Last Day in Lima (July 8, 2006)

Today was our last day in Lima. We spent it re-packing our bags, getting laundry done, and going to a couple of museums. The first one was the Museo de la Nacion, which had good exhibits on the various pre-Incan civilizations of Peru. There were lots of ceramics, and replicas from various ruins found around Peru. There sure are a lot of them! The ruins we will have visited by the end of our trip are only the tip of the iceberg. After spending a couple of hours at the museum we took a cab back to the Plaza de Armas and went inside the Cathedral. It was fairly impressive as far as cathedrals go, with several intricately carved wooden side chapels and also the remains of Francisco Pizarro, the man who founded of Lima, the “City of the Kings”, in 1535. There is a good museum section inside the cathedral as well, with a large amount of religious paraphernalia dating from the 16^th century. We had hoped to visit the museum of the Spanish Inquisition today as well, but it is closed on weekends. We wandered around the plaza, soaking in the colonial architecture, and then had a late lunch at one of the restaurants near the plaza. We went back to our hostel to kill some time playing cards and internet until it was time to collect our laundry, pack it in our bags, and head to the bus station for our 10:00pm trip to Huaraz. The bus was comfortable, although we did have to switch seats because one of ours wouldn’t stay in a semi-tilted back position – it was either all the way up or all the way down! Thankfully the bus wasn’t full so we could change seats. With another stop to collect passengers at 11:00 and then a movie, we didn’t get much sleep.