Peru, Day 10

Today was a good day. First of all, I woke up realizing that I had a full twenty-four hours to see Lima – my last day in Peru before I fly north to Quito, in neighboring Ecuador. (Quito is 9350 feet above sea level, so I’m hoping I don’t have another bout with altitude sickness.)

I woke up at six so that I could grab a shower and then hit El Mercado Numero Dos before it fully got in swing. I ended up leaving my hotel at a little before seven and got to the market about ten minutes later – it was a nice, brisk morning walk from my hotel. The neighborhood got progressively worse, and more crowded, as I neared the market, but the area was interesting in its own right. The number of hulking security men in berets and camouflage around the market itself told me that the area probably isn’t where I want to hang out, but it looks like a good place to buy foodstuffs.









The people working inside were friendly, too, and didn’t mind me poking around taking photos. I ended up buying a guanabana for six soles (~$2), which I haven’t eaten yet but need to before I leave Peru.



I hung out there until a little after eight a.m., and while the market was getting busier I’d say that only half the stalls, at most, were even open. I’m sure if I’d returned at ten the place would have really been bustling.

Afterward I came back to my hotel and availed myself of free breakfast.



Once I’d filled myself with nondescript food, I grabbed a taxi for Museo de Larco, which I recommend to anyone visiting Lima who wishes to get a deeper understanding of Peruvian pre-Columbian history. During this taxi ride my feeling about Lima changed even more. As we drove through the neighborhoods of Miraflores, San Isidro, Jesús Maria, and Pueblo Libre, I became increasingly impressed with how beautiful Lima is -- yes, this is a backtrack from what I said about my initial impressions of the city. There are a great many parks in Lima, and the architecture in these neighborhoods is beautiful. It goes without saying that it's too bad that crime is such a big problem here, as Lima seems to offer so much. Having come here from more rural areas of Peru, it's also worth saying that the socioeconomic differences between Lima and every Indian community I passed through are insanely steep. Much of Lima is very affluent, whereas the Indian communities that I saw are very poor indeed. I noticed this going from Cuzco to Poroy train station (a thirty-minute trip) for my trip to Machu Picchu, too, but Lima in many parts is far more affluent than even Cuzco.



But back to Museo de Larco. While the museum is known for its gold and silver collection from Ancient Peru, and also its textiles, I was most impressed with the pottery pieces on display. The creativity in all the works was astounding.









And the sheer number of civilizations represented – Peru, after all, is one of six regions of the world where first civilizations (“cradles of civilizations”) developed independently of other societies – is mind-boggling. Oh, and the erotic archaeological collection is mind-boggling, too. It almost makes the Kama Sutra look tame.

In addition to the museum pieces, there are two nice stores on the grounds and what’s supposed to be a great restaurant.



There’s also apparently a resident Peruvian Hairless that sleeps on the entrance walkway, blinking its coffee-bean eyes in the sun.



Museo de Larco is located at Av. Bolívar 1515 in Pueblo Libre, Lima. Tel: 461-1312. Email: webmaster@museolarco.org. Web: www.museolarco.org. Tickets for adults are 24 soles (US$8.37).

By the time I finished at Museo de Larco it was lunchtime, more or less. So I took another taxi to a place that was also in Pueblo Libre called Restaurant El Bolivariano.



I got there just as it was opening, and had my pick of tables.



I ended up ordering causa acevichada (ceviche on top of a cold casserole-like serving of mashed potatoes, avocado, hot peppers, and onions in an ají amarillo sauce).



I had a frozen lemonade, too.



The causa acevichada was beautifully presented and also tasted great. The flavors were milder than I expected – ají amarillo is always mild, I’m coming to understand – but the combinations were pretty amazing. By itself each portion would have been good, too, but putting them together like this doubles the fun (if not the flavor). After this I was convinced by my friendly waiter to try the “postre nacional de Peru” – picarones, which are rings of fried bread served with cinnamon and cane syrup. He said they were small and not to worry that they came in a dish of four. Being the trusting type, I said fine. When they arrived, however, they were huge.



