The Trocadero red light district in Lima

While local police sometimes do things like sweeping up prostitutes from the streets of Lima prostitution is actually legal in Peru. Although the sale of sex is legal the country things are not as out in the open as they are in cities like Pattaya. El Trocadero in Lima is one of the largest and most prominent places for women to sell sex in the country.

Trocadero is actually a club even though it looks more like a rundown red light district than anything else. It has the general appearance of a laufhaus type of place even though the exterior is little more than some plain red walls. The club’s located in between a shopping center and an industrial area containing a large shipping yard.

El Trocadero in Lima

El Trocadero which is also known more formally as El Trocadero del Callao is basically a building filled with many rooms that working women can use to service customers. A security team works the doors and inside women ply their trade.

Customers enter through a doorway on the right side of the building. There they pay a cover charge of 20 Soles ($6 USD) to enter. Once inside they are confronted with what looks like a cell block of a prison. Rather than cells there are rooms though they don’t look all that different.

There is a long center space which is surrounded by the rooms. Women hang out of the doors of the rooms except when they have customers inside. They try to draw customers in and then talk them into paying for sex.

Trocadero buzzes with the sounds of walking and talking. The sounds and smells can be overwhelming not in the least due to the presence of a communal gutter than sex workers and customers alike urinate into all day and night. Trocadero is definitely not The Lord in Bangkok or Rio in Macau.

Price of sex

Of course the rates at Trocadero are nothing like the prices at The Lord or Rio either. The women who work at El Trocadero are all independent contractors who set their own prices but the going rate for a short session is a mere 20 to 30 Soles. At just six to nine US dollars that makes Trocadero one of the cheapest places for men to buy sex in the world.

A typical session at El Trocadero involves a short bit of sex with a condom in one or perhaps two positions. Other services are offered by most women but they normally come with a premium attached. As stated everything is up for negotiation but the average price to add oral sex to a session is around 10 Soles and anal sex is offered by some women for an additional 20 Soles. Some women offer oral and even anal as a part of their regular rate though they are not as common. No matter what the price or the options offered sessions rarely last more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

Summary

There are dozens of women working at El Trocadero every day of the week. Some put the number of women working at over one hundred. I haven’t done a formal count but that doesn’t seem to be all that far off.

The ladies range in age from nineteen up to perhaps forty or even older. The average age is probably around twenty five or so. Peruvians are most common but women from Ecuador, Colombia, and other countries also work at El Trocadero.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but El Trocadero has never been described as a center for supermodels by anyone. Some of the ladies are more attractive than others. It’s difficult to believe some of the women are attractive to anyone at all but since they get customers they must be offering something guys are looking for.

El Trocadero. Callao Distric, Lima, Peru. Click here for a map. Open every day from 3:00 PM until 10:00 PM.