Walk Lima until the map shows up

Lima is grey overhead for half the year and enormous in every direction. In FOG the whole map starts hidden, so the Malecon, the colonial grid downtown and every side street in between only appear once your feet have been there.

What walking Lima is actually like

Lima sits on a desert coast under a lid of cloud. From roughly May to November the garua parks itself overhead, grey and damp without ever properly raining, and then it lifts and the sun becomes the problem instead. Either way the walking is flat, at least on top. The city runs along a line of crumbling brown cliffs a hundred metres above the Pacific, and the streets set back from them are level enough that you cover ground without noticing you have.

The old centre keeps its colonial grid: Plaza Mayor, Jiron de la Union, straight blocks that fill in neatly and predictably. Everything else grew outward as separate districts that were once separate towns, so Miraflores, San Isidro, Barranco, Surquillo and Pueblo Libre each have their own logic and their own street names. The seams between them are wide avenues built entirely for cars. Crossing Javier Prado or Avenida Arequipa on foot is a decision, not a stroll, and the pedestrian bridges are often the only sane option.

One afternoon, one long stripe

The obvious walk is the cliff. Start at Parque Salazar in Miraflores, pick up the Malecon and keep the ocean on your right. The path threads through a chain of small clifftop parks, past the paragliders launching off the edge, and runs a few kilometres south before dropping into Barranco.

In Barranco, turn inland. The Puente de los Suspiros, the Bajada de Banos running down to the sea, then the main plaza and the streets behind it. Walk back to Miraflores through the inland blocks rather than along the clifftop and you roughly double the new ground you take, because the return leg lights streets the outbound leg never touched. That is the whole trick to filling in a linear city.

Why Lima is hard to fill in

Lima is around ten million people across more than forty districts, and the honest answer is that you are not going to finish it. Districts sit far apart and the gaps between them are normally covered by car or colectivo, which does nothing for your map. What you end up with is several bright islands separated by dark motorway country.

That turns out to be fine, because a single district is a satisfying unit of work. Miraflores or Barranco can be pushed to a genuinely high number in a few weeks of ordinary walking, and FOG shows you what percentage of a city you have lit. San Isidro fills fast too, especially the quiet blocks around the olive grove at El Olivar. The historic centre is compact and gridded, so nothing is wasted there.

One practical note. The banks of towers along Avenida Larco and in San Isidro can push your GPS around a little, so a clifftop line often looks neater than a walk between high buildings. It settles once you are back in the open.

How FOG works

FOG is a fog of war map for the real world. The entire globe starts hidden. Every street you physically walk is revealed permanently, and it keeps revealing with the app closed and the screen off.

There is no account, no sign up, no cloud and no tracking. The map stays on your phone and you can export it whenever you want. Exploring is free. One purchase of USD 5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import, with no subscription ever.

• Ranks climb with the area you cover: Wanderer, Scout, Pathfinder, Explorer, Voyager.
• 241 countries, 3,390 regions and 7,342 named places, collected only by standing in them.
• Import Google Timeline exports and GPX files to fill in walks you already did.

Questions people actually ask

Start with a dark map.

FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.

free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription