Lima, Gateway to Peru :: by Aurora Travel®:::

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Inca Xpress Peru

Tarapaca 226
Miraflores
LIMA18 - Peru
Tel: 51-1-4479519
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Lima,

Peru's incredibly rich and compelling archaeological heritage and its great natural beauty -remarkable even in a continent renowned for its exotic vistas -draw tens of thousands of visitors each year. Almost all make a stop at Lima, which is Peru's cultural and business center. Lima runs at a slower pace than many South American metropolises; its rhythm is more traditional, and its people reflect a steadier, calmer constitution. Lima's unusually amenable inhabitants give the metropolis the feeling, at times, of a cluster of smaller towns. Lima's physical atmosphere is slightly dreamlike, mostly because of the garua -a mist that settles over the city between May and October - under its blanket, Lima's inhabitants meet in the penas (bars offering folk and Creole music), shop in the open marketplaces, and dine at Lima's celebrated restaurants. Several museums display and preserve Peru's golden past, including most notably the internationally famed Museo Nacional de Antropologia y Arqueologia. South of Lima, long white beaches washed by the cold waters of the southern Pacific stretch away in an uninterrupted string, returned by row upon row of huge, brilliant white sand dunes. In contrast to the tourist beaches of warmer climes, these shores have few amenities other than small restaurants and cafes. One of the best of these remote beaches, as if to confirm its tranquillity, is known as El Silencio. Like Lima itself, these beaches seem to exist in an eddy of time, pleasantly removed from the relentless pace of more frequented destinations. Lima was founded by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535. The foundation was originally planned for January 6th — Epiphany, or the Day of the Magi — and despite the delay the capital was still known by the evocative name of La Ciudad de los Reyes or “The City of Kings.” Pizarro traced a grid of 13 streets by nine to form 117 city blocks on the site of an existing indigenous settlement beside the southern bank of the Rimac River (from which the name Lima was derived). Several huacas, or funeral mounds, along with other pre-Columbian ruins, survive in greater Lima as testimony that the area was populated before the Conquest. The most important pre-Inca religious site in coastal Peru was nearby at Pachacamac. For two centuries after its foundation, Lima was the political, commercial and ecclesiastical capital of Spanish South America, the seat of the Inquisition as well as of the Viceroys.A major program of urban renewal is in progress in the historic center of the city under the auspices of UNESCO it has been declared pan of “the Cultural Heritage of Mankind,” and there have been spectacular changes in both architectural restoration and street cleanliness and security. The usual starting point for exploring Lima is the Plaza Mayor which has benefited greatly from recent renovation. The eastern side of the square is dominated by the Catedralon a site chosen by Francisco Pizarro. Next door to the cathedral is the Archbishop’s Palace, rebuilt in the l920s with an impressive wooden balcony...(next page)

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