Being the eating machine that I am, I squeezed them down. All four of them. It was easier than I’d expected. Actually, they didn’t have much flavor to them, and surprisingly even the cane syrup and cinnamon didn’t add much, either. But they were there, my stomach was telling my brain, “Gimme more,” and I was game for anything. My causa acevichada cost 19 soles (US$6.62) and my picarones were 7 soles (US$2.44). El Bolivariano is a great choice if you’re in Pueblo Libre to visit Museo de Larco or Museo Nacional de Arqueología (just a two-minute walk away from the restaurant). It’s located at Psje. Santa Rose 291, Pueblo Libre, Lima. Tel: 261-9565. Email: Reservas@elbolivariano.com. Web: www.elbolivariano.com.

But I wasn’t done yet. Amazingly, I found the fortitude, both mentally and intestinally, to visit an 88-year-old tavern called Antigua Taberna Queirolo.



The place is famous for its pisco sours and fortified wine, which is brewed next door (which is in turn next to a church, which I’m sure loves the tavern’s proximity). I ended up ordering what I think was called a Chilado de Pisco, which my waiter told me was the especial de la casa.



I’d say fully half my glass was pisco, followed by ginger ale, lime juice, and two other things that I couldn’t translate. It cost 10 soles (US$3.49) and took me about half an hour to polish off. Then I got sleepy…I wasn’t the only one drinking at 1 p.m., but everyone else was eating sandwiches or ceviche. I’m sure they just thought I was a lush. Anyone regularly reading my blog might think so, too.

From there I took a taxi home and rested for a bit. But not for too long, because I had more eating to do. At 7:30 I headed to what is widely considered to be Peru’s best restaurant: Astrid & Gastón. That’s right, the best restaurant in a country famous for its food. I felt woefully underdressed for the occasion – all I had was a striped polo shirt (yes, it was clean), a pair of dark jeans (clean, too), a black jacket (not so clean), and a pair of running shoes (clean if you don’t look at the soles), and I was afraid they’d turn me away. But thankfully they let me in – they told me that reserved seating began at nine, so I was safe for a while – and sat me at a table more or less in the middle of their main dining area.



I was immediately given bread and asked what I’d have to drink. “A piscopolitan,” I said quickly and a little guiltily. But hey, it’s my last night in Lima and I felt like splurging. I forget exactly what a piscopolitan is, but it has pisco, of course, and cranberry juice, lime juice, and several other fancy ingredients. It came quickly and was excellent.



For my main course I was really torn – everything on the menu sounded extraordinary, and just reading the menu made me realize that I was in a special place indeed. Possibly this would be a once-in-a-lifetime meal. But the pressure was on them, not me, and I felt good ordering the Cabrilla del mar de Piura, which the menu describes as “steamed spotted grouper from the sea of Piura with glazed scallops, razor-clams, ají Amarillo and mint, and creamy rice, peas, and corn).” Not bad, eh?

As I was waiting for it, one of the waiters saw my camera and asked me if I wanted to take photos of the kitchen. Sure!



He ended up giving me a tour of the entire restaurant, showing me the kitchen, an outdoor “office area” with an art installation in the wall, and answered my questions about the place.



Nice guy. Maybe he was worried that I was a food reporter from the New York Times and wanted to make a good impression on me. Then again, I’m pretty sure I was the worst-dressed customer they’d seen in some time, so maybe he just felt sorry for me.

Shortly after returning to my table my food arrived. It was beautiful.



The creamy, light-green rice held my gaze for some time, and my first bite didn’t let me down. This might sound improbable, but the flavors were in fact new to me. The sauce was perhaps a tad salty, but the dish itself was fantastic – the grouper was perfect in its firmness, with a tinge of pink in the middle, and the scallop and razor-clams were just as good. There were also two pieces of squid mixed in, and the green rice, which seemed to be of a sticky variety, and therefore absorbent of all the flavors, was quite good, too. Surprisingly, the mint was cooked, which seemed to take away the mintiness I was expecting. But it was a fantastic dish, all the more so since it only cost 49 soles (US$17).

