I took a 9-day guided Peru trip with Exoticca. The itinerary starts off and ends in Lima, with a city tour by Exoticca partner, Condor Travel, that includes bus transportation to the city center and a walking tour with an English-speaking guide.
Exoticca’s choice of Ibis Miraflores Reducto was reasonable. Miraflores is a walkable nicer area of Lima with access to oceanfront walk and some great restaurants. In Lima’s crazy traffic compounded by constant honking and dirty air it was still not fun to go through four airport transfers, some of which took over 2 hours in bumper-to-bumper standstill traffic.
Miraflores is also not city center, where historically important buildings are, so that’s another bus trip to and fro hotel that lasted over an hour in each direction. The tour was fun, though, with some good introduction into Peru history, specifics of Lima (appointed by Spanish as capital in order to be closer to the port city) and architectural decisions along the way.
The bus we were on seemed to feature an excessively aggressive air conditioner, so being seated in the back I only heard part of the guide’s talk, but I did my research with some tourist books beforehand, so didn’t miss much.
I thought Santo Domingo convent was well-kept and very beautiful inside and outside (the walking tour included entrance tickets). They had this fairly big (for the time) library with a variety of ancient books brought over by Spaniards.
Walking in Lima is not for the faint of heart. The cars seem to have the right of way, and even crossing the street on pedestrian crosswalk on green is a bit iffy, as some overeager driver is always in a hurry. It’s best to mix with the crowds and walk with groups.
Lima traffic being the constant gridlock makes it more manageable for a walker – most of the time crossing a smaller street just means making eye contact with the driver and quickly navigating in front of his car that’s sitting there stopped anyways.
The drivers strongly believe in the magical power of the honk, so there’s a persistent noisy background to all of the walks (and any potential videos you’d shoot in Lima as a tourist).
What Lima lacks in transportation comfort it compensates in food. The fresh seafood (ceviches, tiradito, sashimi, or grilled) is phenomenal, universally fresh with various levels and depths of spices. A few places I tried:
- Punto Azul – recommended by our tour guide, tourist-oriented English-speaking establishment that does a good ceviche and a pisco sour.
- Cevicheria Puro Mar – another spectacular ceviche, combined with great service and good amount of seating.
- Cebicheria El Pez On – I ended up there originally planning to go Punto Azul, but that day Punto Azul had a large group and the waitlist was getting ridiculously long. It’s just down the street and features nice friendly service with a great tiradito.
- Punta Sal – good place to stop if you’re walking down the oceanfront Malecon de Miraflores, which I did, past the Lovers’ Park and the light house almost all the way to San Isidro. Another consistently good ceviche and nice park and ocean views from 3rd-floor dining room.
- Amankaya – confusingly located in a private yard beyond a closed gate (guarded by a pretty friendly welcoming guy), it’s a music-themed Peruvian bistro with guitars and rock music posters on the wall, and classical rock playlists blasting on TV at all times. Fun twist on Peruvian classics. I tried the catch-of-the-day Ceviche Norteno, and it was very nice, somewhat spicier than I intended, though.
Malecon de Miraflores, mentioned above, is this beautiful oceanfront walk amid lush greenery and past various condo buildings, hotels, malls and restaurants on the other side of the park. It seems to be very popular with locals, mid-day that I walked it for a few hours it had quite a few families with strollers and Limans jogging or walking their dogs.