Thanks to the six-hour time difference it didn’t take much to wake me at sunrise, i.e. well before six. As it happened the toodle-ooh of west Peruvian doves pulled me out of bed and became my first lifer of the trip. These are the size and build of our collared doves with a prominent white wing patch; they are the dove of the coastal strip. They started a 20-lifer day, which is good for a mega-city but bad for a birding trip. I was caught between two stools. Contrary to expectations though I didn’t miss a single species.
Not far from the hotel a raucous, explosive series of notes alerted me to scrub blackbirds flitting between the urban trees. Then even without following a map, I found the only green space in Miraflores and house wrens soon followed on to the year list. A long-tailed mockingbird heralded a flood of the rest of the lifers; southern beardless tyrannulet, amazilia hummingbird, Harris hawk, bananaquit – in its own odd family between orioles and buntings – and saffron finch were among them. All this despite the attentions of most of the feral cats in Lima. Seriously, the park sprouted cats and the locals fed them and petted them; maybe that’s the way it works with nine million inhabitants crammed on to a coastal shelf.
My favourite birds of the day had to be the punky tyrannulets: they were everywhere and cute. The mockingbirds were as fearless as their north American cousins and came a close second.
Now I’ve got to talk toilets. Yes, you may think you know everything about toilets but the etiquette is different in Peru. I didn’t learn this until many days into the trip and had been quite happily flushing paper down the loo, when paper was needed if you get my drift. This buggers up their sewage systems, so the routine is to wrap the tissue up and dispose of it in a bin.
Gross, or what? Gross maybe but necessary. Just don’t carry the habit back to Europe.
On my second foray into the city, after breakfast and ablutions, the first rufous-collared sparrow made its entrance; it was the only countrywide species, apart from feral pigeon of course. My route this time took me down to brown cliffs where black vultures were soon obvious. Somehow the colour of these cliffs made them look fragile and nets draped over them reinforced the impression. One good earthquake and the whole lot would crumble.
Roads snaked up from the sea to Miraflores in gullies and this all reminded me of Bournemouth with its chines. All it needed was a few funiculars and a pier. Oh, and wetter weather.
Lima is in a desert. It offers 0.3 inches of rain a year, of which you’ll hear some later. Being on the coast though, neotropic cormorant, Belcher’s gull, Peruvian pelican, Inca tern and Peruvian booby went onto the life list too. Yes, yes, I know: booby – ha-ha. Good thing Peru doesn’t have any shags too. Nor tits. Right that’s got all the puerile jokes out of the way.
Perched on top of these friable cliffs was the new posh shopping and dining centre of Larco Mar and to welcome visitors was an old friend of mine. Paddington Bear, complete with Union Jack duffel-coat. I’m sure that wasn’t in the books. I’m also sure that his childhood influence was behind my idea to visit Peru. I say this because Australia had similar roots in a couple of pictures of kangaroos and an aborigine that I had as a kid. These things run deep.
Early to mid-afternoon was as usual birding doldrums and so a good time to eat. I’m ashamed to say that my first Peruvian meal was a pizza at Mama Lola: I wasn’t quite ready for ceviche, which is basically raw seafood but marinated in lemon juice and chilis. It sounds delicious but I needed to be sure that the restaurant serving it wasn’t going to poison me.
I was ready for Cusqueña, a beer that had eluded me thus far. It was easily the best Peruvian beer since the local Pilsen was a tad watery. However, all the brews contributed in the end to the profits of SABMiller – just like Foster’s and Grolsch. What’s worse was that every bottle of water was labelled Coca-Cola and guess who put the stuff in the bottles?
If you said SABMiller, have a hatload of cynicism points.
The meal was pretty much the end of the day for me since it was then about ten o’clock in the evening European time and there was only just over an hour’s daylight left anyway until the swift dusk fell. ⇐ ⇒