All You Can (m)Eat

It’s less of a burger and more a study in meat, really. Once you add braised short rib and foie gras into the mixture, it’s difficult to call ground sirloin on a bun a hamburger, which typically conjures up images of the all-American, Joe Six Pack, rootin’ tootin’ good ol’ U.S. of A. meat sandwich.

It is certainly not that, but then again when has Daniel Boulud ever looked for anything that simple? His food has always been outstanding, from Daniel (which earned the coveted 4-star rating from the New York Times in January of this year), to DGBG, which just opened to quite impressive reviews, to his 8 other internationally acclaimed restaurants.

So, while it is not your typical hamburger, it is most definitely a wonderfully rich and delicious study in meat. Beginning with ground sirloin—a great choice because it is relatively lean but with enough marbled fat to make it juicy—the patty is then stuffed with braised short ribs and served with a dollop of foie gras in the middle. The texture of the sirloin perfectly contrasts with the stringy braised short ribs, and the two flavors—tender and savory ribs packed into a denser and juicier shell of ground sirloin—come together perfectly. The dollop of foie gras adds a bit of muted creaminess, which intensifies the flavor combination. Served on a parmesan bun, which doesn’t do much to rein in 5 inch tall inside, the burger is a modern meat marvel. It may be richer than the Astor’s, but it is definitely worth it. (At $32 you may be wondering why, but just go and eat it and you won’t be wondering anymore. Though I didn’t try it, there is an option to add either 10 or 20 grams of shaved black truffle. It significantly adds to the price, though, and the already expensive burger goes up to either $75 or $150, depending on the amount of truffles you add.)

The ambiance in db Bistro Moderne is also quite low key, but retains a quiet elegance that lets you know that you’re in a nice restaurant without overdoing it. They have dialed down their presumption and dialed up their attention to detail, which makes for a very pleasant and easy-going dining experience.

Even though it’s not an everyday burger, it is most definitely an extraordinary take on a classic American favorite, and one that every meat-lover should try immediately.

So, make really elaborate meat sandwiches with foie gras and braised short ribs (and black truffles if you feel so inclined), not war.

And now, to bed.

Babbo or Bust?

Maybe it was rigmarole of getting a reservation: our first available table is exactly one month from today, here’s your reservation code, sorry our day-manager made a mistake and you actually can’t have your original reservation, here’s another one, you wanted one before 11?, sorry we can only do 5:15. (Actually I was lucky and scored a Saturday at 8, but the first four steps were actually like that…)
But we finally got to Babbo at 8:10 on Saturday night not knowing what to expect but very excited about pork bellies and beef cheeks and goose livers, oh my, and were directed to a table in the back. I’d read and heard magnificent things about Babbo: the pasta is so original, no one has done anything quite like this with Italian food before, the prices are very reasonable, the service is impeccable. Some of those things were true, but the question of whether or not it would be worth a month’s wait was still very much up in the air.
The space was beautifully decorated—high ceilings, nicely spaced tables, and a beautiful second floor dining room with a large glass skylight in the middle of the room. More than just an impressive dining room, though, the service is involved in an intricate dance with one another and with their customers; within the first five minutes we had three people come to our table to take a wine order or make sure we were okay with out or bring us water. They have their timing down nicely, although it can be a bit overwhelming to be approached by four different people when you haven’t even gotten a chance to look at the menu yet. Before we’d gotten a chance to order our wine, we were brought an amuse bouche, “compliments of the chef.” It was a warm curried chickpea spread on top of toast, and it was fine. There was a hint of sweetness to the chickpeas, they were a bit firmer than usual, so complimented the crispy toast nicely. But the whole thing was a bit bland, and unimpressive. Not a great start, but we were both willing to put it aside because our waitress was very nice and seemed surprisingly down to earth, grounded in reality and aware that, as two 21-year-olds, we needed a different kind of service than the typical patron.
The appetizer we ordered—grilled octopus with spicy limoncello vinaigrette—was also quite tasty. It was cooked well, so it was tender and not chewy or tough as it can easily get, and the vinaigrette cut the somewhat creamy flavor of the octopus with a nice tang and touch of hotness. Then came the pasta course, which was by far the stand out portion of the meal. I had the beef cheek ravioli with crushed goose liver and black truffles, which was not only a fabulous blend of flavors but also so strikingly original that it begged the question of exactly how these ingredients were put together. Bridget had a squid ink spaghetti with rock shrimp, spicy salami calabrese and green chiles, which was also delicious. While I’ve never had rock shrimp before, it is easy to tell why it is a nicer compliment to a pasta dish like this one: the taste is much smoother and you don’t run the risk of having that chalky texture that can significantly bring down any dish, especially pasta. The pairing of the shrimp with the salami and green chiles was perfectly balanced, and left room for all the flavors to develop without overpowering each other.
So, all told, the actual food portion of the meal was great, and very reasonably priced. (For an appetizer, 2 main courses and a bottle of wine the total was only $100.) It was the whole production surrounding the experience that left a somewhat flat taste in my mouth. If this were still a neighborhood ristorante and enoteca as it touts itself, then I would wholeheartedly suggest a trip there. But it’s become so much more than that since it first opened in 1998 that I think it may have actually lost some of its luster. It is no longer a friendly Italian restaurant where you can taste really good food in a comfortable friendly, but a hyped up eatery that screams that you are sitting some place ultra chic and hip. So, while it is certainly worth the money, it may not actually be worth the wait.

Still, you should probably make beef cheek ravioli with crushed goose livers, not war.
And now, to bed.

The Great Chile Fiesta of '09

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens aren’t nice to walk around in when it’s raining, but the Chile Pepper Fiesta was happening rain or shine, so I didn’t really have any choice in the matter. It’s been six years since the last time I was at the gardens, and I’ve never been to a Chile Pepper Fiesta (or any other event surrounding the chile pepper, for that matter), so I had no idea what to expect. What I didn’t expect was Rogue Brewery Chipotle Ale, or Kumquat Cookery’s chocolate-chili cupcakes or chocolate-chili brownies from Mari’s New York. But I was very pleasantly surprised by all three.

The first stop I made was the Rogue Brewery table, which had the longest line of any. Unfortunately I got there too late to try the chocolate stout, but figuring that it was only 2 o’clock and I didn’t need an entire meal in liquid form, I decided to just get the Chipotle Ale. At first it tasted more or less like the Dead Guy Ale, made by the same brewer. It had a full-bodied, sweet flavor, but with a crisp taste that took away some of the heaviness. The real kick, though, came at the end, when the smokiness of the chipotle hit the back of the tongue, and gave it a spicy, almost cinnamon flavor. I was sold: usually I could take or leave an ale, preferring something a bit lighter in color and flavor, but the extra smoky kick at the end set this apart from other ales, and the hoppy sweetness complimented it perfectly.

Feeling quite contented as I strolled around on the wet grass, craning my neck to fit under my friend Ansley’s umbrella, we set off to see what other interesting flavors this chili pepper extravaganza held in store. Directly across from the Rogue Brewery tent was a mini-cupcake table where representatives of the Kumquat Cookery were sampling their chocolate-chili concoctions. As I am a bit of a sample maniac—I will try almost anything as long as it’s cut into small pieces and free—I was drawn to their table like a moth to a flame. (Actually the metaphor is quite apt: had I eaten enough of these delicious cupcakes I could have died just like the poor moth in the fire…) In any event I’m glad I was drawn to it, because the cupcakes were very unique: they were surprisingly fluffy and the tanginess of the chili brought out the savory flavor in the chocolate, which doesn’t happen often e. What brought it all together, though, was the chocolate icing, which was creamy without being heavy and added a layer of sweetness without overpowering the balance of savory chocolate and tangy chili.

At this point it was raining somewhat torrentially, but far be it from Ansley and I to be deterred by a little bit of rain, so we headed over to the next chocolate stand, which happened to be Mari’s Chocolate. Apparently Mari specializes in brownies, and, after tasting her brownies I’m thinking that we need more brownie-ologists in the world. Only someone who has spent a long time thinking about how to make them could have put heat so effectively into such a small square of brownie. About one-inch by one-inch by one-inch, the little cubes were the perfect amount of fudge to cake ratio: dense without being too heavy, moist without being too greasy and chocolaty enough without being too fudgy. Their only downfall was their price; $5 for two small cubes of brownie is too much, even if they are “artisanal brownies” sold at Barney’s and Bergdorf Goodman’s. I tried the “heat” and “caramel sea salt” versions, which were both delicious. Both accompaniments, ancho and chipotle peppers (for the heat ones) and sea salt (for the caramel-sea salt ones), gave distinctly different flavors to the chocolate, which made for an interesting comparison between then two.

