cliff. There is about 100-300 feet of flat ground probably about 10-20 feet above sea level, and then a cliff that reaches about 200 feet up. At the top of the cliffs are a string of parks. Some of the parks had artwork in them, others had tennis courts, while one place you could go paragliding. After following the cliffside parks a ways, we turned back towards our hotel. We ate supper at a chicken place and then went back to the hotel and almost straight to bed because we were still exhausted from traveling the day before.
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| Cliffs of Lima in Miraflores |
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