Miraflores, bird guano, and the Pacific War of 1879-1884

We are spending the weekend here in Miraflores on the coast of Lima.  It is one of several upscale neighborhoods in the city.  We have a list of restaurants from Paco and Lucy and several are located within easy walking distance of our hotel. The 2nd best seafood restaurant, according to the Lonely Planet Guide, in all of South America is within sight and not far away. Maybe lunch there tomorrow. The grilled sea bass is not to be ignored.

Larcomar Shopping Mall just below our hotel and built into the cliff

The Andersons and RuthAnn along the walking path 

We had dinner with our new friends the Andersons in their Miraflores apartment.  They also are temple workers and normally are Canadians living in Ottawa but we understand their reasons for spending their winter in Miraflores.  After dinner we walked back to our hotel and enjoyed the view above the Pacific. I always wondered why the Spanish named the ocean the Pacific as our experience in Northern CA generally suggests it is anything but peaceful or 'pacific'.  Here at least in Lima the waves are small enough to make surfing largely uninteresting by comparison to CA, though there are boards and folks out doing that.  The winds are very fresh, the air clean, and flying by our hotel window each afternoon are the paragliders who launch from the cliff below us.

Parasails glider looking south to Chorillos

In the distance to the south of the bay from our hotel is an area known as Chorillos.  Years ago it was a fishing village, but all of that has changed. It was thoroughly destroyed by the Chileans in the Pacific War, also known as the Saltpeter War.  There is a mountain seen in the distance upon which a Peruvian general abandoned his post and fled from the invading army. His name is still "Mudd" with two "d's" in Peru even today.  The Chileans occupied Lima for some years until pressured by the United States to withdraw.  Seems the Brits put them up to this foreign adventure because of vast amounts of bird guano between Chile and Peru.  This was before the synthetic manufacture of saltpeter or sodium nitrate, the essential ingredient for producing gunpowder, and was needed by the Brits for their empire.  The disputed area occupied by Chile was actually part of Bolivia.  They lost that area as a result of the Pacific War and Peru eventually was awarded the city of Tacna which is their southernmost major city. Bolivians came out the worst as their country became landlocked and egress to the Pacific has been problematic over the decades.  Once WWI got underway and the synthesis of this important mineral no longer was needed, the guano of Peru and Chile was of no interest to the world powers and a decades long economic depression settled in the region.  This area of the Atacama Desert, long ago abandoned for its bird guano, is now of interest to the Chinese as the other areas of mineral and copper rich Peru are.

Chorillos to the South of us

Nothing ever happens in a vacuum and one observer of the Pacific War was then US Naval Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan who was here to "protect" US interests.  His observations of the use of navy vessels and ships by Chile to defeat both the combined armies of Peru and Bolivia contributed to his monumental tour de force, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History."  That book and his work is required reading by every naval cadet anywhere in the world and especially at the US Naval Academy.  It is upon the basis of that work that the US and other nations expanded and embraced technological improvement of their navies. This was for the combined purposes of projecting national interests, establishing colonies, and or to secure foreign markets for these world powers. Mahan is also the author of the term "Middle East" in describing that area around the eastern Mediterranean where so much of our navy is and has been occupied after WWII. 

Captain Mahan's Civil War era ship sent to Peru to protect our interests

Thanks to the Brother and Sister Anderson for their great food, hospitality, and for his introduction to us about the war between Chile and Peru.  Hostilities these days are largely confined to soccer stadiums, fortunately, though there is still some detectable disdain among the former protagonists.

View over the Pacific at sunset from our hotel