Living in Peru : your everyday companion

By Larry J. Pitman

Lima on the brink of winter. Somehow the image of living in South America doesn’t include cold foggy days. And yet it is just the way Lima is in the winter.  It is the beginning of July, and the cold season is beginning. Cold here may mean down to 12 degrees Celsius (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit). Not really that cold by European or North American standards. But all things are relative.

Of course everyone here talks about the weather and especially so when it is cold. Our sky will soon be filled with fog. Sunshine will be a thing of the past.

You can sense the city adjusting to the low temperatures. Just as an organism slows down with the cold, Lima does too. Taxi drivers tell me that these winter months are no good for them. People just want to stay home.

Personally, I love this time of the year. It reminds me of where I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, our summers were often characterized by foggy, windy days and very cold nights. Even the high humidity in Lima is the same.

We live along the coast in Barranco, where the fog hangs, and I love to see it swirl around, obscuring buildings and making them much more mysterious. It is not as thick as London or the Central Valley of California, but certainly enough to make everything look different.

Limeños dress appropriately. Mufflers, coats and gloves will soon appear. If you walk around without all this, people tell you to need to bundle up in order to avoid getting sick.

Well, I just love to get out and walk in this stuff. There is something about a cold foggy day that makes me want to move. Then there is the reverse pleasure of coming in from the cold to a warm comfortable room. Perhaps it is the pleasure-pain principle in action.

With the cold weather, we’ll see in the stores stocks of Panneton, the Italian sweet bread with bits of fruit in it. Peruvians love this bread,particularly when it is accompanied by a steaming cup of hot chocolate. It is a reward for suffering through the cold and how sweet it is! That reminds me that I must go out and get us a Panneton. For some reason they just don’t seem to last long in our household.

One of the miracles of Lima, though, is that in just a few minutes, actually 30-40, you can find a completely different climate. Lima is on the coast located on a narrow strip of land that gives way to foothills and mountains. Just move away from the coast, into the mountains, and the climate is sunny, warm and dry. So the wonderful thing about winter in Lima is to schedule a brief trip out to enjoy the sun.

How much do we appreciate the sun when we haven’t seen it for a while?  For me, the pleasure is immeasurable. My only complaint is that we don’t get out of Lima often enough. It is hard to tear ourselves away for a weekend or a Sunday, and yet it is so wonderful when we do.

I used to live in Hawaii and was very bored with the continual sunshine with perfect temperatures day in and day out. I often yearned for an occasional foggy day; now my wishes have been granted.

So pardon me while I bundle up and get out to enjoy our wonderful foggy weather.