I’ve traveled to very few countries in Latin America. It’s very typical for me to be talking to someone from Europe and realize that they are more well-traveled in the region than I am, despite coming from the area. I’ve only traveled to Argentina a few times (although I only visited Buenos Aires a few years ago, while I was already living in Germany), and Sao Paulo briefly for a concert. Never been to Perú, never been to Bolivia, never been to Colombia.

So it’s actually also a bit funny that my first time in Perú happens also when I’m living so far away. I could have easily traveled before while I was in Chile, but I never did. Anyway, here is how it went.

Prepping the trip

Earlier this year I won a small fellowship to do fieldwork. The project I applied to was a paper I’ve been developing, on and off, since 2023, about how conflict-related violence during the 80s and 90s in Perú affected women’s political aspirations, i.e., how many women were running for office, and how electorally successful they were. I found some cool data to work with on this, but I needed some additional information to make the paper a bit cooler — information that was a bit difficult to obtain from far away.

So I applied to this fellowship, I won the funding, and I started preparing for my trip to Lima. Preparing maybe is an overstatement; I actually prepared very little. I sent a few emails to some people I wanted to meet, saved some addresses of a couple of government offices I wanted to visit, and most importantly: mapped all the nice cafes Lima has to offer. Because drinking coffee and eating delicious food is a very important part of doing fieldwork, of course.

While I was deciding the dates of the trip, for which I was a bit constrained as I have to submit this paper in like two days (I won’t manage, of course), I thought it’d be super nice to make it a joint vacation with someone else from Chile, so I told my friend Vero if she wanted to tag along and she agreed.

We stayed at Casa Andina Select in Miraflores. Originally, the travel agency that was helping me with the trip had booked me a hotel in the city center, but after talking with some people from Perú they told me it wasn’t a good idea to stay there. Later on, I realized that they were true. So fortunately, the travel agency agreed to change the hotel booking, which was a great choice as the hotel in Miraflores was super nice, had a jacuzzi and sauna, and a very good continental breakfast. 10/10 no notes.

Lima highlights

On Sunday, when I arrived in Lima (Vero was arriving later that day), I visited the LUM Museum. Actually, it’s not only a museum, as they also have archives and services for researchers. I ended up going there like four times throughout the week, but this first time was to visit the exposition.

The museum focuses on the violence that occurred during the internal armed conflict, both state and insurgency inflicted. The circuit is quite chronological: they explain the events that first triggered the violence in May 1980, how it spread from the Andean regions, and the questionable state response that resulted in multiple human rights abuses. It’s definitely worth visiting: the building is quite impressive (sort of brutalist-like), and the collections are very well put together. It also has an amazing view to the Pacific Ocean.

On Monday evening we went to the Circuito Mágico del Agua. One of the receptionists at the hotel recommended it, and it didn’t disappoint. It is a huge park with water fountains, and at 19.15pm daily, they have a light show. It can get a bit crowded, but we got there literally at like 19.14 and there was no line, as most visitors were already inside waiting for the show to start. The perks of being late-ish, I suppose.

On Tuesday, we went to the city center. Here I understood why it wouldn’t have been convenient to stay here: not because it was particularly insecure or anything (I didn’t think it was), but because they close the streets either due to small protests, big crowds (there were a lot of school children doing museum visits during this time), or just because. So actually calling taxis/Ubers in that area was impossible. Moving from there to the places I needed to go would’ve been a pain.

In the city center, we visited the Basílica de San Francisco and its catacombs. The church itself offers a tour that lasts for about 45 minutes, and it was really cool, so I don’t advise people to take the tours that are offered in front of the church for like 5 times the price. Pictures were not allowed inside the convent or the catacombs, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one that it was amazing.

After the catacombs we visited Chinatown. That area was really really crowded and a bit chaotic. It was similar to Meiggs in Santiago, and only a single street (picture below) felt like a proper Chinatown.

On Wednesday, we visited Huaca Pucllana, a pre-Incan archeological site. My friend Vero had already visited this place before, but apparently it underwent major upgrades in the last few years (and we later got aware that it was actually closed not that long ago). So now you can visit way more places inside the site than when she visited it around 7 years ago.

You have to take a tour mandatorily, but the same site has tour guides in both English and Spanish. And the tour was actually amazing: the tour guide explained a bunch of things, not only related to the site but to the pre-Incan culture and the later Inca occupation. Tour guides here are no joke; apparently you have to take a bunch of tests to be certified as a tour guide. We learnt that tour guides tended to be historians, teachers, and so on, which made sense considering the high-quality of the tours. For noisy people like us, who love knowing stuff, it was great.

