I had a bad concience not having been to an archeological site or museum for some time so I thought about going to Pachacamac, which is the next site close to the city after the one I’ve already been to.

As always I thought about how to go there without having to take a taxi. My first idea was to take the metro (train), so I looked that up on Google Maps. The problem here in Perú is that Google Maps is not very detailed in general and especially places are very often not shown on the map and relatively often they’re shown in the wrong places. I estimated the distance between the last station of the metro to the south and the entrance to be about 5 kilometers – a good walking distance. The only problem was that the reason why my collegues claimed the train was dangerous is that it’s ends seem to be in slums or at least very poor areas of Lima. I thought I might just go to the last station and see whether it seems safe to get out. So I went there and as it didn’t look that bad I started walking. At some points I didn’t feel very safe, but nothing happened. I tried not to show my camera and cell too much though.

At about half the way I saw a pretty huge park nearby on Google Maps, so I thought it might be more convenient to walk through the park, although it meant taking a small detour. The park turned out to be very nice, although it had fences around it. The entrance fee of s/. 2,50 is not worth mentioning (less than 1,00 €), but unfortunately it has only one entrance, so I couldn’t walk through. The park itself is very nice, it has places to grill, a small food court, a big lake with small islands (one has monkeys on it) where you can even rent a boat, playgrounds, sports fields an amphitheater. I was very impressed and guessing from the crowds of people in there I guess it is successful.

After walking through the park I continued my way to Pachacamac, but when I thought I was there the place shown on Google Maps turned out to be a dessert. I started investigating and found another place in the map but behind the dessert from the point where I was. Maybe two kilometers I thought, it was 3.5 in the end not counting a 30 minutes detour I made because there was a sign indicating a huge supermarket was close and I at least needed some drink. Unfortunately I didn’t find it so I had to go into a dark hall of small shops to buy a water and leave as quickly as possible 🙂

Walking along a relatively small street through the “dessert” was not very nice because almost every empty taxi honked at me hoping I wanted a ride (did they honestly believe someone walking in the middle of nowhere would suddenly want to continue using the taxi?), but I made it and arrived at the entrance at 3 p.m. – last admission is 3.30 p.m. so I was relatively happy not to have taken longer. The place itself was interesting and even had a small museum. The view from the highest point was also interesting – it was used by the Chilean army during the war in the end of the 19th century – but apart from that it was more or less to get rid of one point on the to-do list as I don’t like walking around dusty ruins *that* much 😀

Luckily there was a bus station right at the entrance, so I had the pleasure of taking a crowded micro back to Lima which was fast, but very uncomfortable (no seat and it wasn’t high enough to stand properly) and the guy even charged me a gringo price (I did not complain because the difference was 0,30€). Fortunately I only needed one third of the time to go back, which was nice. Another interesting day, especially getting there and finding that nice park was fun!