Is Lima already considered a must?
No doubt! The question is how many days you should stay, which depends on the number of days of your travel plans. Lima has many formats. Lima is the beautiful old Downtown Lima, but it is also the modern cosmopolitan Miraflores. Lima is its amazing Peruvian food (important reason to stay at least 3 days), but it is also gorgeous international-Peruvian restaurants. Lima is museums, plazas and tourism, but also surfing, paragliding and activities. Lima is its old bars and pubs that resemble the 1800, but also the new worldwide trendy culture in amazing raves and parties. Lima is a walk by the Miraflores Park and Barranco boardwalk, but also one-day trips to Caral and Mamacona.
Lima Limon (Lemon Lima), as local call it, was a must, is now a must, and will always be a must. There have been plenty of articles (NYTimes, WSJ, CondeNast …. ) about the importance international travel agents are now allocating to Lima when they sell travel packages to Peru. The question is how many days you stay in Lima, knowing that your travel polans are limited and you are also interested in Cusco, Puno, Mancora, Arequipa, or Madre de Dios. If you are travelling for a week, you might only be able to stay for a day or a day and a half. Worse case scenario, a day would give you a chance to enjoy downtown Lima, have an amazing lunch, enjoy at least one museum (Peruvian Gold work and ancestral clay art work are also a must), a walk through Miraflores Park and surrounding, and a final effort for a nice dinner. Another natural plus on Lima, is that most likely you would either land and/or depart from Lima Airport to your initial or ultimate destination.
This puts you already in the spot, so relax, and enjoy it. You could also consider purposely staying for a couples days or even a week in Lima (Check our blog entries on what to do in Lima in 1 day, 3 days and a week). If you have the time, for sure do it. Pariwana Hostels Lima will give you all the tools to enjoy it. For daytime there are plenty of sites visits, museums and touristic destinations; for the nighttime Pariwana Hostels Lima will guide you through our nightlife. We now of full blown parties every day of the week starting Tuesday! For day trips, there is a bunch: Caral (the oldest city-civilization in the Latin America), Mamacona (a 30 minutes away local pre-Inca ruin), and finally you can consider a two-day trip south of Lima to Paracas (Ballesta Islands), Huacachina (Oasis) and Nazca (Nazca Lines). Lima… no doubt, for sure a must.