Since kids are back in school now, our new schedule includes several classes on Saturdays and Sundays and our “weekends” are now Wednesdays and Thursdays. Yesterday we took advantage of a day off and headed to Lima for the day. We stopped at an Incan market to buy souvenirs, walked around the main plaza in Lima (Plaza Mayor), then took a bus to the top of a foothill that overlooks Lima.

I was stunned at how far Lima extends. Every flat piece of land as far as the eye can see has been “developed.” Homes and buildings butt up against one side of a foothill and then continue immediately on the other side. It’s as though the foothills are little blips in the landscape that people simply jumped over and spread beyond.

The homes closest to the foothills are often the poorest, and in some places people had managed to build shacks on the foothills themselves. I cannot imagine how it’s even possible to prop up a home made of thin wooden walls and a thatched roof on the steep slope of a foothill made of large rocks and dry, crumbling dirt.

I was also struck by the beauty of the view in front of me. Despite run-down homes, a brown river, and a dusty brown landscape, Lima looked beautiful. The setting sun, Pacific Ocean, and densely populated land all met at the horizon, causing the sky, water, and earth to blend indistinguishably. It was breathtaking.