August 24, 2008
Kathy and I just returned from the Arequipa Cheese Festival in a park north of our B&B. Cheese ice cream (two Soles, which is the Peruvian version of the dollar). Yummy.

Tommy and I have been watching the U.S. Basketball ¨Dream Team¨ compete in the Olympics on Peruvian tv, and some of the comments by the Peruvian announcers are just outrageous. In the game against Argentina, one of the commentators mused, ¨Why don´t black people get white ink tattoos?¨ T. and I just looked at each other, stunned. The same guy has noted more than once that there is only one white guy on the U.S. team (Jason Kidd? Who´s not exactly a honky). Or, maybe he meant the coach. Ha.

We really enjoyed today´s final with Spain, as Tomas is a big Rudy Fernandez fan, who played for his home country of Spain. T. showed me Rudy´s crazy highlight reel online. Rudy was a hoot in the losing effort today, taking ridiculous shots with long, goofy arcs, that mostly, amazingly went in. Portland is expecting big things of him next year and some are predicting a championship (okay, Tommy is).

While the food is excellent here in Peru I have to complain about one aspect of dining down here: their idea of a napkin leaves much to be desired. In most restaurants, even the high class, expensive ones we ate at in Mira Flores, a Scottsdale-like suburb of Lima, you get these tiny pieces of paper that would make our U.S. cocktail napkins look like blankets. When we got up in the canyon, many restaurants simply put a roll of toilet paper on the table in place of napkins of any kind. This is a bit out of sequence as far as the meal digesting process goes, at least for my tastes.

Speaking of the canyon and the great soups we had there, Sherry Monahan has suggested that I post some of the recipes and I will do just that when I get home this week. I have photographs of most of the dishes and believe me, they are worth the wait.

Also, I have some 30 pages of sketches of the people, the land, the buildings and more importantly, the hats. It´s been a great trip, but I´m anxious to get home and see my dogs, my chickens and my staff and my friends and family. Not necessarily in that order.