Lima

You arrive in Lima hungry or you arrive wrong. The continent's gastronomic capital cooks on a cliff over the Pacific, under a sky that spends eight months a year as a grey lid — the garúa — which limeños repay at the table: here lunch is the sacred hour and ceviche is a noon inheritance, never dinner.

The sensible traveller divides her: the Centro and its wooden balconies in the morning — viceregal Lima is still there, among convents with catacombs —; Miraflores to walk the malecón along the clifftop, paragliders at eye level; and Barranco for the art, the Bridge of Sighs and the night. The sea is watched more than swum: the Humboldt current left it cold on purpose.

The Guide's honesty: the grey sky is not bad weather, it is the weather — under the garúa it never truly rains and one always walks —; the famous tables demand reservations weeks out; and the best ceviche doesn't always come with tablecloths: ask for the neighborhood cevichería and arrive before one.