Thanksgiving in Jauja - Part I

Though Thanksgiving isn't really celebrated in Peru, the date served as a good excuse for us to get out of Lima and head for the mountains for good food and great company with our friends, Bruno and Merideth. Bruno has a charming B&B in the central Andes of Peru, in a town called Jauja. If you are ever anywhere near Jauja, Tarma, or Huancayo, Hostal Manco Capac is where you'll want to stay. You won't find better hospitality anywhere.
Driving from Lima to Jauja takes about 5-6 hours depending on traffic, and especially on how many trucks and buses you encounter on the 2-lane highway that is the Carretera Central. The road winds through spectacular scenery and gorges. Coming from Lima, in the first 2.5 hours you rise from sea level to a 4,800 meter pass (that's more than 15,000 feet). There are also very austere scenes, as you go through large mining areas and very poor villages.
Still, the region around Jauja is quite beautiful. There are wonderful hikes and sites all around. Above, you see the gang ready for action, including Bruno's 4-wheel drive, 4-door pickup truck. Believe it or not, this qualifies as one of our dream machines at this point. Very handy for exploring the back roads (which is nearly all of the roads) of Peru. You need 4-wheel drive, because most of the roads are unpaved, and this being the rainy season, they are deep with mud.

Here, you see Britt stuffing the turkey with a delicious mix created by Bruno that included sausage and nuts and bread crumbs and cognac, or something like that, plus other wonderful things. It was only a part of what would be a delicious meal.

Here are some views around Jauja. Above gives an idea of the countryside. When we came last April, it was full of colors from the patchwork of crops that were in bloom. This time of year, the landscape looks like a sepia photograph, because we are following the dry season and only just getting into the rainy one.

Above is a typical street scene in Jauja. Note the dog. There are feral dogs everywhere.

Just another random dog, only this one stopped in front of a red door, and I liked the contrasting colors.

This is a scene right next to the Jauja airport. There are 2 flights per day from Lima; both are in the morning and leave within 30 minutes of each other.

To work up an appetite for the Thanksgiving meal, we took a hike in the hills above Jauja to some pre-Columbian ruins that feature dozens of walls and circular storehouses. You can see the rain in the background of the photo, above, making its way toward us.

View from the ruins - down into the valley and its patchwork of fields.

The rain caught up with us as we were climbing around the ruins, and we were soaked.

Some of the fields are tilled with tractors, but others are worked by hand, or with hand-held plows pulled by oxen or donkeys.

People here are very poor. And this time of year, there's mud everywhere.

Here we are back at Hostal Manco Capac, ready to enjoy a terrific meal.

The next day, we headed down to Huancayo and then up into the mountains for a spectacular hike. Here's a preview. I'll load more photos tomorrow.


Sheep in the high Andes.

Alpaca in the Andes. The mountains are steep, high, and very beautiful.

food update

The food in Lima remains one of the city's greatest attributes.
The products are fresh, especially the fish and produce.

In addition, Peruvian cuisine, especially the rich variety you get in Lima, is a fusion of different styles and cultures and agro-ecosystems. You have fresh fish from the ocean, thriving in the cold waters of the Humboldt Current. There are mangos, olives, asparagus, and big artichokes from the coast and low altitudes. In the Andes you get quinoa, potatoes, llama, trout, and guinea pig. From the jungle you get pineapple, heart of palm, and all sorts of exotic nuts and fruits. There are all kinds of beans, including lima beans. There are 4 colors of cauliflower. There are interesting looking things I don't know the names of.

A friend in the States asked me recently if I'd learned to make Peruvian recipes. I really haven't, but Addison did for a school project. He cooked up a range of traditional recipes.

I haven't tried very many recipes, but I do like to try out odd things that I find at the grocery store. Often I buy some new food just because I like the look of it or find it intriguing. Then I do what I can with it. The results can be mixed, though are more often positive than not.

Here are some examples of typical Peruvian (Limenian) dishes presented as they should be - in this case at one of our favorite restaurants, called Francesco's. The photo above is a mixed ceviche. In its purist form, ceviche is presented in lime juice with red peppers, aji (hot pepper), big fat corn kernels called choclo, and a slice or two of sweet potato to balance the acidity of the lime juice. The one here involves some mayonaise. For some odd reason, Peruvians love to put mayonaise in dishes.

Above is a taster's sampling of causitas. Causa is a traditional dish that starts with mashed/riced potato, which is mixed with oil or other things to give it a smooth texture but also help it stick together. The potato is generally rolled around a filling that usually includes avocado, mayonaise, and chicken, fish, or seafood. There's often a sauce dribbled on top, as well. The version above is the mini-causa, or causita, presented in more of a sushi form, with the fish and seafood mixture on top of the potato.

This is a sampling of ingredients from our kitchen. The potatoes are from my workplace. Recently, as happens from time to time, the staff was offered a 6 kilo bag containing several varieties of potatoes - all of them picked from the fields by my office. The long green vegetable looks and tastes a bit like a cucumber. But it is hollow inside (more like a sweet pepper) and can be eaten raw (in salad, for example) or cooked (stuffed, for example). The package on the bottom right contains a fruit from the jungle that has a rough exterior and liquidy interior. It's used mainly for juice and doesn't have much taste, frankly. On the bottom left is orange cauliflower. I've taken to buying and trying much more cauliflower than ever before, because it comes in all these beautiful colors. The purple, shown below, remains our favorite. They all taste much the same, but actually contain different amounts of vitamins and such. My favorite method is to briefly steam then grill them in the oven, with goat cheese melted on top.

