Lima Food Culture

 Temple * Cooking Class * Market * More Lima

We started our morning nearly forgetting our temple recommends as we hopped in the taxi - gratefully it occurred to Lara to jump out and go grabs hers and Sydney’s before getting too far down the road. The traffic was a mess - we were traveling right in the middle of rush hour and what took us 30 minutes to drive last night, took over an hour this morning. We were 30 minutes late to our baptism appointment at the Lima Temple. Eric’s aunt and uncle were the temple presidents many years back here, but the temple security guard and president still remembered them.

The Lima temple was expecting us to bring more people to help in the baptistery than what we had, so it appeared at first that they could not accommodate us. But before we knew it, they had recruited some baptistery helpers and we were all set. The baptistery was very small, including the acutal font included. It was really nice to see Charlie and Sydney do baptism with Eric while Lara and another sister acted as witness.

After a quick 30 minutes in the temple, we had some additional time to walk around and enjoy the grounds before starting our tour for the day. The first stop on our Lima tour today was the beach boardwalk outside of Miraflores. Inspired by the Spanish architect Gaudi, the boardwalk was decorated with colorful, wavy tile art. After our nice walk, we had a cooking demonstration: ceviche, causa limena (a potato and avocado dish), and lomo saltado.

We thought that the cooking demonstration was our lunch, so we were surprised to learn that lunch was the same menu, but in a more formal setting. It was delicious the second go around, but we were stuffed and dessert was served this time - picarones (fried potato batter in a maple syrup). We all agreed that the ceviche was the best!

After lunch we visited the local market in the Miraflores neighborhood. Apparently, each area has a local market full of produce, meat, fish, spices, nuts - all the basics you might need. It was beautifully arranged and very diverse. We saw many things that we are not accustomed to - especially all sorts of hanging meats that no one really wanted to experiment eating.

After lunch we headed back downtown to Lima to visit the Chinatown district and to further explore the colonial buildings in the historic center. Many buildings were marked with the UNESCO designation as world treasures. They were truly beautiful.

Our final even was spent wandering the Miraflores quarter and enjoying a yummy pastry from a French bakery - and then packing for our jungle adventure to Puerto Maldonado tomorrow!