Archive for category Peru
A tomato story
Posted by Witka in AFTERTASTE, Peru on February 10th, 2010
Few hundreds years ago ancestors of a tomato came to Europe from South America. They crossed the Atlantic on colonizer’s ships. They entered our world, adapted themselves to the environment, stormed our gardens and boarded our pans. Now it is hard to imagine European cuisine without a tomato.
In September 2009 our hero – a juicy, European tomato – was transported from Spain into a Waitrose supermarket in London. There Witka, carefully choosing her fruits, took the tomato home. Having had paid before, obviously. The tomato was not consumed that day, though. Instead he found himself in a backpack. Unaware of his fate, the tomato crossed the Atlantic as his ancestors had done a long time ago. He did it in a comfortable plane. He returned to his fatherlands. Not many tomatoes in the world have this opportunity and he felt very lucky. The romantic journey brought him to Gran Bolivar hotel in Lima.
There, on 2nd of October, Risky ate him.
The End.
P.S. While writing this short story a certain analogy came into mind… We are feeling a bit like two bruised tomatoes that came back, after many years, to their fatherland. And we are very unaware of our faith… We have a feeling someone wants to eat us alive. We are still fighting 
Titicaca
Posted by Witka in Bolivia, Peru, South America on October 13th, 2009
Late evening we boarded a night bus from Cusco to Puno, a town on the Titicaca Lake . We were woken by an amazing sunrise and the sun coming out of the lake. No wonder the Inkas believed the sun is born every day in Titicaca Lake.
Titicaca Lake is located at the elevation of 3800 m above sea level and has the area of 8300 square kilometres (230km long and 100km wide). It is divided between Peru and Bolivia. Local people still speak Quechua and many of the Inkas culture and traditions survived here till today. Titicaca is the sacred lake of Inkas. They believed they had been born in the lake.
First thing we noticed in Puno was the way the traffic works here. The town is a simple place organized on the plan of quadras (square blocks of buildings). Not even one of the road junctions has a sign, not to mention traffic lights. Therefore, all the drivers announce their presence by hitting the horns. When you are approaching a junction you cannot see anything until the last second. Therefore you hit the horn and pray other drivers don´t listen to their radios. You can imagine how quiet the streets are A traffic paradise. We had couple of rides with the taxi drivers and we almost hit a bike, almost ran over a tourist and bumped into 3 dogs. And it wasn´t anyone´s fault. It is just the way the town works. Adding to that the sidewalks are often less than 50 cm wide.
We have visited Uros islands on Lake Titicaca. These artificial islands are made of weed. People living there speak their own language and are experts in knitting and crafts. They are leaving in houses made of weed. The commute in boats made of weed. And they eat weed. And fish. We met a family who lives there, we went to their house, seen how they spend their days. Pretty amazing.
We also went to Taquile Island where people do (surprise surprise) knitting and weaving (not sure about the spelling). Their craft was appreciated by Unesco in 2005 and was put on their world heritage list. We learned about the way the local boys show their feelings to the local girls. There are 2 ways of doing it. First – a boy throws a stone at the girl. If the girl puts it up – it means she is interested. If the girl doesn´t move it means the boy is in trouble. The second way is to weave a hat. A boy brings a hat he had done to a girl. The girl puts water in the hat. If the hat doesn´t leak it means that the stitch is very tight which means the boy is a good weaver. That means he has good chance to be her husband. Of course the stone method is more popular. Our guide told us that recently the hats and stones are being replaced by stereos. A boy is walking the streets with his stereo and showing it off. The bigger and more expensive the better. Well, Taquile doesn´t have cars so I imagine their stereo is working here like a good car. Not sure if the girls prefer the stereos or the hats.
Photos from peru
Posted by Witka in Peru, South America on October 13th, 2009
As many as we could upload in an hour. There will be more to come.
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/witka49
Cusco czyli pepek swiata
Posted by Witka in Peru, South America on October 10th, 2009
There was another surprise waiting for us in Cusco. Unfortunately, it wasn´t Nancy. It was soroche – the altitude sickness.
Cusco is located at 3400 meters above sea level, which is above 2km higher than Ben Nevis. The altitude sickness can have various effects. Witka, for example, lost the ability to make simple calculations (like adding) and she lost movement coordination. Risky, however, had stomach problems. Both of us felt very tired while speaking and walking. Therefore, we decided to minimise verbal communication and tried to walk very slowly. Every movement cost us a lot of energy. Mate de coca brought us relief.
After seeing Lima Cusco felt like home. It is not much smaller than Poznan ( over 400 000 habitants). The old town is very charming with its narrow streets, colourful people and strong character. We walked a lot. We walked slowly, not talking. Witka was wondering why 2 and 2 makes 4 and Risky was chatting with his stomach. We enjoyed the Andes surrounding the city, colours, smells and sounds. We noticed that the meaning of ´customer service´has a particular meaning in Cusco. There is a lot of people trying to introduce you to a 20-page menu of a restaurant in 10 seconds. Adding to that there are plenty of street artists, who, unlike in Europe, are not sitting quietly waiting for someone to buy their art. Here, all the artists attack you. Literally. And the shoe-cleaners… They follow you with a brush, trying to persuade you you should be ashamed of your boots. Even the ladies in stores are shouting out to the passers by trying to advertise their stuff.
From Cusco we visited the Sacred Valley. We were overwhelmed by the beauty of Andes, the remaining Inka´s terraces and the ruins of their cities. Their agriculture were far more advanced than European when the Spaniards came in sixteenth century. We got tomatoes and potatoes from them (we should ask them how to pronounce it before we brought it to Europe). Can anyone imagine European cuisine without them now? I don´t think so, so remember it while eating your next pack of crisps.
