Happy New Year!!! (Sunday December 31st, 2017)

We left the restaurant and made our way back to the hotel where we had our evening at leisure to enjoy ringing in the new year our way.  

We wanted to experience New Years Eve in Lima, Peru, among the locals.  We've heard that they know how to celebrate, so we wanted to see it for ourselves.  So we decided to walk down to the beach.

We stopped at a convenience store on our way to the beach to grab a six pack of beer and a few snacks.

The convenience stores in Peru don't sell hot dogs, they sell empanadas.  Yum!

Looking at a map, the beach was a straight shot down the street from our hotel, so we left the convenience store and continued on to the park where the beach was (or so we thought).  When we got to the park, we realized that we were high up on a cliff overlooking the beach.  We had a gorgeous view, but we really wanted to get closer.

We decided that there had to be a way down, and we were going to find it.  So we kept walking along the cliff and eventually found some steps leading down.

When we got to the bottom of the steps, we realized that we still had a long way to go.  We were down the first cliff, but there was still another cliff and a highway.  Wow, this was going to be more exciting than we thought!

We met this thing on our walk.  Not sure what it was, but it gave us a little more excitement.

Well, we've made it to the highway!

After 30 or 40 minutes of walking, we came upon another park that appeared to be at beach level.  Yay!  We made it!

But what we didn't realize was that there was still a steep boulder field that we would have to navigate through before we could get to the water.





We finally made it to the water so the boys could enjoy the surf.  They wanted to play in the water so bad.  This was not a nice sandy beach by any means, but it has some nice waves.

From where we were sitting on the beach, we had a 180 degree view of Lima, with the other 180 degrees being the Pacific Ocean. 

Our view to the south. 

Our view to the north.

It was so relaxing to just sit and enjoy the beautiful views of the city.  Even before the clock struck twelve a lot of fireworks were going off around the city.

As the night wore on, the fireworks just kept getting better.

New Years Eve was everything we could have hoped for here in Lima.  We enjoyed over an hour of continuous fireworks all around us as we sat and listened to the lapping waves just below us.  

As we walked back up the rocky shore and reentered the park, there were a lot more people than when we first got here.  Each one greeted us with Feliz Anos as we walked by.  The mood was so cheerful!

We made our way through the park and across the highway, then back up both of the cliffs, through the cliff top park and through the city back to our hotel.  I think of a better way to end a year and begin a new.  

Tomorrow we will return to the United States, but hopefully we will be back to this beautiful country some day.