And alright, Apple Juice definitely didn't find me, so it's time for some... wait... FOOD PORN, PERU STYLE!
Here's the summary: I ate pretty well, went through probably 5000-7000 calories in an average riding day, got almost no protein except quinoa, ate a literal shitton of avocados (sometimes three in a meal, sometimes ten per day.)
Peruvian food is... bland. Almost everything you see below required salt and pepper, at a minimum, to be added.
This is the special breakfast I got served three or four mornings at our hotel in Cusco, while my fellow trip members ate scrambled eggs that looked like yellow and white dish scrubbies. Yes, I shared. No, I didn't eat the honey.
The folks who cooked for us on the trip went out of their way to make me special vegan food. Yay! This was a lunchtime salad. Sometimes lunch occurred at 10am.
Breakfast. I told you I ate a lot of avocado, right?
Pizza! We went to this place at the foot of Macchu Picchu twice, and, uhhhh, I got some avocado. I was particularly hungry at this meal: this was when we hiked up Macchu Picchu, and Huayna Picchu, and then A6 (I think he's A6) and I hiked back down on the road with about a million switchbacks, rather than do another set of endless stairs.
Bland food, but you do see a lot of beautiful salad presentations in Peru. This is at the same pizza place as in the previous shot.
Ummmmm, how about more avocado, and more salad?
Okay, how about more salad. And more avocado.
Need more avocado, and more salad?
Fine, sure: more avocado. Good thing I love avocado so damn much.
Most of the coffee in Peru is, in a word, dreadful. I drank a ton of instant, made ultra-strong just to make it drinkable. The brewed coffee in hotels and restaurants was usually thin, bitter, insipid crap.
I drank a decent amount of beer, too. This is Cusquena, the beer that had floating around under the seat in the van for a week, that we drank while driving back from our last day of biking. It was pretty bad. It did provide for one highly amusing (for some) moment: in my rush to toast, I foamed beer all over the trip leader, and A6. They were... not amused. But everyone else was.
Lots of quinoa. Usually bland, usually with bland, unseasoned tiny vegetables in it.
We went back to this place three times. No, it isn't that amazing, but the trip leader really liked it. And after an initial incident with mayonaise, they figured out how to serve me avocado vegan-style. We actually managed to empty their stock of avocados on at least one occasion.
This is a sandwich. Yep, really. This is at the Cusco airport restaurant, but it burned through through nine soles (about USD$3.25) and got some food in my stomach.
The lovely little hostel I stayed a couple nights at in Miraflores, Lima, The Gallery House, had a kitchen. So I ate some more avocado!
I mixed up the avocado with sauteed ONIONS! and asparagus.
WAAAAAAIT. You said you want a detail of ONIONS?!? You got it! Oh, and some garlic playing second fiddle.
It may not look super appetizing, but a terribly exciting find in the supermarket in Lima was dry protein chunks (essentially dehydrated seitan.) They were a little over USD$3, and got some much needed vegan protein into my diet.
On my last full day in Peru, I stayed at a basic but totally serviceable hotel near the airport called Hostal Victor, and took my own picnic dinner (and breakfast, and avocado sandwich for the flight the next day.)
Okay, enough food porn for now. Gotta get chugging on, uhhhhh.... other stuff.
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