This morning our night bus got in even earlier than before, it was around 5am. I had a feeling that when we got to our hostel that we wouldn't be able to check in early, and I was right. We took a taxi from the bus terminal to the hostel, and by the time we'd got there it must have been around 5.30am. The check in time is at 2pm, so as we got there so early, we were not allowed to check in. There was a couple of guys who'd been on the same night bus as us and they asked to check in early as they got there a few minutes before us and they said no. When we checked in I did ask if it was possible, but they said we'd have to wait for people to check out of our room and for it to be cleaned. They said we could wait upstairs on the roof terrace, so off we went. I could have used these few hours to catch up on the blog, but as we hardly had any sleep on the bus, my priority was catching up on sleep. We found a couple of sofas in the bar area, which looked like they had only just stopped partying. We arrived early on a Sunday morning, so i'm guessing they were partying hard last night. There were loads of empty beer bottles and glasses everywhere and it stank like an ashtray in there. I had to clear the bottles and fag butts away before I could try and sleep! We laid down and I think I actually dozed off for about an hour, but then the cleaner came in and started banging around the place. Not long after, people started coming in for breakfast, so it was impossible to get any more sleep!

Once we'd woken up, we had some breakfast and then surfed the net for things to do here . The guys we met in Huaraz said there was a food festival going on in Lima and today was the last day. I was just too tired to want to make the effort to go to it, although John would have liked to. It was further out of town anyway so you couldn't just walk there. Football was being played on tv, so it kept John entertained, meanwhile, I attempted to catch up on the blog. At around 1.30pm, they finally called us to our room so we could check in. We went straight to bed to catch up on sleep and didn't wake up until about 5pm. We went upstairs to have pizza for dinner and afterwards went back to our room to watch a film.

We woke up and felt more refreshed today but when we looked out of our balcony, the weather in Lima was pretty grey and miserable. I don't think it gets sunny that much here. It's also a lot cooler than places we've been already, perhaps these are the reasons why people don't come to Lima or stay here for long. We are staying in the district of Miraflores, so decided we'd take a walk to check out the views . There is a whole shopping centre built into the cliffs above the sea in Miraflores, so we can check that out and then walk along the beach. Apparently it's better to stay in Miraflores than the historic centre, so that's why we wanted to stay here. It seems like a big modern city so far. We walked until we found the shopping centre and once we did, I stopped to admire it. I've never seen a shopping centre that overlooks the sea and is build into the cliffs, it looked pretty cool. We walked around there for a while, but most of the shops were designer ones and out of our budget, so we just window shopped. One shop that caught our eye was where ladies hand making crafted items like scarves, knitted jumpers and woollen items. You could see them through the window dressed in brightly coloured attire, so it drew us into the shop. You could watch them making the jumpers and they attracted a lot of attention. I don't know if they were out there for the tourists or if that is where they actually work and dress like that, but it was amusing all the same . When we'd had enough of wandering through the shopping mall, we walked along the top of the cliffs and saw some people paragliding. We carried on walking until we came to where they were all taking off and watched them for a while. It would be good to do paragliding, but not here in Lima where it's so foggy, you wouldn't be able to see anything!

The next day we decided to visit the old town, so took a local bus there. The lady who works at the hostel warned us to take a taxi back for some reason, although it was fine to take the bus there. We caught a local trolley bus, which was kind of like a tram system running through the city. It was fairly cheap anyway and we felt safe enough. We walked through the historic old centre and saw many nice buildings, but we've seen so many, we carried on walking. We went shopping and walked through the town centre as they have a high street, which i've been missing, so it was nice to be back in a high street again. After we done as much shopping as John could take, we had some lunch and decided we'd catch the trolley bus back, rather than a taxi . What's the worst that could happen! We walked back to the terminal and tried to purchase the return ticket which was a bit of a hassle as we had no change and nobody was in the kiosks to get any change. We eventually bribed one of the shopkeepers to give us some change and then got our tickets and got back on the bus. The journey was un-eventful and we felt safe, so we got off the bus at the same station we departed from. We managed to find a local artesanal market place selling all kinds of alpaca jumpers and souvenirs so had a look in there. John tried on a couple of alpaca sweaters and I think they actually suited him! He didn't buy one there as wasn't sure if he'd have space in his backpack. I was glad we'd actually found somewhere like this, as we've not come across any so far surprisingly. We stopped off somewhere for dinner on the way back and went back to the hostel to pack our stuff. Tomorrow it's off to Paracas.