Week 2

On Monday we had PI day. Pizzas and apple pie. It was my second baking adventure in peru and it turned out pretty well. The first adventure was making Guinness Cake in a land where there is no Guinness. Don’t ask. So after some internet snooping I found out that any sweeter dark beer will do. ie. Cerveza Negra. And after more ‘research’ I found someone had said that Pilsen Polar would make an ok sub for people without Guinness. Carlo’s mom has measuring cups, but no spoons and only one gigantic cake pan. So the cake baked for 1.5 hours and was still a little fudgey on the inside. The frosting was make out of 100% pure cocoa paste from Cusco. Cocoa paste and TONS of powdered sugar and some butter and some cream all formed a pretty tasty and intense chocolate frosting. Verdict:Excellent. Nothing like buying your way into people’s hearts with food. I also did St. Patty’s day food. We had shepherd’s pie and green swirl cupcakes with green frosting. Success! The cupcakes came out mondo sized and the shepherd’s pie was gone in a wink.

(Truncated version : Went on walks around the area. We went to the National Museum. Went to an old club house with a pool with Carlos’ aunt. The club represents the Loreto department of Peru. We went to the congress and thanks to Carlos’ uncle we got to see everything inside and outside and the Inquisition Museum and the Franciscan Convent with Catacombs, and what amounts to their Chinatown and walked around a sketchy, but very traditional neighborhood. I went to my first Chili’s. For the expanded version, read further :-) )

This week has been better and worse. Because I don’t do much I bore easily. Because the apartment is in a residential area, there is no public transportation around, and I haven’t figured out how to use it...so its a big effort to move around. But, because we don’t work we can do interesting things if we put our minds to it. We took some nice walks around the area, like 5k walks and looked at pretty apartment buildings and parks and a market where they sell everything from artichoke hearts to illegal DVDs and baking supplies and to beads and things. There are a lot of stands and the prices are really good. For non food items the prices are really good, but for food items the prices are on par with the cheaper supermarkets. If you want to buy an illegal movie, you can always check to make sure the quality is good before you buy it. Very handy. Silver jewerly is also very cheap here. Mostly, I have found out that because many items are made in Peru, when they are sold in Peru, they are VERY cheap. Awesome.

Carlos’ is also benefiting from my being in Lima. This week we were invited to his Aunt and Uncle’s club. His aunt told me that there is a club in Lima that represents every department of Peru. Like if every state had a club in DC. His aunt is from a place called Iquitos, which is a city in the Northern Department of Loreto which is jungle that sits on the Amazon River. She showed us all around the club building which included depictions of what life was/is like there, and meeting and event rooms, and the POOL!, and the bar and the cafe and the library with resources about the jungle and Loreto. It looks like it used to be a very nice club that has fallen into a bit of a bad spot. Kind of like a lot of Lima. It’s heyday is a few decades ago. We were treated to yummy fried smashed plantains called patacón and a cocktail made from the bark of a tree and the powder is usually used for some medicinal purposes. They also make it into a syrupy thing and mix it with alcohol. We had chuchuhuasi sours. The pool and the interesting bites to eat made the day quite fun and was finished off with my yummy St. Patty’s day food.

Friday was very exciting. We went to see Carlos’ uncle who works in the congress as an congressional advisor. First we got to go into the Inquisition Museum which was really disturbing. Every time I see something about the Inquisition, I wonder how people could have done these things to others and created the types of tortures that were inflicted on people. Its horrendous. However, the ceiling of the building is made from hand carved wood made of thousands of pieces that form an intricate pattern. Its beautiful and amazing to think that it was pieced together without nails or screws. It was pieced like a puzzle. The name for it in Spanish is basically called the male-female style because the female part fits into the male part to hold together. After that we got the inside scoop on the congress. We went to all the floors and looked into all the rooms which included the embassador’s room and the room where they have congressional sessions (we got to sit in the chairs that the president of congress sits in) annnnnddddd, the roof. We went all the way up to the top of the roof and checked out the view.

We followed our morning tours with a walk around the center of Lima which a few years ago would not have been possible. Carlos said that in the early 2000’s, the center of Lima wasn’t safe to walk around in during the day. Lima used to be a walled city until people from the country started moving in and the wealthy residents moved out of the center and into places like Miraflores and San Isidro. In the exact center of the city, they have been cleaning and restoring the old colonial style buildings. I love the colors. Carlos’ mom says that they are all the colonial colors. The buildings are pink and orange and sky blue and yellow and a lot of the buildings have enclosed patios that are beautiful. Its sad that the majority of them are falling into ruin. We went to the Franciscan convent as well and did a tour around the convent and the catacombs underneath. In some of the pits with the bones there were pieces of bread which apparently helps to keep the smell down.

After our slightly ghastly tour we went to walk around Chinatown. It was pretty funny to see signs for things like banks and restaurants and big companies in Chinese. We bought some kinda altered dim sum which was not too bad and I saw a place that sold roast duck and char siu and other things. We passed a stall outside a restaurant that had fried dim sum. But not the regular fried stuff. They had fried siu mai on a stick and fried something else as well. All around the Chinatown area the streets are filled with people and music from stores and restaurants and food stands and people selling items from the huge central market. They sell EVERYTHING. DVDs are 3 for 5 soles (it was 3 for 10soles in the other market). There was a man selling stick-on beards and a moto-delivery truck filled with bags of potatoes ready to be made into fries. People yell at you trying to get you to buy things and there are people everywhere and men pushing their delivery carts. It is technically not a pedestrian street, but there are so many people all the time that the cars can’t pass so they deliver by large rolling carts that they push at top speed. It was so much fun to walk around there and see people going about their things and the noise and the hustle-bustle of being there was so exciting. I love seeing those parts of town that are full of life, and people aren’t tending to tourists. Next week I get to go to the central market and see where everyone buys their wares to sell in their stores or on the street. Can’t wait.