Following my entrée I decided to push the limits of my stomach’s capacity yet again and ordered dessert. It was a tough choice, but I went with the “dismantled tiramisu with fruit compote the ‘maiz marado’ (purple corn) way” (28 soles [US$9.76]).



Look: I’ve had more than my share of desserts in my lifetime. Nothing I’ve ever had compared to this. I mean, the entrée was excellent, but the dessert was in a class all by itself. I had the “maiz marado” in Cuzco, but that was like eating rotten bugs compared to this. The dismantled tiramisu is a brilliant idea, and that cream log in the middle was just unbelievably good. The fruit compote, too, was superlative, even though it only consisted of four small squares. In this case, I was thrilled to have pushed myself to the limits of my stomach’s capacity. I finished off the meal with more alcohol – a pisco de café y algarrobo: “coffee pisco and algarrobo (a kind of tree that grows on the coast in northern Peru where the weather is always warm).” Again, superlative.



As if that wasn’t enough, they served complementary candies at the end. I didn’t eat them, don’t worry…



The entire meal ended up costing me $47. Yes, it’s expensive – not compared to prices in Aguas Calientes, amazingly – but to me it was worth it. It was not only the best meal I had in Peru, but it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. For $47, it was a steal. Even more so since I went there without a reservation and probably looked like I was going to a campground after my meal.

Astrid & Gastón is located at Castuarias 175 in Miraflores, Lima. Tel: 242-4422 / 5387. Web: www.astridygaston.com. They also have restaurants in Santiago, Caracas, Bogotá, Quito, Madrid, México City, and Buenos Aires.

Peru, Day 9

This is going to be a very boring update. Nothing really happened today other than more travel delays. My flight from Trujillo to Lima, which was originally scheduled to fly at 8:30 a.m., was pushed back to 3 p.m. And then, once I checked in, and was told that my flight was on time, I proceeded to wait another three hours to board. So, in all, I spent from 1 p.m. until 8 p.m. at airports and in transit between airports and hotels. Another partial day lost thanks to StarPeru. If I ever come back to Peru, and I hope I will, I know never to schedule another flight on their airline. LAN, though more expensive, is far more reliable and better run.

Rant over. Still, there’s not much to report here because I simply didn’t have time to do anything special. I just ate. And only two meals. Ay caramba.

I was actually a little bummed to be leaving Trujillo. I was a little worried that I’d made a mistake traveling here rather than to Iquitos, which is said to be a beautiful and fascinating city on the Amazon River, but in the end I was happy to have come into contact with such a charming, colorful little city that was full of well-preserved colonial architecture and was for the most part walkable. It was also really nice to be able to spend one night in Huanchaco, which is only a 15-minute drive away but utterly different from Trujillo. My feeling is that if Peru were safer it would be crawling with foreigners.

In any case, in the morning I didn’t have any place special to go in Trujillo – one of the museums I wanted to go to was closed on Sunday, which is also true of almost every business here, as all the giant colonial doors were shuttered throughout the city – so I wandered around and found myself at the Plaza de Armas, where something slightly ominous seemed to be happening. I quickly noticed was that the streets around the plaza were cordoned off, lots of police in riot gear were standing on the corners of the plaza, and gathered in groups around the square were soldiers in camouflage.





I hung around for a bit and watched people filter in and out of the big church in the plaza, seemingly oblivious to this gathering of soldiers and riot police, then headed back to my hotel for breakfast. After I’d ordered I was told that this happens every Sunday: it’s a municipal event, apparently. I have no idea what it was about or if what she told me was correct. Anyway, there was nothing for me to do at that point but eat breakfast and prepare for my trip to the airport.

When my breakfast arrived I nearly hit the floor. Another guest started laughing and said, “Es muy grande!” Hey, no kidding, muchacha. Ten of the pancake breakfasts I ordered could have fed the entire army that I’d seen gathered in the plaza.



