La Playa

It's the beginning of March and summer is nearly over in Lima. The uniform stores have been busy, and most kids are back in school. But there's probably a few more weeks of hot weather and as long as it's hot, people will flock to the beach on the weekends. Limeños really do live for "la playa". Because Lima's sky is grey for pretty much nine months of the year, people take advantage of the summer by spending as much time as they can at the beach.


Many Limeños compete with the surfers by going to the local beaches that border the districts of Miraflores, Barranco, and Chorrillos. These beaches sit below the cliffs of the Costa Verde, with the coast highway separating the beach from the hillside. There are about 15 different beaches divided by jetties, with many of them covered in large, round stones but the surfers don't care what's on the shore. Peru is known for its awesome surfing up and down the country's coast, and as proof many of the beaches have Hawaiian names like Waikiki and Makaha. A few of the Costa Verde beaches are more people-friendly, and if people don't want to travel very far, these are the beaches for them. There's also the beach where the fishing boats come in to bring their catches, and the "restaurants" that make and sell those fresh catches. 


Then there are the beaches south of Lima. Every weekend there's a mass exodus to these southern beaches, whether it's just for the day or for the weekend. On Friday afternoons you'll see maids loading up the cars of the weekend beachgoers, everyone wanting to beat the traffic out of town.   


Kiko and I like to go to a public beach called Punta Rocas. It's at the end of a stretch of sand lined with different outdoor restaurants. Each restaurant is basically a wooden shell that only opens during the summer. When you sit on the beach in front of a restaurant, you get an umbrella and two chairs (maybe even lounge chairs with cushions). Each restaurant even has a good sized swimming pool set up on the sand to attract families with kids. While you lounge, you can order food and drinks from a menu and it will be delivered to you on a small plastic table. We recently enjoyed some fresh mixed seafood ceviche and bottles of ice cold Cusqueña beer, a great experience to have on the beach! No more packing up coolers, beach bags, chairs and umbrellas! We just grab our towels, sunscreen, and books, and if we forget our books, we can buy them from vendors who constantly walk by with their endless supply of jewelry, pareos, cotton dresses, DVDs, plastic sand toys, and of course ice cream!


There are numerous Limeños who either own beach houses, have friends or family with beach houses, or rent beach houses, either in a small, older beach town like Punta Hermosa, or in a newer area known as "Asia". Asia is a series of private beach neighborhoods along the coast where people spend their summer weekends, or maybe spend an entire month. Each "neighborhood" has its own amenities, like a clubhouse, pool, and restaurant. Whether families go to their beach houses for the weekend or a longer period of time, they often bring their maids and nannies with them. This way they can enjoy their trip without having to worry about cooking, housekeeping or taking care of the kids. 


There is a commercial shopping and entertainment district in Asia called El Boulevard de Asia. It's a little like Vegas, rising up in the middle of the desert (because even thought it's the beach, the coast of Peru is still the desert). The Boulevard is a large, outdoor mall that includes high-end stores, cafes and restaurants, bars and clubs, and a grocery store. The entire mall is only open for the summer, a period from about New Year's Day until Easter - all of the mechandise is stocked at the beginning of the season and whatever isn't sold is trucked back to Lima when summer is over. If you get a bit antsy at your beach house, you can drive down the highway to the Boulevard, and have some dinner, a coffee or ice cream, or a few drinks while most likely running into people that you know from Lima who are there for the same reason that you are. As the hour pushes midnight, you'll begin to see the parade of clubgoers, mostly young people from about 16 to 30, walking back and forth along the uneven sidewalk. The younger girls totter in their high heels, and are constantly pulling down their tight, black miniskirts, apparently their standard clubbing uniform! The younger guys don't dress up at all, opting for jeans and a t-shirt, often looking like they grabbed the shirt from the floor where it landed the night before. 


When we were there in January, we did what many others do on a typical night. We had coffee with Kiko's sis and brother-in-law, then went into a clothing store that had a DJ playing and were offered free bottles of Peroni beer ("what? a free beer for coming into your store? uh, sure, thanks!") We walked around until our family left, then found a bar where we sat under the stars and enjoyed some delicious, fruity pisco drinks while listening to a Pink Floyd tribute band. We people-watched, and we both saw several people we knew - I saw a friend I had met in Spanish class in '09, and Kiko saw a guy from work and a friend from grade school, who ended up staying to have a drink with us. This friend told us he had a contact at a club called Nikita, so after the band finished playing around 2am, we headed over to the club, even though we weren't dressed for clubbing. Cover charges at these clubs are expensive, and the friend got me in free, saving us 100 soles (about $37, which we would never spend at home for a few hours of dancing, even if there WAS a place to go dancing). This club is where the "older crowd" goes (haha), and it's actually outside amidst pretty, lighted trees. There was a white tarp shading the dance floor, and the DJ played a mix of salsa and American dance music. After dancing pretty much nonstop for almost three hours, we left the club (which was still packed at 5am!) and chose Peruvian-style stuffed baked potatoes as our after-clubbing snack! After a full night acting younger than we are, we ended up back at my sister-in-law's beach house and in bed by 6am. Not something I would do very often, but it really was fun to experience this aspect of beach life!


We got back to the house earlier than most of the people who party at the Boulevard. These folks sleep until the afternoon, then get up and spend the rest of the day on the beach. If you don't want to make the long walk to the sand, you can go upstairs to the roof of your beach house, where there is usually a terrace with some kind of tarp or cover for shade, tables, chairs and lounge chairs, and a small built-in swimming pool. You can build on your roof in Peru because houses are made from concrete, and roofs are flat. It's so different from the beach houses in Newport and Balboa. 


It's kind of lonely being in the city on a summer weekend. There are 12 apartments in this building, and we're the only people in it...everyone else is at the beach!