Bajada de Baños

This guide to Bajada de Banos in Lima starts with the single antique trolley car kept near-shrine-like at the top of the slope, once part of a tramline that carried the city's wealthiest families down to the beach. It traces the ravine back to the 1890s and the chaplain locally credited with engineering the cut by diverting water from higher ground, then follows the two economies that grew up in it at once: fishermen's shacks in the ravine itself, and ornate republican-style summer mansions climbing the cliffs above them. A paved road later ordered by mayor Pedro Herouard sealed the arrangement in place.