Lima: home away from home

Is it wrong to begin at the end? Regardless, it’s my blog so I’ll do what I like.

Back from a year in hibernation, let’s get into the story of the summer of 2023…

Jessica and I spent a month traveling around Ecuador. It was truly wonderful, and I’ll get to writing about it…hopefully soon. But, at the end of our time there we headed down to Peru so Jessica could continue her research in Lima (this being the second half of the Fulbright award that sent her to London last year).

For those of you who don’t know, Jessica’s last book (The Kids Are in Charge) was all based on research she did in Lima with the movement of working children. So, from 2012 to 2015 we spent a combined 11 months living there and getting to know our way around the city.

My favorite thing to do used to be to take a random bus for an hour or so (and the buses mostly follow insanely twisted routes), figure out where I was, and then walk home, spending the whole day seeing parts of the city I wouldn’t get to otherwise.

I had some fear that the buses would be less of an exciting adventure than when I’d last been to Lima. You see, on our last visit, in 2015, the city had started to prevent the 6,034 independent bus companies (that’s my unofficial count) from traveling the main street (Arequipa) that runs from Miraflores to the historic center. They set up government run buses that run like normal buses in most of the rest of the world. Boring!

I had a sneaking suspicion that given the eight years between then and now, the whole rest of the city would be running official buses and the beautiful chaos would be gone. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the case. Arequipa remains the only street with the boring buses. In the rest of the city, buses vary in size, speed, and route, but share a couple of common features: (1) they have labels on the sides noting some of the major destinations and streets they cover, and (2) they have a second person who leans out the side and yells about their route to encourage people to jump on. As the bus travels, this worker then goes around and collects money for tickets depending on how far you’re traveling. There’s a fair amount of asking, “Does this bus go here?” and such, but ultimately it all works pretty well, and if you discover the right routes, you can often get from point A to point B without needing to change rides at all.

Sadly, I had no time for getting lost on purpose on this visit. Jessica is still there (she’s in Lima for a month), but I only had ten days to enjoy the city. So, instead of getting to explore new parts of the city, instead this functioned more as a “greatest hits” tour of sorts. A little disappointing, but still wonderful.

As with our previous visits, we rented an apartment in Miraflores, the touristy, ex-patty, young-hip-upper-middle-classy neighborhood along the coast. It’s safe, convenient for transport to lots of places, and…well, it’s our home away from home. We know the streets. We can point out which shops are new, and marvel at which survived the pandemic. All in all, it’s a fun place to be, and a comfortable base from which to explore.

My biggest concern with only a week-plus there was that I wouldn’t get to eat at “all the places.” Well, I didn’t. But, I still ate well. The food in Lima is over the top delicious, varies from damn cheap to reasonably affordable, and comes in great quantity. (In fact, one of the biggest problems is that we often find that we get enough food for lunch that we can’t bring ourselves to also eat dinner. A real loss as there’s so much good food!)

So, a quick rundown of some food highlights:

(1) La Lucha Sangucheria. La Lucha has some of the best sandwiches in Peru (particularly the chicharron, which includes pork, sweet potato, and “salsa criolla”–basically lightly marinated onions). The juices are also tasty. But the fries (made with the especially dense papas huayro), dipped in the aji (pepper sauce) are what really push the place over the top. We used to get food there at least once a week, often more, and the fact that our apartment was only two blocks from the newest La Lucha location made it an obvious first stop. (Also pictured: just a few of the literally thousands of varieties of potatoes grown in Peru, courtesy of the Surquillo market.)

(2) Pollo a la Brasa. Also on the list of “we ate it all the time” classics is pollo a la brasa. There are about ten million pollo a la brasa joints in Peru, each with slight variation, but all serving a pretty standard meal of rotisserie chicken, fries, and some sort of salad accompaniment. We only managed to get in one such meal, but enjoyed a classic at Pardo’s–probably our favorite of the big pollo a la brasa chains.

