We had our first excursion out with two of the pastors from the church here on Friday. Since we are currently under house arrest for fear of getting lost, hurt or stolen, this was an exciting opportunity to just explore the town around us and spend time with our friends outside of the confines of our house. Pastor Juan and Julian decided to take us to the historical district of Trujillo so we could see the center of the town. This included a tour of a cathedral, Peru’s Statue of Liberty, random sight seeing and finally, an authentic Peruvian dinner.
I really don’t remember a lot about the cathedral except that it was very pretty, like most cathedrals. The outside walls stood out more to me than the interior because of its intense, golden color. A lot of the buildings in the historical district have bright colors. Blues, yellows, greens and red dominate the spectrum but occasionally, there will be some pinks and purples as well. The variety of colors lights up the streets, that’s for sure. For me, the best part of the cathedral was bonding with Julian. It’s safe to say we are now best friends. I think I told him that already too. While inside the cathedral, you are not supposed to take pictures (again like most cathedrals) so, I wasn’t too disappointed. Julian objected. He took out his camera and snuck in a picture of the arched ceiling, complete with paintings of angels and clouds. But, not without his camera making a huge flash and loud snap. He looked at me, surprised until the both of us just burst out laughing. He then took his flash off, shot another picture of the priest and then put his camera away. I took out my camera and whispered “secreto” to him, signaling that I was going to do the same. So, now I have three pictures from the cathedral to show for my experience and we didn’t even get kicked out.
Once we were done at the cathedral, it was time for Cena (dinner). According to Juan and Julian, the most authentic Peruvian food could be found a couple blocks away from the cathedral. After a little bit of walking, we found the smallest restaurant in the entire town. So small, that we all had to sit outside (which was nice because it was stuffy inside anyway) Let me just preface this explanation by saying, that if I lived in Peru, I would gain 100 pounds in a month easily! We had, what I can only describe as, a slab of beef, wrapped in baked potato mush, completely deep-fried and served with mayonnaise. It was sooooo good! Then for dessert, we had what would be the equivalent of funnel cake. But instead of powered sugar topping the fried dough, we had syrup. Again, sooo good! Apparently, this is a typical Peruvian dinner. Oh yea, it has to be served with a 3 liter of Coke or else, you cannot have an official conversation.
On our way back to the bus, we stopped to look at a few random tourist spots. Again, my bonding time with Julian overshadows all the touristy things we were looking at. We passed a casino that had a dragon outside the front door and I couldn’t help but to pose by it. As soon as Julian saw it, he joined in the picture.
We finished our night by getting a few necessary items from the grocery store. Side note: It has become a running joke among the group that I am Dracula because of a mistranslation between Juan and I. He thought I said I was from Transylvania (instead of Pennsylvania) So, when we first met, he called me Dracula and made fangs. I played along and told him I only turn into Dracula at night and blah blah so now we laugh about it all the time. When we were at the grocery store, Julian found some Dracula gummies for me. He held it up and asked to take a picture with me since of course, I am the real Dracula. Needless to say, we made yet another scene in the middle of the aisle in the grocery store….priceless…
