Pipeno Launch Contest

I fell in love with Lima’s colors when I took my first bus journey along Avenida La Marina and saw numerous flower-beds with puffy yellow blooms on green grass. The day was sunny and it seemed the light made these flowers even yellower. Since that moment, the colors of the city never cease to work their magic on me.

There are two fantastic palettes: the one born by nature and the one brought to life by humans. Both are exciting, but the first one makes me feel especially involved when it provides an instant escape into the Wonderland of Nature.

Many trees and bushes that grow here blossom with flowers in all forms and shades: big red ones look like chic hairpins in the green crown of a tree; a scattering of tiny orange, pink and yellow ones ornament a row of bushes; the softest lilac and bold scarlet ones make trees look like haute couture gowns.

When I move along the rows of private houses in any district of Lima, I always notice a spectacular patchwork of colors. Individual architectural solutions add a special impact to the very personal choices of paints: tender violet is followed by merry orange, then comes green, purple, azure, pink, and mustard. All in one street! Many houses have small flower gardens in front of them, so there are more colors to cheer your eye up.

Every time I see Peruvian handmade clothes with a variety of colors beyond imagination, I gasp with admiration at this masterpiece of creativity, patience and skill. Sorry, Mother Nature, but this is something even you may envy sometimes.

The ocean might have shattered my expectation, but I liked its silver gray calmness at second sight. After all, it was authentic, genuine ocean in all its greatness – why should I insist on it being aquamarine blue? The more I observed it, the cooler its shades seemed to me. And only the brownish edging of contamination reminded me that a human hand has been continually soiling this everlasting beauty.

In Miraflores I love to take a long walk along the beautiful recreation area facing the ocean. Thoroughly kept lawns and well-designed flower beds; a variety of palms and cactuses; trees and bushes with exquisite multi-colored splashes of flowers… And the people with their children and pets, walking, talking, laughing, sitting on the benches and enjoying the ocean view. Treasures of nature and human work are found in soothing harmony there providing comfort for body and soul.

There is also the gray sky, clouds of fog, a lot of dust, streets with rubbish, rivers of old creaky transport and shabby constructions – but my mind keeps sweeping all this aside as irrelevant whilst cherishing every precious moment when the beauty of nature presents itself. This attitude became an unconscious habit: I notice and understand the ugly things that stay around, but I always look forward to more beauty that can counterbalance the imperfections of the struggle for existence a human being leaves behind.

Wherever I happen to stay, the beauty of nature always finds a way to my heart. Love is in the eye of the beholder. And my eyes have never gotten bored in Lima, even after seven months of living here. In fact, I feel like they have just begun their visual feast and that there are many more treasures to discover.

This beauty will not vanish when I visit other places, even more fascinating and incredible. It has already crystallized in my mind, it has already become my sweet memory.

Now I will continue enjoying the privilege of living in this city and contemplating its beauties. Everything that a tourist eye observes greedily as it flashes through its vision in the hurry of limited hours like a bunch of kaleidoscopic ornaments leaving a dim feeling of “it’s not enough” – all this I can savor slowly and thoughtfully, day by day, filling my mind with pictures of Lima and knowing they will stay with me forever.

Quite often I meet people who tell me that Lima is an ugly crowded megalopolis and there is almost nothing to see there. They truly believe in it and live this reality. But I prefer to stick with those who tell me that Lima is full of surprising beauty, that there are legends on every corner and that it possesses a unique atmosphere no other capital in Latin America has.

These people make this city more interesting and more beautiful for me and for their friends who come to visit. We share the same vision, and our eye of the beholder has never let us down so far.