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 8

Trujillo at dusk.

This morning I was awakened at 5:30 by the sound of gunshots – about 40 of them over a period of maybe ten minutes. I had no idea what was going on, but I assumed people were either hunting near my hostal or someone was just popping off rounds because they’d run out of beer to drink and were angry about it. Of course, the shooting set off the neighborhood dogs, and it was also about time for the birds to wake up and start singing loudly and local churches to begin tolling their bells. I lay in bed until 6:00 in shock and awe, then dragged myself into the shower and went downstairs to have your typical Peruvian free-with-accommodations breakfast.

I ended up traveling into the countryside to see Huaca de la Luna y de la Sol and Chan Chan, as well as two lesser sites associated with the latter. It was nice to get off the beaten track and see more of Peru, but somehow I was disappointed in Huaca de la Luna (one doesn’t have access to Huaca de la Sol) and especially Chan Chan.

Although my guide at each destination was superbly well informed about the site where they worked, it was difficult for me to imagine how the places looked hundreds of years ago and in what ways, if any, these civilizations influenced the present-day way of life in the region. I know they have; I just couldn’t piece together how. It was interesting, I must say, if morbidly so, to learn just how extensive the practice of human sacrifice was in both Chimu civilization (~900 A.D. – 1470 A.D.) and in Moche civilization (A.D. 100 – ~A.D. 800), and how thoroughly the Spanish plundered these sites without regard for keeping any part of these civilizations intact. And Peruvians, too, even now, have been known to participate in grave-robbing.

The murals at Huaca de la Luna (Moche civilization) were brilliant – the artistry of their renderings of different animal deities, of soldiers leading prisoners, and of figures holding human heads – seemed strikingly modern.

It was also interesting to see how the temple was enlarged by the practice of simply building over the previous temple, which was constructed of mud and a series of other murals and contained the bodies of its former rulers and select followers. But maybe more of the site needs to be excavated – there are many mounds left to be examined, but there’s little money for it in Peru – before a sufficient story of the place can be told. I guess I felt like I left the Temple of the Moon with very little sense of its story.

Chan Chan, on the other hand, despite being a UNESCO World Heritage site, just didn’t do much for me. There weren’t many explanations posted, and even though I had a capable guide, I didn’t feel like I learned much by going here. Not much is left of Chan Chan, either, and the structures that have been unearthed were quite plain.

What designs there were – stylized cormorants, pelicans, and depictions of the moon and ocean – were repeated often, as were the diamond-shaped ventilation holes in many of the walls. Interesting, yes; but frankly, I wanted more from the hour I spent touring it under the hot sun.

It was good to get back to town and check in to my hotel in Trujillo. As soon as I did, I asked the receptionist for a recommendation of where to get good ceviche. She pointed to a place on a map that looked like a ten-minute taxi ride. I hesitated, but other staff around her chimed in to say it was the best. So what could I do? I got a taxi and headed over there – and inevitably found myself in another one of those pretend conversations in Spanish where admitting after five minutes that I haven’t understood a thing is certain to be taken as an insult. So I just continued to nod and smile and say, “Si, si, es muy interesando,” and even allowed the driver to give me a tour of the city rather than just take me directly to my destination. Why do I let this happen?

It was a big relief to leave the taxi and enter Mar Picante. These photos do no justice to this restaurant – absolutely none. (I was using a rather small camera here, not the one I normally use, and the quality of these shots isn’t as good.) Every dish the waiters and waitresses carried from the kitchen looked absolutely incredible. And my own dish, which was a kind of bento of sorts, excited me to no end. I ordered the Fantasia Marina: ceviche of fish, shrimp, squid, and cockles; rice with fried whitefish and clams; whitefish and crayfish in a spicy yellow ají sauce; and crispy fried fish nuggets with yucca.

All this food, and it was a lot, only cost 16 soles ($5.54)! I may have to go there tomorrow. If you ever get to Trujillo, this is a must-do.

