One Year in Lima: I want to live at Mistura

Last Friday I went to Mistura, the largest food festival in Latin America which is fortunately held right here in Lima! I went with several friends from all over -- Norway, France, USA, Mexico, and Peru -- so we were definitely an international group! Getting there was the hardest part -- there were special buses running there BUT they were all full....so the 6 of us piled into a taxi (after several attempts to get other taxis to take us but being denied because we were so many). I somehow ended up sitting on a lap, even though I am the tallest girl, so I spent the entire ride down to the beach bent in half....

Mistura is divided up into different "mundos" (worlds) -- they represent all the parts of Peru, as well as having an "oriental" world, a chocolate world, and a coffee world. There is also a whole section of stalls where people are selling their products, but also giving out a ton of free samples. This picture is of "Mundo Andino" (Andean world) which has food from the Andes, including Cuy (guinea pig)!!

I was looking forward to seeing cuy in person and Mistura did not disappoint...there were tons of places selling it! This place decided to put a stuffed guinea pig next to the cooked one so I just had to take a picuture. There was also a person in a cuy costume (kind of like basketball mascot costumes except a guinea pig).

Although I did not personally try it, the other people in my group bought cuy and ate it. You can't really see it in this picture but the foot still had the toes on it....

Ane Kine's first bite of cuy!

This section was meat....just meat. Here are some alpacas being cooked.

closer up picture of the alpacas.

and this is just rows of pork...

This was a case just full of popsicles! They were expensive though so I didn't try one.

I FOUND VEGETARIAN FOOD! I don't know what the real name for this was but it was DELICIOUS. The one on the left is a pepper stuffed with some sort of sauce and with cheese baked over it. And the one on the right is a "potato cake" filled with egg and cheese.

This was in the free samples section and was a stall of just different salsas. The man working told us to try the spiciest one so we did....it was pretty hot but I survived.

This stall only sold olives. And they were delicious.

FINALLY I tried coca. This place was all things coca - coca pisco, coca desserts, plain coca leaves, you name it. I had the coca pisco and some sort of chocolate coca dessert thing.

These were supposed to be fruit flavored but the one I tried just tasted like grape cough syrup :(

This was the weirdest/best thing ever. This stall sold potatoes and potato bread and they had made a man out of potato bread! The man pictured was like brushing the potato man for some reason...he also told us the potato man's name but I don't remember it.

Of course we had to take a picture with the potato man. Right before we were going to take the picture the stall owner handed Ane Kine a bag of potatoes which is why we look slightly confused.

There were different dance groups throughout the day that would go around the whole festival. This one is from the Amazon.

"Higher up in the mountains better grows the coffee berry" -- I love it when translations are just slightly off

This place had THE BEST frappecinos. We tried one as a sample but then couldn't resist...they were SO GOOD.

cases of chocolate in chocolate world

the brazilian embassy had a stall in chocolate world with cool chocolate sculptures. Me and Ane Kine also got free ceramic to go mugs from here that say I love chocolate in portuguese with the brazilian flag.