I couldn't resist this green cauliflower. It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss to me.

One of the dishes Addison chose to prepare as part of a school project on Peruvian food was papas Huancayna. It involves steamed potatoes covered in a creamy sauce made in the blender from a combination of aji sauce (hot sauce), milk, garlic, olive oil, and a softish white cheese that looks like feta only has far less flavor.

The potato aisle at the local supermarket is well stocked. Potatoes are from Peru originally, and there are more than 3,000 different varieties of them. But the range in Lima is far more limited than in the mountains, and people from the mountains will tell you that the ones we get here have no flavor. I have colleagues who are very involved in helping to preserve the biodiversity of native potatoes in Peru, and helping to find markets for them with Andean farmers. They've had good success with products such as gourmet potato chips. But all this is a subject for another day.

Above is a ceviche prepared by Addison and based on fresh scallops. Delicious.

This is papa Huancayno in its finished form a la Addison.

Above is a lomo saltado, another typical dish. Like many main dishes here it contains both potatoes and rice. There also are slices of beef, sweet pepper, onion, and french fries. The seasoning contains soy sauce, which is a reflection of the Asian influence of the many Chinese workers who came to Peru in the 19th century to work on railroads and the Japanese ones who worked in the sugar cane fields.

animal sightings

Some days it's the animals that catch my photographic eye. None of these represents anything extraordinary or even out of the ordinary. They are just part of daily life in Lima.

Dog on a ledge, Miraflores. Peru is full of dogs: big, small, street ones, posh lap dogs. And people tend to be very dog friendly. This one looked a little forlorn, but also in charge of his territory.

Scarlet Tanager, there are lots of these on the campus where my office is located. They are small, but bright as cardinals, and a welcome sight on a gray day.

Duck graffitti. This is in a funny area. The wall seems to protect a communal garden. It is in La Molina, a fairly tony suburb of Lima, where my office is located. But it is along a road near the Agrarian University, couched between the fancier parts. And along here there seems to be the leftovers of a much less prosperous, hidden neighborhood with odd shacks, dirt alleyways, and much mystery.

more photos from work

The gray haze is hanging on to Lima, even though it's now November and Spring is way overdue.
When we first moved to Lima, it was January and summer was in full swing. The sun came out pretty much daily, and it really brought out all the lively colors of the buildings and flowers and people.
Under the mist and fog, the colors are muted. And Lima reverts to variations on grey and sepia.
Here are some examples from potato-land.

Paper bags photographed through a screenhouse

Yellow truck

More paper bags photographed through the screen of an unusued screenhouse

Patchwork of freshly harvested potatoes

Solitary wheelbarrow among the screenhouses

Virgin locker

Irrigation ditch

Farm equipment

Birds

Peru, because of its wide range of terrains (desert, high mountain, jungle) is a world center of biodiversity. It has the greatest diversity of things such as potatoes (over 4,000 varieties), orchids, and birds - including hummingbirds.
If you travel just 3 or so hours south of Lima, there is a nature reserve in Paracas and around the Islas Ballestas that offers an impressive variety and number of birds - including lots of seabirds, and even penguins. In fact, it's the northernmost spot for seeing penguins, which come this far thanks to the cold waters of the Humboldt Current.

Even around Lima, we get a very interesting assortment of birds. There are cormorants and pelicans, as well as all sorts of gulls, along the beachfront.
But even inland, there are lots of birds.
Here are a few that Valerie encounters at work:

This is a Burrowing Owl, that I encountered during a lunchtime walk in the potato fields. They are among the smallest types of owls -barely bigger than a robin. And they are diurnal, which is why this one was out in the middle of the day. They also burrow in holes in the ground, rather than trees or rafters. The green eyes were striking as was the way it bobbed its head up and down.

This pair of Peruvian Thicknees has taken up regular residence in the CIP potato fields. They have remarkably blue-green eyes. They are normally water birds, but these seem to be content to be surrounded by dirt and potatoes.

The lantana bushes outside my office window regularly attract hummingbirds. I'm not sure what this one is called, but it's relatively big - at least compared to the ruby-throated variety we are used to seeing in the States. They are hard to photograph, particularly through a window, but I'll keep trying to capture a better view.

Lima Halloween 09

When we moved from DC, one of the many things we gave away was our rather substantial costume collection, accumulated over years of Halloweens, school plays, and other random events. Little did we know we'd be dressing up before the year was out.
Now that we've lived here a while, we know better. Peruvians love to dance, sing,dress up in costumes, and celebrate all sorts of occasions. It's one of the many charming things about being here.
And it turns out that Halloween is no exception. Kids wear their costumes to school. And little kids go trick-or-treating, but in the afternoon rather than in the dark. Adults have parties. So do the teenagers. We attended one that was a benefit for an organization that takes care of orphans. It was amazing, and tons of fun. We didn't have costumes, but managed to get some wigs and made do with that. There were some very elaborate and clever costumes in the crowd. We danced into the wee hours of the morning.