Nov 20
The first question everyone asks when I rave about the gastronomy in Peru is the inevitable "Have you tried the cuy (guinea pig)"? To avoid any suspense here, yes, of course I tried it. Since we are writing about typical foods in each country, I had to! And usually what follows is "but they are so cute-didn't you have one as a pet when you were a kid"? No, I didn't. I had a dog.
A continuation from my last post about the foods we tried while in Lima,Peru, here you will find an introduction to our first Peruvian dishes we discovered. This is only the beginning, stay tuned for more foods to come!
Of all of the foods I have eaten in the past year and of all the cities we visited in South America, one place stands alone as the shining star. Lima, Peru is without a doubt the culinary capital of this continent. It is putting not only Peru but Latin America on the map and is poised to become the next big thing in the international gastronomic world. There is a new army of chefs in the making committed to bringing the foods from Peru to the rest of the world. And the world, in return, should be very grateful.
After our rafting adventures, we flew from Rurrenabaque back to La Paz. From there, we took an awful night bus to Cochabamba. Night buses in Bolivia are disaster affairs. Okay, most buses in Bolivia are terrible but night buses are a special type of horror because the seats do not recline to beds, there is usually no bathroom and the roads in the country completely suck. This makes for little sleep with a full bladder on a bumpy road. Not very pleasant, I'm afraid.
One year ago on October 4, with much trepidation and excitement, Laurent & I landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina with just backpacks strapped to our backs containing everything we would need for the next two years. I had quit my job back in New York, sold my car and many of my possessions and had no idea what the future would hold.
The next adventure was about to begin. It started in Sucre when I met a girl who told me of a great experience she had. While in La Paz, she discovered a company called 'Deep Rainforest' who organized a 6 day tour aboard a homemade raft. Each night you would stop along the river and camp. Occasionally there would be hikes to try to spot monkeys or other wildlife. Showers consisted of plunging into crystal waterfalls, streams or for the very brave, the murky pirhana-infested, caiman-lurking waters.
After our rough introduction to Bolivia, we finally made it to Sucre. And like so many travelers before, we fell in love with this city. In fact, it's easily become one of our favorite cities in all of South America. We decided to spend 3 weeks here learning more Spanish and we could have stayed for 3 more. Why all this love for Sucre? Well, that's easy.
We're back! It was my first time taking a 'vacation' to go 'home' so that was kind of weird but it was also pretty amazing to be able to make this opportunity happen. It was a bit of a whirlwind and time flew by for both of us but it was great seeing so many friends and family. I discovered I don't miss New York that much but I miss its people. Okay, so I missed burgers, pizza and bagels!! And real coffee! Now we are back to 'No es cafe' (Nescafe).
Wait, aren't we already on vacation? Yeah, it's just a vacation within the vacation!
Last week, we visited Chile's most colorful city, Valparaiso. If Chile, San Francisco, Brooklyn & Paris had a baby, it might be Valparaiso.
Now that I have your attention, no there wasn't an ACTUAL earthquake here in Chile, although the drink we tried is named for Chile's notorious past with these natural disasters. The earthquake we experienced was the 'Terremoto drink'. It's definitely not fancy enough to be called a cocktail!
Infused exposures 