As we slid away from Mari’s table, wrapped in a cloud of beer and chocolate and pepper induced calmness, we decided that it was raining a bit too hard, and we were a bit too full, to take any more advantage of the Great Chile Pepper Fiesta of ’09. We walked happily back through the rain to the subway, and rode back uptown, the blunted smokiness of chipotle and ancho and cayenne still lingering on the back of our tongues.

So, make chili-chocolate brownies or cupcakes or beer, not war.

And now, to bed.

BLFGTs

The title of this post represents neither the new cool Twitter abbreviation nor a shortened expletive. It is an acronym for what I ate for dinner tonight, and also one of the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever had. (BLFGT = Bacon + Lettuce +Fried Green Tomato)

My friend Paige is from Alabama and she is proud of it. She is a very good cook and will periodically make food that reminds her of home, both to give her Northeastern friends an education in Southern cooking and also to provide herself some of the comfort we all feel when we eat something evocative of home. Paige (a theater major and very talented actress) can also be sneaky, as she was tonight, when she came back to our apartment and casually mentioned that she’d “picked up some green tomatoes” at the supermarket. Who knew she had this juicy mint-green trump card sitting in her back pocket, just waiting to be turned into a delicious sandwich?
Having no idea what was coming I didn’t spend all day thinking about what a great dinner I’d be having, or tailoring my day’s meals to allow an absolute gorging come 7:30. Next time, rest assured, I will.
The BLFGT is very easy to make, as Paige will humbly attest to once you’re biting into it and telling her on how nicely the cornmeal coating on the tomato compliments its firmness and woody taste, or how the lettuce provides just the right amount of watery respite from the salty bacon. The green tomatoes—which are just the unripe brothers of the red ones—are firmer and less juicy than their differently colored kin, and have a very fresh taste almost like you crossed a ripe tomato with a cucumber: the coolness and touch of sourness of the cucumber cuts the sweet tomato, but the general texture is similar. As a whole the sandwich works because of the five distinct textures and flavors that blend so nicely: sourdough bread, savory bacon, soft Bibb lettuce, fresh and woody tomato, and creamy mayonnaise.
The recipe is as follows:
For 4 BLFGTs:
1 large or 2 medium green tomatoes
½ c. corn meal
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp. onion powder
1tsp. chili powder
½ c. milk
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 lb. bacon
1 head Bibb lettuce
1 loaf sourdough bread
Mayonnaise to taste

1) Slice tomatoes into ½ inch slices, and lie flat in a baking dish with short sides
2) Pour milk over tomatoes and let sit for 10 minutes
3) While tomatoes are sitting, cook bacon in a large pan until crispy
4) Mix corn meal, salt, pepper, garlic, and chili onion powders in a pie tin
5) Dip tomatoes into cornmeal mixture, and over medium heat, fry tomatoes for 1-2 minutes per side, or until browned
6) Wash and separate Bibb lettuce into individual pieces
7) Assemble sandwiches using sourdough bread, mayonnaise, tomatoes, bacon, and lettuce

Hopefully the sandwich will catch on and the BLFGT will become the new Twitter abbrev.
So, make BLGFTs, not war.
And now, to bed.

Appetitte for Deconstruction in New York

Note: Since my last post nearly 5 months ago I have been lucky enough to touch 3 continents, the rooftop of Africa, the Pacific cost in Los Angeles, the Atlantic coast in Rhode Island, and, last but certainly not least, the corner of Broadway and 114th St. in New York. I'm sorry to say that I did not finish writing my tale of Peruvian Proportions, nor about speeding across the Serengeti Planes or reaching Uhru Peak, 6,895 meters away from terra firma. This blog, though it still holds the same web address, is no longer just about Julie in Peru, but about about my culinary exploits in New York and where ever else I can get my hands on food. Hopefully it will end up being about other things too, but first and foremost I'm hoping to find out just what kind of gastronomic exploits this city holds for me. That said, I've whetted my appetite and it is, as always, up for deconstruction.

Thanks for reading!

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It has been nearly 4 ½ years since the City Council approved the plan that paved the blue and yellow brick road for Ikea’s entrance. About 5 years before that a Fairway Market sprung up, gracing the shores of the rogue part of Brooklyn with a historically checkered past. And only about 10 years before "The Market Like No Other" appeared, Life Magazine named Red Hook one of the 10 worst neighborhoods in the U.S., calling it “the crack capital” of the country. Basically in the past 20 years we have seen Red Hook grow up from a violent teenager with explosive anger issues to a 30-something businessman with 2 kids and a Subaru.

As a diverse neighborhood—which has housed one of the city’s initial Puerto Rican communities, vibrant Italian and Irish populations and many of the city’s first longshoremen—Red Hook has long been home to lots of diverse eateries. And the tradition still stands, as Mexican, Ecuadorian and one ceviche, food trucks flock to the Red Hood Ball Fields on Saturdays and Sundays, waiting for the throngs of people who have heard about it.

And, living up to their hype, each weekend these alternating quilted-silver and white trucks line up like soldiers, armed with piles of tortillas and mountains of fresh mango and pineapple. They adorn their trucks with war paint: strings of blue and white and yellow flags denoting the Ecuadorian pupusa vendors, red and green and white paper cutouts flapping haphazardly in the breeze to signify tacos and pico de gallo. These trucks are by no means a new attraction; on the contrary, at least one of the Ecuadorian trucks touts that to have been in business since 1991. The ballpark seems well prepared for the onslaught of people, too. There are tables set up and even a small kiosk selling blow up carnival toys like big hammers and neon green dogs on a wooden dowel that you can pretend to walk.

Since the trucks are so popular the lines are very long: it’s best to go to the taco truck with the shortest line—on Saturday that was Mama Mexico’s Taco Truck—and get a pork al pastor taco for your wait in line for either a pupsa or ceviche. I ordered a chicken taco, and thankfully my generous friends, who had more foresight than I, gave me bites of their carne and al pastor tacos. I think I’ve finally learned my lesson about chicken tacos, which is that they’re usually not that good. Often made of dark meat, which is fattier and therefore richer, the flavor of the marinade doesn’t seem to come across as much in a chicken taco than in other kinds. In this particular one, there was too much filling inside (I couldn’t close the tortilla, and there were actually 2 of them, one to act as a sort of retaining wall for the other), and the chicken tasted greasy and bland. Of course, as with many tacos, the flavor has as much to do with the salsas that adorn it than with the meat itself. The pickled jalapeños and carrots tasted tart with a sharp acid kick at the end, the pico de gallo was spicy but textured, and the salsa roja had a complex enough flavor that added a whole lot of heat without dulling your mouth. Still, the quality and taste of the meat didn’t do justice to its accompaniments.

The pork al pastor, was a completely different story. Served in a thick brown sauce that was sweet as it was savory, these tacos were a much better indication of why the carts are so popular. First of all there was not as much meat in the shell which allowed for easier eating. Second, the cooking technique—it looked and tasted like it was braised, although I’m not sure—allowed for the sauce to bring out and compliment the natural flavor and texture of the meat. Topped with lettuce, onions, cilantro and a bit of salsa roja, the flavors of this taco worked much better together.

While the 20 minute wait for pupsas would have been worth it even without the tacos, it certainly made the time pass more quickly. A pupsa is something like an Ecuadorian stuffed pancake: it is made of two corn tortillas, joined around their edges and filled in the middle with things ranging from cheese and jalapeños to pork to chicken, and grilled. The dough outside is a bit thicker than a regular corn tortilla and has a touch of sweetness. The first one I tried, queso and jalapeños, converted me. The cheese tasted like jack cheese, mild and creamy, while the jalapeños cut through it sharply. And the shell, with a consistency that lies somewhere between a corn tortilla and corn bread, got a crispy outside and theoretically should have melt the cheese inside, like a gooey grilled cheese pocket. In actuality the cheese wasn’t melted as much as it could have been, but I credit that more to the amount of cheese that was stuffed inside, that was for all intents and purposes way too much, than to the actual preparation. The second pupusa I had was filled with stewed chicken. I liked the second better because I thought that there was a bit too much cheese in the first, and because the chicken had a nice tanginess and gave marked contrast to the bland chicken I’d had in the taco.

Everyone and their foodie-mother has written about the Red Hook Ball Field Street Vendors, so if you haven’t gone I would highly recommend it, even if only to watch the soldierly procession of trucks competing with one another. And, at the very least, this eclectic mix of vibrant food vendors is surely a better alternative to Swedish Meatballs.
To get to the Red Hook Ball Field Street Vendors, take the 2 or 3 train to Wall Street and walk east to Pier 11, where the Ikea Water Taxi leaves from. (It is free on weekends, and costs $5 during the week). Once you get off the taxi in Brooklyn, walk across the parking lot to Halleck St. Make a left on Halleck St. and walk 2 blocks until Bay St. Go left on Bay st., and continue 4 blocks to the intersection of Clinton and Bay Streets. The vendors are there on the weekends, beginning around 10 o'clock.

