Saturday, April 04, 2015

Peru Spring 2015 Day 7

We started later again because it was Good Friday holiday here. I had the second piece of pizza and some coffee for breakfast and watched the video of our wedding we got a few weeks before. It had some errors we can hopefully get fixed (name misspellings) but it was overall done well and was fun to watch.  About the time I got to the reception Daniela joined me in watching it and ate the rest of the grapes we had. We got cleaned up and headed to her house to start visiting some of her family.

We ate at a small restaurant inside a market called Sergio's Cevicheria with her family before getting around to making the visits. I had a fried fish which was served whole on the bone (Daneila ordered it too but thought like I did that it would be a filet so she swapped with what her brother ordered). I did my best to eat the meat but the bones were not as clean as her brother's or mother's fish I will full admit. They served with rice and red onion salad. We had chicha morada as well.

After lunch we visited her Tia Lucha whom she said she had not seen in about 3 years. She looks to be in her 70s or so and was a very nice and direct lady who reminded me a lot of my grandmother. We also met Daniela's cousins Eddy an Liz.  They served some white wine and we talked for probably about 2 hours. Most all of it was in Spanish and I did what I could to follow along. Most of the conversation was about this and that relative and memories of such and what each one was doing more than anything.  They were very nice hosts.

When we finished there we took the same taxi who took us to their house by calling him. He was still in the area and picked us up and brought us to meet Daniela's Aunt Silvia who read at our wedding.  She and her son Andres were in a procession for the cross and we met them at a church where we saw a small presentation of the passion of the Christ in the common area in front of the church. I had never seen anything like it. Especially the girls yelling things as narrators I guess.  When that finished we walked to Silvia and Otto's house to visit. Otto and Diana also were there and we talked to them for a couple of hours. They served sandwiches and sliced peaches and some soda as well.  They showed us their dalmatian dogs as well. They liked me of course.  The younger one was named Ringo and was only a few months old at best but probably already as big as Murphy, my nephew's boxer.  I gave Ringo a couple of treats for sitting. He is already starting to be trained which is cool. I think we stayed there for a couple more hours and then because my mother-in-law was passing out asleep in her chair we decided to leave and get her mom and brother home on their way and we headed to Ed and Donna's house.

At Ed and Donna's house we listened to music and Ed and I went to buy cake and wine and we listened to music and drank wine until midnight. At midnight we had some champagne and a birthday cake for Daniela. It was a chocolate cake. We even bought candles. We drank the champagne and ate the cake and listened to music for a couple more hours or so before we took a taxi back to the apartment and basically immediately passed out.

Peru Spring 2015 Day 6

Thursday is the start of their Holy Week holidays here so they are off from Thursday through till Monday from work across the whole country so we didn't have to get moving too early because they were not officially working.  I had a piece of pizza and some coffee for breakfast.  When we got moving we took a taxi to Donna and Edwin's house and they drove us out to a beach a couple of hours away (with traffic I am sure it was worse in time than distance) and we spent the afternoon at the beach. The drive I think took over 2 hours or at least very close. We took the same route we used to get to Caral and Chancay and when we turned off to the beach I actually saw signs for Chancay. We had to use the Panamerican Highway for about an hour to get there but it took us an hour to get out of Lima.

At the beach we found a spot and set up and then we tested the water which is as cold as the beaches on the north shore of Massachusetts or New Hampshire.  The beach was clean and they had tables with overhead tents set up and small restaurants that served food. The sand was fine but had these really sticky black particles in it that would not go away. I felt at the end of the day I would be getting rid of sand for weeks.  We ordered a plate of ceviche and a plate of fried fish pieces (chicharon) and ate those when they were served. The food was reasonable though I thought the fish was a bit dry.  We also had some Pilsen Callao and some Inca Cola for good measure.  After we finished eating my mother-in-law, Ed and I took a walk to climb the hill overlooking the beach. There is a Krishna community called Eco-Friendly Park right near the beach and we climbed up to a small building they had up there. There were people fishing from the cliffs but didn't see anyone catch anything. I think the walk took about half an hour and there was some steep inclines on the way.  Still it was fun.  Donna and Daniela stayed behind and talked.

When we got back we hung around for a short time longer but the sun was close to setting so we packed up and they wanted to get chancho al palo which is a roasted pork dish that I had not tried before. Edwin drove us to Huaral and asked for a place mentioned on a travel show and we found out where it was and drove to it. It was called Wuarmy's.  They specialize in chanco al palo and carapulcra ironically so we also got a dish of that for free with the order of pork. Also they served a red onion salad and white rice. We ate a lot of food and had a local red wine which was strong and sweet and tasted of raisins to me. We had that primarily because they only had Cristal for beer which Daniela does not like.  The food was very tasty though I must admit I liked my mother-in-law's carapulcra better than this place. Admittedly it is served in a slightly different style but more it was about the flavor than the texture.

