Art and Fauna in Miraflores

On Friday, the kids and I took the opportunity to just go to Miraflores and stroll about, taking in the sights and sounds along Avenida Larco and the park.

Our first stop was the municipal art gallery, where there is a show entitled ¨Treason Toward the Permanent". Susana found it interesting. Nico didn't get it.

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by Adriana Rodríguez

The Impossible Tale of the Chinese Restaurant Bunny. Chapter 1
by Pilar Talavera

In the park itself there was a display of photographs dealing with Peru's Andean cloud forests and documenting the incredible richness of the fauna and flora that occur in them, as well as the communities that make the forests their home.

Parrillada

After shopping at Minka with my uncle Willy, we took our purchases to his apartment in San Borja disctrict, where Willy and Elba prepared a parillada for us, and my aunt Toya, and uncles Orlando and Tata, who also joined us for the afternoon.

One thing we did seem to answer, was how many people does it take to get a fire going.

Apparently it takes three grown men and a single teenage girl with a hairdryer.

Willy cooked the meat in the typical South American way: with just a bit of salt over low coals, and some sausages to stave off hunger while the meats cooked. Of course, pisco sours were very much in evidence.

Minka Market

Minka is a huge market near the airport. It combines the small producer stall character of a usual market with the superabundance of a supermarket just because of its massive scale -though no supermarket can match it in sheer variety.

Minka is composed of several hangar-sized pavillions -one each for fruits, vegetables, dry goods, meats, seafood, housewares, and furniture- as well as a gym and a very nice food court. Incredibly, it is still growing, with addition in progress of one or two more pavillions and a large MacDonald's.

Shopping there is to expose oneself to vibrant sounds and color, to be amazed by the variety of products from all of Peru's 80 microclimates, and to an incredible landscape of scents: ripe papaya, earthy potatoes, fresh meat, chicken soup, Andean herbs. Wonderful.

In the vegetable pavillion

The vegetable pavillion

Purple corn for making chicha and pudding

Granadillas and prickly pears

Lúcuma

Pepinos

In the fruit pavillion

In the meat pavillion

A chicken cut open to reveal the developing eggs,
showing it's a mature hen which are preferred for soups

Fútbol

Last night we went to a soccer match between Club Universitario de Deportes, La "U", of Lima and Cusco's Club Cienciano. The U was playing for the title of Champion in Peru's Torneo Apertura so it made for an exciting match and a boisterous crowd, specially since it was being played at the U's own Estadio Monumental.

It took us over an hour to get there as the traffic was so bad and the cops had closed the streets closest to the stadium. The authorities had granted permission for the stadium to be filled to its 70,000 capacity, so the lines to get in were long. We got in after the game had started and had to negotiate our way through the crowds to get to our seats, which were among just 500 numbered seats for this game. We had excellent seats: 16 rows back and right on the midfield line.

The game was a good one, with Cienciano keeping the U's goalie quite busy throughout the match. However, the crowd was way more fun, with the chanting and singing going on (70,000 voices can get quite loud), and the constant flares being set off despite reminders over the loudspeakers that "pyrotechnics of any sort are prohibited."

The U defeated Cienciano 3-1 and won the championship.

San Felipe

Today San Felipe has a birthday.

Started as project by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry, who was an archictect in regular life, the Residencial San Felipe was inaugurated forty-two years ago, on July 2, 1966. At the time, with almost 50 buildings in five distinct styles holding apartments for over 10,000 families,* it was one of the largest -if not the largest- housing project in all of Peru.

The complex was planned and built, on the grounds of a former hippodrome, as a single huge block with no cross-traffic and interlaced with sidewalks and gardens, and including three preschools and a shopping center. Over time a cooperative school and a chapel were established on the grounds and a clinic was built across the street, meaning that residents could have almost all their needs met within the Residencial itself.

Into the 1980s the Resi was a dominant feature on the Lima skyline, its 15-storey buildings topped only by the former Ministry of Education on Avenida Abancay and the Banco de Credito tower in Miraflores.

its four decades San Felipe has remained a distintict neighborhood, with many of the original families still occupying their apartments. Its mix of buildings and large green areas are unmatched anywhere else in the city, leading to lower levels of noise and atmospheric pollution within its boundaries than is the average in this sprawling city. Its gardens abound with birds and butterflies, and it is even said that they harbor an endemic type of blind snake.

The neighbors recently won an important victory when they defeated a move by the mayor of Jesús María and a grocery store chain to take over part of the parking areas and build a larger supermarket and movie theatre. The neighbors insisted that the project was unecessary and would harm their quality of life by increasing foot and vehicle traffic while reducing parking, arguing that the parking areas -like the gardens- are held in condominium by the neighbors and are not for the municipality to dispose of at will.

Confronted by the organized neighbors, who staged rallies, and weekly cacerolazos in which pots and pans would be banged together from apartments all over the resi at 8:00 pm sharp every Saturday, and a media and internet campaign, the Plaza Vea chain backed out and the mayor backed down.




*Edit: Oops! That should be "10,000 people".

Zen Sushi

Last night we met my cousin Juancho and my niece, Rafaela, at Zen Sushi Bar in San Isidro.

Lima is rapidly becoming recognized as one of the world's sushi meccas due to the quality, variety, and extreme freshness of the fish available, as well as the presence of skilled and creative itamaes (sushi chefs).

Zen impressed right of the bat from the entrance. Upon being seated, we were each served a complimentary snail cooked in teriyaki sauce.

We ordered a combination of four maki rolls, and the sashimi moriawase - a plate of 20 cuts of sashimi in a combination decided by the itamae. The sashimi included some nice cuts of tuna and octopus, as well as other fish, and we were all fighting over the last pieces. The sushi was very good. The kids declared it the best they'd had, although they found the California roll a bit standard. The definite winners of the evening were the two fusion makis we ordered: the encebichado and the rocoto maki. The former included lime-macerated fish and the roll was finished with a citrusy mayonais-like sauce. The rocoto maki included a rocoto-based sauce, which made the roll somewhat spicy.

Zen Sushi Bar
621 Av. Dos de Mayo
San Isidro, Lima