South America

La Paz was a pretty busy city, but Lima is almost 3 times as big and the drive into the city showed that this was definitely true. We got lost on the way to the hotel and we were taken down roads which hardly had an inch between any of the traffic, and past markets which had people flock to sell us stuff through the windows of the truck. It was the last day of this leg so we had planned to go out with the people who were leaving, but because of some misunderstanding we ended up going out in 2 groups. We travelled 20 mins in a cab to get to Miraflores, a kind of Ayia Napa type place where bars try to entice you in with free pisco sours (it worked). Somehow we ended up at a tequila bar off a side street that required us to hand in our cameras at the entrance. I had forgotten to bring my camera, but there was only one type of bar that cameras aren't allowed and that's a strip bar. I was surprised to see that there wasn't any stripping going on, and there wasn't even a stage or pole to be found anywhere, but there did seem to be a lot of single women about. This wasn't a strip bar, it was a brothel. A couple of the guys had already got drinks without realising (yeah whatever...) so we decided to stay for one round. Within minutes a couple of our friends had girls on their laps and even had prices agreed; £50 each for the night. They left to go back to the hotel with the girls and we tried to meet up with the other group we left behind. 2 hours and 2 long taxi rides later we were still searching for the club, so we gave up and headed back home.

The next day we tried to sort out our Galapagos trip but we were unsuccessful because it was Sunday. Everyone was meeting later that night to go bowling and we had read that there was a cinema in the same complex. LarcoMar Shopping Complex was a tourist hotspot, full of American chain restaurants and prices 50% higher than anywhere else in the city. We ended up ordering a disgusting, overpriced, undercooked chicken burger from a fast food restaurant which we had to take back. The cinema was showing the new Owen Wilson film, Drillbit Taylor, which was very funny. When the film finished I had completely forgotten where I was and had to think "Oh yeah, I'm in Peru, not the Printworks in Manchester".

We met up with the rest of the group and went bowling, but me and Dee didn't have enough money to go out after, so we played a couple of games of pool (I won) and went back to the hotel to watch TV.