Lima is a city of contrast and food. The Peruvian capital features an alluring mix of people and food from the Amazon, the Andes and the Pacific coast. Follow Walker as he explores Lima’s diverse neighborhoods in search of the tastiest food Lima has to offer.
Tag Archives: Lima
Lima: South America’s Culinary Capital
South America’s Culinary Gem
In the eyes of foreigners, Lima often plays second fiddle to Cusco. Sure it has horrendous traffic, and it’s unsafe in parts, but most Limeños (people from Lima) love their city. And what’s not to like? Bohemian neighborhoods that once housed Peruvian writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa are perched on rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, spring like weather occurs all year around, and welcoming locals will quickly become your best friend. Ultimately, when it comes to singing Lima’s praises, it’s all about the food. Spicy, fresh, organic and raw, Lima’s cuisine is one of the best in the world. It’s gastronomy is a synthesis of everything that is Peru; it takes its ingredients from the Amazon jungle, the high Andes and the Pacific, blending it together with Peru’s multi ethnic make up. The largest number of Asians in Latin America reside in Peru, adding to the flavor of many dishes; Afro-Peruvians, Quechua and Aymara natives, Spanish, Italian and Germans have contributed as well. If you come for one thing, come for the food.
Most tourists give Lima a day, maybe two. They see the somewhat uninspiring streets of Miraflores and then they leave, claiming that Lima ‘isn’t that interesting’ or ‘it’s just a big city’. But that’s their loss. Lima is hot, chaotic and in your face, but it’s also beautiful, cosmopolitan and incredibly diverse. Skipping Lima for the tourist shops of Cusco or the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu would be to miss arguably the most important part of the country; it would be missing Peru at its most sophisticated, contemporary and progressive. While Cusco and Machu Picchu look towards Peru’s past, Lima looks towards its future.
View of Miraflores from the cliffs of Barranco. Miraflores is one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Lima, and is filled with an array of great restaurants, bookstores and ocean views.
Local resident in the neighborhood of Barranco. Barranco feels more like a small Mediterrian town rather a neighborhood within a city of 10 million people.
Barra Cevichera José y Juanita in Lima’s La Victoria neighborhood serves up some of the best ceviche in Lima. Traditional ceviche, like this one, is made with raw corvina (sea bass) marinated in key lime and served with corn and sweet potato. It cost 15 Soles ($5), while delicious ceviche can be found on the street for less than half that price.
Ice cream vendor on the streets of La Victoria, one of Lima’s chaotic neighborhoods south of downtown.
For a few dollars, Parque de las Aguas in Lima provides cheap entertainment with water, light and sound.
Turn of the century architecture around Plaza San Martin, one of the European squares in the city.
The street markets of Ate.
Rock Fish and plantains steamed in a Patioba leaf? This tasty meal can be found in the Amazonian section of the Ceres market in Ate.
The announcer at Brisas keeps the crowd entertained.
Dancers at Brisas del Titicaca performing a traditional dance from the highlands of Peru.
Brisas del Titicaca is a cultural center/restaurant/nighclub that highlights dancing and music from Peru’s many distinct regions.
While out filming in el centro de Lima we ran in to la señorita Mishel Serna, who was crowned Miss Lima 2014. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join in the photoshoot.
Riding the buses though the very chaotic and congested streets of Lima will only cost you a few cents, but they’ll take you on a roller coaster ride you won’t forget for a long time.
The cliffs of Miraflores come alive at sunset. Miraflores is a upscale neighborhood in Lima, Peru, popular with shoppers and tourists.
Local resident at the Plaza de Armas in Centro de Lima.
A young woman performing a song from the central highlands of Peru.
Graffiti covered streets in Quillca, an area with old school bars, underground punk shows, old record shops and more radical bookstores than you can count. This graffiti says “Femicide-74% are mothers of 1 to 3 children-assassinated.”
Buying records in Quillca.
Plaza de Armas at night.
Pre carnival celebrations in Centro de Lima.
Preparing for carnival in Centro de Lima. Carnivals in Peru are know for their water street battles, a tradition that dates back to the 1800s.
Manolo’s is a classic spot in Miraflores that has been serving up tasty sandwiches and churros since 1968. The crispy, sugary churros comes in three flavors, manjar blanco, chocolate and crema pastelera. They are all delicious, so get all three!
More pre Carnival celebrations in Ate.
Ayahuasca is an upscale bar in an old converted mansion in Barranco. The bar features numerous drinks that combine unique ingredients from Peru, such as coca leaves and starfruit mixed with Pisco.
A businessmans store that has been converted into a shrine to Peruvian football. This man spoke nostalgically of the time when Peruvian football was at its height. The last time Peru was in the world cup was 1982.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Walker then majored in International Relations and Chinese at the New School University in NYC. He began traveling during a high school exchange to Argentina, and hasn’t stopped since. Walker has always sought out the more unusual and off the beaten path locations and is combining his love for photography and travel to kickstart a career as a journalist, striving to redefine the profession in rapidly changing world.
