From the 13th floor…
From our apartment on the 13th floor here in Lima Peru we overlook the Country Club. Way beyond our means–it is rumored to cost $100,000 US to join–, it still gives us pleasure everyday.
Most Limeños live in apartments, with a view of the apartment next door. So we are blessed with an open space view of verdant fairways.
Every afternoon the nannies, dressed in their uniform of white scrubs, bring their small charges to play in the playground. Swarms of tiny tots, barely tall enough to hold a racket, are occupied in the tennis club’s version of childcare, with miniature nets and a maze of plastic obstacles to keep the other tots occupied when it is not their turn to hit a ball (to heaven knows where!). Progressively, the tiny tots are replaced by older children coming for serious training.
The clay courts, reminiscent of the colours of the Red Centre in Australia, need constant maintenance. Having spent the day picking up balls for everyone (nobody ever picks up their own balls there!) and serving practice balls to trainees, the attendants are charged with scraping the courts and re-painting the lines ready for the next day.
In winter the wildly extravagant birthday parties with huge, temporarily constructed jumping castles, puppet shows and bubble blowing, balloon twisting clowns and entertainers, appear every Friday. Every new party seems to be out-doing the previous one for extravagance.
Now it is summer, the swimming pool, freshly painted, is full. The temporary fence surrounding the once empty pool has been replaced with rows of wooden deckchairs beneath a sea of yellow sun umbrellas. The jumping castle area has been transformed with the uncovering of an in-ground paddling pool. Hidden plumbing in another area of the playground has now been connected to the showering umbrellas, the water guns and the eight foot high water buckets which periodically overflow to the delight of the children below.
As the enticing aromas of the outdoor dining waft up to us blending with the smell of our meal slow cooking on our Barbie, a pair of dark brown –gallinazos– vultures, soar gracefully on thermals way above us. There is a strange feeling of tranquility sitting on our tiny 13th floor balcony, living vicariously, the life of the privileged in Lima.
Now, we are enjoying a sundowner on our balcony while my husband is rhetorically telling the golfers what they are doing wrong..…..