The pancake itself was no smaller than a football – it was certainly heavier – and it came with two fried eggs covered with a slab of ham, two large rolls with jam (because everyone knows that bread goes great with pancakes), orange juice, and tea. All I can say is that I did my best. I couldn’t touch the rolls, but I ate the entire pancake, which was great, and most of the eggs and ham, which I didn’t want to let go to waste. I wish Adam Richman were a genie one could summon whenever necessary; I’d have requested that he take half my meal, including all the bread.

After that I dragged my overfed stomach around Trujillo for a couple more hours, mostly taking photos of churches and the city’s beautiful doors and windows, but also stopping in a nice cafe for a quick coffee, then headed to the airport.



I have to retract a statement I made earlier about Lima. I said something to the effect that it was grimy, treeless, and basically unattractive. I was basing this off of an airport ride to Central Lima, which I now know is a relatively poor and dangerous part of the city. Since I was staying in Miraflores this time I took a different route from the airport, and even at night this part of Lima struck me as quite attractive. (More on this in my next post.)

By the time I arrived at my hotel it was already 8 p.m. So I asked the receptionist for a restaurant recommendation and then promptly went in the other direction. I have no idea why I did that. But I came across a fairly active area and found a restaurant with the word CHIFAS spelled out above its entrance. I wanted to give this another try, so I went inside. A nice older waiter – all the wait staff was Peruvian, which surprised me a little – sat me down at a table and told me which items from the menu were the restaurant’s specialties. He pointed to numerous things and rattled off various explanations in Spanish, which I didn’t understand. I pointed at two things he’d pointed at and said I’d try those. Then I ordered beer. And then he left.



The first thing I ordered was soup.



It was basically egg drop soup with snap beans, shrimp, chicken, and button mushrooms.



I have no idea what made this soup Chifas. The Chinese part of the dish I understood, but the Peruvian part of the dish was lost on me. It was good, but nothing special.

Then my entrée arrived: I thought I’d ordered chicken with mixed vegetables, but a mix of chicken, shrimp, duck, pork, quail eggs, vegetables, and cashews arrived.



It was a huge amount of food, and again I wasn’t clear on what was Peruvian and what was Chinese about it. To me, all the ingredients were Chinese, and before I took a bite I half-guessed that the taste might be somehow Peruvian. It seemed that I was right. The entire meal had a uniform, salty taste, which by the time I was halfway through the dish had gotten a little tiresome. When the waiter came by I asked him if Chifas basically meant using Chinese ingredients but cooking them in a Peruvian way – with certain oil often used in Peruvian cooking, for example – and he said yes. The idea is to cook Chinese food but give it a flavor that is recognizably Peruvian. Good enough, I thought. But in fact it wasn’t very good. Not bad, but certainly nothing I’d think would result in so many Chifas restaurants around the country. Maybe I just went to the wrong place.

By the time I got home it was already 10 p.m. Since I wanted to hit the central market early the next morning, I turned in and slept right away.

Peru, Day 7

A line-up of caballitos de tótora in Huanchaco.

This morning started off non-descript – which left me quite happy. The only problem I had was a lack of hot water for my shower, which took half an hour to fix. Once cleaned up I skipped the free breakfast at my hostal and walked a few minutes through a drizzle to Panaderia-Pasteleria Santa Micaela, a bakery run by nuns.

The nuns know how to make a comfy atmosphere. I love those giant wooden doors, too.

I figured that I couldn’t lose with nuns, and wow, who knew that nuns could make such good pastries and coffee? I ordered a black coffee (2 soles), two (but got three) caramandukas (1 sole), and an oreja (2 soles).

Solid food and coffee. What a refreshing way to start the morning!

There were absolutely no complaints from my stomach, and seriously, that coffee was outstanding.

At 11:00 I headed to the airport for a trip to Trujillo on dreaded StarPeru. Amazingly, the flight only left ten minutes late, and fifty minutes later we were touching down in Trujillo, on the north-central coast of Peru (population about 550,000). Considering what a short distance Trujillo is from Lima, which seems always to be overcast or drizzly, it was surprising to see how arid and brown Trujillo’s landscape is. There are three mountains that one immediately sees upon leaving the airport, and they sit in the brown, dusty distance like stacks of kindling spaced evenly and purposely apart.

