Earlier this month, I told you about the best meal of my life. Now, because Astrid y Gaston was kind enough to forward me a copy of its menu, you can play the home game, and try to make up your mind as to what you’d order from this most amazing bill of fare (an English version of which seems not to exist anywhere else online).

First, the appetizers …

Then, the entrees … (more…)

Why, yes, I did record Saturday night’s Nebula Awards banquet, but as the file is larger than six gigabytes, which in my neck of the woods would require about 20 hours of my total bandwidth to upload, making it impossible for me to use the Internet for any other purpose, like, say, earning a living, you won’t get to vicariously experience that night until the weekend, when I can start it uploading and then wander away from my keyboard for the day. (On the other hand, if you want to relive last year’s ceremony, you can watch a video of it right now.)

Meanwhile, here’s a different, hour-long video which might appeal to you—though not if you’re looking for long speeches from writers thanking their editors, agents, critique groups, and spouses.

Back at the beginning of our recent Peru trip, on April 29, 2012, our first morning in Cuzco, our tour guide took us to the main square, the Plaza de Armas, to watch what she said would be a military parade. But it proved to be much more than that. Also marching were trade unions and university students, who made up the majority of the participants. I enjoyed most watching the faces of the thousands of those who marched. Some were deadly serious, some bored, some joking, some weary.

And now, prepare to travel to Cuzco, and see a microcosm of a country’s future in the faces of its students …

Also—I have uploaded all of my photos of Peru to Flickr. Haven’t had time to caption them appropriately yet, but perhaps you’ll find them interesting anyway.

And that should be the end of my Peru posts. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program of posts about writing, comics, science fiction, food … and, of course, the ukulele.

It occurs to me that since I’ve told you what I ate in Peru, from multiple servings of guinea pig to a marvelous meal of octopus and goat, I should also tell you what I didn’t eat.

So … where did I draw the line?

At a crowded food stall in Cuzco’s main market, I found people slurping away at bowls of soup beneath the following sign.

And why not? Who wouldn’t want to be cured of epilepsia or dolor de cabeza?

But the problem was … well …

You know the old saying that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day?

You do? Then you’ll know what I saw beneath that sign, eagerly waiting to be dropped into my soup.

That’s right. (more…)

My culinary adventuring in Peru earlier this month went far beyond guinea pigs.

When I learned that we would have an evening free in Lima at the end of our week spent exploring Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo, Sacsayhuaman, and other awe-inspiring sites, I was determined that I wouldn’t permit exhaustion to cause us to fall back on room service or a hotel restaurant. I wanted more than a meal. I wanted magic. And after a bit of research, I decided the best place to ingest that magic was at Astrid y Gaston, voted one of the 50 best restaurants in the world. I sent emails to our Lima hotel, hoping that the concierge would have luck snagging us a table, but by the time our trip began, I’d heard nothing back. So I started to worry.

And then, as I boarded our American Airlines flight in Miami, I saw the name of the chef, Gastón Acurio, on the cover of the inflight magazine, and a lengthy article inside touting the wonders of his kitchen. And I worried some more.

Because though I couldn’t understand Spanish, I did understand that such a piece might increase the already high demand for tables at Astrid y Gaston. So the first thing I did when I saw our tour operator after landing was to ask if he could help get us a reservation later that week. He did, and so on Friday night, we cabbed over, along with a few friends we’d made on the trip, to the restaurant one food critic called, “my favorite restaurant in Peru.”

When we arrived a few minutes before the 7:00 p.m. opening, the door was locked, the shutters were closed, and except for the small sign on an exterior wall, we had no way of knowing we were in the right place. But exactly at 7:00, the door was flung open, and we were warmly welcomed and shown to our table near the kitchen. (more…)

Remember how miserable I was when I found myself ukulele-less in Salt Lake City? My withdrawal symptoms gave me the shakes. I was determined not to let that happen again, and yet, I didn’t want to lug my concert-sized uke to Peru.

Luckily, one of my new UK friends, found through George Formby fandom, recommended that I purchase a tiny Kala pocket ukulele, created just for that purpose.

Which I did!

And so if you were in Peru the first week of May, you’d have found me holding my uke aloft at Machu Picchu …

… along the Inca Trail, in front of a backdrop that seemed perfect for a performance of “When I’m Cleaning Windows” … (more…)

As our Peru trip tour bus made its way through the streets of Ollantaytambo last week on its way to the Inca site known as the Fortress, I spotted … the Batmobile!

Well, not the Batmobile. More like a Batmobile—a small taxi with a rear window in the shape of the Bat symbol. I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to snap a photo, however, and when we headed back after our climb, even though I was vigilant, I didn’t spot it again as we meandered through the small town. And that, I thought, was that.

But later in the week, as we bussed toward Cuzco after our stay in Machu Picchu, I spotted five other similar vehicles with Batman decorations in small towns along the route. I was only fast enough snap a shot of this one, but it’ll give you an idea of what I mean.

But those half dozen vehicles weren’t all. (more…)

Sure, Peru—and especially Machu Picchu—was a magical, mystical experience. But I know what you’re really interested in.

How did all those guinea pigs taste?

And before you accuse me of barbaric behavior for dining on animals which have been domesticated as pets in the U.S., all I can say to that is, when it comes to guinea pigs—or cuy, as they’re called in Peru—the question I always ask myself is … what would Jesus do?

And what Jesus would do is—eat the guinea pig!

Want proof? Check out this 1753 painting by Marcos Zapata from the Cathedral of Cuzco showing Christ and the Apostles about to dig into some cuy. And if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

I ended up eating cuy four times over the course of our week in Peru. Which restaurant prepared it the best? You’ll find that out below. (more…)

If you’ve wondered why I’ve been unusually silent for the past week and a half, I have a very good reason. I was on vacation.

In Machu Picchu!

And while I was there—and at the fortress at Ollantaytambo, and by Intipunku, the Sun Gate (from which you can, below, see Machu Picchu way off in the distance)—I oddly found myself thinking The Great Gatsby.

I’ll have more to share about the experience later, once I’ve recovered and had time to process it all, but for now, I just want to say—remember that passage a few paragraphs from the end of The Great Gatsby, the section that speaks of finally finding a thing “commensurate to his capacity for wonder”?

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Though the analogy made there isn’t an exact match for what I felt as I clambered over the ancient stones and walked the Inca Trail, I was indeed feeling a sense of wonder, and also feeling that here was something truly worthy of that wonder. We so often say that things are awe-inspiring when they’re not really inspiring awe. But in this case, I was filled with awe, positively gobsmacked by it.

Didn’t expect to be thinking of Jay Gatsby as I fought off altitude sickness. But there you have it.

More thoughts and pics to follow later!

(And, yes, that is a ukulele in my hands.)