Make pickled jalapeños, not war.

And now, to bed.

Lima (my current city of residence) is huge and swallows you whole. It pays no heed to blog posts you need to write or e mails that need returning. So the tardiness of this post is through no fault of my own; all the blame can be put on this enormous and sprawling city that feels like it has no end, where the streets all have similar names and there is no grid-like rhyme or reason to the layout of the streets. (Just a joke, but in all seriousness I have spent much of the past week trying to figure out this behemoth of a city, and, unfortunately, not gotten much farther than a 6 block radius of my apartment.)

So I should start with my experience in the jungle, which is chronologically where I left off from the last post, but first a short detour to last Friday (I would say the highlight of my trip thus far), when I had the honor and good fortune of meeting Gastón Acurio, one of Peru’s (and, many would say, Latin America’s) most well known chefs.
First, a bit of background. One of the biggest draws of this program for most people is the independent study project that gets completed your last month here. The topic is, as the name would suggest, picked by the student, and within my group they range from the rise of evangelism in Lima to the impact of UN Convention 169 on indigenous rights to the mixture of indigenous and western traditions in the composition of modern Peruvian music. Combining my interest in eating and writing about food, I chose to study how Peruvian food has changed in the past 30 years, and how globalization is forcing it to morph into a product that is suitable for an ever expanding and changing global market. Focusing specifically on one dish—causa—which is basically a cake of mashed potatoes mixed with ají amarillo (yellow pepper) and mayonnaise and topped with anything, ranging from avocado and tomato to lobster, I am looking at how and why the cuisine of Peru is changing in the ways that it is.
So, for this topic, all signs pointed to Gastón Acurio as the man to talk to, because he is at the cutting edge of contemporary Peruvian food. He owns 15 or 20 restaurants in at least 4 countries in Latin America, Spain and the US, and his flagship restaurant, Astrid y Gastón, is consistently rated one of the best in Latin America. Luckily for me, Dean Karlan, Jake’s co-author, likes Gastón’s restaurants and is a frequent visitor to them, and was nice enough to give me his phone number. Mentioning Dean’s name was like having a golden ticket, and 10 minutes after I had e mailed Gastón’s secretary on Friday morning, I had a meeting for 4:30 that afternoon. Immediately I set to trying to get as much information about him as I could, so I could feel prepared to talk to him.
At 4:30 I arrived at his office and was ushered up a flight of stairs into the top floor of an apartment building that had been furnished with a state of the art kitchen, a waiting room decorated with the prizes he’d won and articles written about him, and a beautiful model kitchen that looked like it was used for photo shoots. After waiting for about 20 minutes, I was called back to the model kitchen where he was being interviewed by another journalist. The first thing he asked me was whether or not I’d visited any of his restaurants, and when I said that I’d tried to make a reservation but couldn’t get one he said “well I’m sure we can arrange that,” and before I knew what was happening I had a reservation for me and my 6 friends that night.
Figuring that things probably couldn’t get much better than that, we sat down to talk and I began asking him a bit about the changes he’s seen in Peruvian food in the past 20 years. We spoke for about 30 minutes, during which time he told me about his bigger picture project; as he explains it, as long as Peru is exporting a majority of crude natural resources, the country is destined to stay in a lower economic sphere, and will never develop to the level of the US or Western Europe. In his eyes, bringing up the level of cuisine of Peru, by focusing on everything from the physical space of the restaurants you design to the quality of the ingredients you use to the decorations you make on the plates you serve, is the first step in developing the products and services of Peru, so that they can eventually become known around the world as high end products. That is his mission, and he is putting a finger in every pie that he can to realize it. It was incredibly interesting to speak with him, and he even obliged me by speaking in English so I could understand our interview.

The restaurant itself is not showy: there is no big sign (there is, in fact, no sign at all, only the name written on the side of the building), nor is the building big and ornately painted. You wouldn’t find it just walking around Mira Flores—the upscale Lima neighborhood that houses it—you would have to know where you’re going. Once you walk inside, though, you see what Gastón means when he says that he is focusing on every little detail. We sat at the bar, so we didn’t get to see the dining room, but even from the little we saw it is clear that he is a man on a mission; the bar is beautiful white stone that looks like marble, but there are light fixtures underneath the stone so it looks like it’s glowing. The room that houses the bar has small tables and couches, where patrons who are waiting for their tables sit and sip on expensive and elegant-sounding drinks, like the insert drink name here, of which I had three and can assure you are quite tasty. The room is dimly lit and there is a quiet ambient music on in the background, to assure the patron that she is not in a stale tourist restaurant, but a cutting edge, cosmopolitan culinary Mecca. All that, and we hadn’t even been given our bread yet.
Having no idea what we were in for—would we get a menu and get to pick what we liked? Would he just send out some things?—we sat down at the bar and ogled the beautiful surroundings. After sitting for about 10 minutes, the courses started rolling out. The first was the causichas—a spin off of the causa that I was studying—with five different small causas, topped with everything from a lobster salad to crab claws. After that came the ceviche, which was just soulfish—a white fish with a dense texture and a creamy flavor—and ají (hot pepper) marinated in lemon and lime juice.
Then came the octopus.
Jake had told me about the octopus, insomuch as it was the best he’d ever had, but other than that I had no idea what to expect. Until I came to Peru, the eight legged creature scared me, and every time I saw it on a menu all I could think of was the scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Eddie Valient walks into the bar and the octopus a bar tender, standing behind the bar making 4 drinks at once. But, fortunately for me, ceviche mixto includes octopus, and so without even thinking, I tried it and took a liking to it. In ceviche it really acts as a foil for the acid and pepper, and so the strongest impression it leaves is its chewy texture and a sound like a boot on packed snow.
This octopus was completely different. I don’t know how it was prepared—it tasted like it may have been grilled because it had a slightly charred taste—but the texture was smooth and soft, the flavor very mild and almost creamy. It was served with a sauce that I couldn’t describe except to say that it complimented and brought out the flavors in the octopus incredibly, so when you took a bit the flavors and texture mixed in your mouth and felt like a taste bud massage.
In my mind nothing topped the octopus, but the last three plates were still very good in their own right. The cuy (guinea pig) crepes—blue corn crepes that had a touch of sweetness with breaded and fried guinea pig meat and a satay peanut sauce—and braised lamb with brown sauce were followed by a sampling of desserts, which ranged from maracuya ice cream to an intense chocolate cake. Six courses and three hours later we left the restaurant feeling like we were on top of the world: filled with some of the best food in Lima that we had been graciously given by one of the most popular chefs in Latin America.
For me, it could not have been better.

And now, to bed.

First, let me apologize for taking so long to get this post up.

We returned to Cusco on Monday after having spent 16 days traveling. We went first to Lima, then to Iquitos, down the Amazon to the jungle, back to Iquitos, and finally back to Cusco. It was, among all else, a lesson in sensory overload and mental digestion of three completely distinct places that, save the common Peruvian flag, are seemingly different countries. But, if there is one thing I’ve observed about Peru since I’ve been here is that it’s a country of contradictions and seemingly random juxtapositions; the landscape almost demands it, with three completely separate climates in the Andes, on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon jungle. Luckily, in the past three weeks, I’ve been able to see a major city in each climate region.

