Lima, Peru - Day 1

Today we arrived in Lima after an early morning flight from Cusco. We dropped our bags off and set off to explore the old section of town. Our first stop was Covento y Museo de San Francisco, a spectacular colonial area church with a catacomb connecting other churches below grounds and housing large open burial grounds with hundreds of skeletons. The church also has a world renowned library with ancient manuscripts and wonderful leather bound books in transcribed in Latin.

We made a brief pit stop for some Anticuchos de Corazon or beef hearts on a skewer which were surprisingly tender and amazingly flavorful. I’ve converted another traveler to the wonders of organ meats!

After a brief stop at the inquisition museum where there were numerous artifacts of torture, we walked over to the Lima Chinatown. Apparently there is a large Chinese population in Lima. Actually there are Chinese people everywhere that I went in South America. Very few places did not have one or two Chifas (Chinese restaurants) providing some variety to the local cuisine. Chifa is a play on the mandarin chi fan or eat rice / meal. The best way that I can describe them as fusion restaurants taking the Chinese style of cooking and incorporating local ingredients, but in reality they are about as close to authentic Chinese food as your local crappy take out place.

Although Lima had the largest Chinatown outside of possibly Sao Paulo, Brazil’s Japan / Korea / Chinatown, I didn’t really notice a lot of Chinese people there. There were blocks and blocks of restaurants and stores run by Chinese, but the customers were all Peruvians and no Chinese were in sight eating in the restaurants or shopping in the stores. Perhaps this is a Chinatown akin to the one in San Francisco where tourists and non Asians flock to while local Asians look for more authentic and non-touristic establishments.

Lima, Peru - Day 1