Back to Callao

Sunday is a good day in Lima.
It's quiet.
There's very little traffic.
Yet stores and restaurants are open. So the city is both alive and more peaceful than usual.
The other thing we've discovered about Sundays in Lima is that if you venture out to different parts of town, you're very likely to stumble into some festival or cultural distraction of one type or another.
Today was no exception.
It started off slowly. We'd celebrated Britt's birthday last night with a few friends, plenty of food and drink, and a late night.
Plus, the day was promising to be very gray.
But it seemed like a good day to visit to Callao, anyway. (See earlier post about Callao for more info.)
Only Valerie had been there before. She wanted to show the guys the old fortress (built in the 1730s or so to protect Lima from pirates) and to explore the old fisherman's neighborhood, which has recently been renovated.
Shortly after we arrived at the Felipe Real Fortress, the sun came out turning the day more bright and gay.
We managed to short-circuit the standard tour (with guide), because one of the guides recognized Valerie from her last visit. Instead, we poked around the most interesting part of the fortress, which is called the King's Tower, and is essentially a fort-within-the fort. It comes complete with its own drawbridge, cannons, tower, and dungeon.
After this visit, we walked toward La Punta, which is the point of Callao that juts into to ocean. On one side is the large commercial port and smaller leisure port. On the other side of the point is the ocean, with a nice "malecon" boardwalk and a nature preserve full of birds of various types (boobies, cormorants, pelicans, egrets, gulls, and such).
The neighborhood of La Punta has old mansions from the early 20th century. It also has lots of smaller houses, many of which were built to house fishermen. They are brightly painted in all sorts of colors. They say that this is due to the fact that the fishermen used leftover paint from their boats, which explains the bright colors and use of multiple colors on one house.
Since the sun was out, these were particularly jolly.
As we were exploring these, we stumbled across a central square, where a big stage had been set up, along with food stands and tables. There was live music. The singers were, let's be honest, mediocre. But the mood was jolly, and the food stands offered all sorts of wonderful choices - roasted chicken, ceviche, and other classic Peruvian dishes, such as lomo saltado (slices of beef, grilled sweet peppers and onions, fried potatoes, and rice), papa rellana (mashed potato stuffed with meat, olives, egg), and causas (mashed potato rolled around a mix of avocado, seafood, mayonaise). Just what we needed.
So, it was lovely. And it was a reminder that there are lots of interesting and underappreciated neighborhoods of Lima. This one rarely gets a mention in the guide books, which is a shame.





In the fortress of Felipe Real

These ladies were serving up wonderful ceviche.

Just a reminder that the fortress at Callao was originally built to protect the city from pirates.

Colorful houses

less glamorous aspects

No new adventures to relate really, but I do want to set the record straight about one thing. Several people have commented to me that our life here in Peru sounds very exciting and glamorous.

The truth is that being an expat in Lima is a mixed bag. Yes, the travels, food, nice apartment, and long summer are all pretty wonderful. Being by the ocean is fun, especially since it involves things like surfing lessons and paragliding opportunities.

But, there are also down sides. Here are a few that top the list of negatives:

1. Pollution. Lima is more polluted than many other Latin American capitals, including Mexico City. The water, which comes barrelling dramatically down from the mountains, is loaded with heavy metals from the mining industry. The particle pollution in the air, primarily from the extremely high number of old cars/buses, high sulpher content in fuel, and heavy use of diesel, exceeds the World Health Organization standards by a factor of 9. This, combined with the local fog, leads to a lot of smog. And there's a constant layer of soot on everything.

2. Terrible drivers. I've been told many Peruvian drivers never take a test to get their license, they just pay a bribe to someone. This combines with a lack of stop signs and traffic lights, a use of horns rather than turn signals, and a prevailing "me first" attitude on the part of the locals. The result is traffic anarchy, where every intersection becomes a game of chicken and the the bigger/bolder/louder car tends to prevail.

3. Red tape and corruption. Bureaucracies everywhere can be very maddening. Peru is no exception. There's a lot of waiting in line, and getting the run-around when you try to deal with either government bureaucracy or basic services. We spent a day going to 3 phone company offices and waiting in line. We never were able to get a cell phone service.
Our car has been trapped in customs since January. We've heard two stories of individuals who never did recover their vehicles (one minivan and one motorcycle) after having them shipped to Peru. If we'd known, we would have left our Rav-4 in DC with friends or sold it and bought something here. From what we've been told, the expectation is that you pay off the proper authorities to help expedite the process. We haven't, and we're still waiting...

4. Fish fog. This is a fascinating phenomenon. There is a fish processing plant near the port of Lima, evidently. When conditions are just so, the fog rolls in from the ocean, picks up the odors from that fish processing plant, and carries them all across the city for miles and miles. The result can be like living inside a big bowl of bouillabesse - or worse.

5. Urban growth and poverty. Lima is BIG. There are more than 8 million inhabitants, and the growth rate is greater than 2% per year. Much of the growth is due to the influx of poor people looking for work (in the past, they were fleeing the Shining Path violence). Nearly 40% of the population lives in severe poverty, generally in shanty towns on the outerparts of the city - though there are poor parts closer in as well. 11% of the population has no access to clean drinking water. Only 10% of the city wastewater is treated - the rest goes directly into the river or ocean. The shanty towns consist of roughly made housing, basically shacks. Generally, these start out with walls made of woven mats or corrugated plastic or metal. When they can afford it, the inhabitants build up the walls with bricks or cement. They tap into electrical wires, where possible. The city eventually brings in electricity, but most do not have running water or sewage.

