Once you've been home for awhile, it's easy to forget all the realities of life on the road. You know, the little things like the necessity of brushing your teeth with bottled water instead of the stuff that comes out of the tap,.... communicating in a combination of your own language and the local language, or the overwhelming smell of of black diesel exhaust being blown directly in your face by large trucks as you walk through the city center. (Not to mention foreign language keyboards!) But oh how quickly it all comes rushing back once you´re back on the road!

Although we've only been in Lima a few days, I think you could easily convince us that the 6 month break where we found jobs, established a household and returned to the normal 9 to 5 routine was all a dream. (Or perhaps more appropriately, our wanderlust has returned and we wish we were back on the road for the long term!) 

We've found Lima to be an incredible city... with beautiful colonial architecture, beaches frequented by surfers and scores of friendly locals. Being such a modern city, starting in Lima has been a great way to reacclimatize to life on the road without having to suffer the loss of too many amenities. Most tourists stay in the posh neighborhood known as Miraflores so that's exactly where we headed as well. It's ideally situated near the city center as well as the ocean and has some of the city's best cafes and restaurants. We spent several hours at the posh Cafe Z just outside the Mira Flores town center enjoying South American Cappuccino and nibbles before finally motivating ourselves to head off to view some of the city's great colonial architecture.

Towards the end of the day, we made our way down to the cities beaches. They are considered very dirty and polluted, but that didn't seem to bother the throngs of locals out catching a wave. We ended our day with a meal and a few beers overlooking the ocean. As we're back in the southern hemisphere, it was a bit chilly, but still enjoyable none the less.

From here we'll hop a plan out to the city of Iquitos which incidentally can only be reached by air or by boat. Iquitos will be the starting point for our tour up the mighty-mighty Amazon to an Amazonian jungle lodge where we'll search for wildlife and see with our own eyes what the Amazonian Rain Forest is all about.