Visiting Peru

Lima
 The Lima airport is nothing remarkable.  It actually has a Starbucks and a decent food court (pre-security), and some shopping at duty free (post-shopping).  There is no free wifi for general use.  The international side has a lounge that both One World and Star Alliance premium members can use (I'm not sure if other brands can use it, so please check), which serves OK food but has very slow wifi.  It has computer terminals that are infinitely faster though, so if you are not limited to your own device, try to snag one.

When you exit the arrival area, immediately on your right will be the official taxis called Taxi Green.  The rates are fixed based on where you are going, and we were charged S/. 50 to Miraflores.  It took us about 40 minutes.  The driver said normally it would be about 30 minutes, but there was highway construction which resulted in a diversion.

There are Scotiabank ATMs on the second floor of the airport that do not charge you a fee, so when you exit arrivals you can walk straight ahead and take the escalators on the left up, turn right, keep walking, and see a bunch of ATMs.  There are also other banks, but we found Scotiabank to be sufficient.  :-)

Figuring out a SIM card was a pain, but basically you have to go to a shop that sells the card itself (they call it "chip" there).  We found a department store with Movistar and Claro desks, and managed to get a chip, but then had to go to a pharmacy to get a top up card.  We paid about US$5 for the chip, and US$10 for 500MB of data for 30 days (but the maximum daily use was 10MB).

Restaurants generally do not include tip (one did, Senzo in Cusco for 18%, which did not have very good food though service was good and the ambience was lovely), and the Lonely Planet told us to tip 10%.  Sometimes when restaurants run your credit card, they include a buffer for authorization of up to 20%, but will only charge whatever tip you write down on the paper.

Negotiate a rate before you get into a taxi.  To/from airport/Miraflores is S/. 50.  We managed to get S/. 20 rate between Miraflores and the old historic center, and S/.10 between Miraflores and San Isidro.

The folks in Lima do not speak very good English.  Do try to learn some key Spanish words, otherwise I suppose pointing and gesturing might help.  Lol.

Food was generally salty.  This applies to all of Peru.  I felt like a salt pan after this trip.

Puno
Airport seemed like a giant container.  Do not expect anything.

Altitude here is high, I think around 14,000 ft.  Consider taking diamox or some other kind of altitude sickness pills.  Coca tea is supposed to help with altitude sickness.  I liked the taste, and warm drinks, so I kept drinking it but not sure if it actually helped (maybe, maybe not).

Taxi fare is around S/. 80 from Juliaca airport (JUL) to town, and takes about an hour.  We managed to negotiate S/. 75 on principle heading into town, but got our hotel to get us a taxi back to the airport for S/. 80.

Our Lake Titikaka tour cost S/. 75 each.  The hotel said it is possible to go to Uros (reed islands) on our own, but not Taquille (boat might go there and not wait for you to return, no scheduled boats), so we opted for a tour.  Taquille was just OK, so if you have limited time or just want to chill in Puno which has lots of great shopping (we are told it is much cheaper than Cusco) you can just take the scheduled boats to Uros to see the reed islands.  It is really amazing how they built them!

Cusco/Sacred Valley
Airport sucked, had some food.  There was free wifi but Dawg had to fiddle around for a long time to get it to work, so just take it as there was no free wifi.

Cusco is also at elevation, I think around 11,000 ft, but lower than Puno.  Diamox was also recommended.

Our friends' hotel included a free transfer to the airport.  Lingon and I took our taxis separately since we came on different flights - he arrived earlier and negotiated S/. 20, so I did the same.  Lonely Planet said it would cost S/. 12-15, and Wiki Travel said S/. 10.  The official airport taxi price is S/. 40, so unless you are the sort who is embarrassed to bargain, you can save quite a bit here.

Food in Cusco was much more expensive.

Shop around for a Sacred Valley tour (Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Chinchero).  The Lonely Planet said we could get one for $22 (not including the tourist ticket, which is either S/. 70 for 2 days or S/. 130 for 10 days (about US$25 or $46).  Zito and Dawg's hotel was quoting USD$75 and ours was quoting $88 including the tourist ticket and lunch, but we went near the main square and found a travel agency that charged us S/. 30 not including the tourist ticket and lunch.  What a deal right?  Not sure how the tour would have been like if we took a more expensive tour, but we enjoyed the ruins anyhow and our tour guide spoke some good English so I was happy.


