Yesterday was a pretty incredible day. After landing in Lima at around 12:30am, we went thru immigration and customs, which was a breeze because of the time of year we are visiting. It felt incredible to be in South America for the first time, and we were all very excited to begin exploring Lima. We had pre-arranged airport transportation and our van was waiting for us, so we headed to our hotel to get a good night’s rest so that we could begin exploring early the next day.

Lima is such an amazing city. With over 13 million people, it is one of the largest cities in South America and was much bigger than we expected. Not that we expected a small city by any stretch, but I don’t think any of us really understood just how large this city is. There is so much to do and see in the city and the people could not be any nicer.

Our hotel is in the Mira Flores neighborhood of Lima, which is a wonderful part of the city. It is about two or three blocks from the ocean, so the first thing we did after breakfast was to walk down to the coast to start exploring. As you can see by the pictures, the coast was absolutely breathtaking. I don’t know that any other coastal city I have visited compares to the beauty of the coastline at Lima. The city is built on these spectacular coastal bluffs with the foothills of the Andes as a backdrop of the city.

After taking some time to explore the coast, and do a little bit of shopping along the way, we saw some some people paragliding and decided to give it a shot. I thought the views of the city and the coastline were spectacular from the ground, but those views were nothing compared to what we saw from the air. If you have never gone paragliding before, I would strongly suggest you give it a try. It is such an amazing feeling to have the wind grab you and just lift you off the ground and into the sky.

We went up with in tandem with an instructor, which was great because we didn’t have any experience paragliding before. For 250 Sol, which is the equivalent to roughly $75 is US currency, we got to go up for about a half hour and they thru in the GoPro video they took of us while we were up. It was an amazing experience!

Once we were done paragliding, we hopped into taxis and headed to old town for the remainder of the day. With its old buildings, amazing architecture, and beautiful cathedrals, this section of the city was amazing. One of my favorite parts was seeing the Plaza de Armas, also known as the Plaza Mayor, which was absolutely incredible. We spent at least a few hours in this area exploring the many wonderful cathedrals, restaurants, and shops. I will definitely have a lot to say about this area when I write my visitor’s guide for Lima.

The food has also been pretty amazing so far in Peru. I had a few things that I wanted to try right away when I got to Peru, and I was able to try both of those yesterday. One was the Pisco Sour, which is the national drink of Peru. This sour alcoholic beverage is topped off with whipped egg white on top, and it was quite delicious. However, I don’t think I could have too many of them at once because they are quite rich. The other thing I wanted to try was the ceviche, which is the national dish of Peru.

If you aren’t familiar with what ceviche, it is fish or other seafood that has been cooked with citric acid instead of heat. So instead of being fried, boiled, or grilled, it is cooked with either lime or lemon juice. I must admit that I wasn’t sure I would like ceviche, but I was pleasantly surprised. The dish we tried was quite good, but it did take some time to get used to eating fish cold.

So all-in-all, our day in Lima was pretty amazing. Today we head to Cusco to do some exploring, and then tomorrow we visit Machu Picchu, so it should be a very busy couple of days. Hopefully I will have more journal posts and pictures to share with you then.

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