Travel to Lima

upmarket suburbs on the south side of town

Set on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, Lima is the capital of Peru, a bustling modern city with a fair dose of Spanish colonial charm, world-class museums, sophisticated shopping and excellent restaurants.

The historic old town, recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, is filled with (mainly slightly faded) Spanish colonial civic buildings, baroque churches, monasteries and mansions. It’s a pleasant place and well worth exploring.

This central area also contains a wealth of museums, which demonstrate Peru’s extraordinarily rich cultural heritage, with incredible collections of ancient gold, silver, textile and ceramic artefacts.

By contrast to the historic centre, the southern suburb of Miraflores is modern and cosmopolitan, home to the majority of the decent hotels, some with cliff-top views of the shingle beaches, where paragliders and surfers can often be seen.

The neighbouring district of Barranco is filled with restored colonial mansions, art galleries, cool cafes and boutique stores.

Lima is also now considered to be a major culinary centre, with a huge choice of high quality restaurants offering some of the finest cuisine in South America, as well as more down-to-earth local huarique diners which are also worth visiting.

The best time to visit Lima is generally considered to be during Dec-Apr, when the weather tends to be clearer and more sunny.

The city experiences two distinct seasons …

The period Dec-Apr is the warmest time of year, with peak daytime temperatures typically reaching around 26C/79F and nighttime temperatures remaining relatively high at around 19C/66F. The key advantage at this time of year is the higher levels of sunshine, which average out around 6 hrs per day. There’s virtually no rainfall.

The converse May-Nov season is cooler, with peak daytime temperatures typically reaching around 22C/71F and nighttime temperatures remaining relatively high at around 16C/61F. Although rainfall remains negligible, there can be persistent sea fogs which cause the levels of sunshine to drop to less than an hour a day in Jun-Aug (usually early morning, clearing for a bit and then resuming from around noon onwards) and leaving the streets with a kind of damp sheen.

This climate pattern is completely opposite to conditions up in the Andes, which means that it’s impossible to visit Peru and experience ideal conditions throughout the whole of your trip.

Most people end up prioritising the conditions in the highlands and live with whatever the coast has to throw at them. But it does make the shoulder seasons of May and November look all the more attractive, especially given that visitor numbers are much lower than the Jul-Sep peak season.

Note that areas of the coast further south (notably Paracas) experience the same foggy conditions (although not to the same extent as Lima), but locations further north (Trujillo, Chiclayo and Mancora) do not and are usually clear and sunny year round.

Getting there

The Jorge Chavez International Airport (LIM) in Lima is the main flight hub for Peru, with an extensive network of connections worldwide, connecting to domestic flights throughout the country.

The airport is about 5 km north of the old city centre, about 10km from the upmarket southern suburbs of Miraflores and Barranco, where most of the good hotels are located. Connecting transfers usually range between 30-90 minutes, depending on the time of day and the levels of traffic.

Where to stay

The vast majority of visitors to Peru arrive and depart via Lima. Most end up staying here for one or two nights before heading off around the country.

Most people choose to base themselves in the reasonably upmarket southern suburbs of Miraflores and Barranco.

Although it’s rare to include nights in Lima at the end of a trip, we can’t help feeling that the various museums are all the more interesting after one has developed an understanding of and appetite for Peruvian history during a trip.

most travellers pass through too fast