Dogs, dogs, dogs

Although I am speaking from a position of extreme ignorance, given I've been in the continent only three weeks and have no knowledge of the mental state of dogs, I would like to suggest that dogs in Peru and Chile are some of the most cheerful in the world. They aren't eaten (as in Vietnam and other places), and they aren't unloved mangy curs with three legs and sores, ready to bite passing tourists (Bali, Thailand). They aren't tortured as in some places in the Middle East. They aren't kept chained up or left unhappily while their owners go out to work. Instead, dogs here appear relatively healthy, and placid and friendly - no grumpy growling or barking as humans go past. Unpampered certainly, and mostly ungroomed, but not unfed. (I stress this is my opinion - I have no scientific support for this view). What is without doubt, however, is that they are free to roam - and appear to enjoy that freedom. OK, sometimes the close contact with traffic isn't ideal for their longevity. But like children in them good ol' days before TV, internet and over-anxious parents, dogs here seem to spend their days cruising, hanging out with friends, stretching out in the sun, watching the world go by from a doorway. It looks like a good life. Reminds me of Hairy Maclary: "Out of the gate and off for a walk". Which would get any dog in Auckland a speedy trip to the pound.

Peru adds a new element to the dog mix - hairless dogs. Relatively hideous to the untrained eye, with their wrinkled skin and sometimes a mohawk, as with the one at the top of the page, this breed dates back to pre-Inca times - you see them on centuries-old ceramics.  They were on the verge of extinction a couple of decades ago, when an Italian-born dog expert named Ermanno Maniero decided they were worth saving and dedicated considerable time persuading Peruvians they were not only beautiful, but could help with health problems like asthma. (Apparently cuddling up with a hairless dog is recommended when you are sick.) 

Interestingly, now the hairless dogs seem often to be the pampered ones - nattily dressed in a little coat, (or less attractively in a baby's vest). I would find it hard to love a hairless dog, I think, but then I'm not a dog devotee. Judge for yourself. 

A tourist in Cusco

It's amazing what a bit of sunshine and a few paracetamol can do. We wandered around on our first day in Cusco (Peru) in the rain, dodging a myriad of sellers of tours, Inca themed dolls, rides in buses, photos with llamas, plastic llamas, furry cuddly toy llamas, woolly hats with llamas on them (you get the theme) - and life wasn't totally perfect. It didn't help that Sam and I had forgotten to start taking our useful altitude sickness tablets two days before arriving, as instructed, and were suffering from headaches and seriously out of breath walking around. (Geoff is made of sterner stuff - no pills needed.)

We retreated home to our llama-less room, and bed.

But the next day the sun was shining, the paracetamol was working, and there were firecrackers and May Day parades to enjoy and an exuberant brass band playing. The streets were full of Peruvian women looking just like tourists want them to look - some dressed up in the full gear for the compulsory photo with llama, or to sell you a hat, but lots just wandering around with their babies or their bundles strapped to their backs with colourful cloths, or sitting on the side of the street selling things. Many of the women still wear the traditional pleated skirts, woollen trousers, waistcoats and the tall hats. It can't be much fun walking around with a huge bundle of sticks strapped to your back, but it's awfully photogenic. 

We walked (breathlessly) up to the Inca ruins above the town. The complex is called Saqsaywaman in the Quechua language, which looks hard to say, but is easy to remember because it rather unfortunately sounds like "sexy woman". I paid for a rather bad photo of an woman with a baby llama, which means I could truthfully say to other women with llamas that I already have my photo. And then we sat at the top and watched the world go by down below.

The old city is very picturesque - all orange tiled roofs unsullied by modern buildings (which they stick on the outskirts) and with the high green hills behind. Little cobbled streets run between squares, and there are churches everywhere. It is decidedly touristy, but in the sunshine and without a headache, very pleasantly so.

Peruvian cuisine

The flight from Lima to Cusco was full of Americans. Presumably you can get from New York or Denver to Machu Picchu and back on a week's annual leave. The man in front of me in the queue to board was wearing a smart collared shirt with "Grant & Eisenhofer: Fighting for Institutional Investors" embroidered on the front. Seriously? Not fighting for justice for Syrian refugees, or for world peace, or the end of malaria. Surely only in the US could you be so proud to be fighting for institutional investors you'd emblazon that on the front of your holiday attire.
The lady next to me on the plane, a very nice Persian American off to do the Inca Trail, showed me photos of her meals in Lima, and they did look totally amazing, both in terms of the haute cuisine food and the haute style presentation. Her favourite restaurant used a lot of rocks (volcanic and otherwise) to display its tasting menu.

I hadn't realised, but Peruvians take their food extremely seriously, considering themselves gastronomic leaders in the same way the French and the Chinese do. They aren't wrong. Lima had three restaurants in the 2016 World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking - the same number as New York and London. But the Lima candidates (which come in at numbers 4, 13 and 30) actually got the best combined score. My new friend on the plane had eaten at two of the top three (Maido and Astrid y Gaston) and was hoping to eat at the third (Central) when she got back off the Inca Trail.

I was impressed.
The day before in Lima we had been to La Casa de la Gastronomia, a museum devoted to the history of Peruvian food, and including a wonderful painting of The Last Supper, with Jesus eating roast guinea pig or cuy, a local delicacy.

The museum traced the history of food from the indiginous peoples, through the Spanish colonisers and the more recent migrants - Chinese, Japanese, other European etc. Not surprisingly, Peruvians are big on fusion. 
They are also big on potatoes. Chile and Peru disagree on which country first domesticated the wild potato (which is apparently bitter and mildly poisonous), but what we do know is that potatoes were being cultivated in the Andes in southern Peru 10,000 years ago. Peruvians claim to have 3800 different types of potato.
Sam has made good use of this culinary knowledge, claiming that his desire to eat chips with every meal is simply a wish to sample the local speciality.
You can't fault the logic.

We have eaten in some pretty swish places since we've been here, as you can see from a couple of below. As far as we know, these restaurants aren't in the World's Best 50 ranking. I fear the presentation lets them down.

Of dancers, vultures and hairless dogs

The Flying Dog hostel, our new accommodation in Lima, sits opposite Kennedy Park in the trendy suburb of Miraflores. The area is home to some of the city's fashionable shops, bars and restaurants. The park is known for its flowers and its cats  in fact you can adopt one from a booth in the park. It also hosts photo exhibitions, shoe shine guys, and a tiny, round, open-air performance arena, with banked seating. Both evenings we were there, the space was being used as a kind of ballroom dance hall stage. RSA [Returned Services Assn] dancing night, Lima-style.
Older men would approach a woman on the front couple of rows of benches and ask her to dance, and they would take to the floor for a number or two. The spectators in the seating above would ling along to obviously popular tunes. One night there was a live band, the next recorded music. It was all extremely civilised.

One day we headed off to Barranco, which used to be an upmarket holiday resort for "Limenos" and is now a rather scruffy, but trendy place to wander around on a Sunday afternoon. There was a food fair going on in the main square, and also a dog fair, where you could buy accessories for your pooch. Actually, you don't often see a dog on a lead - mostly they are just happily free range, when they aren't getting splattered across the street by passing vans. So a backpack enabling owners to carry their dog safely when they are riding their bike seems a tad excessive. (Actually, you don't see many people on bikes, either.)

We pottered around for a while, taking photos of a couple of Peru's famous hairless dogs, and then suddenly crossed a little bridge and there was a church covered in vultures. Dozens of them all doing what vultures do in the best cowboy movies - not much. It was most unexpected. We haven't seen vultures before or since.