Birthday Wishes

Day 62-63: South Eastern Peru, Peru. “We made it!”, Karen shrieked with more than just a touch of relief in her voice. I felt like kissing the ground, but deciding on the slightly more cooler approach, simply nodded in agreement. We had crossed Peru's most dangerous mountain pass and lived to tell the tale. For more people are killed on this route and more buses go careering off the edge of the road into the plunging abyss below than on any other road anywhere in the country. And in a mountainous country with a network of poorly maintained roads, the Puno to Arequipa highway has an awful lot of competition vying for its infamous accolade!

We had followed the lake road north-westerly from Copacabana until we reached the little border town of Yuguyo. Here, passports duly stamped for exit from Bolivia and entry to Peru we had continued into the sixth and final country of our South American adventure. Small changes at first: The women still wearing their plaited hair under bowler hats, multiple layer skirts and their worldly possessions bundled on their backs. But in Peru, the colours a little more brighter and the ladies a little more smiley (the latter point may be something to do with the local trend to trim your front teeth with solid gold so that every time they laughed, I felt I was at the mercy of a cloned set of James Bond villains)!

Subtle changes in the Peruvian diet compared to Bolivia too: Llama gives way to alpaca, and Peru's meat staple the guinea pig makes an appearance; traditionally served as if it were the victim of some unfortunate road kill incident: Flat as a pancake, complete with head and all four paws splayed to the cardinal points. (A dish that so far we have managed to avoid, but as our journey takes us to more remote Peruvian outposts our pizza alternatives may be no more!)

And it was food that had brought us on our seven hour journey from Lake Titicaca in the east to Arequipa in the Peruvian central highlands. With Karen's birthday celebration we felt it was high time that we splashed out a bit and treated ourselves by way of a slap up meal at Zig Zag, said to be one of the countries finest restaurants. A romantic Alpine-Andean fusion haunt that delivers the gourmand goods in a sillar walled candlelit setting. Crayfish cocktail, volcanic stone cooked trilogy of meat (beef, lamb and the tenderest alpaca loin) and passion fruit meringue all washed down with a perfect Peruvian cabernet sauvignon and the biggest pisco sour you could ever imagine!!

...And after three months of living off budget food and just a couple of beers a night, this was positively heaven, even if we did have to crack open the indigestion tablets the next day!

Happy Birthday, Karen!