Astrid, Gaston and the American moustache hunt

Lima was definitely growing on us. The restaurant scene in Miraflores was really very impressive and we had yet to try the pinacle. Astrid y Gaston is recommended by everyone. It is number 35 on the top 100 restaurant list, fodors raves about it, it is in our lonely planet AND the hostal owner said we had to go there.

To guarantee a table you usually have to book 3 weeks in advance but there is a bar which you can sit in and order from the restaurant menu as long as you get there earlish. We desperately wanted to go so we arrived at 6:30pm, 30 minutes before it opened. People who know me will think this was me panicking but for a change the eagerness was mainly on the part of my fiancée.

To be honest there was no need for this early arrival, we could have got there at 8 and got a table on this particular evening but this did mean that we got talking to an American woman who also turned up before they let anyone in at 7.

She was a regular there and as well as telling us about her favourite dishes she also old us about a hole in the wall seafood restaurant we had to try for lunch. Apparently it was so good the locals don't like telling people about it. She gave us a street address and a name, el begote (or the moustache) before she left to catch a flight to the States while we got on with enjoying our meal.

Moving onto the food Astrid and Gaston is certainly a case of how many people can't be wrong. The whole experience was truly excellent. I started with scallops in a slighty sweet sauce covered in dried (or maybe fried) carrots and a foam while my fiancée had octopus in a frothy sauce, sadly the food envy for my scallops was too strong and I was forced to change halfway through!

For main course I ordered a piece of beef which had been stewed until perfectly tender, the whole main was really very good. My partner had a very nice rare tuna steak with a creamy sauce.

The highlight of the whole thing was dessert. I had an amazing chocolate covered giant marshmallow on a biscuit base with a raspberry coulis (there is a sweet in the uk which is similar although not as big) this was served with hot chocolate poured over the top (which melts the choccy coating and ends up as a sauce). My partner had a really interesting postre called "the tomato who wants to be a dessert" this was a pear and raviloi tart topped with a tomato puree and served with basil ice cream which she claimed was one if the best desserts for people without a sweet tooth she had ever tried.

I think it would have been sad to pass through Lima without getting a chance to eat here so despite the time we wasted standing around outside I think it was worth blowing our budget for. Although again by Uk standards the price was pretty average, with a main costing between 20 and 30 pounds.

The following lunch time we took advice from the American lady and went looking for "El Bigote". Because we had a street address and a name we didn't bother checking the Internet or even a map to see if the directions we had made sense. They didn't, so we spent an hour and a half trudging the streets looking for it.

Eventually we were too hungry to continue (I am not a pleasant person to be around while hungry and my fiancée is similar) so rather than have a massive fight we picked a touristy restaurant and ate some dodgy seafood.

My fiancée was not yet ready to admit defeat though, using the restaurants wifi she looked up where we should be (about 75m from where we were) and the actual name of the place "la rincon de el bigote" which has the address José Galvez 529 and after abandoning most of our first lunch we headed off to try it.

It is the most unassuming place you can imagine but the food there is definitely something they should be shouting about. We had the giant clam ceviche starter (you order as many as you think you can eat) which was great, and followed it with their mixed fried seafood. This was light and fluffy in amazing batter. Everything was cooked wonderfully.

It was definitely worth the effort I just wish we'd found it an hour earlier so I could have tried things like the pulpo al olivio (octopus in puréed olives).

It wasn't the cheapest meal out with each clam costing 1pound fifty and the mixed seafood costing 8 pounds (much more expensive than our first lunch in the tourist place) but it is definitely worth it.

Pictured below are the scallops, octopus, beef, tuna steaks, chocolate marshmallow ball and the tomato who thinks he is a dessert from Astrid y Gaston. The front of El Riñcon el Begote and the clams and mixed fried seafood.

Traditional eating in the Colca Canyon

For some reason as this trip has gone on we've decided we like walking. This came as a shock to us as the thought had never really occurred to us before, but a trek in the countryside is something we both really enjoy (especially when you have better weather options than the Uk)

This revelation coupled with our recent indulgences meant that a trek in the colca canyon was high on our to do list during our time in Arequipa. Having read up on the subject we realised that not all treks into the canyon are the same. We (after much consideration) booked one that involved about double the usual amount of walking than a standard 3 day colca trek. We booked this through Pablo tours as they come highly recommended on trip advisor with most people commenting on how good the food was.

The other reason for doing this tour was the fact that it included some home stay elements and a small guided group rather than a large group where one slow person can ruin it for everyone (oh and they were the first tour company we came across who were open!)

One thing I did find bad about the experience is the fact that you have to leave Arequipa at 3am (yup, three in the morning!) on a bus on the first day but as our bus was not full this just meant that I got to sleep lying on the back seat as we drove up into the mountains.

It turned out that we were the only people on our tour so it was just us and Maria Jesus our guide, she explained that we'd probably not see any other tourists for the first day and a half as we were going in a completely different direction to the others (and walking for about double the time) our first day was a 5 hour trek, mainly down hill. "Easy" I hear you say, well, you'd be wrong! We descended around 1500m on a steep, narrow gravel track. After that my knees and ankles were aching after sliding around on all of the loose rocks.

As predicted we didn't see anyone else on the path or the dirt road we finally came to. The dirt road is new, completed 2 months before we got there, according to our guide Maria, it is precariously dug into the side of the mountain linking villages where transport was previously either mule or llama! Only 2 buses a week brave the journey (on Wednesday and Sunday) and we saw 1 pickup truck drive down it in the 2 days we were there.

