Peru, what a country!

The blog name will stay the same but the content is about to change. If I were to change it, it would be www.adreamcometrue.com. It will be longer be about Santiago and my Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching, but about our travels around.  We head back to the USA on March 25 and from now ‘til then we plan to visit Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Southern Chile and Patagonia if we can pull it off! I’m going to try my best to keep up with the blog.  

We barely had time to say chau to Santiago and let it sink in that we were leaving, before we arrived to the Santiago airport headed to Lima, Peru.  Not long after being in Lima, I was reminded how Latin American cultures and places are so wrongly lumped together.  Lima is so different from Santiago from the landscape, the architecture, the crime rate, the weather, and the friendliness to the food.  Oh, the food!  More on that later . . .

Flepi, the delightful family dog

We arrived on Christmas Eve and were warmly welcomed by my good friend and Barbieri colleague, Lisie and her family.  We got to have a lovely Christmas that didn’t make me miss my family or the seven-types-of-seafood Christmas Eve feast too much.  We spent Christmas Eve at Lisie’s aunt’s house with extended family.  Anton and I were operating on Santiago time, two hours ahead of Lima time and dinner, following tradition, wasn’t until past nine.  Christmas Eve is similar to New Year’s Eve in that it celebrates the coming of something, in this case, the birth of baby Jesus.  At midnight there was a champagne toast, and best wishes exchanged while illegal fireworks were set off around town.  

Lisie, her mom, three sisters, two nephews and niece were wonderful to be around.  They were generous hosts who were each very interesting and fun to talk to.  On Christmas Day morning we toured by bike around the neighborhood and surroundings including coastal parks.  Lima is very humid and overcast but has some great views of the Pacific and some pretty, old buildings.  We had a delicious lunch of salmon, salad and potatoes with an ají sauce called Tarí and it was SO good.  I haven’t been unimpressed with a meal yet.  For dinner we had sanguiches criollas.  Mine a chicharrón with fried pork belly, pickled red onions and sweet potato.  Anton’s was lomo huancaina with beef, lettuce, tomato, crispy thin potatoes and a huancaina, a cheesy aji sauce.

The next day we headed to the Haustein beach home in Ancon about an hour from Lima.  On the way Lisie and her sister, Delia shared some very interesting political history about Peru, riddled with corruption and attempted reform. We spent the afternoon on a boat ride, playing cards, taking dips in the ocean and eating more seafood and potatoes.  With more than one hundred different potato varieties and a huge coastline, Peruvians eat potatoes almost daily and seafood nearly as much.  Peru might be right up there with New Orleans and Italy for great food on vacation. More delicious food was had when we returned to Lima and has fushion sushi like rollos acevichado (ceviche roll).  Sunday morning I was introduced to fruits native to Peru at a local market.  Aguaymanto, pacai, granadilla and nespiro we all amazingly exotic and delicious.  We sadly bid adieu to Lima and the Hausteins to fly to Cusco en route to Puno.  

When we passed through Cusco I immediately had a flutter of excitement. For four years, I taught my third graders about the Inca and even though it was at an elementary level, to see the history of what I had read about right in front of me is so neat.  It’s just like after studying Spanish art for years in high school and making it to the Reina Sofia in Madrid to see Picasso’s Guernica.  There are platforms on the Andes mountains, ancient stone buildings, alpaca and Inca descendants all around. We took a very cheap, 8 hour bus to Puno on which we were the only white people among the quechua passengers.  Many women wearing traditional dress and speaking quechua.

Puno was just lovely.  It is a not-too-touristy, laid back, small city on the shores of Lake Titicaca with no chain establishments at all.  Many people walking around live in outlying communities and maintain a traditional way of life doing farm and artisan work.  It is 3,800 meters above sea level and despite warding off the site affects of the altitude we had a great time.  We stayed at a B & B, with an amazingly kind and knowledgable owner.  We visited the city’s cathedral and museum.  We toured the burial ground for ancient civilization’s leaders with towers up to 12 meters high for tombs.  We also did an unforgettable tour on Lake Titicaca of the Uros Islands, the 85 floating islands built from lake reeds with 1,500 inhabitants who speak Aymara, a pre-Inca language.  We also visited Taquile, a larger, natural island with habitants who speak quechua.  It was serene and beautiful.  While looking at the immense lake, we had a glorious lunch of quinoa soup and grilled trout with of course, fried potatoes.  We also met nice people in our tour group, including a couple from Cambridge, MA and a young guy who was riding his motorcycle from Vancouver to Tierra del Fuego.

The worlds highest navigable lake

Chulpa- Ancient Inca Tomb, we later saw the mummies recovered from the site in a Musem 

Homes on one of the floating islands

A view from Taquile Island

Right this moment, I am writing from the Andean Explorer, an old fashioned, luxury train, a splurge for Anton’s big birthday!  It is like a movie set.  We’re sitting in seats that look like living room furniture with a white tablecloth table and there is a bar car and an observation car in the back.  The views of the Andes and countryside are majestic.  There was a three course lunch and lots of snacks.  We are headed back to Lima where we will meet up with Joe and Lindsey in preparation for our hike to Machu Picchu.  I can’t wait to see what adventures and dishes, Peru has to offer next.