Peru, Day 2

The main plaza in Aguas Calientes.

After another sleepless night I ended up crawling out of bed at 5 a.m., showering, and grabbing a “breakfast” of toast and Tang that was waiting for me downstairs. From there I headed to Pomoy train station, which was a pretty interesting taxi ride for all the rolling, mist-covered hills and the city-outskirt activities I could see. It wasn’t long before I got on the train heading to Aguas Calientes, the town on the doorstep to Machu Picchu.

I took the second class train, which costs $71 for the three-hour trip, which is about $350 less than the first class train, and the views were great. For the first half of my trip I alternated conversations with a couple from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and a couple from Queretaro, Mexico. During the second half of the trip I either had my eyes riveted to the stunning landscape or else was fighting to keep from falling asleep.

One thing that helped was the unexpected breakfast that was served on board. It wasn’t much, but I needed the energy, and it tasted pretty good. They served fruit, two kinds of cheese, two kinds of meat, and I also managed to get coco leaf bread as well as a mini-cinnamon roll.

Not a bad spread for a three-hour train trip.

The trip was pretty spectacular.

Fairly typical scenery along the route to Aguas Calientes.

The mist is ever-present on the tops of the mountains.

The train’s interior was filled with windows, which gave you something of a feeling of being in an open car.

Not a great photo, but it's hard to take a shot without attracting people's attention...

The train follows a river that is easily the roughest I’ve seen anywhere – the rapids’ churning waves often reached four or five feet.

This shot doesn't capture the violence of these rapids at all.

We occasionally passed small towns and villages, and the closer we got to Aguas Calientes the more frequently we saw local Indians and the more spectacular the mountain scenery became.

These small villages are few and far between, but I would have loved to stop and walk through them.

Local Indian women trying to sell items to passengers. I didn't see a single transaction during our five-minute stop.

By the time we arrived it was raining, and because the rain only came down harder after I’d checked into my hostal, Rupa Wasi, and because I was incredibly sleepy, I decided to wait until early tomorrow morning to hit Machu Picchu.

For lunch I headed to the only place in Aguas Calientes that my guidebook said served Peruvian food, and even this had many “French touches.” At first I found it hard to believe that the entire town didn’t have Peruvian food, but the overabundance of restaurants, which appeared literally every few feet as I made my way to my hostal, quickly made it clear that the town catered in a limited way to a very particular kind of tourist: pizza eaters. Now, I love pizza, but this was disappointing.

Before I went to have lunch, I moseyed through the local market, if it can be called that. The market doesn’t even have a name, apparently. People just know where it is and go there for fairly basic needs. It contained a few things I hadn’t seen before – certain types of fruits, beans, and potatoes – and asking about them in my limited Spanish hardly helped me learn anything.

Mmm, potatoes...

Colorful little tray of spices and coco leaves.

I should have sampled some cheese, but that's easier said than done.

Once I’d seen the market – that is, three minutes later – I tracked down a restaurant called Indio Feliz. I was welcomed at the door by a Frenchman named Patrick, and he ushered me in to his empty restaurant, which was by far the most unexpected thing I’d seen in Aguas Calientes.

A welcome sight when tienes hambre.

The interior was decorated in a fusion of Peruvian antiques and French seafaring. Yet, somehow it seemed to work.

This doesn't properly capture the atmosphere. Each room was unique in its own right.

Since the restaurant didn’t officially open for 15 more minutes, he gave me a grand tour of the restaurant’s two floors, then took me to the top floor, which gave a view onto mist-shrouded mountains, a lot of hanging laundry in neighboring, half-built houses, and several pieces of antiques that ranged in price from US$2000 - $15,000 and were two hundred years old. I guess that when your lunches cost $20 with a drink and you hire local people and buy local foodstuffs, you’ll soon be able to buy expensive furnishings.

I ordered the most Peruvian items I could find on the menu: “Peruvian Creole Soup” (cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and parmesan cheese from the Altiplano) and “Pepper Chicken with Peruvian Ocucaje Pisco Sauce,” which came with fried sweet potatoes, a cooked tomato topped with pesto sauce, steamed beans, and a plate of thick homemade garlic and dill potato chips. The “Homemade Orange Pie with Custard and Ice Cream” made the lunch set, though it obviously wasn’t Peruvian.

Peruvian Creole Soup

While I generally dislike fusion, the fact is that this was a really good meal. The chicken was well cooked and had a lot of flavor, and the sauce it was in was excellent – slightly peppery with a strong hint of citrus. The vegetables were creatively made, especially the tomato, and even the potato chips were interesting. I’ve only been in Peru for five meals so far, but this has been the best so far.