From Lima to Rio: The Interoceanic Highway
I traveled for three days on a section of the Interoceanic Highway from the Pacific Coast of Peru to the Brazilian Amazon. The highway continues to São Paulo, Brazil, over 3,900 miles away. The highway spans three time zones, and is the first to cross the entire continent of South America. Many have called it one of the greatest construction projects in Latin America since the Panama Canal. Since its completion, the Interoceanic has raised Peru’s GDP by 1.5% a year. However, the highway has had many detrimental impacts on the local people and environments. The remote Peruvian Amazon was once five to seven days from Cusco Peru by truck. But now the trip takes less than 9 hours. Illegal gold mining and logging has increased exponentially in the last 5 years and residents of Puerto Maldonado, a dusty, frontier boom town, have expressed their concern about the benefits the highway promised to bring.
I asked Malena, a women who worked at the Tarapoto Hostel how the Interoceanic has changed the town. “It hasn’t brought more jobs, it’s actually taken them away,” she replied. “Miners and other people like that just come here, take everything away, and destroy the nature we have here,” Malena added. “The highway has also brought in a lot more delinquency and crime.”
The impact of the highway is being felt especially hard in the remote regions of the Amazon where 15 tribes have been displaced. The Interoceanic now runs through the heart of their homeland, bringing diseases, disrupting wildlife habitat, and ruining their sustainable lifestyle. The Amazon, one of the worlds great ecosystems, is still rich and plentiful, but for how much longer will it remain?
An hour outside of Cusco, the Interoceanic Highways begins its climb over the Andes.
The highway passes through indigenous villages where over 90% of the population still speaks Quechua.
At 15,500 ft above sea level, the pass between Cusco and Puerto Maldonado, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, is one of the highest paved roads in the worlds.
The Highway takes a dramatic turn after reaching the pass, suddenly plunging over 13,000 feet in the span of a few hours.
Brasiléia, located on the border with Bolivia, was in the midst of an intense Dengue and Chikungunya outbreak. City officials handed out pamphlets on the highway through town.
Brasiléia has also been a major transit route for Haitian refugees after the earthquake there in 2010. 20,000 Haitians have already passed through the town, with many more arriving every day. Most leave Haiti for Colombia or Ecuador, passing through the Amazon, Brasiléia, and on to São Paulo, the economic capital of Latin America. A thousand Haitians still reside in a building built for 200 in Brasiléia.
Many parts of Acre, a large Amazonian state in far northwestern Brazil, has been affected greatly by logging interests.
Since 1978 over 289,000 square miles of Amazonian rainforest have been cut down. Since the year 2000, 75% of that has been for cattle ranching. Cattle ranching and soy represent the largest threats today to the Amazon.
Between Brasiléia and Rio Branco, we stopped for gas in Xapuri. This was the birthplace of Chico Mendes, the famous rubber tapper and environmental activist who was murdered by ranchers in 1988. Chico Mendes once said, “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity.”
Dusk on the Acre River, in Rio Branco, a sleepy city in the heart of the rich Amazonian rainforest. Rio Branco sprang up out of the jungle less than a hundred years ago as a rubber tapping outpost.
Pan Pipes and Ping Pong
Sampling a Traditional Peruvian Meal
by Nick Neumann
LIMA, PERU
We met a friendly Limeña while watching the 49ers game at an American sports bar in Lima’s upscale neighborhood of Miraflores. After chatting for a while, Yirka invited us over to her house on the weekend for a traditional Peruvian lunch. So on Saturday morning we met at her house in the outskirts of Lima and headed off to the local market to buy ingredients for Papa a la Huancaína, while grandma prepared the cuy (guinea pig).
We started off by buying Queso fresco, yellow pepper for the Huancaína sauce and lots of potatoes, of course, followed by onions, tomatoes, and avocados for the salad. Produce in Lima is always extremely fresh and delicious, grown on small family farms in the highlands or in the jungle. There were many jungle fruits that neither of us had ever tried before. The friendly fruit vender let us sample a grenadine (a delicious, sweet passionfruit), a dragon fruit and a juicy golden pineapple.
After a quick juice break, we took a detour to the shamanistic section of the market. There are lots of weird things for sale in this part, including dried llama fetuses, dead frogs and snakes, hallucinogenic cacti and piles of coca leaves. The llama fetuses are buried under the foundations of many Peruvian houses as a sacred offering to the goddess Pachamama.
We arrived back at the house and Yirka began preparing the Huancaína sauce and cooking the potatoes. Although the dishes name is derived from Huancayo, a city in the Peruvian highlands, it has become a staple throughout the country. 
The cuy, a traditional food of Peruvian Andean people, was in the oven. Grandma had prepared it simply with a stuffing of various Andean herbs and put it in the oven for about six hours. There isn’t much meat on their tiny bones, and their giant buck teeth are a bit off putting, but they are pretty tasty.
After thoroughly enjoying lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon playing the pan pipes and ping pong with her family.
Growing up in downtown San Francisco surrounded by tourists, hobos and crackheads gave Nick a unique perspective on inner city living. His diverse upbringing conditioned him for a globetrotting life of urban adventure. After traveling extensively through South Asia, he kicked it with Maasai warriors during a four month stay in Tanzania, majored in Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College and recently spent seven months backpacking around South America making documentaries.