Shanty town on the outskirts of Lima. Built on a very unsolid foundation of sand/dirt.

Fish fog.









Traffic, including several "combis" - an unregulated form of transportation. Inexpensive and very necessary for people to get around. But there are no pollution standards, and these tend to spew vast quantities of dark exhaust.






Ready-made housing, for those who can afford it. Otherwise, they buy housing supplies brick by brick.










Transit police. Too few of these around, and their method seems to snarl traffic more often than not.








Waiting in line. A national pastime.









A middle-class section of Lima.







Enough grousing. The next post will be more upbeat.

Callao

Callao is a neighborhood of Lima located to the NW of the old historic center. This is where the ports (leisure and cargo) and international airport are located. It's also where our poor car is sitting idly, caught in bureaucratic/immigration tangles from which it may never emerge - but that's another story.

The sections around the airport and cargo ports are not especially pleasant. In fact, the port section is said to be quite dangerous. But, at the very end of Callao, where the land makes a peninsula known as La Punta, there is a very pretty residential section. It includes some very lovely mansions left over from the early 20th century when wealthy Limenas built their vacation houses here. There's also the pleasure port with its Yaught Club.

Near la Punta is a massive fort, called Castillo de Real Felipe. It was originally built in the 1850s to protect the city from pirates. It is shaped like a pentagon, with guard towers in each corner. There are two large towers within the fort, which offered a second layer of protection if the invaders made it past the outer walls and cannons of the fort.

One of the fort's most famous moments was on May 2, 1866, during the Battle of Callao. This is when the Spanish fleet tried to reconquer Peru, which had become independent. The Peruvians were allied with Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and managed to successfully fend off the Spanish attack with no real damage to the city. It is considered a moment of great victory, and there are numerous streets and avenues in Lima named Dos de Mayo.

The fort is currently unoccupied, but it is used for naval drills and ceremonies. There is a modern conference center in the middle (something of an eyesore, in fact). The fort also contains a military museum, filled with the usual displays of cannons, weapons, uniforms, and bronze busts of military leaders.

In 1746, an enormous tsumani, caused by an earthquake, covered the entire port of Calloa, the fort, and much of the La Punta peninsula destroying or damaging much in its path.
This sign warns about moving to higher ground in case of an earthquake. The map to the right shows the wide flood zone, which includes all of La Punta.

The old mansions of La Punta remind many people of Havana. I've never been there, but they reminded me of San Francisco, particularly since it was a foggy afternoon.

One of the towers within the fortress contains a dungeon, full of labyrinthian corridors

This display of ladies' hats caught my eye, because of its sharp contrast with the rest of the fort, which was very masculine and militaristic.

There was a funeral service taking place while we were visiting, with guards in dress uniforms, drums, and plenty of pomp.

LIma on a sunny day

Lima is famous for its foggy, overcast weather. And that does seem to be the prevailing situation in the winter. But since we've been here, the sun has shown every day. We arrived in January, in the midst of summer, and the days remain very summer like even now that it's fall.
One of the advantages of the Lima sunshine (which tends to come with 75 degree days, by the way) is the way it brings out all the bold colors of the city. People are not afraid to paint their houses in bright hues of red, blue, ochre, or other colors. And they contrast colors in ways that would shock your average Washingtonian.
Here are just a few examples.

Food

If you eat out in Lima, you are pretty much bound to have a great meal. The food is fresh and interesting, with all sorts of fine combinations of flavors.

Eating in is a different story, especially when you don't really know your way around the pickings at the supermarket. Much of the food there is very familiar, but there are surprises, too. Feeling adventurous, I often pick out food items just because they look interesting, or attractive. Here are some examples.

I bought these thinking they were sweet peppers. They were deceptively smooth skinned when I purchased them. Of course, they are not sweet peppers, but rather the firey aji. Luckily, I figured that out before adding them to a meal.

These tubers or roots (I'm not sure which) come in a variety of colors. They look like a cross between a carrot and a potato. Since we like both, and they came in such pretty colors, I bought a batch. It turns out that they are not terribly interesting - sort of like a bitter turnip.



This happy display contains includes one success and two flops. The tiny limes are wonderful. The skin is very fine, and they are filled with juice. Great for making pisco sours, if we knew how to do that.
The middle fruit looks like a pear and smells really good. But inside, it looks more like the fruit of a prickly pear, and has even less taste.
The top two are called limon dulce, sweet lemons. Sounds promising, like a good source of lemonade. But in fact, they don't have much taste, and what they do have is uninspiring. Oh well.



Here of course is one of Lima's best offerings - the basic mango. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes - all of them wonderful. We try to eat some every day.











Peru is famous for its huge variety of beans.
We are very fond of the local Lima bean, a bigger version of the ones you find in the frozen food section of American grocery stores.
I bought these fava beans purely for looks. It's hard to tell in this photo, but they look like very pretty river stones, with swirls of color. We haven't tried them yet.





Finally, I bought these simply because I couldn't resist the name, Canario. How charming. They look like the French flageolet beans. But who knows?

... to be continued...