Pepper Chicken with Peruvian Ocucaje Pisco Sauce

In any case, I could see myself returning here for a meal very easily – I wouldn’t hesitate over trying more on their menu, and the welcome service I got was more than I’d expected – though I intend to branch out some if possible.

Homemade Orange Pie with Custard and Ice Cream

Indio Feliz can be found at Calle Lloque Yupanqui Lote 4 M-12. Their telephone and fax numbers are (084) 211090 / 211320. Their website is www.indiofeliz.com, and according to their business card “[They] welcome national, international and extra terrestrial tourists.”

I went to dinner rather early, partly because I had lunch early and partly because I wanted to get to bed in time for a decent sleep since I have to be at the bus station at the crack of dawn. I ended up crossing the footbridge to the local side of Aguas Calientes and wandering around.

I thought she was making pisco drinks behind the soccer stadium, but she told me they were mates.

It’s an interesting enough area to visit, though I did get a lot of looks, perhaps because there weren’t a lot of other foreigners around. I came across some pollerias and other local restaurants, but for some reason I decided to eat closer to my hostal. The walk was nice in parts, especially when crossing the river, which cascades toward town from the mountains.

Looking down toward the town of Aguas Calientes.

I ended up choosing a place that advertised “tipical Peruvian food,” which included guinea pig, alpaca, trout, pig, lamb, and stuffed potatoes. I went with the Peruvian oven-baked trout (trucho de horna). For 30 soles ($10.38), that’s a bargain in Aguas Calientes.

The front of the restaurant looked inviting enough.

I also ordered a medium-sized Peruvian beer called Cusqueña (8 soles); unfortunately, this ended up being the highlight of my meal.

The medium-sized beer was 2.5 liters. I can't imagine what the large size looked like.

The presentation of the dish, as you can see in the photo below, was quite nice. A fried trout fillet with half-caramelized onions, large circular wedges of fried potato, a small salad, and some rice. Sounds good, right?

Trucho de horna (Peruvian oven-baked trout)

Well, the first potato I tried had a big black hair cooked into it. Okay, I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before – I just set it aside and went on with things. But my first bite of trout tasted like dirt, and the fish had very little give to it. My second bite was the same, and I’m starting to wonder how fresh this fish actually was. Trout sometimes has that taste to it, though, and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. In the end, I ate most of the meal. He charged me 4 soles as a service tax, which is a first for me here, and since my meal was not very good I decided to consider the service tax his tip (which in Peru is at most about 10%). The total for my meal was 42 soles, or US$14.53.

The restaurant was named Caminos del Inka II and was right across the entrance to the alley that leads to Indio Feliz. I would not recommend this restaurant, though the man who ran it was nice.

Peru, Day 1

Well, folks, I’m in Peru. In an airport. Stealing wi-fi from Starbucks, which is across the corridor from where I’m sitting. I just finished my first meal in Peru, though it didn’t strike me as particularly Peruvian in any real sense. As soon as I went through customs, picked up my bag, changed money, and got a boarding pass for my flight to Cuzco, I headed to Café Laderia, on the second floor of the recently refurbished airport in Lima.

Not exactly my image of Peru, but for an airport lounge this seems about par for the course.

After struggling with the Spanish menu, a waiter gave me one in English and I ordered a Kaslik sandwich. (What or who is Kaslik? I have no idea.)

Some real food after a long flight. Real food, that is, minus the candied pecans.

Hey, I needed sustenance for my five-hour layover following the eight-hour flight from LAX. The Kaslik was made with grilled chicken breast, bacon, organic spinach, artichoke, and candied pecans, all wrapped in a tortilla. It’s kind of absurd to recommend a single sandwich at an airport in Lima, but why not? It was good. It was also enormous. And while the bacon was a tad on the soggy side, the candied pecans, though strange, were surprisingly good -- nothing like a candied crunch with soft, salty ingredients. I’m not sure if this is a sign of what’s to come, but the regular black coffee I ordered ended up being espresso – and it really hit the spot, which is surprising, because espresso doesn’t usually do it for me.

Ahh, caffeine...

The entire meal cost me 24 Peruvian soles, which is just over US$8. Yes, airport prices are exorbitant the world over.

As for the food I had on the plane, LAN airlines served barely passable fare: beef stew, mashed potatoes, and cheesecake. Their snack was a half sandwich that could have contained very thin sliced chicken just as easily as it could have contained shoe glue. I had no idea what I was eating but I was hungry and trusting and it was gone in no time.

...

