Adios Lima

Our last day in Lima, mix of sun and cloud with a high of 24. The highlight of today's tour was definitely the Amano Museum, a private textile museum that has been closed for renovations but gave us a special pre tour! Here we saw textiles dating to 2500 BC to the 16th century. The condition of these textiles is remarkable. Many were from thr Paracas region of Peru. The weaving of the first piece was exquisite with the finest fibre you can imagine, in fact when Doris ( owner and curator) was restoring the piece it was not possible to find such a fine fibre, and ingeniously found something to substitute.

People of the Highlands spin standing while coastal people spin sitting, this creates a different twist in the fibres allowing identification.

The embroidery work is spectacular, especially when you think they used dried cactus needles for their work. 

The Imara culture believed that spinning from the left, meaning the work came from the heart and their textile was never cut.

Certainly a recurring theme these past days was "balance", it was important to have balance in their work which translates to their life.

Lima is a very busy city of 10 million, the traffic is a nightmare, buses everywhere, horns blaring.

I stayed in the Miraflores region, which is very clean and safe to walk. It has a number of beautiful parks, tennis courts, soccer fields, jogging/walking paths, and a park that even has exercise equipment in it such as elliptical machines. These parks are very well used by the residents.

Like all cities there are many different areas, from the very poor to the wealthy.

The people that we have met are pleasant and welcoming.

The foods are rich in flavours, lots of potatoes and bread- add red wine and I'm in heaven.

Beware of the red pepper, it looks like our sweet red pepper but it is very very hot! Surprise to the palette. In Lima there are many dishes using fish and/or seafood, but I was always able to easily find other things to enjoy.

We took a little side trip to the market to learn about the fruits and vegetables native to peru, some very interesting things and a feast for the eyes.

We tried a Chirimoya yesterday, it looks like a dinosaur egg, when opened its a custard sort of texture a tastes somewhere between a pear and an apple- it was quite good.

Well off to bed, we fly to Arequipa at 650AM, there is no sleeping in!