Lima, Pachcamac, Huana Pullacana, National Museum

Kristi and my first day in Lima.  Lima is a busy, overpopulated city with many shanty-towns on the outskirts.  I had heard lots of bad things about Lima, but found it quite clean and not too impoverished compared with places like Cairo and Istanbul.   Though there was lots of evidence that the crime rate was high.  Driving from the airport at night through Central Lima to Miraflores (the nice part of town) we never saw cars parked on side of the road until we got to Miraflores, probably because they wouldn't be there in the morning if they were left out.  Also, both in the rich and poor parts of town, homes and apartment builds had tall gates or walls that were topped with spikes, barbed wire, electric wire or broken glass bottles.  Again, more evidence that there is a decent amount of property crime in Lima.

National Museum

The Lonely Planet states that the National Museum is the big bad museum with all the cool stuff and that the archaeology/anthropology museum just has a few pots.  Sadly,  this turns out not to be the case.  The National Museum had a small room with a few nice pieces (some zoomorphic pots, knots that the Incans used to record numerical and mathematical data, tapestries, gold workings, and pots depicting mythological stories), one floor devoted to Peruvian civil war and one floor that was the ode to the potato (tons of potato art).

Pachacamac

On our first night in Lima, we pulled into our hostel, I headed to the restroom to freshen up and then return to our room to find that Kristi had already made a new friend.  Charlie, a fellow die-hard archaeology fan, had overheard Kristi and I talking and had hunted down his fellow Americans.  The three of us spent the days making the rounds of important sites and stops in Lima.

Charlie, Kristi and I rented a taxi for a day and drove out to see Pachcamac, an ancient cult, religious and administrative center.  The site had almost no guards so we were really able to explore it and properly bond with the site.

Huana Pullacana

Huana Pullacana is a mudbrick adobe pyramid located in the heart of Miraflores, which is near downtown Lima.