Day 79 27.09.15
While the others decided to go on a city tour of Lima, I opted for a relaxed morning, went to get out cash from the atm and chose to have some lunch before we were heading to Pisco by public bus.
I had some lomo saltado, but it wasn’t as good as the one I had had at the market.
We then took a van to the bus station where we waited in a normal waiting hall. While waiting however, we saw a long long list of fruits and vegetables you are not allowed to bring into Arequipa due to fears they have of special fruit flies being carried around and spread to different cities. As all the fruit and vegetables had pictures next to them, I chose to use them instead as little guidelines as to what local fruit and veggies were called and what they looked like.
We left at 3pm and arrived quite late, not really getting to know a lot of Pisco. The landscape however had changed quite a bit from a city to a more arid place, you can definitely say we were in the middle of the desert, but still close enough to the sea.
This is the view of the courtyard of our hotel.
Most of Pisco was destroyed in 2007 when the epicentre of an earthquake was situated right in the centre of this town. The earthquake was on a 7,5 on the Richter scala, and caused about 80% of the houses to collapse, especially ones that were higher than 3 floors. Also during the time the earthquake occurred, a church service was being held in an old colonial church, where unfortunately several hundreds of people were buried when the roof collapsed.
We walked around the main square – sorry that the photos are this blurry, but my camera just didn’t want to adjust.
We went for dinner at a very fancy looking place; perhaps we got this impression only due to the fact that the other buildings looked a lot more run down. Yes they are still recovering from an earthquake that was 8 years ago.
I had an avocado salad and afterwards a dish I was told to try while I was here; tiradito.
It is pretty much like ceviche, only that unlike ceviche the fish is kept in very thin pieces and not served in large chunks. The sauce for this tiradito was spicy and with the corn very delicious.
Around me everyone was trying a dish called Tuca tuca, which is a mixture of rice and beans, either with chicken, pork, beef or seafood mixed in with it, or as a separate rice dish. When a fellow traveller could no longer eat more, the plates came literally as mounds of rice and beans on plates, I got to try a little of here seafood version. It tasted good, but it was instantly filling, and I had already had a starter and a main.
I had a feeling that I had read that tonight was going to be a blood moon, but I wasn’t sure. So we were happy to see that the moon was clearly visible on our way back to the hotel, and we were extra lucky that there was a local taking photos of this phenomenon with a great zoom on his camera. I decided to take some photos of his camera and the image we got to see.
Back at the hotel we went to sleep after this long day of driving.