I arrived in Cuzco at 6 a.m. It was cool and wet out, and a thick swirling mist enshrouded most of the mountains that hem in the city. Homeless dogs roamed the sidewalks while locals were bundled up against the morning chill in colorful sweaters and wraps. In other words, it was exactly how I'd imagined Cuzco.

I'd heard a lot about altitude sickness, and I was told that since I was coming from sea level it would probably affect me in a big way. I felt it immediately upon exiting the plane -- mostly just shortness of breath and a little dizziness. As soon as I checked into my hostal, Casona Los Pleiades, I was given chamomile tea suffused with coco leaves, which are supposed to alleviate altitude sickness. I drank a cup, which tasted like I'd expect leaves in hot water to taste -- it actually resembled artichoke tea, or perhaps the water left over from boiled brussel sprouts -- and then decided to take a two-hour nap. When I woke up, I was still short of breath and was totally parched. Not only that, my muscles were strangely stiff and every time I stretched it felt like I was going to get a muscle cramp.

Coco tea grows on you after just a couple cups. Gee, I wonder why?

But I wanted to see something of the city, and I also thought I should eat something since I skipped the "breakfast" served on the flight from Lima to Cuzco. All I can say is that walking the hills of the city, I was pretty sure I might pass out.

Cuesta San Blas, separating me from the main drag of Cuzco

It wasn't uncomfortable, I was just lacking oxygen. Anyway, I didn't have to go far before I came across a really nice, if small, bakery on Cuesta San Blas called Buen Pastor. It's easy to miss this place, as it's not much more than a hole in the wall, though they do have a second floor with windows overlooking a steep cobbled alley.

Late morning selection of pastries at Buen Pastor

I orded a pañuelo de durasno, which is a pastry filled with something like a sweet cream cheese and two halves of a canned peach. I also got a black coffee, which was served to me in a way that surprised me.

Even with the diluted coffee, this was good stuff.

I was given a huge cup full of hot water, which made me think they'd mistaken my order and had brought me tea. In fact, there was coffee on the table as well, but the idea is to pour it into the water and drink the coffee diluted. It didn't really taste like coffee, but I knew I was getting my caffeine fix, so I didn't care. The pastry was fantastic, and I'll be sure to return there after tomorrow's trip to Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu. It's worth mentioning that the women running this place were incredibly friendly -- not in-your-face friendly, or friendly with ulterior motives, but just really sweet people who wanted me to enjoy my food and my time in Cuzco.

The sugar and caffeine gave me the energy I needed to hoof it down to the Plaza de Armas, where I wanted to buy an entrance ticket to Machu Picchu. However, the government office started their siesta at 11 and I arrived at 11:10, so I decided to explore the environs and look around for someplace I might want to have a Peruvian lunch.

A view across Plaza de Armas of Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús

I ended up killing time by entering that impressive building in the photo above -- Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús, a Spanish church built in the 17th century -- and then wandering around the street until I couldn't catch my breath any longer. Eventually I decided I was hungry enough for lunch, so I hit a restaurant called Los Candiles that supposedly offers traditional Peruvian fare.

Entrance to Los Candiles

I'd already decided that I was going to have alpaca for my first real meal in Peru, and their menu didn't disappoint. There were at least a half dozen alpaca dishes to choose from, along with guinea pig, which I also figure I ought to try since I'm here. But guinea pig is more of a leap than I'm willing to make on my first day here, and my feeling is that if I can get through an entire dish of alpaca then I'll be ready to try guinea pig in a few more days.

The interior of the restaurant is somewhat small. The walls are filled with local paintings of Cuzco.

I arrived at the tail end of the lunch rush, which was fine with me. I took a seat in the back, and a very attentive waiter with excellent English took my order: alpaca with bacon in mushroom sauce, with french fries and a small tomato and cucumber salad. I also ordered my first pisco sour, which was amazingly good.

Not the greatest photo, but wow, this was tasty.

The pisco sour is basically the national alcoholic beverage of Peru, and it's featured on every menu I've seen thus far. The waiter made mine with pisco alcohol (a kind of brandy made from muscat grapes), lime juice, sugar, cinnamon, ice, and egg whites to make it frothy. If it hadn't cost 10 soles ($3.50), I would have tossed more back than just the one.

Bread with string, anyone?

Lunch came with complementary bread, which was very soft and reminded me of pita bread due to its thinness and also its hollow center. The only problem with the bread was that I found a string baked into the dough. Had it been dental floss, I probably would have cared more. As it was, I finished the bread and it was fine.

This was a lot of alpaca...

