Morro Solar

This guide to Morro Solar in Lima follows the headland's switchback trails, now a proving ground for mountain bikers and hikers climbing toward the summit's giant Christ statue, a Virgin Mary shrine, a planetarium, and a stone obelisk to an unknown soldier. It turns from that everyday scene to 1881, when Peruvian defenders dug in on this same slope during the War of the Pacific and this playground was a battlefield. Paragliders launching from the cliffs at Miraflores and Barranco now use the hill as their turning point.