Inca Trail
I believe we start around 9,000+ ft. of elevation.  It is VERY highly recommended to stay in Cusco for a few days to get acclimatized and I completely agree with this if you plan to do the Inca Trail, because the Inca Trail is brutal.

Of all the big hikes I have done (the other two being Kilimanjaro and W Trek at Torres del Paine), this was the most interesting, since there were ruins to see and stories to hear along the way, since people lived here many many centuries ago.

While I think this is a really amazing hike, I recommend it with reservations, since it really was quite a physical challenge.

Cell service was poor.  Toilets were poor.  Please practice the third world squat if your tour company does not bring a portable toilet for you.

After the hike, you will be taken to Aguas Calientes for lunch and to take the train back to Poroy where probably your tour agency will meet you and transport you back to Cusco.  We were booked on the second train at 4.43pm, which was way more time than we needed.  There is a 3.20pm train, so try to get your travel agency to book that for you if possible.  We did the Huayna Picchu hike and managed to finish up around 12.30pm and be at our designated restaurant (where our bags were stored) at 1.00pm, and for us we just wanted to go back and relax so waiting there was brutal.  All the restaurants in Aguas Calientes seemed to be cash only, so make sure you have some cash to pay the bill!  They also take USD but the exchange rate is poor.

Visit Peru!!!!  :-)

Astrid y Gaston, Lima

Dinner at Astrid y Gaston was a most magnificent experience.  From the journey in the cab ride, seeing the beautiful San Isidro area, to the last dessert plate, our senses were given a jolly ol' treat.  It is worth noting that the restaurant has moved to the Casa Hacienda Moreyra, wonderfully outfitted in a swanky neighbourhood.  We almost went to the Miraflores location but thanks to the Dawg we made it to dinner at the right place.  They used to have an a la carte menu, but now it is a full tasting menu, of which we had one cocktail (part of the menu) and 28 or so other courses.  Here is a picture of the menu together with a book they made describing the various compartments of the dinner.

The stark white building was gorgeous on the outside, with a beautiful garden.

We got to see their test kitchen in the distance and they allowed us in their actual kitchen which was a treat, but the experience was not quite as informative as NOMA in Denmark since they explained a lot more about their process there.

The dining room was very well furnished, clean, modern.

The food was prepared meticulously.  Our server explained to us that a lot of the dishes were custom made by local artists, which I think is really special.  It seems like molecular gastronomy is really popular now - a lot of the dishes were created by making the foods into powders and then reshaped or recreated into the form that was presented to us.  The presentation was unique and gorgeous.  I would say I loved 80-90% of the flavours, which I think is quite an endorsement since I do not generally love this type of cuisine.

If you get a chance to go, go!  Aside from trying the fabulous innovative delish food, try to solve the mystery of how to open the bathroom door.  Took me 3 tries.

Chez Wong, Lima

We had lunch at Chez Wong, what we think is chef Javier Wong's house.  One has to email or call to get a reservation and there is no official website.  Lunch only (I think).  The entrance to the building looks just like anyone's house (we had a bit of a hard time finding it), but the whole downstairs was converted to a kitchen and dining area.

It is quite a novel idea to eat at someone's house.  I had done this when I was a teenager with my parents in Hong Kong, and again a few years ago with Lingon in Buenos Aires, and it is just different and fun.  He had cute glasses with an image of him on them smoking a cigarette while in action.  Thankfully he did not smoke while cooking our food.

Watching Chef Wong slice up his giant flounder is really quite mesmerizing.  His knife is so sharp and he does everything so quickly.  We had cerviche of flounder and octopus, as well as 2 other stir fry dishes.  The cerviche was exceptional, with leche de tigre (milk of the tiger), which I think is basically lemon garnish and fish sauce with onion garnish.  I could taste the freshness of the fish and octopus, and it was very clean tasting.  The stir fry felt like it had MSG, though I'm not sure whether it did or not, but I get this weird bodily sensation when I eat MSG.  Again the fish was so fresh, just that the sauces made me feel really weird.  I might go again just for the cerviche which was ultra fabulous, but otherwise the stir fry was good but not worth a second visit.  Each dish cost S/. 150.

