Country Club Hotel, Lima Peru
I recently returned from a business trip to Lima, Peru. I had not been there since the late 1990′s and what an amazing transformation. The city is still about 8 million people, traffic is crazy as ever although the vehicles are newer, less emissions, and for the most part they seem to honor the traffic lights now.
In the late 90′s I worked with the Caterpillar dealer in Peru about 2-3 times per year. During that time, the city certianly had its overcrowding, no opportunity for people to get ahead and you could see it in their face and read it in their eyes…no hope.
Today there is an emerging middle class. There are jobs being created, no one is sitting idle. There have been 3-4 new universities opened, the government seems to be stable and the world is knocking on the door for the minerals and natural gas being extracted there. With an emerging middle class with money to spend, the demand for shopping, restaurants, theaters, virtually anything you can think of will be available in the future. Cell phones are the norm, Wi-Fi is readily available, and for those with the Starbucks obsession, they have about a dozen or so throughout the city. It is amazing the changes over the last ten years.