What Not To Wear in Lima

Every weekend, I see floods of tourists passing through the city, walking the flat streets of this seaside city carrying backpacks big enough to haul their full body weight.  Curiously, they clad themselves in traditional Andean patterns spruced up for a commercial market, perhaps thinking that if they wear these items, they can camouflage themselves with the locals.  But in Lima, they stick out like a herd of cowboy hats in New York City.

In practical terms, their attire is understandable: most are only passing through to Lima on their way to the highlands or the jungle, where they will spend their time trekking, rafting, and climbing. Still, I have to wonder:  Isn´t there space for at least one pair of jeans and T-Shirt in that enormous backpack?  Here are a few fashion faux pas to avoid while traveling through Lima:

  1.)   The Stereotypical Poncho

A poncho in Lima is a loud declaration of your gringo-ness: “I´m here, and I know nothing about Peru except ponchos and Machu Picchu.” You´d be hard-pressed to spot a Limeño wearing a poncho.  That´s because they—like Europeans and Americans—sport leather jackets, dress coats, pea coats and bubble jackets on the darkest winter days.  

Stop in the name of fashion!

  2.)   The Mystical Gringo Pants

There´s no escaping (or excuse) for this one: gringo pants are undeniably gringo.  They come in the loudest colors and most obnoxious patterns—a puzzling combination of stripes, checkerboards and dots.  But what exactly are these mystical pants?  Pajamas?  Exercise gear?  Hiking pants?  I´ve never seen a native Peruvian hiking the Inca Trail or climbing Colca Canyon in gringo pants.  But I have seen plenty of gringos do it. Case in point.

  3.)   The Almighty Hiking Boot

A necessity for outdoor expeditions in the Andes and the Amazon, the hiking boot is impractical footwear in Lima.  Here, the streets are flat and the vegetation could hardly be described as wild or lush.   Indeed, the posh leather member of the boot family or the proletarian tennis shoe will suffice. 

  4.)   The Gringo Bill

A sure-fire way to identify yourself as a gringo is to clad yourself in an American football team jersey or baseball cap.  The use of baseball caps in Lima is particularly strange because five months of the year (May-September), the sun simply never shines.  So gringos: surrender your hats! I promise, not one ray will touch your pearly white skin.

Take a look in the mirror before you put on the hat. You'll be appalled, too.

  5.)   The World´s Favorite Chullo (not to be confused with cholo)

While the chullo—a knitted woolen hat with quirky earflaps—is a smart investment for traveling to the highlands of Peru, where temperatures can drop below freezing, not even the coldest days of Lima winter (about 60 degrees Fahrenheit) warrant its use.  Thus it´s best to save the chullo for the mountains, or as a conversation piece when you get back home. (¨Whoa, sweet hat, dude.¨)  

Photo credits: 1, 2

Foods That Are Impossible to Eat While Trying to Look Graceful in Front of Your Boyfriend’s Parents

Every few weeks, my boyfriend’s parents invite us over for lunch. I’m awkward by nature as it is, but when you sit a plate of food in front of me, my social ineptness is taken to new levels, especially because in this case, I’m desperately trying to win their approval with my charm and grace. That’s right, I’m such a lady, I think triumphantly as I successfully cut each piece of meat without scraping the plate, delicately place it into my mouth, and chew it with my lips fully closed.  

But there are some foods that are just impossible to eat while you’re trying to impress your boyfriend’s parents, and my potential future in-laws seem to have a knack for ordering them on the days when they invite me over. Call it paranoia, but they seem to take special pleasure in watching my discomfort as I try to cut and chew my way through the following plates:

Anticuchos

First course: grilled and marinated pieces of beef heart placed on a skewer. Need I say more? Perhaps. Trying to pry a piece of anticucho meat from a skewer with your knife is like trying to take off a pair of skinny jeans after Thanksgiving dinner. You yank and you pull, but that baby is just not coming off without some help. To add insult to injury, these pieces of anticucho meat were the most enormous I’ve ever seen, making them especially difficult to slide off the skewers in one swift movement. I tried cutting the meat in half while it was still on the skewer, I tried a two-pronged attack with my knife and fork, but those pieces of chewy cow’s meat just wouldn’t budge. One time I successfully tore a piece of meat from the skewer, only to have it go flying across the table and onto the crisp white tablecloth.

What is a girl to do when confronted with such impossible food? Observe the etiquette of those around her, I suppose. So I did. I noticed the men were all tearing the meat directly off the skewer with their teeth, but that seemed a little barbaric, so I looked to my boyfriend’s mother for a clue as to how to coax the meat off the skewer with a little dignity. But alas! She wasn’t eating anticuchos at all (something about cholesterol), so instead I found her delicately placing forkfuls of tiradito into her mouth. Go figure. 

Pollo a la brasa

Main entrée: pollo a la brasa and French fries. I should preface this section by saying that pollo a la brasa, or rotisserie-style chicken, is one of my very favorite Peruvian plates, and I’ve told my boyfriend’s family as much, so it was sweet of them to think of me when setting the lunch menu. That said, pollo a la brasa is an incredibly challenging dish to eat when you are trying to cast an irresistible ladylike charm on your potential future in-laws. There’s just something about carving little pieces of chicken away from the bone that makes you feel a little less charismatic and desirable, especially when it comes to my favorite part of the whole experience: slurping down the skin I saved especially so that its seasoned and crispy goodness can be the very last taste in my mouth.

Grapes (with seeds)

Dessert: after turning down ice cream, my boyfriend’s mom asked if I’d like some grapes. Thinking that grapes are much easier to eat than the appetizer and entrée I just mentioned, I enthusiastically agreed. But as soon as she sat the bowl down in front of me, I knew it was a mistake. For these, I quickly judged, were no ordinary grapes. These grapes were the size of golf balls, and I had the sneaking suspicion that they would have seeds in them. So with my boyfriend’s parents sitting across from me, the age-old question crossed my mind: spit or swallow?  

The former option, of course, would involve me trying to delicately reach into my mouth mid-chew, retrieve the tiny seed lodged on my tongue, and drop it back into the bowl before me. While I could have feasibly dabbed my lips with a napkin and spit the seed it into it or formed a fist over my lips and furrowed your eyebrows— as if lost in thought—when removing the seed, I think it’d become pretty obvious after a few grapes as to what I was really trying to do. Was it weirder to try to hide the obvious or to reach into my mouth candidly with no regard to ladylike etiquette? Both options made me anxious, so I decided to swallow the seeds instead. Of course, if my boyfriend’s parents were expecting to find a pile of seeds upon clean-up later, they would know that I had swallowed the seeds instead, thus leaving nothing behind. While that reality might be just as weird and awkward, I decided to accept it, since I wouldn’t have to be there for the big moment of truth. I just hope they don’t say anything about it the next time I visit…

photo credits: 1,2