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Published: July 26th 2008
Rose and Her Mini Bananas
She just loved these little guysThursday, July 24, 2008. Rose’s sister, Valeria, arrived the night before and stayed at our apartment. She and Rose had a great time unpacking the tons of stuff she brought with her, and deciding what went where. We had already decided that our luggage was overweight, so we packed as much stuff as we could live without and sent it from Lima to Chiclayo by bus. Valerie did the same only the next day. The Peruvians have a kind of neat system where they completely wrap the suitcase or box in what appears to be Saran Wrap. That makes them pretty much tamper resistant. To ship our huge, heavy suitcase to Chiclayo it was about ten bucks.
Rose’s aunt Victoria is 99 years old and will hit 100 on May 8, 2009. She owns a
grifo (a gas station) and runs it every day. We would have been remiss to not meet with her and spend some quality time. We decided to invite her (and her sister, and her son and his fiancée and the sister’s caregiver and the caregiver’s daughter and the aunt’s brother and their bookkeeper for the grifo, hmmm, let’s see, did I miss anyone?) for lunch.
Aunt Victoria, 99 Years Old
Still runs her own gas station in Lima, Peru. We went to a
chifa - (Cantonese for “eat rice”), a Chinese restaurant. We went to the Wa Lok, which is very fancy and excellent food. We had a huge variety of dishes, including our little buddy, the toothy fish pictured here. As it turned out, his head and tail were the most prized pieces to eat. The tail went to the aunt, and the fiancée got the head.
After we all departed company (and DUH, who got to pick up the tab?), we went to another fancy-wancy
pasteleria (a pastry shoppe) that is well known in Lima, the San Antonio (www.pasteleriasanantonio.com). The little orange-colored tarts with the curly Q thing on top are made from
Lucuma, which is my personal favorite Peruvian fruit. I can’t really describe the taste except to say it is wonderful. I ate the rectangular thing made with
manjarblanco, which is made from caramelized milk. It was called a
Milhojas de Manjarblanco. It sort of reminded me of a scone, only sweeter. Anyway, if you want to impress your sweetie with your knowledge of cool places to go, try the San Antonio.
From there, we drove to the airport to board our flight
Not Just Another Pretty Face
Steamed in soy sauce, this big boy tasted a lot better than he looked....... to Chiclayo. Thanks to having bought our tickets though an agency and them having a phone number to contact us, we discovered that our flight had been delayed an hour. We arrived safely in Chiclayo and were met by our
corredor, (real estate guy, Danny Amenero ). He had a driver and we went to recover our shipped luggage and headed for Pimentel. So far, so good. We got to our apartment and to our complete surprise; it was on the fifth floor. NO ELEVATOR! Well, we wanted exercise while here in Pimentel. I reckon we’re gonna get some exercise whether we want it or not. Our view is not exactly what I had hoped for, but it IS an ocean view. We are going to reserve judgment on DecorDanny for now.
Somehow, our queen size bed turned into a full size. We dragged a twin mattress from an extra room and Rose slept there and I slept in the full. We woke up about 8:30 am and we were starving. We walked to a little seaside restaurant where the specialty was…..guess what…SEA FOOD! We ordered a tortilla de raya, from what I gathered was an omelet that
has stingray as an ingredient. I wasn’t going to complain. Then the waitress came back and said that we have no bread. We will give you crackers instead. JUST GIVE ME THE DAMNED CRACKERS! I’M STARVING HERE! Then she comes back and tells us that they are out of raya (DAMN!), they will serve us langostino instead. By this time, I didn’t care if they put octopus in it. When we finally got it, I have to admit, it was pretty tasty. I guess if you are hungry enough, crab poop would be OK. Our coffee consisted of a packet of Nescafe instant coffee with two cups of hot water. Don’t even THINK about a refill!
Fed and happy, we continued our walk, just looking around. We headed back to the apartment so Rose could do her sister’s hair for a wedding. Since we knew no one at the wedding, we begged off. Prior to doing the hair, we went to Chiclayo to do some shopping. We bought about a hundred bucks worth of provisions, which included an American style coffee maker. It is funny how you miss certain things. Coffee here seems to be a luxury, not something
that you MUST have to get your morning going. We lugged all that stuff up five flights of stairs and were sweating pretty profusely when we were all done. By the way, we did have the foresight to bring a big bag of Jose’s Columbian coffee from Costco with us. We had a couple of cups to celebrate getting our new machine this afternoon and it was excellent.
Rose got Valeria all made up and her hair done and she left for the wedding. Rose and I went for an evening walk along the shore tonight (Friday) and we are wrapping up our day now. Pretty exciting stuff, huh?
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Rita
non-member comment
Must have coffee!
Cool blog! Great idea to write and share your experience in Peru. The Aunt Victoria photo is precious. Unbelievable that she is still working!!! OMG! I can't imagine not having coffee to jump start the day. Nope, I could not eat that fish's head! eek!