A full Sunday: Festisabores in Arequipa

First thing in the morning I took Micah to Avelino, because I knew he'd love it. We spent about 2 hours there wandering around and shopping for all the things we didn't really need, and that's about Micah's limit for putting up with me at the market, lol. 

Next we went to Fesitsabores, this big annual food festival. It was in the Cerro Juli convention center, which was big and green and a bit out of the city, so it made a perfect venue. Only s/10 entrance fee. 

We tried some food, but for some reason all the stands were selling whole plates of food instead of small plates to taste the food. So we didn't get to try as many things as we wanted but most of the things we tried were really good. The best thing was definitely the recoto relleno, a traditional food from Arequipa (supposedly originally from here) that is a recoto hot pepper stuffed with beef and topped with cheese. 

The whole grilled fish we ate for s/15.

They had a stage setup for bands and some dancers in front so that while you're taking a break from eating too much you can chill here. We also got to taste some wine and get free mini Pisco sours (the national liquer of Peru) from all the bars that were trying to promote themselves. Yummm...  but the mixture of all these things with the sun ended up giving me a bad headache. 

Later in the evening we watched a cooking class from a gastronomy school here in Arequipa, Instituto del Sur. They showed us how to make 'Chinese Peruvian' food. Fried chicken with a sweet and sour sauce, fried rice and vegetables. Ok, so at least they did introduce it as a fusion. Not too bad. And since I took notes (it was all in Spanish so I only understood a little) at the end of the demonstration they asked questions about how to make the dishes and I won a shirt for answering. 

    


We saw a lot of really interesting foods. Sometimes I'm thinking the food is weirder here than it was in China. Like, cuy (guinea pig) another traditional food from Peru.

Cuy

 

Grilled pork

The traditional countryside dress for women.