I really didn't know what to expect from the alpaca, but I decided that if I didn't really like it then the bacon would save the day. I was partly right. What surprised me wasn't just the piece of match that I found wedged between the bacon and alpaca -- what's with the surprise ingredients -- but that it was served rare. Perhaps the meat is naturally pink, but it seemed undercooked, and that gave the meat a somewhat mealy texture that I didn't much like. The taste was pretty mild, which is about right for a cholesterol-free meat, but there was a slight gaminess to it that had me chasing it down with the french fries, the mushroom sauce (very salty), the salad, the bread, and the pisco sour. I ate about 90% of it, stopping when I ran out of chasers. It would be hard for me to recommend this, but let's face it, one meal of alpaca doesn't make me an expert on it.

The entire meal cost me 38 soles ($13.15), which was more than it was worth. But Cuzco is a relatively pricey destination, and food costs here are generally rather high. There were a few items on the menu that I would have liked to try: "Andean's Appetizer" (crackling pig with cusquenian tamales, stuffed yucca, filler chili [?], brochette, and creole sauce) and various kinds of ceviche would have been better choices, I think.

On my way back to the hostal, I came across a giant dessert put together with a face at one end of it. The face gave the gigantic dessert character, but it also made it really bizarre. When I asked one of the workers at the hostal what it was for, she told me it was for a small weekend festival.

Seemed he was practicing for a Guinness World Record...

Once I climbed up to the general area where my hostal is located, I came across a number of indigenous women trying to sell small crafts while little girls tried to convince tourists to take photos of them and their alpacas for 1 sole (35 cents).

I'm not sure why the alpacas are here. I guess it's a way for people to make money. Photo, anyone?

The girl in the photo below is obviously a pro at this. She has a practiced smile and knew exactly how to hold her skirt for the photo. Even the alpaca stuck his teeth out for me. You can see that its ears are back, so maybe it had an inkling of what I had for lunch. Sorry, bud. Rest assured that I won't be eating more of your kin anytime soon.

She's good at this.

Still struggling with the altitude. I had my third coco tea right before dinner, and while it helps with my headache, which isn't that bad to begin with, it doesn't seem to help with my shortness of breath. Just heading a block and a half away for dinner left me winded. Ah, but it was nice to arrive at Pacha Papa and get a seat outside as dusk filled the sky. It was rather chilly, and while it was good to see they had heat lamps everywhere, for some reason they never turned them on.

Turn those heat lamps on, amigos!

I really liked Pacha Papa's menu and thought I did a good job of ordering. I went right to their "Clay Pot Stews" section (guisos en olla de barro) and chose aji de gallina (24 soles), which is shredded chicken in a creamy yellow chili sauce, ostensibly with nuts and parmesan cheese. However, my dish came with potatoes and a very potent olive, but no nuts or parmesan cheese that I could detect. In fact, although the sauce was spicy, there was virtually no flavor to the dish -- not even the chicken tasted like anything, and on top of that it was dry. I really wanted to like this dish. I really did. But it didn't work out.

It looks better than it tasted.

What impressed me the most was what came to my table first: a glass of chica morada (4 soles), which is so purple it's almost black. It is the most beautiful drink I've probably ever seen. When I asked about it, the waiter went into the kitchen and brought out a piece of purple maize and told me that it gets boiled down for hours before it's used in this drink. The purple maize is mixed with cinnamon, spices, fresh fruit, and pineapple and apple skins. Given the color, I was sure I'd taste corn in the drink, but there wasn't a trace. It was very smooth and clean and rather sweet. It took me a while to realize what it reminded me of; the cinnamon helps give it a slightly cider-like aftertaste. I was going to order a coco sour (coco leaves infused in pisco, lemon juice, and sugar), but I'm glad I went with this.

A beautiful drink. And it tasted good, too.

And then, because I don't understand the concept of overkill, I ended up getting maize morada (10 soles) for dessert. I was told that it's similar to chica morada but that it's a pudding. Well that sold me. This, too, was an extremely dark purple color. It was a hot pudding with fresh-dried fruit (apple and raisins were all that I detected). That's right, hot pudding. I've never had anything like it, but the consistency was somewhere between jello and cough syrup, though the taste was pretty good.

I'm sure my tongue was purple after the meal...

Tomorrow I wake up at 5 am and will take a train to Aguas Calientes. I don't know if I'll have such easy Internet access from there, but if not, I'll catch up on my trip posts later.

Lox of Bagels

It's easy to overlook this place. I should also add that the exterior doesn't do Lox of Bagels justice.