From the airport I took a taxi to a wonderful little hostal only about ten minutes away. Rather than stay in Trujillo my first night I decided to hang out in Huanchaco, which is known for its laid-back beach scene, complete with surfing, the nearby Chan Chan ruins, and reed fishing boats (caballitos de tótora) that have been around for three thousand years and are, some say, the original surfing vessel.

Fisherman heading out on his caballito de tótora.

Surfers and fishermen on their reed boats sharing the water.

A fairly typical house, if more freshly painted than most, in Huanchaco.

This place feels like a world away from the other places I’ve been in Peru and is incredibly charming and relaxing.

After arranging a half-day’s excursions for Saturday, I walked into town and climbed the hilly roads to the Santuario de la Virgen del Socorro, Peru’s second oldest church, dating to 1540.

My approach to the 469-year-old church.

Its location, with sweeping views of Huancacho and its curving coastline, was probably the most outwardly impressive thing to me about the church.

Huanchaco can be stunning at times.

This was rivaled, however, by the several couples making out behind the stone wall in front of the church.

See that blue speck a tad right-of-center? That's the back of a guy smacking lips big-time with his chica. There's a little girl on the left of the church who seems to be taking a photo of them with her camera phone. I, of course, merely wanted a shot of the church.

I’m not religious, but even to me it seemed in poor form to be getting it on within view of the entrance to Peru’s second-oldest church.

I met an Argentine transplant who helped me find the church, and on my way back to town I spent at least fifteen minutes pretending to have a conversation with a friendly local man who was apparently quite opinionated about many things. I really wish I knew Spanish, as the time I spend pretending to communicate with people would be more useful to all parties.

From there it was time to find dinner, and I knew already where I was going: Restaurant Don Pepe.

Not a bad view for dinner.

Yes, Don Pepe is king. At least he is king of the cangrejo reventado (“busted crab”), a dish so messy and difficult to eat that my table ended up looking like the scene of a massacre. I am not joking about that, even if my simile fell woefully short of convincing.

Pre-slaughter photo...

Cangrejo reventado is fresh crab cooked with eggs, seaweed, and ají (chili pepper), and came with steamed yucca and salted white rice. I was given a small rounded club and told to batter the crabs directly on the table until their shells broke open and I could suck down their juicy goodness. This is where my massacre analogy comes in. Every whack I gave my three crabs sent seaweed, cooked egg, and crab guts splattering all over myself, the table, my beer bottle, my beer glass, the wall, the street, the overhead light bulbs, the two bathroom doors twenty feet behind me, the rooftop next door, and one or two of those caballitos de tótoras in the sea directly in front of me. It was impossible to drink my beer because my hand was so slick with my meal that I couldn’t hold onto the glass. I apologized to a table of German women on my way out, and they told me not to worry about it. I think they were just afraid of my week-long beard growth, otherwise I'm sure they would have yelled at me.

I loved Restaurant Don Pepe. It was partly the food, partly the service, partly the view, and partly the fact that my cangrejo reventado and Pilsen Trujillo beer cost me a total of 20 soles ($6.92). Compare that with the $20 meals I was eating in Aguas Calientes, and you can see why I was thrilled.

As if that wasn’t enough – actually, there wasn’t a lot of food in that meal – I ended up getting an ice cream on my way back. Why? I’m not sure. I don’t even like ice cream all that much.

It was good, but why exactly did I order this?

I forget the name of the second flavor I ordered along with chocolate, but it tasted like egg nog and had giant raisins that might have been steeped in rum. Rum raisin? Ron con pasas? Anyway, it was only 2 soles.

Tomorrow I cram in a lot of local traveling and will hopefully get the chance to have some ceviche and end my day in a café once frequented by the famous author and would-be-politician Mario Vargas Llosa, who no longer lives in Peru but in Spain. From what I heard, not only did he leave Peru but upon selling his house here he made the buyer promise to burn it down and build on top of the ashes.

