A Special Day In Lima, Peru

We arrived in Lima, Peru at 7:00 AM this morning. This is our first time in this port of call.

Lima is home to approximately eight million of the twenty-four million citizens of Peru.

The major products exported from this area include sugar cane, cotton, minerals (iron, copper, lead and silver), bananas, coffee beans, asparagus and tea. Lima receives 1” of rain annually.

There are clearly issues with the local economy. The present inflation rate is 47%. While unemployment is at approximately 9%, an additional 43% of the people are underemployed. Many people are street vendors or work in manufacturing. We could see quite a bit of poverty as we traveled through Lima. As is the case when Keith visited Venezuela several years ago on business, there are many areas where there are literally shacks along the hilltops surrounding the city.

With that said, we thought that the city streets were clean and there are some very nice areas along with other areas of the city where the middle class live.

Schooling is compulsory through the 11th grade and voting is compulsory as well.

Today we took the complimentary shore excursion provided by Crystal. They are providing one complimentary shore excursion on each of the seven segments of the World Cruise. This excursion is called The Ruins of the Pachacamac Temple & Hacianda Mamacona.

At 9:15 this morning, we were taken by bus through some of Lima’s residential areas and then we proceeded another 20 miles to the Lurin Valley, where we visited the ruins of the Pachamac Temple, which was built in the 8th century. We stopped at three different locations to view the ruins and then we proceeded to Hacienda Mamacona, which is a very beautiful and large ranch.

The ranch included a little local market and we were treated to music and dancing by wonderful musicians and dancers. We also had the opportunity to view a Peruvian Pace Horse show. The horses have a distinctive gait, which makes riding them very smooth. They are truly beautiful horses.

Following the show, we had a very nice lunch, which included a variety of local vegetables, quiche, chicken, gnocchi, and several other food items Desert included dol de leche, rice pudding and a flam along with red and white wine and pisco sour.

We walked around the beautiful grounds for a while and spoke with the two owners’.

We got back to the ship at about 4:15 PM. We were fortunate to have wonderful weather today. While we had expected it to be very humid, we were fortunate that there was very little humidity with the temperature in the low to mid 70’s.

This excursion was truly wonderful experience and kudos to Crystal for providing such a wonderful complimentary excursion. We would highly recommend it for visitors to Lima.

Since we boarded the cruise ship, we have been on Eastern Standard Time. This evening we will change the time to one hour forward.

Keith & Anne Marie