I. Lima

We arrived in Lima three weeks ago, on Saturday, March 21 to beautiful sun and humidity. After the rainy season, Cusco begins to dry and cool off, and since I get cold when the mercury plunges below about 65 degrees I was glad to get to Lima where it was a comfortable 80. We met the director of the Lima portion of the program Gonzalo, in the airport and he took us to our hostel. We were staying in Mira Flores, which is, from what I’ve gathered by talking to my Cusqueñan mother, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. It is right on the beach, filled with manicured lawns, gated apartment buildings and fancy cars and has a main street that runs through the middle that could—by a relatively small stretch of the imagination—be mistaken for a city in the US. (Perhaps somewhere in Las Vegas, as Larco—the name of the street—is lined with large casinos that have water cascading down big stone sculptures in front of them.) It is also one of the safest areas of the city that, by all accounts, is quite dangerous and not the kind of place where you’d want to be out along at night. Our Academic Director told us that when you get into a taxi at night you are supposed to take down the license place number and call someone to let them know it. Then you are supposed to call them when you get home, just to assure them that you got home safely. Yes, perhaps it’s a bit over cautious and compulsive, but I’d venture to guess that there is a reason she told us to keep that in mind when coming home at night. But Mira Flores, I suppose a bit like the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, is a suspension of that reality, and shrouds the dangerous face of Lima with bright lights, a 24 hour grocery store that is remarkably like whole Foods, and an outdoor mall complete with Starbucks, Chili’s and Tony Roma’s.
After dropping our bags at the hostel we were led about four blocks away, to a cevicheria called Punto Azul. I should mention that it is a pretty hard and fast Gringo rule that one does not eat ceviche in Cusco and saves their fish fix for Lima, where the seafood is so fresh you can almost see it still moving. (Why would you make a point to have sushi in Nebraska, when you could go to New York and literally trace the two-hour journey of salmon from boat to plate?) But, of course the Cusqueñans don’t see it that way (I’m sure Lincoln, Nebraska is chock full of sushi restaurants), and so for my last meal in Cusco my family took me out for ceviche. It was very good and tasted fresh; I was also able to avoid any stomach or digestion issues, so it must have been okay. In any event, I was excited to taste the difference between this ceviche and what I’d had the day before. I’ve learned, from cookbooks and talking to people, that ceviche is just a broad term for seafood that is marinated in lemon or lime juice. I hope I will be able to tell you more about it after May 10, when I will have completed my Independent Study Project on typical and “new-Andean” Peruvian food, but for now all I can say is that all the ceviche I have eaten is just fish—usually light colored, like kingfish—and sometimes scallops, shrimp, calamari or octopus, with onions and sometimes hot pepper marinated in acidic juice and served over a bed of lettuce with a side of sweet potato and choclo, which is like a waxier version of corn on the cob. It is divine, and though not a substitute for sushi luncheon (really nothing is a substitute for that) it is certainly is a delicious variation on the same ingredient. We also ordered arroz con mariscos—rice with shellfish—which tasted a bit like paella without meat, and tacu tacu, which was a base of rice and lentils with shellfish mixed in. Everything was absolutely delicious, and by the time I left Punto Azul I was convinced that this week would be one of the best I’d spent in Peru.
The next few days proved my initial assumption correct, and exploring the area of Lima around my hostel in Mira Flores was interesting and a nice change from Cusco. We had class in the mornings, but after 1:30 we were free. The first few days we spent wandering around Mira Flores, in large part trying to find our way down to the beach. The neighborhood abuts the ocean, but the residential area is built high up on tall bluffs, which, although providing beautiful views of the beach, prove difficult to navigate for Americans trying to find a beach to lie on. Eventually we found our way to one with crystal blue water and a small sandy area where we could put our towels. It almost didn’t seem real: Monday afternoon with nothing to do except lie on the beach and watch the surfers crisscross on top of the rough surface and try to avoid the rip tide. Welcome to Lima!
By Tuesday Lima was feeling like home, and Gonzalo graciously offered up his beach house—situated about an hour and a half outside Lima—to the 15 of us, to give us a little taste of Spring Break Peru ’09. It is the closest thing to an oasis that I’ve ever seen. After you get outside the outskirts of Lima, driving north up the coast, the buildings and houses start to melt into the sand, and you quickly realize that you’re in a desert. Climbing up from the ground are political ads painted on half finished buildings and billboards advertising Coke and D’Anafria Ice Cream. (These are no ordinary billboards, either. Many of them are 3-dimensinal and all of them have some figure springing off the rectangular confines of the billboard and trying to jump into your car.) We drove for about an hour through the desert, half expecting to see a camel or at the very least a cactus, but there was just reddish brown sand stretching as far as the eye could see. Finally, around kilometer 135, the driver made a right turn and we drove for along a dirt road lined with white rocks for about 3 minutes until we pulled up in front of a big cement house. Gonzalo lives in a gated beach community, apparently a very popular thing for middle class Limanians, which has a stretch of private beach about 500 years long. The houses are all built up on bluffs that surround the small cove of ocean, and so when you stand on the patio you can see about 15 other houses also built up on the bluffs and then just ocean forever. At night the stars come out and since there is nothing around to swallow them up they are vibrant and sharp and alive.
We arrived back in Lima the next day, and still had three days there before leaving for Iquitos. We did some more exploring and getting a feel for the city; I also did some apartment hunting because I’ll be living in Lima from April 14-May 7, working on my independent study project. 5 of my friends will be living with me, and we found a beautiful apartment one in a very safe and family-friendly part of Mira Flores, about a 30-minute walk or 10-minute cab ride from the central plaza, John F Kennedy Plaza.

Part of me wonders if I liked Lima so much because it’s a big city with English bookstores, American restaurants and upscale grocery stores that carry organic fruit and 30 kinds of cheese. (In Cusco they only sell about 5 types, but they all taste very similar and the most popular kind squeaks in your mouth when you chew it. Hence the name, squeaky cheese.) In any event, it is a big city and even though it doesn’t have all the amenities of New York or Boston or Los Angeles, it is relatively easy to simulate an American style of life there. Part of me feels like I’m taking the easy way out: spending my last month here living with 5 American friends, cooking my own meals, reading English books. Am I getting the most out of this experience if I live like that? And I suppose that’s really the challenge of the next month: to take it upon myself to make my experience as real as possible. (And what does that mean—making an experience real? What is “real” Peruvian, anyway? If anyone has suggestions about answering this, please let me know. That’s a big part of what my independent study project is about: trying to decipher what is “authentic Peruvian food” versus food that has been so changed by globalization that it’s not really “authentic” anymore.) I can, and probably will, live in America for the rest of my life; I may as well take advantage of this incredible good fortune I have to be visiting Peru on this program. So, I suppose, at the end of this rambling and indulgent paragraph, I will say: stay tuned for my (hopefully) authentic Peruvian experience in Lima. First, though, down the Amazon, to the jungle and back.

And now, to bed.

Hearing the phrase “if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger” is never a good sign. It usually means that someone is trying to spin something in your favor, trying to sympathize with your plight and commiserate with you in your misery. It also doesn’t usually make you feel a whole lot better.
But, so it was last Tuesday afternoon as I was walking home from the supermarket, flea bomb in hand, that my friend Bridget told me just that: Well, I guess if it won’t kill us it will at least make us stronger. She was, of course, speaking of that piece of the campo that we’d brought home with us, the fleas.
Last Friday morning I woke up and, in the course of showering and getting dressed, began noticing some bites on my legs. I didn’t think much of it at the time—sleeping in the Shebang has brought much worse than a few spider-looking bites on my legs. They itched a bit, but again, I’d had much worse. Bridget also had some bites, and was convinced she had fleas. (At this point I still thought she was crazy, and made sure to let her know each and every time she told me about them. I even laughed at the idea, which, looking back was a terrible idea and ended up being a lesson in Karma.) I was, on Saturday morning, still of the opinion that my bites were simply errant spider bites, just a holdover from the campo. Merely a visitor who wanted to see Cusco from the vantage of my leg and got hungry along the way.
Every day, though, I woke up with a few new bites that were beginning to itch worse than any bites—mosquito or spider—that I’d had in the past. They were also pretty big, maybe ½ centimeter in diameter which, although it may not seem like a lot, begins to look like it when there are 20 of them covering your leg. When I spoke to Mom on Sunday night I mentioned the bites to her and she told me I should talk to my host mom, to see if she had any ideas about the bites. With new ones appearing daily I was beginning to come around to Bridget’s flea theory—albeit begrudgingly.
Monday morning dawned with five new bites, which had now migrated now from my right leg to my left, and up to my stomach. At breakfast I showed my host mom a few of them and asked her what she thought they were.
“Oh, you’ve got pulgas,” she said.
Now, I have taken seven years of Spanish; I could explain the usages of the subjunctive tense, the difference between por and para and idioms with the verb tener. The word pulgas, however, was one with which I was not familiar. So, when my mom told me I had them, I just assumed it was Peruvian Spanish for generic bug bite. (Pulga is not a word one comes across in the thematic vocabulary of Spanish textbooks in the US—which theme would that fall under, “vermin that infest your bedroom”? That has never been a chapter heading, but maybe I’m just using the wrong books.)
When I got to school that day I told Bridget not to worry, that it was okay, that I just had pulgas!
“Julie, pulgas are fleas.”
Well, there it was: karma, come to bite me in the ass. Oh Jesus, I thought. I’d had a dog for 13 years and not once did the thought of fleas even cross my mind. Now, five days in the campo and my body was an all-you-can-eat buffet that happened to be popular with a good portion of the fleas in Corporaque. It took me a few minutes of arguing, but after having everyone else assure me that pulgas were indeed fleas, my period of denial was over and I’d moved into the next phase of my grieving: acceptance.
“Alright, well what the hell are we going to do about our fleas, then,” I asked Bridget, although only half-heatedly, because I really didn’t care to know the answer.
“Well Irma (=director of the program), told me that we need to spray down everything in our rooms with flea spray. Then we need to do it again, with some kind of spray that is even more powerful than the first. We need to do it in the morning, because we can’t go into our rooms for 8 hours after we spray,” she told me.
We walked home, half laughing and half incredulous at our situation: we were here, living in Peru, with fleas. Was that a joke?
Today, no, it was most certainly not a joke. Tomorrow, even still would be a little too soon for it to be a joke. By Wednesday, though, the fact that we had fleas might be hilarious. (So I hope you’re enjoying this post—it’s meant to be funny, as it is now Thursday night and the fleas are hopefully dead and I don’t think I’ve gotten any new bites.)
On Tuesday morning both Bridget and I got up at 6:15, and instead of meeting our friend Jaime to go running like we usually do, took everything out of our room and sprayed it down with the flea spray we’d gotten. (It takes a surprisingly long time to spray three heavy wool blankets with Raid! Flea Killer) Then we both packed up every single item of clothing that we’d brought with us and took it to the Laundromat. Fleas be damned, they were going to die whether they liked it or not.
And here we are, a combined 165 soles worth of laundry later, 3 cans of flea/mite death spray, and 27 soles worth of cortisone cream later, it seems that we are flea free. It is a nice feeling not to wake up in the middle of the night tearing at your legs and arms because they itch so much. And, I suppose because the fleas did not kill us, they perhaps made us stronger. Or at least they made our fingers stronger, from all the itching.

