lluvia

This weekend in Lima, I saw something rather unusual. It wasn’t seeing a guy getting beat up downtown –which I did see–near the used bookstore street–about five guys pummeling one guy. Yep, just another day in the Lima city center. The unusual thing I saw in Lima wasn’t the rare yellow-tailed oriole–which I also saw– the bird looking like a flying bunch of bananas.

The oddity in Lima was seeing lluvia, or rain.

I was outside of the city in a place called Ichoca, which unlike the link claims, is not the Switzerland of Lima. If you dare to take the winding mountain path to the Ichoca, you’ll find some waterfalls with a shaky ladder, but no yodeler. You’ll also find a few easy trails, all with beautiful views. We just finished our short hike to this chapel when the heavens ripped open.

The rain was unusual because it never rains in Lima. Never. The subtropical desert climate is Teflon for raindrops. It gets misty but no rain, no umbrellas, no puddles, no thunder, no rainbows.

Luckily, we headed to small cantina at the base of the hike had a covering. If our hike had started five minutes later, we would have gotten caught in the downpour. As we waited for our meal, I watched everyone watch the rain, the pounding echoing off of the ribbed metal roofing.

Everyone stopped to watch the rain.

Everyone watched the rain, except the chefs. They kept our meals on the coals.

I had the fish, or trutta, a salmon-trout hybrid. Everyone else had the chicken and potatoes, even the pooch.

The bathrooms were out back. You had to cover your head and take a left at the sheep.

Ichocha is about two and a half hours from Lima’s City center. This dog is waiting for you, but I’m not sure about the rain.