Peru, Day 6

Since Day 5 in Peru was lost somewhere between a clinic – ay caramba, it was expensive and the nurses there need to learn how to inject a needle into a patient’s arm – and my bathroom, I’m resuming my little blog on Day 6, after arriving in Lima.

Actually, it would be better for me to start prior to arriving in Lima, beginning with some, let’s say, character-building experiences with transportation in Peru. In my first five days in Peru, I have had three flight delays (which substantially shorten the time I have in each of my destinations), one flight cancellation, one un-cancelled flight that defied explanation (except for maybe the fact that an irate Canadian man threatened to kill a StarPeru employee if he couldn’t get to Lima by evening in order to make his connecting flight back home), and a taxi ride to a clinic in which I was dropped off in the middle of nowhere despite the fact that the driver had a map with the clinic’s location clearly spelled out. Ah, there’s nothing nicer than a fifteen-minute walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood in Peru without knowing the language and feeling very sick. My character, in case it had been on the low end of the scale, I’m pretty sure has suddenly – or at least in the eight hours I spent in the airport yesterday – grown in leaps and bounds. So that’s a relief.

By the time I got to Lima, I was very happy. I was starting to feel much better, and my return to a “normal” altitude was welcome. I arrived in the evening, during the height of rush hour traffic. Aside from my constant inhalation of exhaust that filled the taxi, it was an interesting ride. Our progress was slow enough that I could get full views of what we were passing. Perhaps it wasn’t much, but it gave me a sense of where I was. The three things that immediately struck me about Lima were that it is extremely grimy, it has very few trees, and there is construction seemingly everywhere. There are also very many young people. With babies. At least these things were true of my trip from the airport to Central Lima, where I spent the night.

Shortly after checking in I decided to take a risk and go to a restaurant in Miraflores that is supposedly known for its Chinese-Peruvian dim sum (an example of chifas, or Chinese-Peruvian fusion) -- this, according to my guidebook. The highlight of this excursion was my first trip into Miraflores, which is an upscale neighborhood full of beautiful colonial architecture. After tipping my taxi driver more than I realized, I headed into Wa Lok, a small chain of well-regarded Chinese restaurants in Lima. I can’t say I was surprised to find that the first floor of the restaurant was a casino, but it’s also true that I stopped and stared in some wonder before climbing upstairs to the second floor, where the actual restaurant is.

Once there I discovered that my guidebook had totally underreported the cost of dim sum here, which was still about what I paid for every meal in Aguas Calientes. I ordered three types of dim sum – tai chi kao, siu lam koc, and kau choy kao – and a Pilsner Callao beer.

The dim sum was in no way Peruvian, as I had either foolishly thought or as my guidebook had foolishly written. (I’m still not sure.) Even so, I was happy to have dim sum, which was good but a little greasy. I can’t remember which dim sum was which, but one came with diced vegetables, one with shrimp, pork and asparagus, and one with chicken and shrimp.

It was no DinTaiFung, but it was pretty tasty. My order ended up being twice as much food as I could eat, but it was nice to have regular food again, and the beer of course was mighty fine.

When I went downstairs to get a taxi, the first one I flagged down refused to take me home, laughing with what looked like fear in his eyes, saying twice in succession, “Central Lima? No, no, no,” and then peeling off down the street. The next one that came, I managed to sit down in the back seat before telling him where I wanted to go. He took me there with no complaints and nothing terrible happened along the way. (Of course, who knows what might have happened to him after he dropped me off.)

Back at the hostal, I dropped off my doggy-bag of dim sum for the receptionist, who seemed happy to receive it but then never appeared to eat it. I spent much of the evening talking to other guests in one of the two common rooms – a couple from Canada, a couple from Israel, and a woman from Hong Kong – before going to bed. Not what I’d call an exciting night, but not a bad ending for the way my day started.

I’m just hoping that my trip to Trujillo tomorrow afternoon isn’t delayed or canceled. If it is, there’s really no point in going, as I won’t have any time to see what I planned.