Bellavista: Peru's Hidden Gem of a Seaport Town
Peru at sunset (Getty Images)
It used to be that travelers to Peru mostly regarded Lima as a place to pass through on the way to the country’s lowland jungles or its Andean treasures of Cusco and Machu Picchu. But as the city has blossomed into the culinary capital of South America in recent years and Peruvian cuisine has become popular in the United States, tourists are spending more time here. Lima has always been my only destination in Peru, because my wife grew up in the area and we often return with our daughter to visit her grandparents.
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It’s a city of contrasts and disparities, from the upscale and touristic Miraflores, San Isidro, and Barranco neighborhoods to the poverty pervasive throughout much of this coastal metropolis of more than 7 million people. Between those extremes there’s a middle ground in parts of Callao, Peru’s main seaport and a constitutional province adjacent to Lima. Avenida Elmer Faucett, the road that carries travelers from Jorge Chávez International Airport toward the heart of Lima, cuts through Bellavista, one of Callao’s six districts — a hidden gem of an area that embodies both the bustle and tranquility of daily life for many Peruvians. My in-laws live here in a comfortable two-story house with patios off the kitchen and dining room and a little white-walled garden in back where hummingbirds hover and windows open to the bedroom wherein we wake to the cooing of doves.
Outside the Bellavista market (Greg Beaubien)
For an introduction to Bellavista, take a taxi to the corner of Faucett and Venezuela avenues (ask the driver how much the ride will cost before entering the cab; locals typically reject the first price). This noisy, chaotic, and sometimes dangerous intersection, wild with careening cars, buses, and unregulated combi passenger vans, scared me a little when we first came here together and had to cross it, especially with our then-toddler daughter. But now our daily routine in Peru always includes a morning walk to Plaza Bellavista, the indoor market at Faucett and Venezuela, just behind the Iglesia De Dios office building. A complex of individually operated stalls selling everything from clothes and toys to fish, meat, produce, hot meals, and bootleg DVDs, it’s where we buy fresh ingredients to cook for lunch. Outside, a line of moto-taxis — three-wheeled motorcycles with nylon-enclosed seats behind the drivers, decorated in vivid colors and designs — waits to ferry shoppers back to their homes.
Street vendors hocking avocados are a common sight around Lima. (Photo: Brian Holsclaw/Flickr)
Across Faucett, behind the Bellavista sign, is the quiet residential neighborhood of Virú, whose streets are named after plants and flowers. Most of the houses are one and two stories high, in pastel colors with flat roofs, even as developers are buying up properties, tearing them down, and erecting four and five flats in their place. The streets are nearly empty, with only an occasional car or moto-taxi happening past, or a palta (avocado) salesman pushing a wooden cart and announcing his product through a distorted loudspeaker. Many people in the neighborhood have opened mini bodegas in their homes, and from the sidewalk you can buy a Coke and a bag of chips through the window.
Follow Calle Los Eucaliptos (Eucalyptus Street) to its intersection with Las Orquídeas (Orchids), and you’ve reached El Parque de la Amistad, a triangular park with a white water tower in its center. Huge red flowers bloom high in the trees over flurries of butterflies that surround the shrubs. Though the quiet is intermittently broken by the grinding roar of a jet passing silver-bellied overhead from the nearby airport — the rumbling often setting off car alarms in the neighborhood — for the most part it’s nearly silent here. Children play and ice cream vendors blow kazoos as they pedal their yellow tricycle carts around the park. The frozen maracuya (passion fruit) bars are our favorites.
Chicharrón sandwiches are a popular Peruvian snack. (queenkv/Flickr)
As afternoon wears into early evening, locals eat a snack called lonche — for us it’s a few chicharrón (fried pork crackling) or avocado sandwiches and cups of tea taken at the kitchen table.
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Especially around the holidays, people here are known to throw parties in their homes with live salsa bands that play loudly long into the night, but the neighbors never complain. On New Year’s Eve locals explode fireworks and burn effigies representing the outgoing year. The air fills with smoke and a young woman dressed in her best clothes pulls a wheeled suitcase on a path through the park as if embarking on a trip, a local tradition that she hopes will bring her the good fortune of travel in the coming year.
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