Getting from Galapagos to Peru was probably the ‘riskiest’ thing we’d done so far on our travels. Flights to/from Galapagos only go via Quito or Guayaquil – we preferred to avoid Quito if possible due to altitude (we had no choice on the way there) and Guyaquil is rather risky (understatement!). Seriously, the UK Government advice is that Guayaquil is one of the more dangerous areas of Ecuador, with the official advice being against all but essential travel due to a very high murder rate, gang warfare, a recent car bomb attack near the Sheraton hotel, and a regional state of emergency in place with overnight curfew. But AIRSIDE-ONLY transits at Guayaquil Airport are excluded from the warning and don’t invalidate UK travel insurance. Debbie had found that flights from to Lima via Guayaquil were almost half the price of those transiting in Quito – no shit Sherlock – and there were connecting flights with LATAM Ecuador which would be ‘safe’ airside transit surely? Best to check though and LATAM Airlines’ London helpdesk didn’t have the foggiest when asked to confirm that us and our bags would be checked all the way through and that we would stay airside at Guayaquil, so Debbie emailed Guayaquil Airport who replied almost immediately and told her that (1) we WOULD need to go landside as we’d be transiting from a domestic to an international flight and were required to go through security and passport control and (2) they had lots of armed security and their airport was very safe. Let’s be honest, they aren’t likely to say that you run the risk of being robbed, kidnapped or murdered on their premises are they?! But we decided to take the risk, save several hundred quid and just hope we didn’t come unstuck. We can now tell this story – obviously our parents were blissfully unaware of the danger – as it was all absolutely fine.

Lima on the other hand…!

We landed late at night, after having spent 5 hours ‘safely’ at Guayaquil. Passport control queues at 11pm were worse than LAX at rush hour, and by the time we got through and collected our baggage there was no sign of our pre-arranged (and pre-paid) driver. He’d probably given up waiting, so Debbie had an irritated (and probably bloody expensive) call with our hotel and another driver was dispatched. We’ve now agreed that pre-arranging drivers is far more stressful than just getting an Uber, so we’ll do that in future. Anyway, we’d arranged a transfer as it felt safer due to our late night arrival time and reports that the area around Lima airport was sketchy – and those reports weren’t wrong! Even at midnight the traffic was chaos and the drivers were mainly lunatics, our guy included! After a nerve-racking hour or so, we finally arrived unscathed at our hotel in Miraflores, Lima’s best/safest district for tourists, and found an oasis of calm and familiarity amongst the madness – an IHG hotel (remember, Debbie is a slave to their loyalty scheme?!). Holiday Inn Lima Miraflores was relatively new, highly rated and not a bad price, so we based ourselves there for 4 nights to explore the city, do some much needed shopping/life admin, try to purchase prescription-only drugs without seeing a doctor, have a bit of a rest and collect some more IHG points & status rewards.

Miraflores

Debbie compares every new city she visits to London, and Miraflores was a cross between Leicester Square and Kensington & Chelsea, depending on which bit you’re staying in. We were definitely at the Leicester Square end, near Kennedy Park, as Steve wasn’t prepared to pay for the posher Intercontinental on the cliff tops near the sea, and anyway Chat GPT had reckoned this was the best-located IHG hotel in Lima. Note – Chat GPT sometimes spews absolute crap!

The hotel was actually rather nice and had shops, restaurants, a pharmacy that did indeed sell us those prescription-only meds, and a laundry in the immediate vicinity. Debbie had been diagnosed with high blood pressure just before we left the UK but our helpful-as-ever GP would only issue 3 months supply of tablets even though it meant that she’d run out over 3 weeks before we were due home. ‘You’ll have to source them while travelling’ was the proposed solution – great – the drug wasn’t available in Colombia, Panama or Ecuador (and isn’t licensed in the USA either) but Lima thankfully came up trumps just before Debbie’s emergency call with the GP surgery for a ‘what now?’ discussion. On that call the pharmacist advised that her recently submitted blood pressure readings weren’t quite as low as they’d like, so could she please double the dose (of the medicine they hadn’t given her enough of) but ensure that she had access to emergency medical facilities as 60% or more of people don’t tolerate the higher dose! Debbie told them in no uncertain terms that she’d rather live with a less than ideal, but reduced and probably ‘OK’, blood pressure of around 140/85 than need to get emergency medical treatment in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest. Unsurprisingly the pharmacist agreed to leave things as they were and review when we get back to the UK!

We walked through Miraflores towards the sea and it felt very safe, increasingly so as we passed some obviously affluent apartment blocks with tennis courts and swimming pools – it’s a very exclusive neighbourhood with plenty of fancy cars, pampered pooches and well groomed ladies. On reaching the Malecon, an attractive 5Km walkway along Lima’s clifftops, we immediately came across Parque del Amor (Love Park) – famous for its mosaic walls inspired by Gaudi’s style in Barcelona, with a large Victor Defin sculpture El Beso (the Kiss) where couples gather on Valentine’s Day, kissing competitions were held in the past, and padlocks are left by loved-up couples like on Brooklyn Bridge.