After visiting the Huaca, we went to La Panchita, a very famous traditional restaurant. We ate some fried yucas as an entrée, and then I ordered a lomo saltado (I had a very strict list of things I wanted to eat while in Lima and this was one of them of course). I ended up eating like 1/3 of the plate but I managed to take the rest for takeaway.

On Thursday we went back to the city center to visit the Museo Electoral y de la Democracia, which was recommended to me by one of the staff members of the LUM Museum. The museum didn’t have a proper tour, but there were a few staff members willing to explain things to us (I say willing but actually they were EXCITED, were probably the only non-schoolchildren they had seen in a long time visiting the museum). After that, we visited the Museo del Café Peruano, which we saw on our first visit to the city center but forgot to pass by. It’s not actually a museum but a cafe, but they have very knowledgeable baristas who explained to us a lot of things related to the coffee process in Perú, along with a particular brewing method they use. I tried the kopi luwak coffee, which is a type of coffee bean fermented in the intestines of a civet. It’s not gross at all (I swear); it was actually one of the best coffees I’ve ever had. You can read more about that here.

After our coffee experience, or should I say my coffe experience because my friend Vero doesn’t drink coffee, we visited Museo Larco, a pre-Columbian art museum. They have quite an impressive collection of both ceramics and jewelry, along with an erotic gallery. The entry ticket is a bit pricey, I think around 12 Euros per person? — definitely European prices but then I knew it’s actually a private museum so it makes sense I guess.

Inside the museum there was a restaurant. As it was past lunch time, we decided to go there and it was a great choice. I ordered some asado de tira with mashed potatoes, and a torta tres leches as dessert.

Yesterday (Saturday) we went to the south of Miraflores, to a district called Barranco: a more classical area, full of buildings that are more traditional-colonial. The weather was really nice, as you can see, although there’s not much to do there besides visiting the coast and eating (we did both).

Lastly, for cat enthusiasts like myself, I strongly recommend visiting Parque Kennedy, home of dozens of cats, just living their best life. Our hotel was pretty nearby so I ended up passing by a bunch of times. The cats look great and very well fed.

What about research…?

Okay so I visited a lot of places and ate a lot of delicious food but I actually came here to work (yikes). So, the work-related things I did:

I visited the newspaper archives at the National Library of Perú. The location I visited was just for research-related endeavours. They don’t have attention for the general public, so it doesn’t feel like an actual library, but that’s okay. I had to get a researcher certification to enter (which was sad because it didn’t involve an actual credential, just a registration that was linked with my name, so I didn’t get a card or anything…it would’ve been a great souvenir).

The staff from the newspaper archives were really nice and helpful, and they even provided me with a full dataset of newspaper headlines related to conflict-related events (which was actually what I came there to do). They probably saved me like 5 months of work that I was planning to give to a research assistant based here after I got a sense of the information they had.

As I said before, I also ended up going to the LUM Museum almost every day. They gave me their newspaper repository (I had to buy a hard drive for this as I forgot mine at home), and I also visited their documentation center where they have a bunch of books and newspapers related to the conflict period. The museum staff had an amazing disposition and they helped me a lot so I’ll be forever grateful to them if (or should I say when) this paper gets published.

The fieldwork experience was better than I expected. When I did fieldwork in Argentina a couple of years ago I ended up a bit traumatized as people were not nice at all (should I be surprised, though…) and I’m pretty sure I almost got my identity stolen by supposedly police officers who started asking questions and taking suspicious pictures of my passport when I was leaving from the airport back to Berlin lol. But everyone was so nice here. I’m also a bit conflicted about the fact that researchers come here to do fieldwork and get data and bother people but in the end people in the country get nothing in return, but actually I found that most people I talked to (from the library, from the archives, from public institutions, etc.) were quite grateful that there were people who still research these topics (I’m people).

My overall assessment of this brief time in Lima is that I had a blast. The food was delicious, I found everything very cheap (you could eat in
a very fancy restaurant for 25 Euros per person), the people were very kind, and the city was walkable and friendly. My only complaint is the hellish traffic jams — hope they can open more subway lines in Lima because public transport is definitely fighting for its life with the number of people living here, let alone the quantity of cars. For a next visit I’d definitely like to go to Cusco as people here have talked wonders about it. And a note to myself on this regard is that if I want to go, I should make it happen in the next couple of years as I don’t think my stamina will last for much longer lol.