And now, to bed. (which is, thankfully, sans fleas.)

My friend Bridget woke me up on Tuesday morning with a song, sung to the tune of “Going to the Chapel,” that went like this:

“Going to the campo, and we’re,
Gonna pick papas,
Going to the campo, and we’re,
Gonna pick papas.”

(Papas = potatoes)

We were staying in a beautiful hotel in Arequipa, a city west of Cusco that was built at the base of three volcanoes, and, as the song would suggest, we were headed off to the capmo (=rural town) to complete our rural home stay portion of the trip. For most of us it would be our first experience with agricultural life and life outside the realm of instant communication to which we’d become accustomed. In short, we were headed for a place where, as my friend Marley put it, “if something on the scale of September 11th happened again, there is a good chance we wouldn’t know about it.”
But first we had a day in Arequipa. Many of the buildings there are made from bricks made from white volcanic ash, hence the city’s nickname: “the White City.” We didn’t get to see much of it, as we arrived on Monday night around 8:00 and left the next afternoon at 1:30, but from the little we explored, it is beautiful and almost feels colonial with its gothic buildings and big churches. There is a main plaza, called the Plaza de Armas like in Cusco, and, because much of Peru caters to tourists, lots of quaint streets with overpriced restaurants and shops selling baby alpaca scarves and sweaters. We ate dinner at a restaurant on the second floor of a patio overlooking the square, which lights up at night and looks more like a movie set than an ancient plaza. (Much like the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, the fact that it is so manicured as to appear fake doesn’t take away from its beauty.)
After a five hour bus ride on Tuesday afternoon, which was made longer by the fact that it is the rainy season and long stretches of road are made into Swiss cheese by the downpours, we arrived in Chivay, a small town which serves as a tourist hub for Colca Canyon. Colca is the second biggest canyon in the world, measuring 3400 meters in depth. The town itself is very nice and quaint—the center of town is probably about five or six square blocks—with restaurants, hotels and tourist shops offering bus tours of the canyon starting at $70 US. The fifteen of us, by now glad to be anywhere but on a bus, got off the bus and went into a restaurant where we were going to be greeted by our host families. We sat down for a lavish buffet meal, and our families walked in soon after. I suppose they wanted to impress us, but most of the women (probably 13 of 15) were wearing traditional outfits, which, as you can see from the picture below, are not the easiest things to get into. (That picture is of me and my friends Bridget and Mary, the two other girls that were staying in town with me.) As soon as the families walked in I began to get extremely nervous: yes, I was going to be living in the same town Mary and Bridget, but would I see them in the next six days? Was I going to taken to the field everyday, to harvest potatoes and plant quinoa? Where would I sleep? Probably on a hard dirt floor along with spiders and snakes and whatever else lived in the campo, was of course the answer I rushed to first. These ridiculous hypothetical situations only got worse as the eight of us (me, my two friends, and the five members of our respective host families that came to greet us) piled into the station wagon and began the 25-minute drive up the hill to the town of Corporaque, where we would be staying. They weren’t helped by the fact that, midway through the drive, the car died and the driver (who, it turned out, was Bridget’s host dad and an extremely nice and capable driver) had to jump out, put a bit more gas in the tank, and continue on the way. By the time I got out of the car and said goodbye to them I was convinced that the next five days would stretch into five years, and that I would come back to Cusco with malaria and yellow fever, having done enough back breaking labor to harvest all the potatoes in Peru. I met the rest of my family—along with my “mom” Muriel, and my eight year old “brother” Alex who had come to meet me in Chivay there were two other boys, Denilson (Chabu) and Christian, who were 11 and 13. My “father” Miguel was 39, and drove a combi in addition to working in the fields—and quickly went to bed. It turns out that, instead of sleeping on the floor with the “snakes” (of which there are none in Corporaque), I actually had my own room which was very big and nicely furnished with a bed, desk, dresser, bookcase and TV. It was also decorated with lots of scientific drawings because I took Christian’s room, and his favorite subjects are math and science.
Wednesday morning dawned bright with no clouds in the sky—a rare feat in Peru in the rainy season. I went into the kitchen to have breakfast, and was told that we would be going to the chakra (=fields) today, to harvest albergas (=peas). In the light of day everything looked nicer and more manageable. My house, which was actually more of a compound as it was built in a rectangle around a dirt courtyard, was very big, and my family extremely welcoming and kind. I was excited to go out to the fields and do some manual labor, adopting that Protestant attitude of hard work doing some good for the body and soul. (I’ve learned it well from you, Mom.) Six of us—Muriel and Miguel, Christian and Chabu, a “tio” (=uncle) and I—left the house at 8:00 in Miguel’s combi, and got to the chakra at 8:30. We immediately started picking peas, which is a pretty mindless task and not too hard on anything minus the back or the knees, as those only grew about two feet high. For the first few hours I was really enjoying myself: we had brought a radio, I was doing a bit of thinking about random things, and I was really enjoying the feeling of collecting beans and seeing my progress as I tossed them into the plastic bag. But then, around 11:00—at 2 ½ hours that was longer than I’ve ever spent continuously in a garden doing anything—I began to tire of the work. I asked Muriel how long we would be spending there, as I actually did have a meeting with the academic director of the program to discuss my independent study project at 2:00 in town. I thought she said that they usually only spend 3 hours at a time in the chakra, but when noon rolled around and she brought out a picnic lunch, I assumed that I’d misheard her. After lunch, when they all started back into the field to continue picking peas, I asked her when she thought we’d be done, as I didn’t want to miss my meeting and I wanted to get out of that godforsaken place.
“We’ll go when it starts raining,” she said. Well that’s great, I thought. It rains at least twice a day every day here! Well, wouldn’t you know it, Wednesday, March 4th, 2009, it didn’t rain. Around 2:30 I gave up on my meeting, just around the time I started talking to myself. (What am I doing here? I hate picking peas! Why am I even in Peru? Whose idea was this? This is ridiculous!) Hindsight being what it is, I can now say that it was not bad at all; in fact manual labor is good for the body and soul, and thinking about it now I am glad that I got to spend the whole day there, seeing what it is like to have to do that kind of work all day. It certainly gave me a renewed appreciation for people who do that all the time. In my journal that night I wrote:

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from all this, but I can definitively say that there are two things I have learned:
1) I am SO glad that I go to Columbia and will never have to do this for my life, and will always have the choice of doing something else
2) I will probably never own or maintain my own farm.”

I probably should have written: 3) It turns out that I actually am a city girl after all.