Next to the park we watched the paragliders take off, whizz along the cliffs and try to land (gracefully or at all), sometimes taking adventurous tourists in tandem, and a little further along we found Faro La Marina, a lighthouse which was particularly photogenic on a grey Lima day. Grey days are the norm in Lima in winter – known as the Garua – and even though Lima is in the tropics it can feel surprisingly chilly and damp despite receiving almost no rain, and sadly we didn’t see the sun at all during our time in Lima. So the photos aren’t the best 🙁

Further along the Malecon we stumbled across the upmarket Larcomar shopping complex, built slightly underground and set oceanside next to the fancy hotel chains (this was where the Intercontinental was). The shops were clearly geared to the guests of those upmarket hotels too! We purchased a couple of ‘expedition’ shirts for our upcoming trip to the Amazon Rainforest (need to look the part, but more importantly protect our arms from mozzies) and then accidentally stumbled across the most important thing that we were seeking in Deepest Darkest Peru – none other than PADDINGTON BEAR…

Before the fancy apartment blocks, shops and nice restaurants arrived, Miraflores was home to Huaca Pucllana, a huge adobe ceremonial and administrative pyramid built in AD 200-700, long before the Incas – showing that Lima had complex civilisations over 1,000 years before the Spanish arrived. We took a free guided tour around the site – absolutely massive and only partly excavated – and also learned about the Peruvian passion for potatoes.

Historic Centre

Lima is absolutely HUGE, approximately double the area of London, and the historic centre is nowhere near the ‘safe’ tourist districts. We did want to understand about Lima’s history and see the city of times gone by so booked a guided tour. Public transport is pretty crap for a city of 12 million inhabitants – they are building a metro system but it’ll be years before it opens – and reports were that we’d be safer with a guide anyway. Luckily it was Sunday and so our guide Leonardo and driver managed to get us (and the 12 others in our minibus) 10Km across the city from Miraflores in just 30 minutes instead of the 90 minutes it’d take during the week. On the journey Leonardo entertained us with stories of the corrupt Peruvian political system and told how 4 living Presidents were currently incarcerated in a ‘President’s’ jail’ and that the number would be 6 if two hadn’t inconveniently died.

It was another grey day in Lima, and while places shine more with blue skies, it was clear that some of the architecture was beautiful – it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site housing many of Peru’s most important historic buildings. It was also clear that the historic centre was a rather sketchy area (remember that we gave Medellin’s centre a miss for that exact reason?) and we were pretty sure that we wouldn’t have been hugely comfortable wandering around on our own, In Plaza San Martin we learned about the liberation of Peru by the Argentine general Jose San Martin. We also learned that the square was shut due to recent political demonstrations that had almost burned down one of the buildings! We hadn’t realised that Peru had such a troubled recent history nor that it wasn’t exactly politically stable now.

Leonardo guided us down a Main Street filled with Chinese shops and casinos, and we learned that Chinese and Japanese immigration has had an enormous influence on Peru, especially on its food, business culture and even politics. Leonardo stopped to point out a lovely church and purchase the Peruvian take on churros (amazing) before we reached the impressive main square- Plaza Mayor de Lima. The city’s birthplace, where Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima in 1535, the square is surrounded by some of Peru’s most historic buildings – Lima Cathedral containing Pizarro’s tomb, the Government Palace, the Archbishop’s Palace famous for its ornate wooden balconies and the Municipality of Lima.

A short walk from the square took us to the church and convent of San Francisco, famous for the underground burial chambers dating from the 16th-19th centuries where archaeologists estimate that the catacombs contain the remains of tens of thousand of people. The families of the deceased paid large sums of money for their loved ones to be buried here, in order for them to secure a quicker route to the Pearly Gates – but the enterprising (corrupt?) monks made a lot of Pesos selling the graves several times over, removing remains after a year or two and throwing them into a mass pit to make room for the next body that a space had been sold for. Today the bones are arranged in geometric patterns in the burial chambers and mass pits – fascinating but macabre. No photos allowed!

Barranco

Lima’s most bohemian and artistic district, a 10 minute Uber ride from our hotel and which we didn’t discover until our last day in the city. Many visitors apparently consider it to be the most atmospheric neighbourhood and we agree – wishing we’d discovered it sooner and actually thinking that we’d have preferred to stay there in preference to Miraflores.

We went to Barranco to join a food tour but did quite a bit of wandering around ourselves too – colourful colonial and republican-era houses blend with ultra-modern seafront houses, street art and murals abound, cafes and bars line the streets and it was a fabulous place to spend a Sunday afternoon. Sadly Barranco’s most famous landmark, the Bridge of Sighs (Puente de los Suspiros), was covered and under renovation so we went and drank Pisco Sours and looked at some art in a gallery instead!

