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Published: January 17th 2007
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We arrived in Ica, a town on our way to Arequipa. Ica is further inland and truly surrounded by a lot of sand. The first thing that stood out in Ica was the plentiful of fruit! It is the season for grapes and a lot of salesmen are pushing big tables on wheels full of them for just 1 peso a kilo!!! (6 peso = 1 Pound) After we found a place to stay we made our way to find a tour of the surroundings as recommended by Lucio. That wasn't too difficult and after arranging a time we headed off for lunch. We stopped near our place and tried the first food on wheels. It was a delicious potato dish stuffed with meat and vegetables for only 1.5 soles! We practiced our spanish with the saleswoman and her son turned out to be an english teacher. Luckily he just passed the little stand so that we could have a little conversation with him and his friend in english. The more we travel in Peru the more we love the warm hearted people. They are very friendly, open and helpful. We left our little lunch conversation with a traditional kiss on
The cotton flower once old
The flower when it dies off, leaves the actuall cotton behind. It is really soft but full of seeds with a sharp spike on each. the cheek and felt truly local.
We looked around for a tour to get a look at the surrounding tourist spots in Ica. Finally we found one and we left that afternoon on our tour for 2. The guide took us to a "bodega", a winery where they also produce Pisco. Of course we had a taste of it and a walk around. We were also tought the correct way to drink this firewater. If the pisco is an aromatic one (produced for the ladies), you take a sniff, then breath out. Then you breath in, knock the whole shot back, and breath out through the mouth. The pisco´s with higher alcohol (for the men, and drunkards) the technique is reversed. You don´t sniff it (as it is horrible), you breath out totally, knock the shot back, then breath in through the mouth. The techniques do prevent throat burning and coughing but did little to improve the taste of the pisco (sorry, but it isn´t really to our taste) The barrels they use are 200 years old, so they say, and the whole place looked like it has the original instruments to produce wine and pisco. The walls of
Inside the wine museum
All those funny shaped jars contain wine and pisco of various sorts. Most are over a hundred years old, the jars not the content ;) We tried the content and felt soon very dizzy :) the place were covered in "genuine" archiological artifacts, some which looked more than dubious. We also saw avocados, pecan nuts and cotton growing.
After the wineries we went to Huacachina, a lagoon in the desert. Huacachina is a small place with a lake and few buildings around it. It looks very pretty and quiet and we had a bit time to walk around it. Apparently there used to be 7 such lagoons around Ica but all have since dried up. The only reason Huacachina is still there is due to mans intervention, pumping water into it. We spotted a crowd of people and being nosy we went to see what was going on. It turned out that the in Peru famous group "Hermanos Aybar" were filming a song for TV. So we mixed with the locals. They were so nice again to draw us into the happenings and allowing us to take pictures. I think they thought that with our big camera we had heard of he group and were taking photos for some professional purpose, blatently this wasn´t the case. Again, we could feel the warmth of the peruvian people, especially Josie who has been squeezed like an
Wine Press
This press is still used for the wine festival every March, when the harvest comes in old friend for a picture. After that we went back to Ica to see the town. All in all it was a very amusing tour, the wine and Pisco at the begining certainly helped 😊
After dinner we went to an internet cafe where Josie made friends with 2 little peruvian girls. It was comedy, as you can imagine the limited spanish wasn't very helpful so technology had to help out. Quickly Josie taught the girls to use Babelfish, the translating website, and the conversation started. The girls were writing in spanish and translating into english and Josie was answering in english translated to spanish. What a laugh!
The next day we bought tickets to Arequipa and had a great fruit salad for breakfast for just 3 soles! With the day left to departure we went back to our favourite potato lady (Andy managed to scoff 2 of the said potato thingys) and managed to get the recipe for the delicious dish. In a comedy twist, it turned out her name was Delia, that well known english cook! Next entry from Arequipa!
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Looking goooooood!!!
Heyy, so meeting English teachers randomly ain't a Rio de Janeiro exclusive, huh! :P Keep up the great work... when's that recipe book being released?? My mouth is watering already!! XXX Ruama