The next four days flew by, and instead of going to the fields to pick peas I took a lot of walks in the canyon with Mary and Bridget, and spent a lot of time with the three brothers with whom I lived. We herded sheep (I am getting good at it, if I do say so myself), picked corn and apples, played soccer, and they so kindly showed me around the town and let me tag along with them with whatever they did. I got along best with Chabu, probably because I spent the most time with him. He likes to cook, and I taught him how to play slap jack and war with a deck of cards. His favorite subject is Communication Skills, but he wants to go to University to be an engineer and work in a mine. He is very good at soccer (he likes taking penalty kicks), and he climbs trees like a monkey. He has good aim with a slingshot, which came in helpful when we were herding the petulant sheep down to the pasture. He is also very funny, and tried really hard to teach me some phrases in Quechua because he knew that I was trying to learn it. (Llula = Liar. That was all I retained.) The other brothers, were also extremely nice and welcoming, and all of them asked lots of questions about life in the US, and especially about how much things cost there. I felt as welcome in their house as I think someone would feel in my own house, which is the absolute highest compliment I can give to the Torres-Bernal family.
The family owns a store, in addition to Miguel’s work as a taxi driver and to owning cultivated land and sheep, which allows them a relatively high level of prosperity compared to their neighbors. The store sells canned goods, meat, bread and basic household necessities, and on Sunday night I asked them what they thought I should buy from the store as a souvenir from their house. Instead of giving me a suggestion, Miguel went into his room and came back with a beer mug that he’d won in a salsa dancing competition. “Take this, and write ‘souvenir from the Torres-Bernal Family, Corporaque, Peru.’” Then he signed it, and I wrote the names of everyone else in the family. I was so touched by the gesture, and it was difficult to show him how much I appreciated it by the awkward hug that ensued. I am looking at the mug now, as I write this, thinking of what they are doing now (probably sleeping), and what they will be doing for the next week while I’m in Cusco, the next two months while I’m in Peru, and the next twenty years while I’m in the US. They will probably be doing the same thing they’ve been doing for their whole lives (maybe Chabu or Christian or Alex will go to University), and the same thing that their parents did. Leaving on Monday morning was sadder than I thought it would be; I really do miss them very much, but it’s hard to think about them in a real way, because their lives are so foreign to my own. It almost doesn’t feel real: did that week really happen? Well the answer for me is yes, and for them it is that it will probably happen exactly like that a thousand times over.
Now I am back in Cusco, living once again with instant communication, access to the US whenever I want, with all of the amenities that accompany living in a city. It certainly feels nice to be back but for now it feels a bit strange, I am sure because the experience is so fresh. The pressure of good fortune is weighing heavy on my shoulders and, even though it’s not guilt that I feel it is like something has shifted. I am guessing that the feeling will fade with time, but hoping and trying to make sure that it doesn’t. It’s a renewed appreciation for showers and bookstores, for rooms without the smell of animals and varied food choices. Mostly, though, it’s just a renewed appreciation for my place in the world, and for exactly what makes my life different from 90% of it: that I have the choice to live however I want, be it in a field in Peru or a house in Montclair. I will probably choose the latter, but it’s nice to know that I’ve got options.

And now, to bed.

Cusco wasn’t built for modernity. But, like any older city, that has not stopped it from eating it up: chewing, swallowing and digesting some confused mixture of narrow cobbled streets and 50-seat luxury tourist busses, Incan stonewalls housing McDonalds’ selling Inca Cola Lite and McPollos. It is vast and expansive, divided into lots of different barrios (neighborhoods) that, just like in New York, have different connotations and stories to go along with them. I live in Santa Ursula, a quiet, middle class neighborhood, about a ten-minute taxi ride or 20-minute combi ride from the center of the city.
But the part that I’ve recently found most interesting it the Plaza de Armas, which is the tourist center and oldest part of the city. From there you can see the Andes tumbling around you on all sides, and, because of the way it’s laid out—with two huge churches towering over the square and the rest adjoining two story buildings running the length of all sides, and very small side streets leading away from it as if they’re almost just barely escaping—you feel almost trapped. Outside this idyllic snow globe scene it looks like someone has just spilled civilization all around you, because the pattern of development that is built into the sides of the mountains is so random: large swaths of green cut into expanses of streetlights and red-roofed houses, and you can see streets abruptly ending for no reason. But the view from the second floor balcony of the restaurant doesn’t allow for much thought other than how lucky you are to be sitting there.
The Plaza de Armas is so beautiful that is almost doesn’t seem real. There is no trash anywhere, and armed policemen are dissipated all around so as to assure that nothing gets too stirred up in this tourist nerve center. (I was sitting on the steps of the square’s overpowering and awe inspiring Cathedral one day drinking a soda, and a trash collector dressed in a blue uniform wearing a painters mask over her mouth came up to me with a plastic bag and motioned for me to throw my cup away. I hadn’t even finished yet! It reminded me of the October at Columbia, where they actually hire people to sweep up the leaves that blanket College Walk.) In the middle of the square lies a huge fountain, green marble and decorated with white relief sculpture, and four bronze mermaid sculptures at the base. It is surrounded by slate paths that cut into the gardens teeming with flowers that are vibrantly colored and never so much as droop their heads. People sit on the benches watching the children who are trying to sell them finger puppets for one sol, and the artists who just want you to look at their portfolios, and, conveniently, accept both Visa and MasterCard.
Surrounding the central park/garden are two level shops and restaurants, most of which have a second floor balcony that looks out onto the city. The two towering buildings were originally built as churches, and I think both still are used for that purpose, although the larger of the two now doubles as a museum. I have yet to enter into it, but I have peered in and it looks exactly like the kind of beautifully ornate Catholic Church that one would expect in one of the bigger cities in a Latin American country. The other Church I haven’t seen open its doors, save for Sunday, so I’m not sure about the interior. (The exterior, I promise, is quite beautiful.) The shops and restaurants are what one would expect from the kernel of tourism: that is, they’re mostly overpriced alpaca sweater stores and real Incan Gold jewelry shops. It’s an odd scene on an average afternoon, because they sit about 15 or 20 yards back from the street that runs around the square, with a beautiful slate sidewalk separating them. Walk along the sidewalk and you’ll be accosted by small children, no older than 6 or 7, who are belligerently trying to sell you finger puppets, “only un sol, por favor,” or candies. And when I say belligerently, I mean it. They grab you and hit you and skitter away because they expect that, if you originally felt bad for them, the fact that they’ve just hit you means that you’re no longer feeling bad and are just annoyed. (I was walking out of a store the other day, holding a soda, and a boy ran up to me and tried to grab my cup from me. When I protested he tried to reach into the pocket of my jacket, so I just wriggled a bit and began to walk quickly. He was unfazed and moved onto the next person wearing NorthFace.) The Cusqeñans I’ve talked to don’t empathize with the children at all, and just assume that their parents are standing a ways off, either peddling alpaca hats or else hoping that their son or daughter will extract enough sympathy to make a few soles. But whatever you felt when the child tried to reach into your pocket quickly dissipates, as you cross the cobblestone street and walk into the park, looking at all the flowers and happy people, allowing this oasis to seep into their pores for just a second more.
The sterility and cleanliness of it surely doesn’t take anything away from the beauty of the Plaza, but just prompts you to think for a second about the disparity between this oasis and the rest of the city. Maybe that’s why it’s nice to go there when you have the luxury, like I do, of living in a different, non-tourist part of the city. Are Santa Ursula or Wanchaq, two neighborhoods with working class Cusqeñans, any more authentic than the Plaza de Armas? In one way, of course they are. (And, how am I defining that word, authentic, anyway?) They are the reality of living in the city, and don’t provide the frills of instant trash collection or police eager to pounce on anyone who dares to stir up anything that even closely resembles trouble, with a capital T. They are where the people who are selling the paintings go at the end of the night, when all the tourists have gone into their hotels or are eating Italian food.
But in another way, it is just a different reality, one that is sometimes hard for gringos like me to swallow. Tourism is a huge part of the Cusqeñan economy, and the Plaza de Armas is the reality of the need to exploit it, expressly so they can go back to Santa Ursula and put food on their table. I don’t judge my host brother Fernando, a salesman for a line of dietary supplements called HerbaLife, for trying to sell a healthier lifestyle to people; why should I judge the woman in the plaza who, wearing brightly colored “indigenous” style clothes, try to charge me one sol to take a picture of her and her alpaca that she leads on a string? She is only trying to sell me an image of Cusco, just like Fernando is trying to sell me an image of a vitamin filled life.
In one of the classes I’m taking we have talked a lot about conscientious tourism, and what it means to be a mindful visitor. It is uncomfortable to watch people dressing themselves up for you, selling their culture to you for 30 cents. Maybe it’s because I’m just more accustomed, but I actually prefer the belligerent man who stands outside the Chipotle on Broadway between 110th and 111th streets, asking if “someone can help me get something for dinner tonight,” to the Quechua speaking woman who wants me to take a picture with her. But then, who am I to feel bad for her, if she is making her choice to make her living that way? A bit of neocolonialist guilt, I suppose.
Well, I clearly don’t have any answers. I am hoping a few more trips to the Plaza de Armas, and a few more discussions with taxi drivers will help me figure it out. For now, just an indulgent blog post.

And now, to bed.

