Fruit tasting and Chinatown

After that, we had the opportunity to taste several different Peruvian fruits including lucuma, granadilla, tuna, chirimoya, maracuya, aguaymanto, and guanabana.  Most were delicious.  Some were more of an acquired taste!

We also tried coca leaves, made more palatable by the addition of tocaya, a sweet minty paste.

From the central market, we walked the short distance to Chinatown.  In the 1850s, the Peruvian government, faced with a labour shortage to build Lima, sponsored 100,000 Chinese workers to come and help out.  Today, their descendents number over 1 million, and there is a thriving foodie culture.  We tried pork dumplings and buns, neither of which were to our taste!

Our last stop of the tour was at a churros stand where, against my better judgement, I tried a very sickly sample stuffed with hot caramel.Read more