Cerro San Cristobal

Took my trip up to Cerro San Cristobal on Thursday.

Left for Lima Center after work (around 1pm). What an interesting place. It’s a mix of commercialized, high class metropolis with old, stately cathedrals, and public buildings, and then the not-so-pretty side of hole-in-the-wall (in a bad way) restaurants, tight streets and alleyways, beggers and street venders. I was alone and had my camera on me (neither of those things is good to be in Lima Center) so I was very worried/wary. Luckily, except for the minor fact of me being Chinese, I think I looked like a bum.

Cinco soles to board a tour bus going up the cerro. The cerro (large hill) itself was an interesting climb– I don’t know how the heavy lump of a bus managed to heave up those steep, narrow streets. It really felt like a different world, winding through that colorful poverty that was right outside the bustling center. (In the past, the government initiated a huge beautification project and decided to paint every single house in the cerro a different color. Crazy, but it worked.) When we reached the very top, we found a large cross, with a place to light candles at its base. I hurried to take pictures, thankfully, because after ten minutes the clouds completely closed us in, and we left in white obscurity. The view wasn’t that fantastic; in winter the weather is humid and cloudy, but in summer supposedly you can see all the way to the sea.

Strolled around Lima Center for a while longer to snap photos of some places I missed the first time I went with my group because my battery had run out. Left around 5pm in a chama; paid a sol twenty for a never-ending bus ride all the way to Av. Tomás Marsano.