Miraflores travel guide

Miraflores, apart from being a nice residential part of Lima, is also home to a busy mercantile district full of fashionable shops, cafés, discos, fine restaurants and good hotels and guesthouses. As in the centre, there is a security force patrolling the streets, in trucks, on motorbikes or on foot.

In the centre of Miraflores is the beautiful Parque Central de Miraflores (aka Parque Kennedy) located between Avenida Larco and Avenida Oscar Benavides (locally known as Avenida Diagonal). This extremely well-kept park has a small open-air theatre with performances Thursday-Sunday, ranging from Afro-Peruvian music to rock‘n’roll. Towards the bottom of the park is a nightly crafts market open from 1700 to 2300.

At the end of Avenida Larco and running along the promenade is the renovated Parque Salazar and the very modern shopping complex called Centro Comercial Larcomar. The shopping centre’s terraces, which have been carved out of the cliff, contain expensive shops, hip cafés and restaurants, an open-air internet café and discos. The balustrades have a beautiful view of the ocean and the sunset. The 12-screen cinema is one of the best in Lima and even has a ‘cine-bar’ in the twelfth theatre. Don’t forget to check out the Cosmic Bowling Alley with its black lights and fluorescent balls. A few hundred metres to the north is the renovated Parque Champagnat and then, across the bridge over the gorge, the famous Parque del Amor where on just about any night you’ll see at least one wedding party taking photos of the newly married couple. Peruvians are nothing if not romantic.

The beach has a great view of the whole Lima coastline from Chorrillos to La Punta. Rosa Náutica, a very expensive restaurant/disco , occupies a pier that juts out from the beach: a Lima dining institution.

The home of the author, poet and historian is now the Museo Ricardo Palma (C General Suárez 189) T01-445 5836, Mon-Fri 0915-1245 and 1430-1700, small entrance fee; photography fee US$3. Palma is one of Peru’s most famous literary figures, best known for his work Tradiciones peruanas, which covers the country’s colonial period .

Huaca Pucllana (at the intersection of C Borgoña y Tarapacá, near the 45th block of Av Arequipa, T01-445 8695, http://pucllana.perucultural.org.pe/, Wed-Mon 0900-1600, US$2.50, includes good, 45-min tour in Spanish or English) is a fifth- to eighth-century AD ceremonial and administrative centre of the pre-Inca Lima culture. The pyramid of small adobe bricks is 23 m high. Evidence of occupation of the site by the Wari culture was found in 2005. It has a site museum, with some objects from the site itself, and a souvenir shop.

Museo Arqueológico Amano (C Retiro 160 near the 11th block of Av Angamos Oeste, T01-441 2909, open by appointment only Mon-Fri pm, free, photography prohibited) is a very fine private collection of artefacts from the Chancay, Chimú and Nazca periods, owned by the late Mr Yoshitaro Amano. It boasts one of the most complete exhibits of Chancay weaving and is particularly interesting for pottery and pre-Columbian textiles, all superbly displayed and lit. To get there, take a bus or colectivo to the corner of Avenida Arequipa y Avenida Angamos and another one to the 11th block of Avenida Angamos Oeste. Alternatively a taxi from down town costs US$3 or from Parque Kennedy US$2.

One of the best private collections of colonial paintings, silver, cloth and furniture in Peru is displayed in the Poli Museum (Almte Cochrane 466, T01-422 2437, tours cost US$10 per person irrespective of the size of the group, allow 2 hrs, call in advance to arrange tours.) It also has a fine collection of pre-Columbian ceramics and gold, including material from Sipán. Guided tours are given in Spanish only and delivered rapidly by Sr Poli or his son, whose views are often contrary to long-held opinions about the symbolism of Peruvian cultures....read more