Peru: Guided by Dog

Walking last night to a local club, The Jazz Zone, for an evening of flamenco music and dancing which turned out to have been rescheduled but they had a night of rumba music with hints of flamenco dancing. But I digress, anyway as I was saying, walking to the club and despite having made noises about turning left down the lovely, tree-lined central walkway of Avenida Pardo Darcie plowed straight on into Graham who had made the left turn.  After a laugh at Darcie’s expense it turned out that she had been focused on the dog further across the street and had not heard a word about a left turn or much else…

Graham arrived safe and sound Thursday night after a 12 hour flight from Amsterdam, mostly awake at least until about 10pm when he nose-dived into bed.  We are staying at the Inka Frog whose logo is rather entertaining:

That is actually a staff not a finger but you would only know that if you had access to a color image not a wire model over the door, lol.  Anyway, it is a nice place, clean, quiet, comes with breakfast of fruit, eggs and rolls and if you are a member of South American Explorer’s you get a 30% discount on the room rate which makes it affordable as the standard rate is above our budget.

We took Graham out for dinner at Bruja de Cacique for a ceviche/anticucho fest and he was suitably impressed with the food just as we were.  The following day we sat up on the roof-level deck and caught up a bit and Graham worked on his tan (he got sunburnt) and then we went for a walk over to a restaurant recommended to us by one of our teaches, Yenifer, called Mi Causa which was fantastic.  A causa seems to be a mashed potato based dish but combining sea food and chiles (Aji in Peru) and other local ingredients into very elegant presentations.   We highly recommend this place, very local, great food, great prices considering the presentation.

  

Fully stuffed, we wandered down to the cliffs overlooking the beach and found a trail down as Graham had a desire to dabble his toes in the Pacific which he did and almost got swept off his feet much to our collective amusement.  The immediate beaches are not particularly nice, very reminiscent of Eastbourne in that they are heavily cobbled to mitigate erosion.  As we were sitting there I noticed that Graham had already succumbed to the intense equatorial sun and was a lovely shade of red in various places, the result of sitting on the patio without sunblock for a couple of hours earlier in the day.

 

We retreated slowly up the cliffs and along a ways showing Graham some of the sights, architecture and such of Miraflores our current home district in Lima, winding up in Parque Kennedy for tea-time cocktails at a tourist-trappy park-side restaurant – fun people watching.  Cocktails suitably downed along with the sun, we made our way over to Panchitos, another local-recommended restaurant.  Very elegant, fantastic food, very filling.  We indulged in an anticucho appetizer plate of beef and chicken hearts, chicken livers, tripe and other unmentionables all marinated and lightly grilled to perfection.  Fantastic is all I can say.   After this dish I was already full but we had also ordered mains which duly showed up to our collective horror as they were HUGE.  Graham had grilled shoulder of baby goat and Darcie and I shared crispy pork.  It was all we could do to finish and we waddled out of there satisfied but bloated. 

 

Saturday was a lovely crystal clear day with temps in the mid to upper twenties and a nice breeze.  We wandered over to the organic farmer’s market behind a former colonial-era train station, bought picnicky things enjoyed the scene for a bit and then walked up into Surquillo to another market to check out the daily meat offerings and to search for some local salami-like things to round out the picnic supplies.  There was a food festival going on and we happened upon a dance troop of young teens (boys and girls) who were whipping their hips around in good coordination and with a high level of energy.

    We drew a blank on the sausage and resorted to a local supermarket, Wong’s for several different types of salami and some water and then strolled over to a park for our picnic.  One of the things I really like about Lima is the plethora of parks that are dotted about the neighborhoods we have stayed in (Miraflores, Surco) and the adjacent ones that we have wandered through (Barranco and San Isidro) and even all the way down into Lima Central although they are a little more gritty there.  The neighborhood parks are usually one or two blocks long and wide and are suitably shaded by mature trees and even though busy main streets may be only one block further away you would be hard pressed to have that busyness intrude on the tranquility of the park.  We picnicked and then Graham took a 45 minute nap in the shade:

Last night we went out to a show at a local jazz club, The Jazz Zone, which was for the most part quite dead, it being Semana Santa (Easter) which is a big deal in Peru.  The country somewhat shuts down for four days, at least in Lima, with those that can escaping for a four-day holiday at the beach.  The band that showed up had a bald percussionist, a youthful second guitar wearing some sort of Chinese-influenced shirt, an electric bass, a lead guitar and a singer/dancer.  They played a lot of covers of Gipsy Kings tunes (this assumes that the GK’s wrote them) and Spanish/Flamenco versions of several well-known to the largely Euro/American audience such as Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”  (Vivire en espanol), the Eagles “Hotel California” and Madonna’s “Isla Bonita”.  A lot of fun all told but the lack of an audience detracted.

  And now here we are, Easter Sunday, peace and quiet continues to reign over Lima, we are planning our immediate future – Arequipa and the Colca Canyon and generally chilling at the hostel.  Graham has a touch of the Inka’s Curse (Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico) and may have what I had last weekend, to whit a blinding headache, over-all lassitude and achy joints/muscles.  If Graham feels up to it we are bussing to Arequipa tomorrow on the early morning bus (6:30am) for the 15 hour ride along the Pan American Highway and up, up, up into the Andes.

We plan to spend a few days getting used to the 2325m or 7600ft elevation and checking out the local sights and sorting out a hike in the Colca Canyon for the following couple of days. Assuming Graham is healthy enough.  We will spend a few more days after doing more sightseeing and then head up to Puno and Lake Titicaca for some high-altitude (3800m/12500ft) lake-side shopping and hopefully adventuring. 

After Puno we will take the bus down! to Cusco and see whether there is any chance of hiking to Machu Pichu.  It has reopened but it sounds like getting to MP, or rather getting back, is a royal nightmare, and while the area desperately needs tourist dollars/Euros (as does the rest of Peru) there are a lot of new government regulations and bureaucracy-driven foolishnesses seemingly making it a very difficult proposition – wish us luck.