(3) Ceviche. Of course there had to be ceviche. I don’t normally eat fish. And I’m really weirded out by raw fish. But Peruvian ceviche is kind of amazing. Not only is it marinated just right in the “leche de tigre,” but it comes with camote (sweet potato), choclo (big corn), and salsa criolla. So good. Here you can see some ceviche Jess got paired with a “causa”–a tower of mashed potato, in this case filled with avocado and covered in seafood. Also, while we’re on seafood, we had the best octopus I’ve ever eaten when we took our friends to Punto Azul, another of our favorite places to go in the past.

(4) Desserts. There are so many good desserts available. We hit up Tanta (part of Gaston Acurio’s empire of restaurants) with some friends and shared desserts centered around manjar blanco (Peruvian version of dulce de leche), maracuya (passion fruit), lucuma (a Peruvian fruit used in juices and desserts), chocolate, and plantains. So good. Not pictured: churros filled with manjar blanco from Manolo. The prices may have gone up, but the location on the main drag walking home from almost anywhere in the evening makes them just too tempting…

(5) Arroz con pollo and Arroz con mariscos. Two of the most delicious dishes available in Peru. Both were consumed multiple times during my brief visit. Each is unique, but includes richly flavored rice topped with either chicken or seafood. Again, I don’t really eat that much seafood, but it’s so rich and buttery and amazing that I just can’t stop myself! (Not pictured, but in the same vein: tacu tacu. Tacu tacu is a mix of beans and rice, usually served with some sort of stew of meat or seafood. It’s also thick and rich and amazing. Check it out if you get the chance!)

(6) Nikkei. There’s a huge number of Peruvian/Japanese restaurants. Great sushi (again, not usually my thing) and some truly fascinating mash ups at times. This trip included the pictured flaming scallops, crazy awesome curry gyozas, and several different sushi situations, ranging from traditional standards to uniquely Peruvian ones.

(7) New discoveries. We also had a few new food experiences. One new thing is several high end food courts around Miraflores. These had a variety of cuisines all under one roof…and most of the food we had at these was top notch. We also visited a new restaurant run by the La Lucha folks–Siete Sopas. Each day of the week they have a different soup available, and they always serve caldo de gallina. I don’t think I ever expected to be wowed by chicken noodle soup, but it was really pretty delicious…

(8) Pisco. Pisco, if you don’t know, is made from grapes that are first fermented and then distilled. It’s a pretty unique alcohol. It’s also a source of international dispute with both Peru and Chile claiming to have invented it. (One of the coolest tours I ever did was of a pisco distillery, and in the back room they were packaging bottles with a label that said “Peruvian grape alcohol” to ship to Chile, since Chile won’t allow Peruvian products that claim to be pisco to be sold there.) Anyhow, on this trip, several pisco sours, maracuya sours, chilcanos, and some other concoctions were had. I had a couple of truly excellent pisco sours in addition to the standard street level ones. If you haven’t had one, treat yourself someday. Pisco, lime, sugar, topped with egg white and bitters. Classic. (Pictured is a pisco sour I had at one of the new food halls, Mercado 28.)

(9) Food failures. There were two major food failures on our trip. One was an attempt to visit Jessica’s favorite “menu” restaurant, El Fogon. Menu restaurants generally have a very limited lunchtime menu, where you pick an appetizer and a main dish, usually served with chicha morada (purple corn drink) or some other juice. The ceviche appetizer at El Fogon is pretty excellent and big enough to be a full meal. Then, on top of that you get pasta or chicken with rice and potatoes or whatever your main dish is. And then you’re full for the rest of the day. For about $4. Ridiculous. But, sadly, when we tried to go, El Fogon was closed!!! Failure! (Jess reports that she walked by the other day and it was open…but then she tried to go on a different day to eat there and it was closed again! Crazy!)