After we finished eating I became the copilot as we drove back to Lima. It was not traffic filled like the daytime so we moved much more easily and got back to Daniela's house to drop off her mom in about an hour and half.

After dropping off their mother it was decided we would do a Holy Thursday tradition and try to visit 7 churches before midnight. I do not know all of the churches but we started near her house and made our way to Miraflores where we finished at the church near Kennedy Park.  We made it there with just a few minutes to spare and they even turned off the lights on everyone to tell them to leave.  We walked from the park to the apartment with our stuff and called it a night.

The pictures from today are located here.

Peru Spring 2015 Day 5

After another later start we had a brief breakfast then we headed down to the office and I did a series of backups of computers and changed around some configurations on Office and such so that Daniela would be able to take all the information home and have emails going to the correct places and such. That took a couple of hours. Daniela's mother arrived and we went upstairs to prepare lunch for everyone. Dianita was not going to the office that day.  We made the carapulcra which had to be started the night before by toasting and soaking the papa seca.  We started by cooking some red onion in oil then adding minced garlic then red pepper and cumin.  We added some pieces of pork and chicken pieces and browned the meat. Then the papa seca was drained and rinsed and added to water where we began to simmer it. We added some cinnamon and cloves to water and boiled that to release flavors.  When the papa seca was to a certain doneness we added the meat back and the water flavored with the spices.  That again simmered until the meat was correctly cooked. We then added finely crushed peanuts, pecans and almonds to the mix to finish it out. We cooked rice as a side and she made a small salad of lettuce, tomatoes, red onion and lemon juice to accompany.  She also quickly lemonade. I had the beer I bought the day before which was another Barbarian IPA.  We called Daniela and Donna because the food was basically ready and they said they were coming right up so we plated and waited then ate when they arrived.

After dinner we cleaned up and I finished some emails before joining the girls downstairs. There the folks from the gallery her office is in were preparing a small going away party for Daniela so we hung out until they were ready then went down to the stained glass store Rosita runs and had a bottle of champagne and a bottle of wine along with small picky snacks like cheese, olives and sausages.  Juan Carlos, his wife, Mr Coloma, Rosita, Donna and us were the attendees and it was a nice time with a few toasts and a lot of talking about memories over the past few years.  It was all very nice of them. Mr. Coloma offered to take us to a nice Italian restaurant after the party was over so a while later when all the snacks were gone and Rosita needed to leave we cleaned up and left the gallery.

Mr. Coloma took us to Pizzeria Mavery (hardly an Italian name). He was very fond of their food and talked a lot about their empanadas, pizza and lasagna.  So we each ordered a different empanada. Daniela had lomo saltado and I had aji de gallina. They were good and very different because they were deep fried instead of baked.  We shared a couple of pitchers of sangria with the meal. Donna ordered fettuccine with meat sauce which she really liked. The rest of us shared a jamon pizza which came with ham and olives and sun dried tomato pieces.  It was good though the crust was a bit bready in my opinion.  Meaning it was not the same dough consistency you would expect from pizza but more from a commercially made loaf of bread.  We left behind a piece and a half and we took that with us in a doggie bag.  We talked about all sorts of things. Mr. Coloma used to live in California and is a big American football fan. He attended USC and is a huge fan of the college team.  So we talked football for a while and a few other things. It was a nice night.  When we were done Donna and Mr. Coloma took their own taxis home and we walked. It was maybe a 20 minute walk back.  We settled in for bed after that.

The pictures from today are located here.

Friday, April 03, 2015

Peru Spring 2015 Day 4

We got going in the morning with a quick breakfast then Daniela went downstairs to work in the office and I waited a little while then I started a short walk around the neighborhood but Daniela called me back to the office. We had to do some basic office chores which were primarily banking then we had lunch with Dianita in a small place around the corner from the office. I had a fish with garlic sauce which came with rice and potatoes. For a starter I had potatoes with huancaina sauce so I didn't really eat the second potatoes.  The fish was good but maybe not the best I have had.  We were served a juice of some sort to go along with it. After lunch we had to do a bit more at the office then we tried to help Donna get a new phone which turned out to no be possible at that moment so we went back to the office. Daniela's mother came and she and I went to Vivanda to buy food for making carapulcra which is a Peruvian dish using papa seca (dried potatoes).

After that we sent my mother-in-law home and again went to a different Claro store and this time we were able to buy Donna a replacement phone that she was happy with.  This carried us late enough that we headed down to Larcomar after leaving Donna at her bus too.  There we got tickets for The Theory of Everything (which was in English but subtitled). We bought nachos which were kind of bad and popcorn and ended up eating all of the food before the movie started.

The movie was actually quite good and it was nice to see it without all the problems the plane had in showing it. I could see the sad points hit Daniela. We both really liked it. The main actor who played Steven Hawking did a great job.  After the movie it was back to the apartment and to bed.