Gastronomical Update

I haven’t posted in a while, and will probably won’t have time tonight to update regarding what I’ve been doing, but I would like to do a quick culinary review of my trip to Peru:


Name: Pisco Sour

Type: Alcoholic beverage

Short description: Peru’s National cocktail (or Chile’s if you ask a Chilean). made of Pisco (Peruvian grape brandy), lime juice, some egg white and crushed ice. In short, a chick drink.

Visual impression: Like lemonade with a big head of white foam.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Lemon juice with a bit (just a bit) of alcohol.

Grade out of 10: 5


Name: Cuy

Type: Meat dish

Short description: Roasted guinea pig. Served on festive occasions and every Peruvian’s favorite.

Sample pic (for illustration purposes alone):



Guinea Pig





Cuy




Visual impression: Like a chicken with a rat’s head.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): The skin is crispy and very good. There isn’t much meat, but whatever I managed to find was kind of like quail (meaning like chicken but more tender and more greasy).

Grade out of 10: 8.5


Name: Ceviche

Type: Sea food dish.

Short description: Raw fish and/or shellfish marinated (and thus "cooked") in some lemon juice. It is possible, and not very hard, to find this dish in Israel, but it is considered something of a national dish in Peru.

Visual impression: As expected.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Hey, It’s lightly cooked seafood - how can you go wrong (well except from adding loads of coriander)?

Grade out of 10: 9 (would have been a 10 if it wasn’t for the Peruvian affection for coriander).


Name: Chicha (aka "Pure Evil")

Type: Alcoholic beverage.

Short description: A Peruvian beer (home brew) made from corn fermented in human spit. In all fairness, it should be noted that the locals claim that in nowadays Chicha goes under a more standard fermentation process. It should also be noted that after trying it, I don´t believe them.

Visual impression: murky rust water, with a big head of foam.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Before taking a sip I took a whiff. Bad idea. It smells like stomach acid. The taste is like expired beer, or maybe an extremely sour alcoholic apple cider.

Grade out of 10: -1576


Name: Chicha Morada

Type: Sometimes beverage, sometimes dessert jello.

Short description: Strong purple colored drink or jello. Served at room temperature.

Visual impression: See "short description".

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Sweet and fruity. Reminiscent of quince marmalade.

Grade out of 10: 7


Name: Alpaca Steak

Type: Meat dish.

Short description: Well, it’s alpaca meat.

Visual impression: Looks just like any other beef steak.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Tastes just like any other beef steak.

Grade out of 10: 10 (Like any beef steak)


Next time (in about 5 days) I`ll finally have time to tell about Cuzco (my current whereabouts).

The Way Inn Lodge, and the Way Out of Huaraz (Sniff, Sniff)

Upon finishing the trek, I went for a day of rock climbing at Chancos, a short drive from Huaraz, and even did a bit of outdoor lead climbing for the first time. It was fun.

The next day, Ashley (the welsh from the Santa Cruz trek) and I moved to a new hostel, about 13 km out of Huaraz, in the mountains, called "The Way Inn Lodge".


The place was great, just great vistas and outdoor activity out of the city. I found some partners for some outdoor bouldering (lots of fun, accompanied by bleeding toes and fingers):

((Is that an extremely cool chalk bag or what?))

And did some great day walks:

I spent about 5 days there, hiking, climbing, getting bitten by sandflies and sunburning my upper lip (I have a bit of a Baron Harkonnen look going now), but the time has come to (very sadly) move on. I´m taking the night bus to Lima tonight, and from there a 5 hour bus to Ica, the best place in Peru for sandboarding and earthquakes.

BTW no. 1:
A file containing all the pics (both for this post and the Santa Cruz one) can be downloaded here.

BTW no. 2:
I fixed the poll and you´re all invited to get me to drink peruvian spit beer.

Laid Back Trekking

With Steve on his way, I wasted no time getting back to the great outdoors, and headed off to do the 4 day Santa Cruz trek.

Again, I did the trek through an agency. Since this trek is much more popular than the Huayhuash, our group consisted of 8(!) people. The large number f people on the group made me a bit worried, but in hindsight these people where the main reason I enjoyed the trek so much, even though we suffered bad visibililty for some of the highlights. The group was made up of a German couple, a Dutch couple, a French guy and a Taiwnanese girl (also a couple), a Welsh guy, and myself. There were all very nice and funny (especially fabrice, the frenchman, who kept making fun of the brit).

As I said, visibility wasn´t very good, and we didn´t even get to see Alpamayo, a mountain that was declared by UNESCO as "the world´s most beautiful mountain". I did however see a cloud that kind of looked like Givat Hamorè.