We felt like we missed out on some almond crusted fish, but did not really know how to request for it.  We probably had the last dish of the day, and Chef Wong look kind of pissed that we had requested another dish and taken away from his hanging out time with a group of friends.  We later found out that group of friends was his son and his son's friends, and we had a chance to chat with his son, who was the only person in the restaurant speaking English.  Such a nice young man.  We asked him if he cooked, to which he replied in the negative, and he said his dad had to find another Padawan, which was funny.  It was nice to see Chef Wong relaxing with a glass of wine after a hard day of cooking!  Thank you for the lovely meal!

Peru Day 2 - Lima

First of all, I have to say, getting around Lima is really hard.  Few people speak English.  I wanted to write about this yesterday but was too exhausted to.  It took us about an hour and a half to purchase a SIM card and get it to work.  It is hard to communicate in restaurants, with taxi drivers, shopkeepers, etc.  I suppose that's the run of it.  I Spanish-ize French and English words, and the Dawg says I speak (my very poor) Spanish with a French accent, which I suppose I'm not surprised about.

Anyhow, we started the day with breakfast in our hotel.  Pretty standard, eggs, bacon, sausage, yoghurt, fruit, cereal, etc.  It was not bad, but nothing to celebrate.  I'd prefer a slightly cheaper hotel room to breakfast, and go out and find some authentic Peruvian breakfast or eat at some yummy bakery, personally.

We spend our pre-lunch time doing the Lonely Planet walking tour of the historical old town, which started at Plaza San Martin, with the Gran Hotel Bolivar facing it.  The hotel was faded and a letdown, but I am glad we saw it.

Walked down the street Jiron de la Union, noted we were early and almost no shop except for breakfast places were open, and went into Iglesia de la Merced where we are told the first mass in Lima was held.  They had amazing mahogany alters, so tall, so big, and magnificent.  No pictures though.

Onto Plaza de Armas, the main square of Lima, surrounded by La Catedral de Lima which had the remains of Francisco Pizzaro, a Spainish conqueror of Peru, Palacio Arzobispal with beautiful Moorish-style balconies and Palacio del Gobierno where the president resides.  Really pretty square, and almost all the buildings around it were quite magnificent and looked decently well maintained.  We took a few pictures around the square and also visited La Catedral de Lima (S/. 10).  Here are pictures of the square (pardon the super overexposure) and of a beautiful mosaic wall inside the cathedral.

We visited Mercado Central, which was a wet and dry market, food court-type place, clothing store, basically sold everything, to try to find coca leaves for Dawg.  Honestly was not very impressed.  Then we walked around Chinatown, which did not appear very Chinese (only found one Chinese vendor), which sucked.  I found some pictures of mooncake which made me very homesick, but they looked quite sad.

I did eat a corn which was not bad, decently sweet, from a cart, which cost S/. 2.

We returned to Plaza de Armas to watch the changing of the guard at the Palacio del Gobierno.  There was a band playing, which was fun and I really enjoyed, but the actual procession was just OK.  However, these guys can kick their legs up 90 degrees.  I guess I'm always so impressed because my hamstrings are so tight.  Can you see those 2 guards almost right in front of the main palace gates?

Last stop before lunch was the Monasterio de San Francisco.  What I mainly wanted to see was the Catacombs.  The entrance with tour cost S/. 7.  The tour was seriously horrible.  We got to see part of the grounds which had some pretty tile work and cloisters, but everything was so poorly maintained and little was original and mostly restored.  The guide had very bad English, and I understood about 5% of what she said.  We got "please follow me", "look here at chapel, look nice", "look nice alterpiece", "17th century rococo style", I mean I'm doing a horrible job describing it here but it was really bad/hilarious.  Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside, but the catacombs which housed the bones was cool and spooky, especially the circular bone grave.  I'd say this would be super cool, and I would have done it in hindsight despite the terrible tour.  Here is a picture of the exterior.

