The Place
Lima does double duty on this trip. It's the first thing the group sees, before any of the altitude, hiking, or early alarms — and it's the last thing, after all of it. That's deliberate: everyone arrives here still on home-timezone legs, and everyone leaves here after nine days at elevation, which is exactly when a few days back at sea level actually feels earned rather than wasted.
Barranco is the neighborhood doing most of the emotional work. It's Lima's old bohemian quarter — narrow streets, 19th-century casonas painted in fading pastels, and the Puente de los Suspiros (the Bridge of Sighs) that the whole neighborhood is built around. Miraflores next door trades that for cliffside parks and a malecón that runs for miles along the Pacific — good for a walk that doesn't feel like sightseeing.
The other reason Lima anchors both ends: the food. Peru's capital has quietly become one of the most talked-about restaurant cities on earth, and two of its restaurants — Central and Maido — regularly place in the World's 50 Best. That's the whole reason this trip's birthday-dinner logistics get their own section — worth getting right.