Ninety seconds on Miraflores
Miraflores puts you on the clifftop above the Pacific, walking from park to park past a giant sculpted kiss and a shopping centre set into the cliff face, with paragliders turning overhead.
The Malecón is a chain of clifftop parks and gardens that crosses the district in three sectors: the Malecón de la Marina, the Malecón Cisneros and the Malecón de la Reserva. All of it looks straight down on the Pacific and the beach below, and the parks join up, so you can walk the whole run without leaving the cliff edge.
Parque del Amor, opened on Valentine's Day 1993, is built around El Beso, Víctor Delfín's huge sculpture of two people kissing. The walls that ring it are covered in broken-tile mosaic modelled on Gaudí's Park Güell in Barcelona. Read the tiles as you go round: they carry love phrases and poems in Spanish and Quechua.
Larcomar is a shopping centre built into the cliff face rather than on top of it, on the site of the old Parque Salazar. Its west-facing terraces look straight out over the Pacific.
Early afternoon is the time to walk down Avenida José Larco from Parque Kennedy to the cliff at Larcomar. Go through it to its terraces for your first look along the coast.
From Larcomar, turn north on the Malecón and follow the clifftop greenery to Parque del Amor. The paragliding schools work from the same clifftop, and from midday to late afternoon, the best flying hours, the gliders swoop along the cliff edge above you.
Time the walk so you are on the cliffs for sunset. Then walk back along the Malecón, or head inland to Parque Kennedy, where stray cats lounge around the square.
Paragliding is the one part of the day you cannot do on your own: you fly with a certified pilot from the launch site in Parque Antonio Raimondi. Pilots were reported to work there between 8am and 6pm when flights restarted, so check the day's hours with the operator.
Most flights last 10 to 20 minutes and land on the beach below the cliffs or on a marked ground area. Pilots will not launch in strong crosswinds or low visibility, so keep a second afternoon free in case the weather moves your flight.
If you plan to fly, wear closed shoes or trainers and light layers, and carry ID for the waiver, sunglasses and a charged phone.
On a grey garúa day the sunset can vanish into cloud, so do the walk and the flight first and count the sunset as a bonus.
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