Off we went to lunch at Chez Wong, which I will write about in a separate post here since it is really late and I am tired.  Basically I enjoyed the meal, but the only dish worth going there for was the cerviche.  The more exciting thing about this was that we got into a taxi accident on the way there.  The sad thing about that is our taxi ran into a kerb in the middle of the road.  This yielded a serious mortifying and seriously painful bruise on my shin from the impact against the center console.  I'm very grateful I did not fly out of the taxi though, and after all the anger I felt sorry for the taxi which seemed to be badly damaged according to Dawg and Zito.

We went back to El Pan de la Chola for dessert, and got toast with a seriously delicious rich butter and decent orange marmalade, a very rich brownie and apple cake.  Solid baked goods.

Zito and I walked around Miraflores.  Here are some photos that I think were cool.  The first photo was of some random people doing some tightrope tricks.  This one guy did some flips, and unfortunately on the one where I took a photo did not make the landing.  Still an amazing effort and very cool.

Took a photo from the rooftop of our hotel which was cool.

Last activity for the day was dinner at Astrid y Gaston.  Amazing culinary experience and will be written about in a separate blog and linked here.

Here's a funny sign we saw today.  Total rip off.

Goodnight!

Peru Day 1 - Lima

Epic day of travel to Peru.  We wanted to have half a day more so the Dawg and I decided to take an overnight flight, SFO-LAS-PTY-LIM.

A few beautiful photos from the plane.

It was a long grueling journey but we finally arrived at the Lima airport, and guess what, the immigration systems were down!  We stood in line for about 20 minutes with nothing happening, and finally the systems went back up.  Yipee fricking doo.  Since we had such a long wait, the bags were already waiting for us when we got to the belt, so hooray for that!

We pre-ordered a car from Taxi Datum (S/. 55 or  US$20 - FX rate is US$1 = S/. 2.7-2.9) but they did not show up.  So we took this time to find an ATM.  I read that the Globalnet ATMs charged a fee, and that Scotiabank and BCP ATMs did not.  However, the BCP ATM tried to charge me S/. 13.50, but thankfully Scotiabank did not, so we used that.  The BCP and Scotiabank ATMs (and a few other banks too) were on the second floor.

Then we went to the tourist information counter, and found out that Taxi Green was the official taxi of the Lima airport and supposedly the cheapest.  The counter was inside the terminal, directly to the right once one exited customs and immigration, and it cost S/. 50.  Our taxi driver was nice, but spoke little English.  He would pick up the newspaper and flip through it at stops, which was a tad terrifying.  He told us that it would take a little while to get to the hotel in Miraflores, since the coastal road was closed off.  I told him I needed el bano to get him to hurry, and his response was I could go to la playa.  Haha!  Anyway, overall very nice guy, but impossible to understand.

Arrived at Dazzler Hotel, which at $180/night for 3 people in a room with free breakfast buffet and wifi was a really good deal IMO.  So far so good, only complaints are that internet is a bit slow and the shower does not drain very quickly.  The room is spacious and the beds are comfortable.

We had great plans to go to El Mercado, supposedly very good cerviche,  which closed at 5pm, but due to the various delays - broken immigration system, road works/traffic jam, slow check in, so we gave up on that and decided to settle in and take a short read before finding food.  Once we were ready, we went to our first stop, El Pan de la Chola.  We ordered a caprese sandwich which had the most amazing bread, mozzerella, tomatoes and a lighter pesto.  Holy crap, I wanted to order another sandwich after that but had to think about the other things I wanted to eat in the evening.  Very very good sandwich.  The Dawg got a cuppuccino which he said was delicious.  I took a taste but coffee is not my thing.  According to our receipt, we got a galleta pecanas y chocola (cookie with pecans and milk chocolate) and a barra valentina (short bread cookie bottom with caramel covered nuts).  Both were amazing, especially the latter.  We would totally go back.

Then we went to Pardo's, which is a polloria, that served yummy grilled chicken.  We tried to go healthy so we shared a half chicken with grilled veges.  It came with these yummy mayonnaise sauces, which negated part of the healthy, and the Dawg ordered a chorizo thing which I was not all that fond of (let it be reflected in the record that I love sausage, so I think this was just not a very good one), though the garlicy dip that came with it was unbelievable.  We requested chicken legs.  The chicken was very moist, the skin was very crispy, and it was very delicious.  Definitely a good stop to make if you like Peruvian grilled chicken!

OK, well it's late, so I am going to bed, and excited for tomorrow.  :-)