Lima, City of Mist

In the Peruvian winter you get "garua" a blanket of fog generated by the interaction between the cold, Antartic sourced Humboldt current and the desert. In the summer according to the guidebooks, the sun breaks through....however in Miraflores to my surprise they get lots of mist coming off the sea. It drops the temperature down to bearable and gives European pale winter skin a break! So mist all year round then.

Actually to be fair once you get into bits of the city that are further away from the coast they are bakingly hot with clear skies and it's only the 98% humidity you need to worry about!

Anyway it's good to be back in Peru, albeit only for 2 weeks this time. Sitting waiting for the 8:30am bus to Trujillo the rush hour is in full swing and in these developed bits of Lima, it feels very like the rest of the developed world. Adverts for mobile phones, plenty of handbags and shoe shops, lots of private cars on the world. You could come to this city, stay in the wealthier bits and have no idea how poor parts of it are. But which version is right? Because you could go to Arequipa or Chiclayo and see the same "developed" way of life. Or you can go to the city outskirts and the mountains and see grinding poverty. For me what seals it, is that the only yound people I know who don't want to leave are those whose businesses are deeply linked to their land (guides in the mountains and rain forests). Everyone else from professionals (my language teachers) to casual labour, would jump at the chance to go somewhere else. Which I find sad but understandable.

However, I don't want to get too fixated on poverty to the exclusion of everything else, or I'll stop coming, and this is a vibrant, fascinating country with lots to offer.