Most airports blast visitors with a heavy cocktail of jetful fumes and burnt rubber on their first step outside the overly air cooled terminals; but not Lima. Our first step outside swallows us in a soft warm evening air rich with all the aromas of the ocean. It tastes like sugar and intoxicates us like a third pisco sour.
That evening, as we drive along the coastline with the windows down, Lima’s perfume persists relentlessly like a Glade wall plug-in done the right way by Mother Nature. Ocean waves un-peel on the rock beaches in an orchestral timpani. All the other noises of the city are sucked away with each woosh of a wave as it washes back into the ocean.
By day Lima sparkles. The sidewalks were polished the night before by the same lonely man who we see buffing the floors of airport terminals and malls. The buildings are painted in gleaming white, clean cool grey; and the grass is freshly combed an evenly unrolled in the greenest green. Under and overpasses were crusted in glittering mosaic art instead of graffiti. Things only get better with the food. Ceviches were so fresh we could only get them in the afternoon while the fish was still wet from the ocean. Pisco sours come with a scoop of white frothy cloud. It was all perfect, until we asked for an ice cold bottle of water to wash it all down because there was no water; anywhere.
Peru was experiencing such massive flooding that water supply had become contaminated from overflowing rivers. Mudslides had created a national disaster in the mountains surrounding the city and to the north. Any bottled or potable water was being ported out of the city by the truckload, accompanied by military troops for disaster relief. In Lima itself, toilets didn’t flush, and showers and sinks didn’t run. For the brief minutes they did, it usually ran brown. Our hotel supplied ten gallon bins of pool water each day with which we would brush and scrub as best we could. Leftovers were used to refill and flush toilet tanks. When absolutely necessary, we snuck our “showers” in the pool late at night. By day three, many restaurants had shuttered their doors. Where our walking tour gathered, so did a donation tent and an assembly line of volunteers loading up trucks to go north. This city of ten million was rocked and rattled.
As we left Lima for the mountains of Cusco we were left humbled by reminder that no amount of glitter, polish, and green grass can stop mother nature. We are always at the whim of our planet despite our best efforts to believe the opposite.
