Beach Day in Lima

Ah, finally in Lima. I'd been looking forward to traveling to Lima for the entirety of our trip in Peru because I knew it was on the coast, and I love coastal cities. As a native of a very landlocked state, I love the opportunity to visit the ocean and take in its presence. As soon as I heard that we had a free day today, I knew that I wanted to spend it at the beach. 

As I was prepping my beach day bag, I asked my friend if we should bring our laptops in case we wanted to do some work. She said she didn't want to risk getting sand in them, so we left them at the hotel. Then we got out google maps and were on our way– only an 11 minute walk. But when we reach our "destination", we were standing on a very high cliff and the ocean was far below us. We were at the beach, but not on the beach. It was beautiful, but... inaccessible. After concluding that there was no safe way to get down there on foot, we called an Uber to take us the rest of the way. 

Upon arriving, the beach was beautiful… but it wasn’t what we were expecting. For starters, we were the only people there– at least in our area. Secondly, there wasn’t any sand– only rocks– so I guess we could have brought our laptops after all. After walking a little further down the coastline, we found some surfers who were enjoying the water. But it still wasn’t anything close to the American-like beaches we were expecting. Still, we laid our towels on the smoothest rocks we could find and took in the sun and the ocean breeze. 

In retrospect, we probably could have found a sandy, slightly more populated area of the beach if we knew where we were going and what we were doing. But that’s part of the fun of traveling and exploring a city on your own. You use what you know and make-do with what you have. But if I were to return, I’d ask a local (Hint: Falconi) how to best enjoy my beach day experience.