Food

This is the standout feature of Lima and the exceptional culinary scene makes it the No1 food city in South America. In fact it’s right up there as a global food superstar, having 4 of World’s 50 best restaurants (including the 2025 No1 – Maido). We had neither the clothes nor the budget to visit any of the really fancy places, but anyway there were no tables available for at least the next 2 months. We did eat some pretty special food in this city though.

Before sampling any Peruvian food we needed to try the national drink – and Pisco Sour quickly became our absolute favourite cocktail ever! Neat Pisco, a type of grape brandy made by fermenting grape juice into wine and then distilling into a clear high-proof spirit, is a close cousin of grappa and the drink of the Devil himself. but blended with lime, syrup, ice, egg white and Angostura Bitters it transforms into the most beautiful concoction. It’s fair to say that we sampled a fair few during our time in Lima! Here’s the first, at Restaurant Panchita.. and we also sampled one of Peru’s most famous dishes, Lomo Saltado, a perfect example of the country’s Chinese influence (chifa cuisine) – strips of beef stir fried with onions, tomatoes, peppers, soy sauce and vinegar, with chips added and then served with rice. Sounds odd but absolutely delicious.

Another of Peru’s national dishes is Ceviche – raw fish cured in lime juice and mixed with red onion, salt and coriander. The acid from the lime firms the fish but traditionally it is marinated only briefly and just a few minutes before serving. Steve was planning to have ceviche as a starter at the renowned (and packed) Punto Azul restaurant, but the waiter kindly advised him that it was a huge portion and maybe we should just share a starter and Steve have the ceviche as a main course. Debbie tasted it and thought it was OK, but she doesn’t really do raw fish. Steve declared it to be delicious and it was indeed a massive amount of food.

We took a Secret Food Tour and encountered some new, and challenging, dishes and ingredients! Getting to the meeting point was a bit of a challenge as the Lima Marathon closed a lot of roads that morning. We got there in plenty of time, as we’d left our hotel stupidly early, but our poor guide Alondra got totally stuck and arrived 45 minutes late and very flustered! We were joined mainly by Americans, most of who were fanatical about English Premiership football (we lost count of how many mentioned that Arsenal had won and Spurs miraculously avoided relegation!), and we were impressed by the young kids with their mom who tucked into everything presented to them.

• First stop was Rima Rima, a colourful and tiny hole in the wall restaurant where we sampled Antichuchos, one of Peru’s most beloved street foods. Hmmm, here was the first challenge for Debbie as these were skewers of beef heart marinated in a smoky spice mix. She doesn’t do offal, not even a steak and kidney pie, and was still traumatised by her mother cooking ox hearts when she was a child, so how the hell was she going to eat this? By just taking the tiniest piece and holding her nose! It wasn’t terrible. Steve thought it was delicious. Luckily we had upgraded our drinks package so there was a Pisco Sour to wash it down with.
• Next was coffee and chocolate, far safer, at a lovely place called UKAW. We tried a variety of handmade chocolates and bought some bars to take away.
• Stop 3 at the bustling El Muelle restaurant near the sea again brought excellent (said Steve) ceviche, small scallops (conchitas) gratinated with parmesan (lovely) and a selection of Causa Limena – another Peruvian classic made with seasoned mashed potato flavoured with lime & yellow chilli and layered with avocado and other fillings. We sampled crab, shrimp and octopus versions – Debbie gave the octopus a miss but we both agreed that causa was a lovely dish.
• The ‘secret dish’ was revealed at stop 4, Republica del Pisco wine bar, and we were relieved that it was not guinea pig! Alondra told us that usually only the Andean people of Peru eat this and that she’d never tasted it in her life. Instead the ‘secret’ was Alpaca in the form of mini slider burgers – they were quite nice but we aren’t sure whether we’d choose alpaca over any other meat.
• And finally the most delicious ice cream at Blu Gelateria, where after sampling a variety of traditional Peruvian fruit flavours we chose our own and indulged.

And even with all the amazing food available in Lima, we fancied a curry so Debbie sought out an Indian restaurant – and it was pretty decent too.

Yes, Lima is indeed deserving of its reputation as a great city for food!

If we’d discovered the Barranco area earlier, and/or the sun had shined occasionally, or we’d been able to sample one or more of the world’s top 50 restaurants, we’d have undoubtedly enjoyed Lima more, but its not a must-do city in our opinion/experience. Flying there is unavoidable if visiting anywhere in Peru, and it can make for a good short stay if you are a foodie and choose the right area to stay. For us, it did what we needed it to, and we had some really good food while we were there.

Now to escape the big city and head to the jungle….