Lima Peru Looking Toward Desamparados Railway Station

As I read George Woodcock’s 1959 book about his travels in Peru (Incas and Other Men), I am reminded about what Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick about the City of Kings:

Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of and skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;—it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can’st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.

Even knowing in advance Lima’s reputation as the Gray City, I wound up loving the place. It is a city of saints (count them: four!), churches, culinary delights, and a park full of friendly stray cats (Parque Kennedy in Miraflores). I wound up spending a week there on my 2014 trip to Peru.

If you are interested, you can read my blogs beginning on September 8, 2014 by clicking On to Peru and following subsequent posts.