I first met Ursula last Tuesday when we were staying in Urubamba. She came to give us each an oral exam that would place us in our respective Spanish classes, and my first words to her were, “antes del examen querría decir, lo siento,” which, (very) roughly translated means, “before this exam I would just like to say, I’m sorry.” She only laughed and assured me that it would be easy and that I would be fine. It turned out to be true: I didn’t get struck by lightening or eaten by an alpaca during the ten minute exam, and I left feeling like maybe I could actually speak some permutation of the Spanish that fluent speakers could understand. I’m sure I wouldn’t have felt that way without Ursula’s interjected bits of laughter when I tried to make jokes, which were frequent because I wanted to do all I could to detract the attention from my Spanish. She and her friend (also a Spanish teacher for our group) left after giving us exams, and all of us who came back from our tests saying something to the effect of, “wow she was so nice, I really hope she’s my teacher!”
The next day, though, was our trip to Machu Picchu, so the 15 of us quickly forgot all about the kindness of Ursula and Viviana, turning our minds instead to the massive Incan ruins and to our impending meeting with our homestay families and to our return to Cusco.
Monday, we remembered again. Ursula, as it turned out, was teaching my Spanish class and was ever patient with our misconjugations and incorrect pronunciation. Like all good language teachers I know—and, after taking seven years of Spanish and befriending a French teacher it’s more than a few—she was both kind and understanding, pushing us to speak correctly and slowly, and only very subtly registering her confusion as she tried to decode what we said.
Two days ago I was coming home from the internet café in my neighborhood, carrying my computer which had almost no battery life left in it. I went into my room, where I had been charging my computer for the past week, to plug it in but much to my chagrin the green light didn’t go on and it didn’t register a charge. “Okay,” I thought, “maybe it’s the outlet. But, after trying the charger in each of the 4 outlets in my room and in the dining room, I began to think that it was maybe my charger. I was on the phone with Dad, and, as is typical for me, I got incredibly frustrated and began swearing and let the problem take over. (I have very little patience when things don’t work like they should, but it’s something I need to work on because there is absolutely no use in living like everything is the most important thing.) The next morning when I got to school I again tried my charger in the outlets there, thinking that maybe some spirit had vexed my house in the night, rendering all the outlets useless.
I was beginning to consider my options for getting a new one—as it was I had about 32 minutes of life left before the computer would be dead as a doornail. There is one Apple store in Peru—they’re not so popular here, and I was about to find out why—and it’s in Lima. I walked into class and asked Ursula if she wouldn’t mind helping me call the store after class, to see if they could send me one and how much it would cost. “Por supeuesto, of course” she answered, as if it wasn’t even a question that needed asking. At 12:00, with cell phone and notebook in hand, so she could write down what the person at the story was saying, she came with me into the courtyard an made the call. Turns out that the reason people don’t like Apple products here is because they are exceedingly expensive (not much different than in the U.S.); for a new charger it was going to cost 689 soles, about $225, and more than most people here make in a month.
Ursula had a different idea. She hung up the phone and said that she had a friend that worked at a computer store and would I like to go there and see if he could fix it, or if he knew someone who could? “Ahh, muchas gracias sí, si es ok.” After spending 3 hours listening to me battle the imperfect and preterit tenses, Ursula was willing to walk with me to computer store to help me work out my relatively miniscule problem. As it turned out, she was not only willing to walk with me there, but also to stand there with me and translate while I tried to groped for words like “outlet,” “blue spark” and “voltage.” The man took the charger and told me to come back at 7:30.
As we walked out of the store, around 1:15, she asked me what I was going to do until 2:30 when I had to be back at school. “I’m not sure, maybe eat a little lunch,” and I asked her if she knew of anyplace to get a salteña, which is very similar to an empanada. She began to give me directions to the best salteñeria in the city, but after a minute decided that she would just take me there herself. We walked up two steps into a small restaurant. I knew she was right about it being the best in the city, because it was filled and I was only one of two gringos. I could also taste that she was right about 10 minutes later, when there was a piping hot pastry sitting in front of me. It was delicious, and certainly the best empanada I’ve ever had. The dough was just a bit sweet, which worked in perfect tandem with it’s savory richness. The filling is a juicy mixture of chicken, onion, ground beef, raisins and a hard boiled egg. When you sprinkle some lime juice on top and some slightly tangy and spicy salsa, the mix of flavors is like a sensory definition of synergy. The coarsely textured and disparate flavor bursts out of the not quite flakey but not quite chewy dough, and makes you feel so lucky to have been shown this secret place that you have the urge to write an ode in the style of Yeats to whoever you brought you there. (Alas, a blog post and journal entry will have to do.)
Ursula kindly sat with me and talked a bit about her self—what she is studying at university (literature), where else she had lived in Peru (Arequipa) and a bit about Peruvian politics (former President Alejandro Toledo, was not actually very popular, even though he was the first indigenous president). She also obliged me by allowing me to show my thanks by paying the 80 cents for her salteña. As we were leaving she leaned to me and gave me her cell phone number, telling me to please call her if I needed anymore help of if there was anything else she could do. I said that I was sure it would be fine, and tried once again to break the language barrier to tell her how much I appreciated her kindness. I think what came out was, “ahh thank you so much for your helpfulness today.” Certainly not as eloquent as if I’d been speaking English, but I hope she could hear my gratitude in my tone of voice, and see it in the way I was standing up a bit straighter, feeling so much better.
She went back to her apartment to study, nearly 2 hours after ending class, and I left to walk around and explore Cusco, listening to George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.” It fit my jaunty and upbeat mood perfectly, and it is the right song for a hot day in Cusco when you’ve just realized that you’re not alone in a foreign city and that karma really does transcend the language barrier, if words don’t always. I hope I will return Ursula’s favor in kind to someone, but more than that I hope that Ursula gets the favor returned to her, 10-fold or 100-fold or more. She certainly deserves it.

(A side note: I picked up my now functioning computer charger from the store at 7:30 last night.)

And now, to bed.

