Tours in Lima
My two tours in Lima were a lot more fun than I expected.
My Lima city tour ended at the Plaza de Armas, where you can ride around the plaza in a horse drawn carriage.
These are the only two tours I’ve done so far in Lima, so I won’t claim that they’re the best or worst until I go back and do a few more.
Check out a much more complete guide to Lima on ProfRabbit!
Lima City Tour
The center of Lima tour was supposed to be four hours, but we took six. I walked almost seven miles that day! We started in Miraflores, then took the bus to the center. There are regular busses all over Lima, but we took what they call the “metropolitano.” That’s a bus that runs in its own lane on freeways. You can cover a lot of ground much faster than on a regular bus, but it’s still just a bus on a freeway. Lima doesn’t have an underground metro system or even a light rail.
After our trip on the metropolitano, we started at the music-filled Plaza San Martín. It’s named after the hero who got Argentina independence from Spain and also contributed to Chile and Peru gaining independence. Every weekend, the plaza fills with dance troupes and live bands, representing cultures from all over Peru. I watched a group of about a hundred men and women dance to a live marching band in costumes decorated with purple and silver bells that represent the altiplano near Bolivia. Another group was dressed in costumes that represent tribes from the Peruvian Amazon, dancing to their own drums and flutes.
From Plaza San Martín, we went to the central market and Chinatown. This is really just one street with a bunch of Chinese restaurants. Don’t expect anything like New York’s Chinatown. The highlight for me was that the clouds parted for about ten minutes and I saw a bit of blue sky.
From Chinatown we walked to the San Francisco monastery, which is famous for the catacombs. They’re very different from catacombs in Rome or Paris though. It’s just the space under the church where nuns and monks were buried until the flesh had decomposed. Then their bones were dug up and tossed in a giant pit right under the pulpit. Today the pit is about 30 feet deep and full. They’ve arranged a few skulls and femurs on top but most of the bones have been crushed by the weight of all the other bones that were dumped on top. After the monastery, we walked to the Plaza de Armas and ended at the Museo de Pisco for a pisco sour.
My guide for the city tour was Gladys from Intrepid, who was always cheerful and eager to answer my questions. I was glad to have her because I’ve always been intimidated by Lima’s size and lack of good transportation. I’ve been traveling in Peru for over 10 years but hadn’t yet seen any of the places she took me to!
The thing about Lima is, it’s gray.
No amount of editing my photos can give that city a blue sky or cheerful lighting. The other thing about Lima is, it’s a massive city with no good public transportation. Besides the metropolitano, you can take a city bus, which stops constantly. When you go to Lima, it’s best to pick a neighborhood and stick to it.
Lima Bike Tour
The bike tour certainly was fun, and we went so far south we left the city entirely.
If you like biking in cities, I highly recommend a bike tour of Lima. Just be sure that you go with a licensed tour agency like Intrepid. There are “pirate” tours that won’t have bike helmets, the bikes are likely to be in poor condition and you have a good chance of the “guide” getting lost.
My guide for the bike tour was Tito, who looked like he could bike all day and not get tired. He was cheerful and clearly loves his home city, but he still didn’t manage to sell me on the gray weather. I will say that biking with some cloud cover is more comfortable than with a blazing sun, but still. We were riding along the coast. Blue sky and blue ocean would have been nice.
Most of the ride is along the malecón, at the top of the cliffs that separate the city from the rocky beaches far below. It’s a pleasant ride and I definitely recommend it for people who want to see the coast line and get some exercise.
This is typical weather for Lima but it wasn’t bad for a long bike ride. This is the farthest southern point of the ride at Salto del Fraile.
We rode south from Miraflores to Salto del Fraile, which means “jump of the monk.” Local legend has it that a monk jumped to his death in 1860. It’s a Romeo & Juliet story of young love. When she was found to be pregnant, she was put on a ship to Spain, and he was sent to a monastery. When the ship passed the cliffs near the monastery he jumped in the ocean, and then she did too. They both drowned.
Today the spot is a popular restaurant. Local re-enactors don monk habits and jump into the crashing waves below. These ones know how to swim, and they always climb back up the cliffs for the audience’s applause and tips.
It’s hard for me to gush about the tours simply because it was so gray and depressing both days. I’m not a big fan of Lima and that makes it hard to gush about anything there. However, the tours were a lot of fun and I would recommend both.
