John Matson helped arrange a place for us to stay our five days in Lima, in a sweet and comfortable hotel in Mira Flores. Climbing up from the seashore road that John led us along into the city and turning into the Mira Flores District was almost like stepping into Alice’s looking glass. The Peru of which we had become so familiar, of dry dusty towns, of sellers on sidewalks with their carts of vegetables, clothing, batteries, sunglasses, of one story shops open to the street, of mud brick homes and businesses in various stages of construction disappeared and we were suddenly surrounded with streets and storefronts resembling a busy downtown area in a large US city. It was a bit disconcerting. Lima is an enormous city and it encompasses areas of great poverty, areas of great wealth, and everything in-between. In our short time there we only had a sampling of a very small part of it.

With John as our tour guide, we first visited the center and historical part of the city. Here are huge colonial buildings including the president’s residence, other government buildings and the cathedral where the bones of Pizarro, the conqueror of the Incas and the founder of Lima, are buried. Pizarro had captured my imagination as a 6^th grader when learning about the conquistadors in Mr. Gulerude’s Social Studies class. His history is not as romantic as that first encounter. One famous incident that perhaps encapsulates why many Peruvians consider him a criminal is in his capture of the Inca ruler, Atahualpa. He demanded a ransom of gold and silver filling three rooms, each room 22 ft by 17 ft. After this enormous ransom was payed Pizarro killed him anyway. The adage “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” was very true in his case as about 9 years later he was murdered by supporters of a rival Spanish politician, his dying body stabbed again and again by his assailants. Sometime in the years after his death, perhaps because of the anger towards him, his head was removed from his skeleton and both were buried separately in the cathedral’s crypt. It has only been in the last few years, through DNA testing his skeleton and head have been reunited and placed in Pizarro’s tomb where a rogue skeleton had been laid many years ago.

We visited a few museums in the city. I enjoyed the Larco Museum which had wonderful exhibits on the pottery we have been seeing with explanations in English as well as Spanish, a real treat. In the storeroom stood shelves reaching to the ceiling with what must have been 50,000 pots (overwhelming, but amazing). We toured the erotic pottery of the Moche culture, similar to what we had seen in Trujillo, except it wasn’t kept behind closed doors. There were also lovely ancient weavings remarkably preserved and gold and silver jewelery exhibits.

The National Museum held a different and sobering experience. On the 6^th floor is housed a photo gallery depicting the 20 years of violence in Peru involving the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla organization and the Peruvian government. The display of the often very brutal photographs is meant to be a testament to the horror of the violence in the hopes that in facing the truths of the history it will not happen again. From about 1980 to 2000 almost 70,000 people died or disappeared as a result of the war, many of them innocent, some children, about half of them killed by the Shining Path and about half by the Peruvian military. The exhibit raised many more questions in me than it answered.

John also brought us out to Punta Negra, a seaside village south of Lima where he hopes to purchase a home, perhaps to open it as a B & B. A retired music teacher from schools in Wisconsin and Alabama, he spent many of his vacations in South America visiting and volunteering in projects through his church. He lived in Bolivia a few years and in Lima for about 5 years. He has many connections here, including his daughter-in-law from Bolivia.  John’s love for Peru was evident in the time and attention he unhesitatingly gave us, ensuring our experience would be positive.  Again, as in Trujillo, my appreciation for the city of Lima will always be more about the hospitality and graciousness of John and his mom than the city itself.