Loco Lima

We headed for Lima on a night bus, leaving Trujillo at 10:00pm. The bus was packed, and we had tickets on the first level, with larger, more comfortable seats. I am blessed with the ability to sleep relatively peacefully in moving vehicles (actually, I find it rather hard to stay awake when travelling for long periods), and for this reason the journey to Lima went very quickly. I fell asleep shortly outside of Trujillo (much to Timb's chagrin as he doesn't sleep well on buses), and didn't awake again until he nudged me as we entered the bus terminal in Lima. We had approximately 7 hours to explore Lima, and we didn't waste a moment.

Lima is a crazy city. We arrived early on a Sunday morning, and after dropping our bags off at our next bus terminal, we headed into Central Lima. We had previously decided that the one thing that we had to do in Lima was see the Iglesia de San Francisco, an old church and monastery that also sits atop vast catacombs. We hired a taxi to take us into town, and we arrived at the Plaza de Armas to find that the streets to our destination had been blocked off. The driver gave us some brief directions and shunted us out of the car and into the street next to the Plaza. It was still very early, but the square was fairly busy, occupied by crews setting up for a charity event, apparently a road race in support of breast cancer research. There was music playing, and a large stage and finish line erected, decorated with pink balloons.

We took some photos around the plaza and headed to find a restaraunt to have breakfast in. Along the way we ran into a large Catholic Mass taking place on the street infront of one of Central Lima's many churches. Emotional disciples lined the street for the service, and we only lingered for a short time, as our stomachs were growling.

We were rather unlucky in locating a place to eat, and were growing rather grumpy. We wandered around the streets for almost an hour before we located a suitable restaraunt, and satisfied our stomachs with our typical breakfast of eggs and bread. Feeling much better, we headed for the church.

The church and monastery sit a few streets off of the Plaza de Armas, housed in beautiful yellow buildings. Many of the historical buildings in Lima are meerly reconstructions of their former sleves, as the region ins plaugued by earthquakes, and the church has managed to maintain much of its ancient structure. We arrived just in time for the start of an English tour, which began in the monastery. Both the church and monastery were constructed and altered over the course of several hundred years, and therefor they contain many different building styles. The most prevalent influences were Moorish and Boroque, though the interior of the church was most recently redone to reflect the Neoclassical leanings of one particular Peruvian leader. I enjoyed the Moorish aspects of the monastery the most, especially the elaboratly created cedar wood ceilings. One particular domed ceiling looked like a net of stars. I found the monastery to be more interesting than the church, and it was here that we had most of our tour. We began in the large library, which houses hundreds of ancient texts that look as if they are falling into disrepair. We then moved to the choir loft, with elaborately carved seats, and then into the gardens and the rooms surrounding them. One of the more interesting of these chambers was known to be a dressing area, and displayed gold leafed carvings of certain monks in the order. The best part about these carvings was that they depicted those monks that had been martyred in the manner in which they had been killed. The most amusing were the monks with heads flopped over to the side. After exploring the monks chambers, our guide led us down into the catacombs. This was the best part of the tour. The catacombs used to be a cemetery, which was originally only used by the monks, but was eventually used by everyone until it was closed in 1821. Approximately 25000 bodies were thought to be buried there, and the amazing thing is that there remains are still present there today. In 1947 the catacombs were excavated, and the graves disrupted. In an attempt to put things right, the individuals involved in the excavation organized the bones they discovered. They initially did this by size, the largest bones all grouped toigether in one grave, followed by the smaller ones in the next, and so on. Later, the organization became more elaborate, and the bones were organized into patterns, particularly in the circular wells of the catacombs. It was a rather unnerving experience being surrounded by all those bones. Our guide told us that people used to steal the bones, and take them home for soveniers, before the graves were covered by glass. Ugh, can you imagine? Our tour of the church ended with the catacombs, and I was happy to be out in the street with the living again.

We left the church, and to our amazement found ourselves in the middle of a religouis procession. We were literally stuck on the street, unable to move in either direction for several minutes. It was amazing, just like you see on TV, with hundreds of people following a statue of St. Martin, carrieds by several porters. The people are very devout, and it was interesting to witness their religious rituals.

When the procession finally moved on, so did Timb and I, heading for the bus station and our bus to Nazca.