My Passion

..Ironically this post was delayed a week due to a nice bout with la turista...

We've been at this hostel for 3 weeks now and know the surrounding neighborhood pretty well. Just around the corner is a panadaria we visit daily for our 6 buns of pan (bread)—usually some mixture of wheat rolls, ciabatta rolls, and slightly eggy rolls they like to fashion as though they were croissants. Right out of the oven this last variety are quite good (they may have a bit of butter in there as well—though they are a far cry from an actual croissant!). None of them are the real hearty bread you'd get in the states—those heavy, hearty wheat and grain breads, or AnnaBread from Ashfield with its incredible crust (Anna, I miss your bread! You know I will gorge on it when we return!). These are squish-down-and-melt-in-your-mouth kinds of breads, and they have become a small staple in our gastronomic lives here.

The other, more alluring offerings at the panadaria are the pastries (postres). Daily options include any number of fillo dough concoctions with or without dulce de leche (my favorite being a puffy fillo square with custard baked into the center and a prune on top); rich but not too sweet slices of chocolate cake; fruit tartlets and meringue pie-lets. Steve's favorites are on the savory end…a version of chard pie, or a calzone-like baked pastry with queso andino inside. The prices in the panadarias are remarkable: 6 fresh-baked rolls go for about 40 cents and each dessert pastry is about 45 cents or so. Needless to say, I find absolutely no reason not to visit the shop on a daily basis.

Across the way on the corner there is a small tienda selling all manner of household items from verduras (vegetables) and raw meats (carne, pollo, etc—all in questionable refrigeration) to toilet paper and matches. Halfway down our block on Calle Puente Grau is a shop selling miel (honey) and bee-keeping equipment (who'd have thought, in the city!). Further down the block is a haircut place, a couple of schools, a few second-hand book and magazine stores (all in Spanish), a few other hostels, and a fairly large indoor crafts market. Often outside the market is a woman selling queso helado, the delicious ice cream/sorbet. In general there are vendors on the streets with covered carts selling gum, cigarettes and snacks. Also on the streets are women and men selling a type of cactus fruit called tuna, newspaper stands, and tons of pre-packaged ice creams, frozen yogurts and frozen juices, which the locals seem to eat a lot of. As you get closer to the main market (9 blocks away) the sidewalks are packed with folks selling shoe laces, batteries, cds, etc, etc, etc. The sidewalks are often narrow, so when you come upon a vendor or even a couple taking up the entire width, you need to step down into the street if you want to pass—making sure you know where the taxis are and they see you, too. This dance goes on—up and down and around and up and down—until you reach your destination.

One other note on the vendors here…walking around other parts of the city, you get a taste of a whole other world of shopping. Here, in the historic (a.k.a tourist) district, all shops have their own neat little space as they do in the US. But elsewhere, the shops are more like the open-air food market. For one, everything is open to the street. No doors need separate potential customers from catching a glimpse of something they'd like to buy. Everything from food stands to furniture, dolls, windows, lumber, sneakers, underwear….spills out into the sidewalk to entice passersby. And if you didn't happen to see exactly what you wanted right there, the shoe vendor at the entrance takes up only a little booth. If you're looking for another type of shoe, just continue into what becomes a labyrinth of a building to look at 50 other shoe vendors, because they're there, each one next to the other and selling what seems to be all the same stuff. And beyond the shoe vendors are the toy vendors, and the lingerie vendors, and the…all taking up what turns out to be a huge warehouse separated into tiny little booths and a maze of walkways connecting them all with the outside world.

But back to our neighborhood….

Around the corner on Calle Jerusalen is a café which we will likely start patronizing, as their coffee may actually be the real thing (99% of the coffee here is instant. None of that smooth, rich Peruvian Roast here, no sir. The export market is very important, you know!) Steve has been subsisting on instant coffee made at home, bless his soul. Café from the café costs as much as it would in the States, but I think he's ready for a treat once in a while.

A few doors down from the café is a vegetarian restaurant called Lakshmivan that we have visited a good handful of times for their menu del dia—a large lunch of 4 courses for about $2.30 each, including tip. Their entrées have generally not impressed me (Steve thinks they're fine though…this is where I get picky), but one of our favorite first courses consists of potatoes with an almost curry-like cream sauce, over lettuce and tomato. It's fantastic.

Our other haunt is on Calle San Francisco, a place called Fez that serves up really good falafel and grilled chicken sandwiches. We've been there more than we'd like to admit, but the food is scrumptious, they wash the raw veggies they serve with purified water, and the two women who work as the waitstaff are wonderful. It's usually full of gringos, if it's full at all, but I guess we shouldn't try to pretend we're not gringos too. Still, before we leave this town I'd like to try out some of the more local eats. Alpaca, for instance, and of course ceviche. We're a couple hours from the ocean (though plenty of fish comes from the rivers), but Arequipa is trying to become one of the gastronomic destinations of South America (and the world?), so the ceviche should still be good. Cuy (guinea pig) is another culinary specialty…but we might not go for that one. We'll have to see.

(Those colorful photos of dancers were taken at a March for Peace and Nonviolence on Christmas Eve, in the Plaza.)