Callao

Callao is the port. Everything that ever came into Peru by sea, silver out and everything else in, went through this harbour next to Lima, and it is still the busiest port on the west coast of South America. Grey water, pelicans, a colonial fortress, and the harbour blue that our Callao cap borrows for its brim. It is the one cap in the range made only in a kids size.

The port

Callao sits on the Pacific 15 kilometres west of Lima's centre, on a bay sheltered by the island of San Lorenzo and the hook of land at La Punta. Founded in the 1530s, sacked by pirates and flattened by earthquakes, it was for two centuries the only port through which Spain allowed trade with South America. The Real Felipe fortress on the waterfront, the largest Spain built in the Americas, was finished in the 1770s to keep the pirates out. It is still there, with the navy in it.

The harbour

The working port is container cranes and fishing fleets; the old quarter at La Punta is quiet streets, a pebble beach and a sea that is cold all year. The light on this coast is grey for half the year, a fog the locals call the donkey's belly, and the water under it turns a deep, flat blue-grey. That is the harbour blue. Callao is also where the cloth from the highlands leaves the country, in containers, for everywhere it is worn.

The cap named Callao

The Callao is a kids five-panel camp cap in navy twill with a handwoven harbour-blue stripe brim, strapback, one size 50 to 54 cm. It is kids only, and it pairs with the adult navy Cajamarca ball cap in the Callao and Cajamarca navy pair. Both belong to the lake family, Qucha. See the kids cap size guide.

Other cities

All twenty on the cities. Cusco · Písac · Urubamba · Maras · Puno · Huaraz · Arequipa · Nazca · Paracas · Iquitos · Cajamarca · Tacna · La Paz · El Alto · Copacabana · Oruro · Potosí · Sucre · Cochabamba. See all the pieces named for Andean towns on headwear and bags, and the cloth families on the weaves.