Los Museos

This weekend we visited three museums and a ruins site. Right now I'm exhausted--it's tiring to be a tourist! But anyway...

Yesterday we started at the Museo de la Nacion, which is supposed to have an extensive "summary" collection of artifacts from all of Peru's pre-Columbian cultures. Which I guess it does, but compared to the museums we went to today it was greatly inferior--the layout and design of the exhibits isn't that exciting, there isn't much explanation, and the whole thing just feels stuck in the 70s. But, we saw some stuff.

After lunch we went to Huaca Pullcana in Miraflores, which is a later and much more extensive complex from the same people who built the pyramid near our house. I also went there 3 years ago during my "city tour" of Lima at the end of our first Peru trip, but of course then I had no idea where I was or what I was seeing, and now I realize it's just a quick bus ride away. I recognized some things from that first tour, but since then they have opened a whole new part of the site--a climb to the top of the pyramid--so the tour was actually quite different. The photos of the pyramid aren't that exciting, though, so here's a view of the whole site from the top of the pyramid:

The most interesting part of our tour was that we shared it with a group of 4 girls who were visiting for a school project. They were funny, asking random questions of the guide and asking us funny questions about the U.S. At the end we didn't have enough time to visit the "administrative" area where the museum had set up scenes of daily life in the town, but the guard let us in to see one small part. So here's a picture of me and girls, and the rear end of a model inhabitant:

Today we visited two more archeology/history museums. The first was a private collection, called Museo Rafael Larco, and it was pretty amazing. The exhibits were well laid-out, but weren't so big that they were overwhelming. We soon realized that it was because most of their collection was in storage. The storage room was open to the public, and it was impressive to say the least. It was like being in a huge university library, but instead of books on the shelves there were clay pots organized by their shape and theme. Here's a picture of Taylor in the "stacks":

The other thing this museum is known for is its collection of erotic art from a pre-Incan culture that produced a lot of it. That room was pretty interesting to visit too, but I didn't take any pictures, sorry!

After the first museum we at lunch at a local seafood place, which was quite delicious as always. It's finally (and quite suddenly) getting cold here in Lima (like California cold--cloudy and in the 50s), so I ordered a fish soup and it totally hit the spot. Then we walked about 15 minutes to the next museum. The neighborhood these museums are in is called Pueblo Libre, and it's one of the middle class neighborhoods of Lima that I didn't think existed when I first arrived. I soon learned that they did, but I didn't have any reason to visit any of them during my normal daily activities. So I'm glad that finally, on my last Sunday in town, we visited the museums and the neighborhood. It was nice to walk through quiet parks and down normal streets. Taylor and I agreed it looked like it could be Brooklyn, although neither of us has spent much time in Brooklyn. I hope that next time we spend a significant chunk of time in Lima--and I hope there is a next time--we can get to know better the more "real" parts of the city, through Peruvian friends or just being adventurous.

The second museum we went to was the National Anthropology, Archeology, and History museum, and it was also well done. Unfortunately by the end we were tired and were not paying the closest attention to the exhibits, and we also missed the 1 hour of sun while we were inside. Also, the real disappointment of the afternoon was that we couldn't find shoeshine boys in the plaza outside of the museum. I've only had my shoes shined once here (and that was my hiking boots after coming off the Inca Trail), but it's actually quite a nice service when you need it done. How come they are only around when you don't want them?! Oh well. We did have a good walk back to the bus stop to help work off our huge lunch.