Lima, first impressions

It took me a few days to recover from my excruciating trip. Now i am ready to explore this land. In the meantime we already met a lot of people. Their sympathy and their warm welcoming energizes us and recharges our batteries with great speed.
To every social aspect belongs the food dimension, and Peruvians don't need to envy any french cuisine since their cooking is of the finest style ! Since we are on the coast we eat a lot of fish here. The speciality here is called the "Ceviche" : which raw fish marinated in Lemon juice and spices. it is excellent and i am ready to have for every single lunch i will be here !!!! we also had something similar to ceviche which is composed of fresh mussels marinated in a garlic-lemon-octopuss ink sauce. it is incredibly invigorating and delicious. Peruvians proudly possess a collection 4500 species of potatoes, needless to say that french fries or gratin dauphinois are jokes compared to the yammy potatoe dishes they prepare here. Peruvians have a sweet tooth so deserts are one of their big specialities, lots of them are composed with sweet potato, lucuma, maracuya , chocolate , coconuts...it is the paradise of any desert afficianodo. Every morning i drink a coca tea. Coca is a medicinal plant here that the natives have been taking since thousands of years. It helps digestion, cures altitude sickness, and tonifies body and brain . It is similar to tea or coffee or yerba mate : it does the perfect job in waking you up ;) the taste is subtle and goes well with my passion for green tea.
It is winter right now so the weather is grey but it never rains. The grey sky creates a surrealistic light. The city being in the desert , everything is covered with a fine dust. The architecture is fascinating, chaotic where old colonial style wooden houses meet strange modern architecture. Lima is twenty times bigger then Paris, and 9 million people live here. The district we live in is called Barranco, it is one of the smallest district of this megapole. it is an old district, very colorfull were a lot of artists like to live, so we feel at home here. more news later......K