The most basic notion is that if rooms do not have private hot water baths and telephones, as well as amenities such as a restaurant before they can be called a hotel. As you will see, however, this rule is not greatly enforced. The star rating system is not consistent… Read More →
Boleto Turistico, a tourist pass that almost every traveler to Cuzco must buy, includes admission to more than a dozen of the most popular ruins and museums in Cuzco and the Sacred Valley (though not all of them). The pass will get you into: Santa Catalina Monastery and Museum Contemporary… Read More →
Biking/Cycling – This is a popular one-day trip that passes beautiful Andean lakes and countryside, as well as the sites of Maras and Moray. Moray has four circular terraces into the earth like an artificial crater, while Maras is one of the most important salt mines of the region. If… Read More →
Most come to Cuzco (also spelled Cusco and Q’osqo, population 350,000) en route to Machu Picchu, but to many it is Cuzco that leaves them breathless, although maybe that’s from the altitude, which stands, at 3360 meters (roughly 11,000 feet) above sea level.
Machu Picchu is the one location synonymous with travel to Peru. The Inca city hidden in the Andes near Cuzco is a wonder of the world and one of the most sought after destinations in South America, if not the planet.
In 2009, the Dakar Rally was run in South America (Argentina and Chile), the first time the race took place outside of Europe and Africa. It has stayed in South America since, with this year adding the vast coastal deserts of Peru to the route. The 9,000 kilometer itinerary extended… Read More →
I was in the Brazilian Amazon not long ago and on my plate, stuck into a piece of decoration fruit, was this little, pea sized, yellow bean. I thought it was a piece of the fruit and poked the bean on my fork and put it into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. It was fragrant, a little fruity, and then the earth shattered and my head exploded. Within seconds I was choking and tears were flowing out of my eyes. It took about ten minutes to recover. Seriously that hot. I had to ask the waitress how you were supposed to eat it. She explained that you just sort of squeeze it with your fork and get a tiny bit of the juice on it and then mix it in whatever you were eating to add some spice (in my case it was fish and rice).
It took a trip to Fiesta Gourmet in Lima to realize I needed to spend more time exploring the food of Peru’s Northern Coast. It was the Arroz con Pato a la Chiclayana to be exact. It’s the restaurants most popular dish and quite possibly my favorite dish in Peru. What intrigued me was that it mentioned the town of Illimo, outside of Chiclayo, as the source of the cilantro, an ingredient equally as important in the dish as the duck or rice, though it lacks the headliner status.
Mistura, a gastronomy festival held in Lima every September since 2008, is an identity feast. Gastronomy in Peru has many layers of hidden meanings, it is not just about the food. In her acclaimed documentary Mistura:The power of food, director Patricia Perez sets out to discover what these deeper meanings might be, and she does a wonderful job in doing so.
Opened in mid-2009 in a hidden spot not far from the Larcomar shopping center in Miraflores, Central is one of the most exciting restaurants to hit Lima’s scene in some time. Thirty-one year old chef Virgilio Martinez is a Peruvian who worked in New York, Paris, Madrid, Colombia, and Southeast Asia for many years (& sometimes in the kitchens of Gaston Acurio) and returned to Lima to open his own restaurant. The global flair came with him in the kitchen: an English pastry chef, a Colombian sous-chef, a Mexican sommelier, and a Spanish mâitre d’.