Local Food and Drinks

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Just thought I would do a quick entry on the foods and drinks of Bolivia and Peru! Not for the squeamish....

The beer here is rather good - very typical, European lager-type beer, that´s very drinkable! In La Paz, brewing beer is rather hit and miss because of the altitude - water boils at a mere 83 degrees rather than 100 elsewhere.

Another alcoholic drink is Pisco Sour. Every time I drank it, I could picture the look of horror that would be on my mother´s face if she were to see me! The base is some sort of local firewater or fermented fruit in clear liqeur. To this is added a few drops of lemon or lime, which turns it a cloudy colour, then some sweet glucose. On top of this is placed some whipped, raw egg white, a dash of angostura bitters and it´s ready to drink! Cheers!

Perhaps, surprisingly, the locals are really good with fresh fruit juices. I´ve drank some wonderful Papaya juice with all the bits and some freshly made lemonade, topped with whipped egg whites for some reason. Every menu has all sorts of variety with fresh fruit juices at extremely reasonable prices.

Food. I can highly recommend Illama Steak. Yummy and very low in cholesterol. I had some with port and honey sauce.

A local delicacy is guinea pig (Chuy). Guinea Pigs are cheap, procreate easily and easy to look after, and many kitchens keep a pen of guinea pigs ready to cook. I didn´t quite dare order a whole guinea pig but had a sample. It tasted just like wild hog meat - suppose the nearest in the UK would be Wild Boar meat. Very gamey. Unfortunately, guinea pig meat is very high in fat, but there´s not a lot of it, so I don´t suppose it matters too much...

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