Travel Review: Lima

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Lima - La Catedral on Plaza de Armas

Just off Lima’s busy central square Plaza de Armas stands an imposing Gothic cathedral, fittingly called La Catedral. The white façade covers one whole side of the square but all the doors are closed except one. When we enter, we find a kind of sub-cathedral; a smaller version for daily use, we surmise.

There are a few unusual pieces inside the church. The altar piece consists of an elaborate symbolic structure, centered upon a Trinity consisting of a humble Christ carrying a cross, God the Father and Mary beneath them. Over them flies the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Over the Holy Spirit towers a cluster consisting of the four evangelists, who are accompanied by their animal symbols derived of the four creatures of Revelation 4:7 (a connection I’ve always disagreed with). Strangely, only Matthew, Luke and Mark look up but John looks down.

Below the central Trinity we see a picture of the Lamb, again surrounded by four faces, presumably the four evangelists. Left and right are cherubim and images of Christ handing His cup to people.

Elsewhere in the church we find an unusual statue of what seems the twelve year old Christ, but already adorned as Pantocrator. Across the sanctuary stands a pieta, but again unusually, with Mary donned as Regina, posing in front of the empty INRI cross.

In its entirety, La Catedral in Lima is a tired old church which fails to engross. The noise from the street is deafening; the interior is dark and we feel unwelcome and shunned. Moments after we enter, some irked eyeing man in a T-shirt hastens across the central isle and disappears through a door next to the main altar. A moment later the lights go out without ado, and the man reappears and begins to herd us out the door. I’m sure it’s closing time but it’s sad when a church’s caretaker shows his sole modicum of enthusiasm only at that hour.

“Maybe there’s room for us at other inn,” Draga says wisely as she grabs my hand in consolation, and lovingly leads me out the door towards a coffee place off the other end of the square.

La Catedral on Plaza de Armas

Unusual 12 year old Christ Pantocrator

Magnificent altar piece of La Catedral on Plaza de Armas

Pieta/ Mary Regina

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Lima, Peru - a dark town

There are 29 million people living in Peru; 9 million in Lima, and I think I met about half of them.

We docked in Callao for an overnight, meaning that Draga and I could go ashore (on the proviso that nothing would break down just five minutes before quitting time). The agent informed us in hysteric guffaws that just outside the port gates gangs of ruthless locals awaited any sailor foolish enough to venture out on foot. Many of us get beaten, stabbed, abducted even, severely mistreated and some never heard from again.

“You take taxi taxi,” he urges. “Callao no good. You go Lima. My cousin has good taxi, taxi good good, always good price, special price for you.”

The agent’s cousin, it appeared later that night, specialized in running sailors to Lima for the special price of 70 dollars. However, for Draga and I, he volunteered the extra special price, only specially now on this special evening, of only 50 US. For that he would wait for us in Lima, to take us back.

After forty minutes of death defying driving through traffic as thick as an asteroid belt, zigzagging along the most depressing slums that seems to consists entirely of alleyways peopled with hordes of hapless kids and bums and small animals, we arrived at Plaza de Armas. I had my mind set on La Catedral; Draga wished for a coffee on a terrace somewhere.

For two hours we felt like human beings again. We partook in a service worshipping something else than mad labor and moneymaking, and we drank coffee on a terrace, trying to pretend this half-lit square is not a glum pearl in an giant oyster of dirt and poverty.