Lima

Lima sits on cliffs that fall straight into the Pacific. The Malecón de Miraflores follows the edge for kilometres, past paragliders drifting level with the buildings and gardens planted along the drop. The city has become the great kitchen of South America: ceviche of raw fish cured in lime, cooking shaped by Japan, China and Spain, pisco sour in the late afternoon. The colonial centre keeps its carved wooden balconies around the Plaza Mayor de Lima, and the Monastery of San Francisco hides catacombs where bones are stacked in circles. The Larco Museum gathers thousands of pre-Columbian ceramics in a white house buried under bougainvillea. In the middle of a residential district, the adobe pyramid of Huaca Pucllana was raised long before the Incas. In Barranco, the Puente de los Suspiros crosses a lane of painted houses among artists' studios and music bars, and the Pacific swell carries surfers to Punta Hermosa Beach, further south.