Our other major food failure was sadly on day one. We went to the bioferia (weekly farmers market) where we had a habit of buying veggies when we were living in Miraflores in the past. It was there as usual (though smaller than I recalled), and as usual we got various baked goods for breakfast. Sadly, mine resulted in a pretty bad bout of food poisoning, knocking me out for Saturday afternoon and much of Sunday. Ugh.

Okay, okay…enough about food. We did do a few other things while we were in Lima…right? I think. Oh, yeah…

One of the things we did was take Spanish classes for a week. After 8 years of not using Spanish, I was super rusty. It’s embarrassing. Jessica, on the other hand, is quite good. She just wanted to polish up on grammar before getting back into doing interviews with folks in Spanish. So, for the week I was there, that took up the entire morning on Monday through Friday. It was worthwhile, but I also was sad to miss out on time to wander the city.

We also spent two days playing tour guide in the afternoon. One of my colleagues from the school I taught at this past year and her partner flew down to Peru and spent a few days with us in Lima before heading off to Cusco and then the Amazon. It was fun hanging out with Rosie and Heather, wandering, and showing them all the coolest spots in town. (Not actually cool, just places we like. We’re so not cool.) They also encouraged us to eat well and share a ton of great food (see above).

One spot we went with them was the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. We had tried to go on the weekend, but there was a line wrapped around the whole building, so we figured the new exhibit on “COLOR” must be pretty amazing. It turned out to be just kinda ok. Probably the most interesting part was a video of scientists discussing the various ways they use color to study climate, astronomy, health, etc. (Meanwhile, the other scientists stare at the speaker with bored expressions.) In the rest of the exhibit, there were a variety of interesting art pieces, some cool prisms, nifty historical artifacts showing how different artists have tried to conceptualize the color wheel, a look at the use of color in comic-style art, and some trippy spaces with arrays of colorful lights. Overall, a fun experience, but nothing terribly stunning.

More interesting was taking a tour of Huaca Pucallana. This is a pre-Incan ruin right in the middle of Miraflores. It was built by the Lima civilization, taken over by the Wari, and then eventually the Ychsma and the Incas. It’s a giant pyramid of clay bricks, but the bricks are stacked vertically like books on a bookshelf, not lying on their sides. This, along with the narrow gaps between them, helped the structure resist the earthquakes common to the area. It’s the third time I’ve toured there, and I always love the contrast between the ancient structure and the surrounding modern city. It’s not the prettiest ancient structure by any means, but fascinating nonetheless.

Probably the weirdest sight we saw with Rosie and Heather was…the opening of the Barbie movie. There was a huge crowd outside the theater, tons of people in pink, and a gaggle of onlookers. I was, at one point, surrounded by a gang of teenage girls pointing at someone in the crowd screaming to each other that, “Si! El esta!” Someone famous was there…I just have no clue who.

Mostly, though, the week in Peru was spent wandering…just not too many places that were particularly new to me. We mostly just circled past a few of our favorite spots again and again.

Of course, the best spot is Parque Kennedy. This park is the heart of Miraflores. There are usually folks there selling food and drinks, often artists as well, and occasionally big setups for cultural events. On certain evenings, old folks gather in the circle there to dance. But, most importantly, there are cats. So many cats.

On a previous trip to Peru (in 2013), Annie Rose challenged me to pet 10 cats in 10 minutes. I succeeded, but it was a challenge. This time, it would have been even easier. The cats were even more numerous and better cared for. There’s a team of volunteers (with a bit of help from the municipal government) who provide food and water for the cats while also promoting adoption. Most of the cats were perfectly happy to be handled, pet, carried, etc.

I love my cats back home, but it’s pretty wonderful to have so many fuzzy friends so readily available.

Another of our favorite spots is the mall.

No. Seriously.

