Why Most of Peru Lives in a Desert

Lima is home to ten million people, and it gets about 6 millimeters of rain a year. Over the Andes, Peru owns a slice of the Amazon rainforest bigger than France. So why does most of Peru live in a desert on the dry Pacific coast? This is the real story of why Peru built its capital in a desert, and why more than half of all Peruvians still live there. A cold ocean current, a wall of mountains, a 5,000-year-old civilization and one Spanish decision in 1535 put Peru's people on the sand. Then, to keep Lima alive, engineers drilled through the Andes and turned around water that was on its way to the Atlantic. In this video: how the Humboldt Current and the Andes create one of the driest deserts on Earth in the middle of the tropics, the garúa fog and the lomas that turn the hills green, Caral, the oldest center of civilization in the Americas, why the Peruvian Amazon stayed empty from the rubber boom to Iquitos, the city you still can't reach by road, how Lima grew from half a million people to more than ten million, and the tunnel through the Continental Divide that brings Amazon water to Lima, plus the water crisis, El Niño floods and fog catchers that come with it. Understanding Peru geography requires looking at why most of the population lives in a dry, arid strip instead of the jungle. The country faces a stark geographic contrast. While the vast Amazon rainforest covers much of the nation, the majority of Peruvians have settled along the narrow, hyper-arid coastline. This pattern of Peru geography defies the conventional expectation that population centers follow abundant natural resources. We examine how the unique Lima climate and the surrounding coastal desert created the conditions for this unexpected distribution. Understanding this settlement pattern requires looking at the historical and environmental factors that made the coast, rather than the jungle, the center of Peruvian life. Subscribe for weekly geography breakdowns, and let me know in the comments which region you want to see analyzed next. CHAPTERS 0:00 Ten million people in a desert 0:33 The desert that shouldn't exist 2:30 A desert full of people 3:47 The wall and the forest 5:56 Everything pointed at the sea 6:58 Ten million on the sand 8:01 Where does the water come from? 9:26 The price of the plumbing If you live in Lima, tell us in the comments: how often does your water get cut? The Curious Archive explains how geography shapes the way the world lives. Subscribe for the next story. KEY SOURCES INEI, 2017 National Census of Peru UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Sacred City of Caral-Supe SEDAPAL, Marcapomacocha water transfer system