In most cities, a post about bagels would seem downright silly. After all, a number of well-known bagel shops, especially chains such as Einstein Bros. and Bruegger’s, are ubiquitous almost everywhere now. Here in Hawaii, however, it’s surprisingly hard to find a good bagel shop (and good pizza, but that’s another post). Most people buy them at grocery stores, and one bite will tell you immediately that no love has gone into the baking process. There are a few locally run bagel shops, but in my experience there is only one worth going to. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit out of the way from where I live, but now and then it’s worth making the fifteen-minute drive to get a nice bagel sandwich and stock up on bagels for home.

The Manhattan was unreal good. I love the fact that they're generous with

the veggies and don't slather on the cream cheese.

If you’re anywhere near downtown Honolulu, Lox of Bagels is, in my opinion, the only place to go to satisfy a bagel craving. Generous with their help, and even more so with the ingredients they pile on to an order, I just don’t see how you can go wrong with anything here. They have more than twenty varieties of homemade bagels, and that doesn’t include seasonal bagels. Their bagel prices are reasonable – at least for Hawaii – and go for $1.09 each.

While their selection of bagel sandwiches is fairly standard, they take the idea of standard and make it special. You can make your own bagel sandwich from ham, salami, roast beef, smoked turkey, tuna, pastrami, or chicken salad, or you can order a veggie ($3.99), a BLT, a Club, or a Manhattan Delight (lox, cream cheese, and capers). All sandwiches come with “the works,” a piling-on of lettuce, tomato, sprouts, onions, mayo, and mustard. You might not notice it in the photo above, but that bagel sandwich, which I’ve squeezed down to make it easier to eat, has a veritable salad inside. It is absolutely worth the $8.49 price tag. If you arrive for breakfast, you have a choice between a bagel with eggs and butter ($2.79); eggs, cheese and butter ($3.29); or eggs, cheese and butter, and ham or bacon ($4.49).

Chocolate bagel puff -- great with coffee

Another thing I like about Lox of Bagels is their bagel-based desserts. For example, they have several pretty amazing “bagel Danish” options as well as “bagel puffs,” which are innocuous-looking, dinner roll-like concoctions that are much better than a glance might suggest. The first time I tried these I worried that they’d be too dry and bready and overwhelm their individual dessert aspects. But not to worry. Good lord, they were excellent – and perfect with a hot cup of strong Vietnamese coffee (yes, another Trung Nguyen victory). Cinnamon raisin puffs, which have cream cheese inside, are only 99¢, but you may want to splurge an extra 40¢ for a specialty puff whose center is filled either with chocolate and cream cheese, peanut butter and cream cheese, or adzuki beans. I went with chocolate and cream cheese, which is delicious eaten warm, and if I didn’t feel like such a pig ordering all this (along with four bagels I’ll be freezing) I would have also ordered the adzuki bagel puff. How's that for fusion?

As with the exterior of Lox of Bagels, the interior doesn't do the place justice either

Lox of Bagels also sells homemade cream cheese spreads: plain, chive, garden vegetable, honey, strawberry, jalapeño cheddar, guava, lox, cinnamon walnut, cucumber onion dill, and spinach herb. Two-ounce containers range from $1.29 to $1.99, and eight-ounce containers will run you between $3.99 and $5.99. They also carry salads, bagel pizzas and melts, bagel dogs, and sweet and savory bagel chips.

They were short on bagels when I arrived. But more were being made in the background.

They were short on bagel puffs and bagel Danishes. But for good reason.

In the two-and-a-half years I’ve lived in Hawaii it’s been difficult to find really good bagels. Well, suffice it to say that bagels are no longer on my list of hard-to-find eats in Hawaii. Lox of Bagels is the real deal. I just wish it were closer to where I live.

A colorful variety of spreads

Lox of Bagels

111 Sand Island Access Road

Honolulu, HI 96819

(808) 845-2855

www.bagelshawaii.com

Mon - Fri: 5 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Saturday: 6 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Sunday: Closed

Catering is available.

My First Newspaper Publication

Well, I finally got a piece of food writing published (not counting my short story about a guy who confused eating with love). For anyone who's interested, please have a look at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin website where it appears as a feature story.

And yes, there's no more anonymity for me, as my real name appears beneath the title of the story. (And if you're really curious, or just have a bunch of extra time on your hands, feel free to check my other blog for various photos as well as some stuff that overlaps with this website.) As far as my blogging life goes, however, I still prefer to go by Sapuche!

I intend to post the original article, which runs twice as long as this publication and has more photos to go with it, as soon as I'm sure the publication rights have reverted back to me.

I'm afraid I have to go back into my blogging cave again (i.e., dealing with the exigencies of my life) for a couple more weeks. After that, I hope to be back blogging fairly regularly again!