PCH Sudamerica Style (a substandard photo essay)

This photographic journey travels the length of Lima Bay - from the southern tip (Barranco) to Callao (Lima's northern neighbor with the airport and main seaport ...and that's why it's still Callao the city, not Callao a neighborhood in Lima). All but the first two pictures were taken from the backseat of a taxi.

The anatomy of Lima's coast (west-east) is this: ocean, beach, road, cliffs - and on top of the cliffs is the city.



Heading north from Barranco you hit the nice areas - nice homes, nice/huge ocean view condos, nice beaches, good surf spots.




You also hit traffic.


As you head north past Magdelena, the landscape changes. The cliffs are no longer green - they're sand - they've been indunated. And the "beaches" are not really for sunbathing. (I have been quite taken with the word indunated since I first heard The Archaeologist say it back in 2004. Not only is it fun to say, but it evokes awesome imagery.)




But, Peru boasts an amazing rarity - an economy that actually improved between 2009 and 2010. They have a rapidly growing middle class (now I'm not an economist, nor do I really speak Spanish, but from what I think I've gleaned, I might postulate that Peru has got it's own credit bubble thing going and right now it's the Clinton years. I'm not saying that within a decade their housing market will plummet, there will be high unemployment, and the sol will have been awfully devalued - we're so beyond my purview here - I assume there are many x factors like the global economy, culture, who gets elected next, etc. - I'm just saying that from what I think I've heard and from what I think I've seen, credit is rampant in a way that it was not 8 or so years ago). So the indunated oceanfront is getting a makeover - a big reclamation/development makeover. They're planting grasses along the cliffs to help stop erosion. They're smoothing out the beach area to make it accessible, and putting in bike/jogging paths, soccer (futbol) courts, ramada thingies, plus more grass to combat the ...indunation.




So that's what we saw from Barranco to Callao, in the order that we saw it. Here's the final shot:

Oh - and here's a picture of Half-O and The Archaeologist at the beach.


Half-O gets very serious near large bodies of water. I don't know if it prompts pondering the imponderables, or if she's wary of our intentions.