Not even a dirt road reached our first home stay in the isolated village of llamadur, it was a kilometre away from the road, down a narrow path and across a pedestrian bridge over a rushing river.

The best thing about this isolation is that the 6 houses here are almost completely self sufficient with large gardens growing vegetables, fruit trees and cactuses. The also have a small menagerie of animals such as chickens and guinea pigs to provide eggs and food.

The meals we had while in Colca all started with a soup most were chicken and vegetable broth with either pasta or rice. All of these were really tasty and were served with the crunchy corn and a dip of chilli, red onion, tomato and lemon juice. Apparently the locals all put these in their soup in varying amounts depending on taste. The corn works kinda like croutons.

The main courses in the evenings we had were chicken in different sauces. first night we had a tomato and vegetable sauce with both rice and potatoes (fairly standard to have both of these in Peru). Apparently it wasn't one of their own chickens, but was one from the shops (price of progress) but even so the whole thing was tasty.

After a night sleeping in a stone hut with a gravel floor, a tin roof and a bed with 2 mattresses followed bu excellent pancakes and fruit for breakfast, we opted for 6 hours of walking and our number was increased by 4. Maria our guide purchased 4 guinea pigs from the house we stayed at as she said the ones in the city were much smaller! The idea being that she could breed these for food. Guinea pig is an expensive delicacy, once deep fried they sell for upwards of 15 pounds a meal (when a normal mail course is 6-10). This precious cargo was held in a cardboard box tied up with string, which she held as we walked along.

The second day was a bit of an effort, an hour and a half of climbing, 3 hours of flat followed by an excellent vegetarian lunch of soup followed by vegetables cooked in tomato sauce (at a family home with a very impressive view and herb garden) we then walked for 2 hours back down to the river where they had hot springs to revive us for the next days climb.

Our meal was the now obligatory soup followed by chicken with an orange sauce (surprisingly tasty) this would have been followed by an early night (we had 1500m straight up to climb the next morning) but disaster struck the guinea pigs had broken free and so we spent some time hunting them with torches in the dark. Sadly the dogs got 2 of them but Maria managed to re capture 2.

To escape the heat of sun we started the final climb at 5am, impressively we finished in a little under 2 and a half hours despite the fact that the previous days excursions were making our legs hurt. The climb, like the whole expedition was not easy, with lots of loose gravel and a steep incline, rather than steps.

I really enjoyed the whole experience, especially the food, it was a really good way to get a feeling for the more simple life of people in the colca canyon as well as giving a view of a more country diet.

Pictured below are the lunch soup and view on day 2, soup with all the trimmings, our room on the first night and a particularly impressive cactus!

Weird eating in Puno, Peru

South America has been a little disappointing so far in only one respect, there has been very little weird food, the only exception to this has been llama (tastes just like deer, see post from Bolivia) but I was hoping that all this would change as we crossed the border from Bolivia into Peru, after all Peru is home of the deep fried Guinea Pig and who knows what else.

Our first Peruvian stop was in Puno, a short (well 3 hours, but we're getting used to it) bus ride and comical border crossing from Copacabana.

As our time in Puno was short we decided to do a couple of organised tours while we we there. The first was the Uros Floating Islands, these are man made islands floating in the middle of Lake Titicaca's Puno bay. The inhabitants are dependant on the 2m high reeds which are native in the shallower parts of the lake.

The reeds are used for so much, their large floating roots are lashed together to make the islands base, dried reeds are laid on top to make a spongey floor, they are also used to build the people's homes and boats and as a food source.

Naturally I felt it was my duty to try the reeds, not least because I felt like pushing my luck, so far I had made it through Chile, Argentina AND Bolivia without a stomach upset! The reed looked a bit like a giant spring onion, but tasted like a strong lettuce, apparently the locals ate it with local fish they caught and sun dried. As a culinary location it isn't that interesting but if you are in Puno I would definitely recommend the experience.

In the afternoon we visited Sillustani, a group of inca and pre inca burial mounds near Puno, these were interesting but the best bit of the trip was on the way back we were offered a stop to see a local farm, the only person interested was my fiancée, although we talked a couple of other people into it (thanks Gemma and Tim, whose excellent travel blog you can read at samesametravelblog.com). This was a great decision.

We stopped on the road side at a small mud bricked farm surrounded with llamas, alpacas and ducks, I think it was fair to say we weren't expecting much, however once inside we got chance to see a guinea pigs being farmed, a bit more about the country way of life in Peru and best of all we got to try a typical set of Peruvian foods.

We ate a quinoa batter deep fried, giant maize corns which had been crisped up somehow (either fried or baked) which we were told to eat with a homemade cows cheese, with a similar texture to haloumi and finally local potatoes which the locals ate with fine grey clay which was mixed with boiling water.

All of this was excellent, the clay I certainly would not have tried on my own but between myself and Tim we talked each other into it. The taste was tricky to describe, the main flavour was minerally, but this is a) not a word and is b) open to interpretation, but for some reason it worked really well with the local potatoes, which tend to be a little dry.

That evening we went to dinner with Gemma and Tim who had spent the last week in Peru. They introduced us to the Peruvian tourist menu, a cheap fixed menu (usually about 15 or 20 soles for 3 courses, which is 4 pounds) that you usually have to ask for. We traded this for info about our time in Bolivia, where they were headed.

It was good to get information from something other than a guide book over a few drinks (more on the Peruvian booze later) and to hear other people's view of a country. It is definitely something we have been missing out on by steering clear or more organised tours and taking a more DIY approach.