La Comida

I normally don't mind airline food at all, but my flights from Boston to Lima were through American Airlines. American doesn't even give out snacks during their domestic flights because they are so cheap, and so I wasn't surprised that their food was terrible.

Anyways, fortunately the food in Peru is delicious! Like many South American countries, they make use out of the diversity in native fruits grown here for fruit juices and ice cream. Also, did you know that quinoa is originally from Peru? I had no idea! Here are some yummy things I've had so far:

• fish in a maracuya (passionfruit!) sauce
• chicken and "wood ear" fungus kabob
• a lot of delicious fresh salads - they do salad good here in Iquito

Ensalada mixta - photo courtesy of Oona

• aji - here in Peru they call basically any kind of sauce or salsa that you can put on your meal aji. There are spicy ones and mild ones, ones that are just sauce and others that have chunks of radishes or onion... basically anything you could want to make your food delicious (if it isn't already)!
• ice cream - flavors tried so far include maracuya, guanabana, and aguaje (all South American fruits)
• juices - maracuya (passionfruit again), pina (pinapple), camu camu (jungle fruit, the juice is bright pink), limonada (good ol' lemonade), chicha morada (purple corn drink)
• juanes: rice with chicken, olives, and hard-boiled egg wrapped up in banana leaves



Juanes - photo shamelessly stolen from the internet

• avocado sandwiches for breakfast (genius!)
• Manjar blanco, sometimes called dulce de leche - sugary, caramel-y, heavenly deliciousness in a thick, creamy spread
• pizza that was half egg, banana, and ham (it sounds gross but was actually really delicious), and half like onion, mushroom, chicken, and other good stuff
• BEER - Cusquena (pretty good) and Cusquena Negra (better). I've tried sips of some others (Cristal, Pilsen) and they aren't as good.
• the best pineapple of my life

We also got very creative when we had to make meals for ourselves at Kilmetro 28, but I'll go into more detail on that later!

You can't drink the tap water here in South America or you might get sick, so you have to drink treated or bottled water. You also can't flush toilet paper in the toilets, but that's a whole other can of worms.