Larcomar is hands down the coolest mall I’ve ever been to. First, the geography. As you approach it at street level, all you see is a park hanging on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Sweet, right? But as you get towards the edge of the cliff, you can then take stairs or escalators down into the mall which sits in a couple of tiers built into the hillside. Restaurants have decks hanging out over the edge with stunning views, and most of the mall is completely open air. So, that’s the main reason it’s so great. But, there’s a second factor that helps as well: malls in Latin America are not dead. They’re lively, full of people going about their business, shopping, chatting, enjoying an ice cream or coffee or whatever. I could do without the commercial crap, but I love the energy of the place. So, Larcomar’s the spot.

Seriously.

And we spent a ton of time (as usual) wandering the malecon up and down the coast from Larcomar. There’s miles and miles to walk, dotted with plants, parks, cafes, and more. I was a little sad that the paragliding spot was closed (for restoration, it said)–so there weren’t colorful parachutes flitting about above us–and we never came across the huge pack of slack liners that usually haunted the woods along the path, but overall it was still pleasant to walk up and down the coast.

Along the path we passed the Parque del Amor, home to a giant statue of two lovers and lined with mosaic-tiled benches with famous quotes about love.

And we saw “the door.” This door is a mystery. It sits right across the street from the malecon, set into a low wall with a jungle of a front yard clearly visible behind it. The wall makes no attempt to keep anyone out, so what is the door for? Was there once a larger structure there? Is it a gateway to a magical realm? We’ll never know.

Sadly, the property next door has been developed since we were last here, so the door seems to have lost a bit of its magic and seems even a little more out of place than it once was.

Further along the walkway, a lovely park copies the imagery of the Nazca Lines with floral displays…

And we enjoyed a drink and a spot to play a game at the Buenavista Cafe…

One of the things I spent the most time doing on our previous visits to Lima was playing games. On our first trip, I didn’t make an effort to find other gamers, but in 2013 I discovered that there was a thriving game culture in Lima, and I spent an inordinate amount of time at “Club Rath’s Edge,” a gaming club, but at that point, really just a guy, David, who opened up his house to an enormous number of friends 4 or 5 evenings every week. The place was packed every time I was there and the Peruvian gaming scene was just incredibly welcoming. That summer was when I designed the first iteration of both Space Station Phoenix (now published) and Divine Intervention (signed to be published) and tested them with David and others at his “Club.”

By the time we visited in 2015, David had a small shop where the club met. He later opened up a game cafe…unfortunately just as the pandemic hit.

Now he has a new shop, Reinos Olvidados. And just as before, he and his people were the most welcoming group I’ve ever had the pleasure to play with. When Jessica and I walked in one afternoon, David and his friends had just set up to play a game of Spirit Island (a great cooperative game). They first asked us to join them, but we said we didn’t have time (since a 5-player game would have taken 3 or 4 hours). Instead of saying, “Oh well,” and going on, they cleared the game out of the way and pulled out the much faster-playing Guild of Merchant Explorers and made us plop down and play that. Seriously–some sweet people who will do anything to make outsiders feel at home.

(Jess felt a little too at home, joining David in making jokes about me in Spanish that I only half understood. Grrr…)

David asked me to come back the next day when Jess was working and then suckered me into playing a 4 hour-long game, Hegemony. Rodrigo’s expressions here pretty much capture how the game made us all feel…

In the game, I took on the role of the working class, trying to manipulate the government and economy to benefit my folks over the capitalists, middle class, and the state. In the end, Rodrigo managed to sell off enough of his businesses such that I ended up with a vast army of the unemployed and my plans collapsed. Alas.

Overall, it was great to see David again. He’s dealing with some mysterious health issues, and I’m hoping for the sake of the many people he brings joy to that he finds a way back to feeling better soon.

It wasn’t all always the same ole same ole…we did see a few new things in my brief time in Lima.

