'Private' bus tour of Lima, Preu

In Lima, there are many differnt driving and bus tours of the city. With a population of nearly 10 million people, Lima is expansive, covering an area that rivals Chicago. For this reason, it is a good idea to go with an organized 'private' tour provider.

After taking a look at some of these 'private' tours, I decided it would be better to venture out on foot and bus to explore the city. The private tours cost $20-50 depending on the sites visited, and I prefer to explore myself anyway. Although the privateness of not interacting with the people of Peru was VERY appealing (Why would anyone want to visit a country and not interact with the people?), I thought just getting on any of the millions of busses in the city would wet my appetite for adventure.

The busses in Peru are worse and more numerous than the busses in Costa Rica. In Peru, every bus is covered with the names of places you can go: 'TASCA', 'Barrancos', 'Chorillios', 'Miraflores', 'Tdo Arequipa'. Each bus has at least 10 places written on it, sugesting where it might go. This is quite perplexing, because most of the busses doen't actually go where it says on their sides. The only way to know where it is really going is to ask the wingman of the bus as he hurriedly shoves people on and off the bus. I waited for a while to select my first bus, knowing that this could be the most important decision I made all day. After watching for a bit, I saw the first 'Wingwoman' and promplty boarded her bus. The only seat open was right in front of her post at the front door, so I sat there. 'This is going to be a great opportunity for me to practice my spanish and get a private guided tour of the city' I thought as the bus rattled into the diesel smoke-filled Avenida Arequipa.

The entire city of Lima is a giant grid, not unlike LA, and there are good parts and bad parts. Avenida Arequipa passes through the center of the city. I got to see the national museum, capital buildings, and some of the other famous sites in Lima. I had gotten into a conversation with the wingwoman, and she was guiding me through the city as we went. I asked her to point out all the important site and some of the history. She was happy to oblige in between yelling at the driver and getting her passengers on and off as efficiently as posibble. I asked her to tell me when we were in TASCA, the central stop, so I could get off and walk around downtown.

As we passed through the center and crossed over the motorway into another part of Lima, I figured she knew better than I, and that we still hadn´t gotten to the center. We began getting into poorer and poorer areas, and the building kept getting older and older. I asked a few times if we were close, but 45 minutes later, I knew something was up. I told her I was getting off at the next stop, and asked if the busses going in the other direction would take me back to the center of Lima. She told me that her bus would take me back, at the end of its route. All I had to do was wait till the end (on a seemingly interminable ride across the urban sprawl that is Lima), eat lunch with her, and then wait for the bus to come all the way back around. I wasn´t impressed, and got off at the next stop I could.

This stop left me somewhere about one hour outside of the city center in one of the poorest looking areas I have ever been in. None of the houses had complete walls, and most looked as if they had been burnt to the ground. All of the houses were built with brick and mortar, with no doors and tin roofs, if they had a roof. I was the only non-peruvian person I had seen since I left Miraflores two hours earlier, and I was getting pretty worried about my wellbeing. I knew I could probably get a taxi back for $30, but I wasn´t quite ready to use that safety net yet.

I walked across the motoway to the traffic going the other direction and got on the first microbus that passed. Once I was on the new bus going the way I had came, I was feeling a bit easier, and my stomach began to untwist the knot it was in. About an hour later I was back in Lima Central where I had originally wanted to go.

The moral of the story is, if the wingwoman on a bus starts flirting with you, even if you don´t realize it, pay attention to where you are going and go with your gut instinct. I knew where I thought I was supposed to get off, but trusting her experience and not paying attention to her posibble alterior motives put me into a crazy situation. I feel fortunate that I got to see part of Lima that 99.9% of people visiting the country will never see. Now, that is a private tour.