A Question of Altitude

   Socked in by a fog that never lifted, we morosely perch ourselves near the cliffs overlooking the ocean at a park with a hideous statue of two concrete lovers entwined for a kiss.  This is an “Attraction” as is the upscale shopping center that has a cineplex and North American franchised restaurants.  The sullen gray mass of the Pacific Ocean and the long stretch of deserted beach is below us.  Juana, my girlfriend, seems a little confused about the altitude although she is most intelligent on every other matter.  “Lima is at sea level?” she asks, and I attribute the question to the enduring concern about altitude that was posed every time Peru as a travel destination was broached.  “Notice that large body of water in our immediate vision?”  I ask.  “Notice that long stretch of beach below us?”  Juana still seems confused.  Maybe it’s the long plane ride we have recently endured.  “The ocean doesn’t tilt up just because we have flown to South America,”  I say brightly.

Yet, the Earth as a spinning, lurching, watery globe with the southern half rearing up is somehow planted in her mind.  At night, when the fog is replaced by blackness and we return to the cliff, I am excited to see an electrified cross lit up and stuck in a rock near the water’s edge.  It is a neon-lit, glowing statement about Peru.  “We are simply a Catholic land.”  It is a  statement that we will find to be both true and untrue.  We will find the obvious differences of very distinct geographies - the coast, the mountains and the jungle (la costa, la sierra y la selva).  There is the heritage of African slaves, Chinese coolies and natives that spawn different music, food, art, culture and in the case of the indigenous peoples, persistent, clamoring demands. But in Lima, on our first nights, with my fascination with the fortunes of Pizarro and his mandate from Spanish royalty, I gaze at the roughly equivalent spot where he stuck his wooden crucifix.  How pleased he would be to see its modern electrified equivalent, nothing else ultimately competing for the soul of Peru.  How perplexed he would be by his reversal of fortune here; a bloody conqueror, who razed the land, is now a hero, a cultural explorer, a builder of church and square.  Lima comes better at night.  People rushing around give it a cosmopolitan feeling. The ugly, substandard, concrete high rises are obscured and even the block-long, garishly lit casinos become fascinating for their cultural significance. Still, we are happy to fly south  a day later to the city of Arequipa and really begin the trip.