I would never have imagined that there is a city like Lima, Perú.  According to Lonely Planet, Lima averages one hour of sunshine per day from the beginning of June till the end of September.  All I can say is that Lonely Planet is being very charitable.  I don’t think I’ve seen an hour of sunshine, all told, in two weeks.  Every day from daybreak to nightfall the sky is a solid, uninterrupted mass of clouds and fog.  A couple times here recently, the image


of the sun was visible momentarily through the cloud cover, and I could feel the warmth, which gave me soon-to-be-disappointed hopes that it would get sunny.  Lonely Planet also reports a daily high of about 69º in the months of the Peruvian winter, July, August and September, but 60º would be more like it, annoyingly cool in the absence of sunshine. Despite the cloudiness and fogginess, however, it never rains a drop in Lima, the average annual precipitation being a mere millimeter or two.  Sometimes there is a trace of moisture on the sidewalk in the morning, dew I suppose.

Probably most people don’t realize it, but Lima is in the midst of an awesome desert, the Sechura Desert, fully as terrible as the


Sahara Desert, only smaller and not as famous.  Both north and south of Lima, almost the entire length of Perú, which is more than 1000 miles, along the shores of the Pacific Ocean, there is an unbroken succession of mountainous dunes. Just half a dozen


towns constitute minor oases in this otherwise God-forsaken panorama.  The unmitigated desert is probably an important factor in perpetuating Perú’s sluggish economy. 

These geographical conditions are created by a maritime current, called the Perú Current or the Humboldt Current, which flows north along the Pacific Coast of Perú and Chile.  The Perú Current is the locale of the world’s greatest oceanic upwelling.  Because of the action of the winds in this region, cold water rises from the depths of the sea, carrying nutrients, which are remains of perished plant and animal life that have settled from above.  From these remains spring new generations of plant and animal life.  This makes Perú a great fishery, but keeps the coastal area rainless, cool and cloudy, a circumstance that has given rise to the depressing, apparently age-old desert landscape of these parts, which continues south of Perú also, for another 1000 miles along the Chilean coast, to Santiago and perhaps beyond, going by the name of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

In May, 2004, I made my first visit to Lima, traveling down by bus from Los Angeles in a 12-day odyssey.  I actually came to look Lima over with a view to moving here, on the assumption that its latitude of only 12º south necessarily kept it warm all year long.  Lima was attractive because of what I fancied were the low prices.  How wrong I was on both counts!

I would never consider remaining in a city that is nearly 100% cloudy 4 to 6 months of the year.  Furthermore, Lima, though definitely cheaper than California, is actually more expensive than Argentina, Uruguay or Paraguay.  I can’t think of a single reason to stay, though I’ll have to admit that the city’s infrastructure is altogether decent.  There are many substantial neighborhoods and some truly fashionable ones.

So tomorrow I’m off to Iquitos, on the Amazon River, in eastern Perú, beyond the Andes. 

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