My plan had been foiled. As I stood at the exit of Terminal H in the Miami Airport, I looked longingly at the first class club that taunted me with its free drinks and bags of mini pretzels. I had to exit the terminal to get my checked suitcase, but without my boarding pass for my next flight I couldn’t get back into the concourse and proudly display my card that would grant me access. “Well,” I thought, “I suppose the rogue Peruvian trip starts now.”
I found my bag and a place to store it, promptly exited the airport and found a taxi. “Take me to your favorite place in Miami, please? I need to be back at the airport at 6:00, so not too far.”
“Ah, yes, I know,” said my Haitian cab driver. “I’ll take you to Mangoes, you can dance and drink and watch the ocean from your table.” It all sounded good to me, and a mere $32 later, I stepped out of my green taxi (who knew, they come in colors other than yellow?!) and onto Ocean Boulevard, the busiest street in South Beach and the only separation between the billions of dollars of real estate that tower up above the sunburned tourists and the Atlantic. The first thing I saw was a two-toned Buick Special, teal and white, regally sitting outside The Avalon hotel. I felt like I had taken a taxi from 2009 to 1957, instead of from the airport to downtown. I walked along the strip, past the hotels and restaurants that boasted 10 pound lobsters and 32 ounce mojitos and crab legs longer than my arm, and thought about my upcoming trip. For now I was feeling okay, and had Mom’s words ringing in my head: Julie, you’re joining the ranks of all the Fillmore’s and Appel’s who have taken trips like this one, and come back richer people. I felt like I was beginning my rite of passage; it was my turn to have stories and I was going to take advantage of it, damnit. The first way I did so was with a mojito and a dolphin sandwich on the porch of the Waldorf Towers, a stucco hotel that looks pretty much the same as the rest of the hotels along the strip. I don’t think I’d ever eaten dolphin before, so I was surprised when I found how much it tastes like swordfish, only a bit creamier and milder. With tartar sauce and lemon and some seasoned French fries, it was the best last American meal I could have hoped for. After I finished my lunch I crossed the street and stepped onto the whitest beach I’d ever seen. It was about 4 o’clock by then, so there were not many people left on the beach; only a few scattered here and there, desperately grabbing at their sun shawls to keep them from blowing away in the wind, which had picked up since I’d crossed the street. I sat down next to a big wooden box that looked like it held beach chairs and stared at the Miami skyline and the larger than life cruise ships that cluttered up the harbor. I just sat for a while, listening to the CD that Eben had made me before I left, and thought about the people who I didn’t even know, that would become my friends in the next 3 ½ months. It’s an odd feeling, like shadows following you around: you can feel their presence but as for their personality or their sense of humor or their hair color, it’s all a mystery. And, after a good bit of that kind of dangerous metaphysical thinking, I got up, dipped my feet in the water, left the beach, and got in a cab back to the airport.
From there, time seemed to slow down and has seemed to move at a snail’s pace until now. (I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing—quite to the contrary I’m getting to experience everything and everyone with a sense of time that I’ve never had before. I’ve only been here for 6 days, but I keep having to remind myself that it’s been that short of a time, as I feel like I’ve been here for about 6 months.)
The group, who by now had sat together in the airport in Miami and Cusco for a combined 5 hours and was beginning to get along like old friends at a reunion, got into Cusco around 11 o’clock on Sunday morning, and was immediately whisked to Urubamba, a small city about an hour outside Cusco best known for it’s position on the PeruRail train to Machu Picchu. The hotel we checked into, Hotel Maizal, was beautiful and peaceful and the perfect place to transition the U.S. to Peru. It is best described as a compound, as it is completely walled in and is a sanctuary unto itself; a respite from the busy street that lies right outside the front gate. There is one big building, divided into 9 sleeping rooms, a separate dining room building with wireless internet and water cooler, and another structure that we used for a classroom. All three buildings lie on probably ¾ of an acre, the rest of which is a beautifully kept lawn complete with a fire pit, a huge bird cage with the loudest parrots I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, a weeping willow tree, lots of beautiful gardens with odd and beautiful looking flowers, and a babbling brook. (I kid you not—there was literally a small stream running through the middle of the lawn—talk about peaceful!) Oh yeah, and the Andes rise up from the ground on all sides, creating the humbling and literally awesome feeling of living in a huge brown and green basin. The first morning I woke up and walked outside to see the clouds gently hanging low, obscuring the tops of the peaks, as if they were tired and needed a rest from being up so high.
We spent two days in Urubamba, during which we had various seminars on how to stay safe in Cusco and avoid petulant health problems like altitude sickness and Rabies (I surely won’t go near another wild dog ever again), and went on some excursions into surrounding towns.
Then we went to Machu Picchu.
Surprisingly, as we all know how 5:15 in the morning feels and all wish we didn’t, no one said a word about having to wake up at 5:15 to catch our combi (like a bus but less safe—for those of you who have been to Ghana, it’s a lot like a tro tro). After a less than safe combi ride, we boarded PeruRail, which runs from Urubamba to Machu Picchu. As you descend down you can see the vegetation begin to change noticeably, from trees and grass to jungle like vines and thick reeds. Corn doesn’t grow down here—it’s much too densely populated with other plants. As you descend into the valley that will eventually bring you to Machu Picchu, the ride gets slower and slower, because of the abundance of trains coming from the other direction. (They only have 1 track, and only a few spots where trains can pass one another, so whenever another train is approaching you have to stop for as long as it takes for the other train to come chugging by.) Finally you get to the city at the base of the mountain—I’m not sure it has a name, but all I saw was an over-abundance of people selling not-so-cheap novelty items that say “Machu Picchu” on them—and get into an air conditioned bus that will take up to the actual entrance of the park. I’m sure this is designed for American or European (or other rich) tourists—the train ride there is $60, the bus ride up is $14, and entrance to the park is some obscene amount of money (I’m forgetting now). It even costs 1 sol (=Peruvian currency, equal to about 33 cents) to go to the bathroom! But then you enter the park, and you forget how much you spent because you’re overcome with what you’re seeing in front of you: huge green towers above you, and thousands of moss covered rocks, that have been painstakingly fit together over hundreds of thousands of years. The ruins are incredible: they are so vast (like the mountains they are covering) and so intricately built that it’s hard to remember that you’re actually seeing them. You feel like you’re a cut out picture that’s been placed on a National Geographic magazine with the title: Wonders of Peru. The colors don’t vary much when you’re looking at the ruins, because it’s so hard to take them in all at once. I had to take more than a few pictures to remember that they were actually right in front of me. We climbed up into the ruins (you can walk right in to them and walk around, as if you’re taking a tour of an old house), and our guide kept telling us about all the rock formations, and what they meant to the Incas. I just looked around and felt that eerie sensation that I get when I’m looking at Jim Morrison’s pants in the Hard Rock Café, or at Lady Bird’s inauguration gown at the Museum of American History. People actually lived here 600 years ago! I entered into that dangerous metaphysical thought territory again: it’s in places like that where I feel like a dot on the infinite line of humanity, like I’m playing only a bit part in this play that’s been going on for thousands of years and will be going on for thousands more.
After we had taken a tour of the ruins as went down to the base for lunch, and then were free to roam around by ourselves for a few hours. A few friends and I found ourselves on the way up to Intipunku, or “La Puerta del Sol,” the Door of the Sun. It’s a beautiful hike up to the left of Machu Picchu on a trail that eventually will lead all the way back to Cusco. We hiked up it with another American we’d met during lunch, for about 50 minutes, until we reached the top, which was 2,720 meters up. Quite a difficult hike, but worth every minute of it, because I have never seen anything like it before. It kind of felt like when you’re sitting in the Imax at Liberty Science Center, and the movie begins to be shot from the birds-eye-view, except for that you’re actually living it and breathing it. At the top we stopped for about 20 minutes, where we took some typical tourist pictures, and sat and marveled at the view for a while. Then we hiked back down, got back on the bus, got to the train, back to the combi, and ate dinner at our hotel, wondering what we had really just seen.

On Thursday we packed up camp in Urubamba and boarded a luxury bus for Cusco, where we would meet our host families. I grew more and more nervous as we approached the city—sure, my host family would be nice enough, but what if that was it? I started to wonder about the $35 in New York souvenirs I had brought: what if they thought they were tacky? What if they already had 4 Statue of Liberty figurines in their house? What if they only ate tripe and sauerkraut? It turns out my worrying—like so much of it throughout the trip, actually—was all for the naught. My señora is a lovely woman, who is ever accommodating and loves to cook (good fit there!) and wants to teach someone how. She has a son who is a chef (nice match up there, too!) and daughter who works for LAN airlines. There are two girls, 15 and 18, who work in the house all day, and the father of the children who comes at night sometimes. (I’m still not 100% sure about their relationship, but I don’t think it would be the most polite thing to ask about it.) I have a very quaint room all to myself, with a bed, desk and a drawer that locks, so I can keep my finger puppets and pictures in there when I’m not home. I haven’t spent too much time here, though, because on Saturday morning, at 6:30, we boarded another luxury tour bus, this time destined for Lake Titicaca.
The ride, normally six hours, took a bit longer because of all the bathroom stops we made, but by 1:45 we were in Puno, the city that lies at the edge of the highest navigable lake in the world. We boarded a boat to take us to La Isla de los Uros Q’hantati, one in an archipelago of floating islands made from dried reeds that have been packed down, bound, and fastened to the ground so they won’t float away. There are many islands like the one way stayed on, all of which cater to tourists like our group. The island is only about 200 yards long by 100 yards wide, and has about 10 huts (also made of reeds), which we all slept in. There are 8 indigenous people who live there all the time, and are constantly giving people like me the “indigenous experience,” by which I mean that they are serving them trout and quinoa, taking them fishing with nets and letting them dress up in native garb. Being there gave me an odd feeling, somewhat like what I’d imagine living in the “It’s A Small World” Disney World attraction is like. Still it was nice to walk around barefoot on the reeds, and there is nothing like waking up early in the morning and looking out at a lake that is 3,800 meters above sea level. It reminded me of being in Rhode Island during that tiny sliver of time when not even the golfers are out on the golf course and the day is just deciding whether or not it really wants to start. It’s that point of tangency between night and day, and I think the most peaceful stolen piece of time in the entire day.
Around 8 o’clock we boarded our boat back to the Puno, and when we got there we were immediately guided towards La Avenida Bolivar, where the Festividad Virgen de la Candelaria was going on. The week long celebration to honor the Vigren Mary was capped off by today’s festivities that included a parade, music and dancing. The parade consisted of dancing troupes, all dressed up in impossibly bright and ornate costumes marching about 100 yards and then stopping to do an impeccably choreographed dance. I saw dozens of different dancing troupes, all wearing different costumes, ranging from scary Diablo attire to full gorilla-like suits. Neon green, purple and day-glo orange seemed to be the favorite of all the colors, but you literally cannot think of a color that wasn’t represented in some way. Marching bands were interspersed among the groups, and the entire parade had to be at least ½ a mile long or more. Street vendors were selling all kinds of food, none of which I ate because I had been duly warned about it’s safety (although I’m going to have to stop on that “culinary safety kick” if I’m going to have anything interesting to talk about, so stay tuned for interesting stories about food and hopefully no stories about the aftermath), and carnival souvenirs. One man had a pole of cotton candy 15 feet high! I found a spot watching the parade with a few of my friends, and we stood drinking a beer and watching the parade of senses flow by. The parade seemed to be suspended in time and place, an entity all to its own. It was 10 o’clock on Sunday morning, and people were dressed in ridiculously grandiose costumes, marching and dancing in the biggest parade of the year! It was like being in an entity all of its own, that could own fit into a continuum of its own being—the past was only past parades, and the future only next year’s. It couldn’t exist outside Puno either. Something about the buildings, that weren’t old or new but just existent, and the streets that were just wide enough to hold four dancers or tuba players. We were a few minutes late getting back to our bus, because the wall of people was only semi-permeable, but it was worth it if only because I got to put on a gorilla head.
And now, to bed.