Joseph Campbell the American writer and scholar once wrote, 'I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.'
Well the journey from Cusco to Lima gave me the experience of being alive and when I exited the bus I was grateful to be alive.
Let me start at the beginning. Tuesday evening I laid in bed googling the bus journey we were about to embark on the next day, and what I found was horror story after horror story.
You have a choice of going with a local bus company where the drivers drive like crazy and more accidents occur resulting in fatalities. Or you can take the tourist company Cruz del Sur (which is the one we booked) which had less accidents but a higher rate of armed robbery where the bus would be hijacked and all the passengers would have to hand over all their belongings to men with guns! Gosh what a choice!
Well like I mentioned for us the choice had already been made as we had booked our bus the week before. I continued to read the news articles and reports from bloggers about their experiences.
The general similarities were that the bus would be travelling somewhere between Abancay and Nazca during the night and the road would be blocked by about 8 hijackers, the bus driver would have no choice but to stop and the robbers would get onboard the bus. They would order the passengers to get off one by one emptying their pockets and getting patted down as they went. Then the hijackers would search the entire bus for money, iPhones, iPads, cameras etc. The whole experience sounded terrifying with guns being pointed at people's heads. As you can imagine I did not sleep well on Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday when we were due to leave for the bus I lined my bra with American dollars and my camera SD cards as no way was I going to loose my salt flat and Machu Picchu photos even if they took my camera! We got onto the bus and off we went! As far as buses are concerned it was by far the nicest we had been on, we even got a TV with movies to watch which was great. As it began to get dark I started to feel nervous. Every time the bus stopped in the night I was pressed up against the window looking out and panicking.
As the sun started to come up on Thursday I breathed a sigh of relief we had made it and we had all our belongings still with us and we had no more bus journeys to take! 132 hours of land travel across South America is enough for me for a lifetime!
Nathan and I now found ourselves in the Peruvian capital of Lima in an area called Miraflores. We really only had Friday and Saturday in the city so started Friday with a free walking tour which was excellent.
We watched the changing of the guards which was spectacular as they marched to classical music.
We went to the main square Plaza Mayor.
We visited Santo Domingo Church.
The guides told us all about the oldest train station in Peru that is now used as a post office.
We went to San Francisco Church.
Walked around downtown Lima and finished the day with a tour inside Congress which was really impressive to see.
On Saturday we spent more time near our apartment, going for a walk along the coast.
And out for lunch for ceviche and beer which was delicious.
Our visit to Lima was short but it was really good to see the capital of Perú as it is worlds apart from Cusco and the Sacred Valley.