Callao/Lima

We have had a day and a half docked at Callao, the port for Lima. The dock is about a 45-minute bus ride into the center of the city of Lima. Although Callao and Lima used to be separated, they have now merged into a metropolis of 8 million people. That is a huge and busy city to navigate in such a short visit.

The port itself is an active container port, which cannot be walked at all. That meant one kind of a shuttle or another once we were off the ship. The docks are home to an incredible number of sea birds, mostly sea gulls. I have no way of estimating their numbers, but there are hundreds of containers on the docks covered wing to wing with birds. I don’t know if there are thousands, tens of thousands or more. Let me just say that one of the enduring memories of this port will be the pervasive stench of their droppings.

There was a free shuttle from the ship to the port’s gate, where taxis could be hired for tours or transportation to sights. Princess offered a very inexpensive ($5 per person each way) shuttle service from the dock to a Marriott Hotel in Miraflores, a lovely neighborhood on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. The shuttle bus ride itself became a tour as we rode through neighborhood after neighborhood of varying economic levels, mostly poor. Since it almost NEVER rains here, everything is very dry and the vegetation is sparse except where people make the effort to garden. The houses all have open, unroofed areas so certain are the people living in them that it will not rain. The streets are paved, highways fast, but congested. Like the port, Miraflores is on the ocean, so much of the ride was along the beaches. Some of the beaches are used even though instead of sand, they are covered with black stones. Many young people are surfing and body surfing the waves.

The shuttle dropped us off in front of H Stern, the jewelry store, no coincidence there. The jewelry was all Inca and Peruvian motifs. Across the street there is a mall overlooking the ocean at the bottom of the cliff. The mall is built into the cliff and barely visible from the Marriott. There is a Starbuck’s, restaurants, jewelry stores, and clothing shops. There was also a desk for city tours that turned out to be the bargain of the port. However, we didn’t discover it; friends told us about it back on the ship.

We visited the Artisans Marketplace, admired several items, but in the end decided not to buy anything. Less to carry is always good. It was hard to resist the alpaca sweaters, but we so seldom wear sweaters in Florida it doesn’t make sense to purchase them.

We went back to the ship for lunch on the shuttle and after lunch watched a movie in the lounge. The daily paper, The Patter, said it was a Russell Crowe movie, which it was not. It was, I believe, The Women, a film that has not one male character on the screen. After dinner we went to the folkloric show, performed by a troupe from Lima. They sang and danced a variety of traditional pieces wearing some fantastic costumes, with clever use of so many bright primary colors.

Today we were in port until only 12:30 which wasn’t really enough time to travel on our own back to the city, so we enjoyed a day on board, mostly by the pool.

By the way, we have not as yet changed our clocks. Look at a map of the world if you, like us, think that is strange.