One new trend I noticed was giant full-building-sized murals. There weren’t a ton of these when we last visited Peru, but there were at least a dozen I saw just in the few days I was there. I liked a few of them…

We also visited one new place, a museum that opened recently. The Lugar de la Memoria is a museum dedicated to remembering the tragedy of the internal conflict between the Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian armed forces in the 80s and 90s. Sendero Luminoso was a violent pseudo-Marxist organization (but, like, the insane kind of Marxists, not like the cool folks who want to help everyday folks have a better life). But the government response went from inept intervention to wholesale massacre over the course of the conflict. Overall, tens of thousands died and tens of thousands more were disappeared.

The design of the museum evidently has been a sight of contention, with debates raging over how much blame the government should be given for the tragedies of the era. We found that it was fairly straight forward in the blame it showered on the Senderistas, but often skirted around directly comparing the government’s heinous actions to those of the terrorists. Nevertheless, if you looked in the right places and read the fine print, the evidence was there. On a list of union leaders killed, there were nearly as many murdered by the government as by the SL. In the gallery of speakers, where you could listen to various people present their stories from the era, there were tales of rape and murder by the Peruvian Army. And a gallery of the disappeared featured victims of both the SL and the army.

The museum also reminded me that one of the streets we often walk, Calle Tarata, a pedestrian area in Miraflores, was largely destroyed by a Sendero car bomb in 1992. I had been aware of that–there’s a big monument in the middle of the street there–but it was good to be reminded of how the conflict was local to Lima as well as being in the mountains (an enormous amount of the dead and disappeared were from areas around Ayacucho).

Moving on from the most depressing to the most joy-filled…

On my last night in Lima, Jess and I went to one of the absolute best bits of Lima, the Circuito Magico del Agua. This park full of fountains comes alive at night with hundreds of families gathering around to wander, enjoy a treat, and watch the “espactaculo.”

We arrived too early to get the full effect, so we took a seat by one of the fountains and played a game on the ipad while watching the sun disappear and the lights come on.

Our favorite fountain, the Labyrinth, was less crowded than usual. This one has various bits that shoot up to different heights at different times and fires jets from a variety of angles on the unsuspecting. Usually there are crowds of folks trying to dodge their way to the center and back out without getting wet, but on this visit, there were only a few people and most of them seemed happy to get wet, making the adventure a bit less exciting and the viewing far less entertaining.

A few of the other fountains…

At the center of the whole experience is one grand fountain, a series of jets lit by ever changing lights…

…that turns into a screen projecting scenes from Peruvian history and culture.

This “espectaculo” looks a bit like this (a few random scenes I videoed)…

It was great to get to see the magic of the waters. But mostly its fun to be around so many people having a good time. Our only regret was that we stupidly didn’t take Rosie and Heather there. (Though, to be fair, it might have been surrounded by cops when they were in town–see below.) In all likelihood, Jess will get them there when they swing back through Lima on the way to the airport.

And overall, it was great to get to visit Lima again, but a little sad. I missed the pace of life I was used to the other times we were there, with tons of time to just wander and get lost. Having only a week made me feel like I had to make intentional choices. A horrible fate, I know. No, it was fine. It just wasn’t the same. Still, a wonderful visit.

When I find the time, I’ll start writing about Ecuador. But why Ecuador? Jessica and I originally thought we’d just travel around Peru this summer, hike in the mountains, etc. But we eventually chose Ecuador (and avoided Peru) for the “fun travel” part of the summer because of the recent political unrest in Peru. (The President was kicked out after he tried to dissolve the Congress, the new president is unpopular and unelected, etc.) We knew we could navigate Lima safely, but earlier in the year there were serious protests and shut downs of transportation and tourism in various parts of the mountains, areas where we would likely have headed. The police crackdown on the protests was violent and deadly, so…Ecuador instead. Things started to heat up again in Peru this summer, so spending more time elsewhere felt like a good choice. One day the police even surrounded the park in Miraflores to prevent protesters from gathering. The protests and police crackdown also prevented us from visiting the historic center in downtown Lima. Stupid cops.

So, it turns out that Ecuador was a good call, both for avoiding nasty police and also because it was just plain amazing. More on that later…