Lima

The trip to Lima was highlighted by an adjacent passenger coughing almost continually for the entire trip of maybe four hours. There has been some publicity posters here on buses advising people of precautions not to spread the H1N1 or swine flu virus, so having a bloke coughing each and every 60 seconds was somewhat unsettling. We travelled in the downstairs section of the bus, which is the luxury section and were given blankets and pillows to make the journey more comfortable. At first I tried pulling my T shirt up over my mouth and eventually I used the blanket and kept my mouth and nose covered for most of the journey. It was unbelievable really, I didn't know who to feel sorrier for, me or the bloke coughing.

We arrived in Lima in the dark and got a taxi to our accommodation then went out for a walk. We found a good coffee shop called Chef's Cafe. I ended up having spinach pie for tea and Kim had a grilled chicken sandwich. All good really, I was getting over a spate of diahhorrea and starting to feel better. Kim was getting psyched up for a job interview.

Lima is now the capital of Peru but it has only been the capital since the Spanish conquered the area around 1535. Before that, the capital was Cusco, that was when the Incas ran the show. Lima is the third largest city in South and Central America, after Mexico City And Sao Paulo.

This was our second visit to Lima. On the first visit we arrived late at night, got a taxi through the seediest part of the city and didn't see that much. This time we arrived through the newer part of the city and got to the coast and went to some good restaurants and that made the whole place feel much better and safer.

While we were here we went to a casino and I introduced Kim to blackjack. She really liked it and won about 10 dollars. I won about $30 so it was necessary to go back there the next night as well. Kim had her job interview that night and we tried to get Pennytel web callback working, but for some reason it didn't work. In the end we had to condescend to using Skype which worked quite well albeit more expensive. Now that it is "official", Kim can be congratulated on her successful application - great work Kim :-)

We didn't do that much in Lima worth writing about, just looking around the city, eating out, playing blackjack and relaxing.

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