At the end of my meal I even told my friendly waiter, “Este comida cambia mi vida.” He liked that. Or maybe he thought it was one of those pretend conversations that gringos like to have in Peru. At least he didn’t have to sit through 15 minutes of it…

When I came back to town – this time with a young taxi driver who was speaking lovey-dovey into his cell phone during my entire ride and nearly got us into two separate accidents – I decided to take a walking tour of the city. Trujillo is an extremely colorful, charming city of about 900,000 people. In the part of town where I’m staying – say from Plaza de Armas to Plazuela el Recreo, or about five blocks by six blocks – the colonial past is apparent in just about every building, especially the churches. The only thing that dampened my enthusiasm about walking was the taxis, whose drivers feel no compunction about running over pedestrians, and honk their horns incessantly at tourists. Most of the places I focused on during my walk were (in addition to churches) museums, cultural centers, a park, some old houses that are well-known examples of period architecture, a couple of “palaces,” a local market, and, at the end, the Plaza del Armas. Oh, and superheroes.

This evening, after being drawn out of my room by the sound of a parade – it was a festival for some local Virgin (note my capitalization) – I went out to give chifas another shot. Earlier this afternoon I saw a restaurant named Chifas right around the corner of my hotel. Although it was open at around 3 p.m., it was closed at 5:30. I scratched my head in wonder, then shrugged and walked back to the corner to a bar I was particularly interested in: Café y Museo del Juguete, which is owned by the Peruvian artist Gerardo Chávez Lopez. (I was less interested in the museum, which is on the top floor and contains figurines and toys and whistles and such from as long as 1000 years ago.)

Just to make sure you don’t think I’m some random alkie wandering through South America, I chose this bar because it’s supposed to have a gorgeous, old-school charm to it, and because it’s known to be a meeting place of famous Peruvian and South American artists, such as Mario Vargas Llosa. He wasn’t there – he moved to Spain shortly after losing the presidential election to Alberto Fujimori – but his photo was on the wall along with numerous other Latin luminaries.

I don’t go to bars very often – really, it’s true – but I have to say that this place, small as it was, has got to be one of the coolest little bars in the world. Everything about it – the color of the building’s exterior, the leather seats, wooden tables, hardwood floors, the piano in the back room, the artist photos on the wall, the muted light seeping through the windows, the antique cash register, the jazz playing on the stereo – made me wonder why at a little past 5:30 on a Saturday so few people were there.

In any case, I ended up ordering a mistela damasco, which is a kind of apricot wine. As you can see, there’s an apricot floating in my glass.

Why does the apricot look furry? I assure you that it wasn't. In fact, it was unbelievably good.

It was very sweet – like Japanese plum wine – and I liked how the glass tapered outward at the top. And for six soles ($2.07), that’s a nice price for an aperitif in a bar with so much history and charm.

I left after a few more people trickled in. The fading light outside made all the colorful buildings appear increasingly subdued – all the bright colors suddenly gradated into pastels – and the turkey vultures that had been soaring high, high overhead all day began to alight on the crosses atop the churches, and spread their wings as if to stretch sore muscles.

I could have stayed on the sidewalk all evening except I was too conscious of myself standing alone with a camera hanging on my neck. After a while I went to get dinner.

I settled for a sandwich shop called Café Amaretto because I saw chicarron de pollo on their menu.

I knew that chicha was a fermented beer made from different varieties of corn, and chicha morada was that delicious purple-black drink made primarily from maize that I’d had in Cuzco. A chicha-something chicken sandwich? Sounds interesting! Reading this, maybe you can see that I suddenly became dyslexic or something because there’s no chicha in chicarron. I ended up with fried chicken nuggets, greasy French fries, and ketchup that tasted like sweetened tomato paste. It was the blandest, most dissatisfying meal I’ve had in Peru – or probably anywhere in the last year or two. It’s my own fault, of course. There’s a photo of it below, not that it’s worth looking at.


Still, it was nice to sit there; a wedding was getting underway at a beautiful church across the street, and the lights on the street were starting to turn on and reflect prettily off Trujillo’s marbled sidewalks.

When I came home I discovered that my flight to Lima got delayed again. But rather than bemoan this, I was happy to learn I had another half-day in Trujillo, which really has a lot going for it.

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.