PERU

As we step outside Lima airport, a big mumma declares herself to be our taxi driver and steers the trolley, with Harley sitting on it, away from Will, who walks nonchalantly alongside as I struggle behind with my trolley and Ruby atop. The airport has a real buzz about it and I immediately tell Will “I think I’m going to like it here”. Of course, what I should have been telling Will was “can you please push this trolley and stop prancing about at the side of mumma over there”.

We had a bit of a surprise on our drive from the airport as the streets were full of casinos and fast food joints and even though it was midnight, there were people everywhere. Cars tooting, buses full, streets busy. Not what we were expecting at all. And neither were we expecting to arrive at our hotel and discover that we don’t have a room. It’s after midnight, the kids are exhausted and we have nowhere to sleep. A lot of phone calls and key jangling later and we’re finally moved to the apartment block just a few meters down the road. It’s a decent sized one-bed apartment but there’s a lot of faffing around to get extra beds moved in and even then, it’s only one single bed so the kids have to top and tail again. Good job they’re both dog tired.

We’re here for 3 days and there’s not very much of interest in Lima so we head for Huaca Pucllana which is a pretty amazing pre-Inca pyramid built in the 5th century from mud bricks. Yes, that IS correct. Mud bricks still surviving from the 5th Century (I know, you were raising your eyebrows at the bit about my calling it a pretty amazing pyramid, but puulease, don’t expect me to play along!). The taxi driver initially tries to dupe us into thinking that it’s closed so he can make double the fare by taking us back again, but Will’s onto him and directs him around to the in-house restaurant which is apparently one of the best in town. Not only is the food passable (for the first time since New Zealand), but we are treated to our first pisco sours (the national drink) and Will decides to go for a pisco tasting in much the same way as he was for a cachaca tasting in Brazil. Shame he ended up liking the one that was $20 a shot.

Not 10 minutes walk from our hotel, we arrive at the coast where, despite the fog, we can see Peruvian surfers trying their luck. If we hadn’t been in Australia, maybe this wouldn’t seem so strange, but here, where the waves are hardly a ripple, where the weather is pretty lousy and where the water is so polluted it’s advisable not to swim in it, it seems a bit optimistic to call yourself a surfer.

And just across the road is the Peruvian equivalent of Harrods where we can stock up on food and wine for the next couple of days since the kids are always so exhausted by the time we come to go out for dinner. So Harrodian is it in fact that we’re chastised for taking a photo of Harley in the fruit department next to the world’s largest basket of apples.