Lima

Fog and cliffs

In Lima, you meet the sea from a clifftop before you ever reach the sand. The malecón, the seafront promenade through Miraflores and Barranco, runs along the top of sheer cliffs, and the coast road and pebble beaches below are known as the Costa Verde. On a good wind day, paragliders take off from the promenade and glide along the cliffs while surfers wait for waves below. In the southern-hemisphere winter, humidity climbs and a thick fog hangs low in the sky, often leaving the city gray even at midday. When summer comes the fog clears, and around sunset people fill the promenade benches to watch the sun go down into the Pacific.

The historic center, from Plaza Mayor

Lima's historic center (Centro Histórico de Lima) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On Plaza Mayor, where the city was founded, stand the Cathedral of Lima (Catedral de Lima) and the Government Palace (Palacio de Gobierno), and the changing of the guard takes place in front of the palace around midday. As you walk Jirón de la Unión from the square to Plaza San Martín, look up: wooden balconies from the colonial and republican eras hang from the upper floors. Nearby, the Church and Convent of San Francisco (Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco) is known for its catacombs. Down a narrow stairway, human bones lie neatly stacked in the underground passages of what was once a cemetery.

An adobe pyramid among the apartments

Walk through residential Miraflores and a stepped, earth-colored mound suddenly appears between the apartment blocks. This is Huaca Pucllana, built of small adobe bricks and straw by people of the ancient Lima culture for ceremonies and burials. Listed hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m., closed Tuesdays, and general admission is S/15. At night you can see the adobe walls lit up, and you can have a pisco sour at the restaurant on the site. With another day, head south to Pachacamac. The sanctuary sits at kilometer 31.5 of the old Panamericana Sur, and in its museum's words, the oracle of Pachacamac has watched over it for more than 1,200 years. Adobe temples are scattered across the desert hills, on a far larger scale than the huaca in town.

Museo Larco's open storerooms

Museo Larco collects artifacts from pre-Columbian Peru. What sets it apart is its storeroom, the kind of space most museums keep closed. Shelves hold 30,000 catalogued ancient ceramics, and you can walk the aisles between them yourself. Vessels shaped like human faces and animals go on and on, so instead of a few hand-picked pieces, you come face to face with the sheer size of the collection. A separate gallery holds a collection of erotic ceramics about sexuality in ancient Peru. The museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. (until 6 p.m. on a few dates over the holidays), and general admission is S/50.

From ceviche to Central

For your first meal in Lima, go for ceviche (cebiche): raw fish marinated in limón juice and seasoned with chili and salt. In 2023 it was inscribed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list. At a cebichería, the tangy marinade is sometimes served on its own in a glass as leche de tigre. The food here also carries Lima's immigration history. The wok cooking of Chinese immigrants became chifa, Peru's own take on Chinese food, and you can still trace it in lomo saltado: beef stir-fried over high heat with onion and tomato, served with fries and rice. For a special meal, there's Central in Barranco, which turns Peru's altitudes and ecosystems, from the sea to the Andes and the Amazon, into a tasting menu. It was named No. 1 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2023. To drink, the classics are the pisco sour and the chilcano, both made with pisco, a grape brandy.

Miraflores to Barranco

Miraflores, home to many of the city's upscale hotels, is a neighborhood of parks strung along the clifftop. In Parque del Amor, a huge sculpture of a couple embracing in a kiss lies stretched out. Keep walking south along the promenade and you'll reach Barranco. Barranco is a bohemian neighborhood of stone-paved streets, murals and contemporary art galleries. The Bridge of Sighs (Puente de los Suspiros), a wooden bridge over an old slope down to the sea, comes with a story: hold your breath and make a wish the first time you cross, and it'll come true. The stairway below runs down to the sea, and after dark the neighborhood's bars and peñas (live music bars) light up one by one.

Before you head to Machu Picchu

Cusco is about 1 hour 15 minutes from Lima by plane. At more than 3,399 meters above sea level, it can bring on altitude sickness if you fly straight up from the coast. Take it easy on the day you arrive, drink water often even if you're not thirsty, and skip alcohol for the first few days. You reach Machu Picchu Pueblo (Aguas Calientes) by train. With PeruRail, it's about 1 hour 45 minutes from Ollantaytambo and about 3 hours 30 minutes from Poroy station near Cusco. In the Andes, April to October is the dry season and November to March the rainy season, so if your dates are flexible, go in the dry months.

What to eat

• Ceviche (at a cebichería)
• Lomo saltado (beef stir-fry)
• Anticuchos (beef-heart skewers)
• Picarones (squash doughnuts)

Handy tips

• Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has most of Peru, Lima included, at travel alert Level 2 (refrain from travel); parts of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Junín, plus La Convención in Cusco region, are at Level 3 (leave the area). It also reports worsening clashes between organized crime groups in central Lima's commercial districts, so check the Peru page on 0404.go.kr before you go.
• Buy Machu Picchu tickets ahead on Peru's official government ticket site (tuboleto.cultura.pe). In-person sales happen only at the ticket office in Machu Picchu Pueblo, capped at 1,000 tickets a day; you have to buy them yourself, in person, and they're for entry the next day only.
• From the airport into town, use an authorized airport taxi or the Airport Express Lima bus. The bus stops at four central points in Miraflores, and fares start at S/15.