We saw Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Yes, we know, lovely name. Then we went to Aguas Calientes – a very tourist-ready place where from you make your way to Machu Picchu (MaPi). We don´t have to mention that there are queues everywhere and to get to MaPi you need to face crowds. Every day there is 2500 people visiting the place. But it doesn´t matter. Becasue the place will just kill them for you Machu Picchu is just beautiful. We forgot about the people around and even the weather which wasn´t perfect. No matter how much you read about this place, how many photographs you see, it will overwhelm you with its setting and beauty. We spent there 6 hours just walking and gazing in awe. We could spend there couple of days and we wouldn´t be bored. You can see how the Inkas were organized, how they planned their cities and lives. Even the law – simple and clear: death for a lie or robbery, exile for laziness.
After that beautiful day in MaPi we came back to reality. After a few hours in trains and buses we came back to Cusco. There,, during a five minute walk to our h0tel we used ´no gracias´40 times to street artists and persuaded 2 shoeblacks that we are not ashamed of our boots.
(more shots here: http://picasaweb.google.com/witka49)
Lima
Posted by Witka in Peru, South America on October 6th, 2009
The surprise waiting for us in Lima was Nancy.
She waited for us at the airport with a sign Witka & Risky and a huge smile. Imagine our surprise!!
Nancy is an old friend of ours, a Venezuelan now living in Lima. Witka had the pleasure working with her in London couple of years ago.
We did not expect to see her at all. We have just touched the new continent and Nancy had spread all her love and care around us. In that perfect, protective ´bubble´ she drove us to our hotel in historic centre of Lima. Although we have been tired when we were leaving the plane, we revived and Nancy took us to a pub where we met Pele and Ronaldinho. Pele turned out to be a very funny man, while Ronaldinho didn´t talk much. To clear any doubts – Estadio (Stadium) is a place where you can find live size models of famous footballers, their shirts, underwear, socks, signatures, whatever you can imagine. We found also scarfs of two Polish football teams – Pogon Szczecin and Zaglebie Lubin. As you can imagine they are probably world-famous clubs. Shame we didn´t know about it. We thought these are the firsts signposts indicating our way home.
After Nancy left us we had a minute to look at our hotel. It turned out to be a massive classical building from 1924. Witka droped when she saw it. Risky was checking out the floor finishes.
Interiors of our hotel were furnished with antiques, there were old, working elevators from the beginning of XX century and a Ford car from 1914 (?) in the reception hall. It could potentially be a 5 star hotel, now it´s only 3 star. For around 25 quid per room with breakfast. In the heart of old town Lima, in one of the most beautiful squares – San Martin. Witka recomends it. Risky is still looking at the floors.
(at this moment we lost all our patience for uploading the photos, we promise more of our shots when we find a net quicker than 1 picture per 4 minutes)
After a difficult night we started our first day in Peru very early. After the hotel breakfast we went to have a breakfast. After that Nancy took us under her wing and off we went to have a proper look at Lima. Nancy showed us places we probably would never see ourselves.
Lima has officialy around 7 millions of inhabitants. But noone is actually able to give the true number of people living here. Unfortunately, most of the people live in poverty. The ´houses´of poor people are situated on slopes of huge, sandy hills, they often don´t have windows, not to mention roads or sanitations.
We were quite shocked by the way people are driving in Lima. Many of the cars are half destroyed, number of passengers is roughly 2.5 times more than what is recommended by the car producers. There is a nice law on the roads: whoever is quicker - wins, whoever is bigger – rules. The most interesting thing is the things you have to go through to actually get a driving licence. You need to pass a number of exhausting and challenging psychological tests. The typical question from such a test is: After waking up in the morning what are your first thoughts: a) i want to kill myself by jumping out of the window, b) i am very frightened of the world around, c) i am calm and prepare myself for the day. Honestly. The tests didn´t help the peruvians in driving at all. They all drive in a way that suggests they all want to jump out of the window.
And the buses. They are awesome. most of them have their own names. Such as TERRIBLE. No more words needed.
We also noticed that there is a lot of police in the streets. And they have dogs. Mostly dobermans and rotweillers. Oh, how we miss our fluffy german shepherds that are patrolling streets in Poland!
Nancy took us also outside Lima, to the beach. Pacific ocean. Great view. The place (Playa de San Pedro) is an isolated spot, in the middle of nowhere, with 3 outdoor restaurants that would not pass any of the health and safety tests. There was also a guard life tower that was not facing towards the water and there were dolphins!! Free dolphins playing close to the shore. What a view. We ordered delicious food in these none-of-the-UK-standards restaurants. Nancy introduced us to ceviche – traditional peruvian dish, which is just delicious. It is a raw fish cooked for seconds in lemon juice with a spicy aftertaste. Yum.
The same day we went to see Miraflores – pretty, resi-commercial district, where Nancy lives. We saw Barranco distric as well. A bohemian, close-to-the-ocean district with beautiful houses, cosy restaurants and nice walking possibilities. There we came across a rehearsal for street theatre. We had enjoyed a show of live southamerican soap opera. With rhymes. And music. For free. Awesome.
We had a quick sip of Pisco drink - traditional peruvian alcohol that plays weird things with minds (they say so).
We spent last days in Lima on watching paragliding in the sun, flying monk (who didn´t need any equipment in order to fly). Last glance at the panorama of Lima (none of us could spot where it ends) and we boarded a 21-hrs bus service to Cusco…
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