Adios, Lima!

And lastly, in this series of photo-heavy posts, are pictures from venturing via bus to el centro, or the center of Lima. It was about a 30 minute bus ride from Barranco.

My favorite picture so far! I love the color. We wandered upon this little plaza with the Church of La Recoleta, accidentally on our way to the main square. It is quite small compared to the rest of the churches we saw.

City streets, on our walk to the main Square, Plaza de Armas. I love the brightly colored buildings.

Plaza de San Martin, with the statue of the liberator, Jose de San Martin on his horse, was inagurated in 1921for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the independence of Peru. Jose de San Martin declared Peru´s independence from this spot in 1821. This square has had many functions throughout history from a bull fighting ring to an open air theater and even the stage for the Spanish Inquisition to burn people to death. The beautiful white buildings in the background surrounds the plaza on all four sides.

La Catedral, was finished in 1625 and has withstood both the 1746 and 1940 earthquakes. It´s layout was dictated by Francisco Pizzarro, the founder of Lima. He is entombed inside.

Palacio de Justicia was enormous. It was constructed based on the Law Courts in Brussels, Belgium. Its width spans 4-5 times the width of what you see in this picture.

This picture does not reflect how pink the Church of St. Domingo really is, but you get the idea.

And for my 3rd reminder of how stinky/dirty Lima is, here is a picture of the Rimac River which runs through Lima and of course, off into the Pacific. As much as I´ve said it´s dirty, it´s not so bad that I´m filthy from one afternoon of walking, as the streets are fairly clean for a big city. There is just lots of polluted water. That´s all.

The Church and Convent of St. Francis is by far the most visited and recommended chuch, as it was the site for Lima´s first graveyard and has catacombs filled with 75,000+ people. There are also erie geometric patterns of skulls and other bones. If you get creeped out easily, don´t click here to see them.

And that concludes your mini tour via blog of the center of Lima! Hope you enjoyed!

We actually left Lima 2 nights ago, but I´m a little slow at getting the pictures posted. We took an 8 hour bus ride overnight into the Cordillera mountain range to the city of Huaraz. We arrived at 6am yesterday morning, had sort of a funky day since we went back to sleep when we got into town due to not getting many zzzz´s on the bus. Then we had a couple of tasty meals, before enjoying a little nightlife and lots more sleep. I´ll post soon (in more detail) about my time in Huaraz, and if I´m lucky, some pictures.