Days 77-79 - sweet home Lima.

The travels may be over, but the work continues.

I immediately fall into my old Lima routine: when I’m not enthroned on my bean bag, surrounded by a mess of maps, notebooks, guidebooks and other assorted paperwork, typing while looking over Miraflores far below, Mike and I go foraging for food.

When I was here two years ago, we frequented the same jugería every morning for a pint of fresh juice and a butifarra sandwich, before he’d resume his work as a freelance translator and I got back to my typing. He tells me that that jugería had gone downhill since, so instead we visit La Lucha, just around the corner, and though I never eat breakfast at home, my day here seems incomplete without a spicy chicharrón (deep fried pork belly) sandwich.

Leo had told me that Gastón Acurio, the superstar chef, has released a book detailing all the best neighbourhood eateries in Lima, the holes-in-the-wall that only locals know about – the best place in town to eat a speciality, like ceviche de conchas negras, for example – and that this book is technically only available to people who open accounts with Banco Continental. Mike informs me that you can also get it on the black market, and since it would be an invaluable research tool if I were to come back to Lima, I drag him to the centre of Lima to help me search for it.

We check out the Metropolitano – the brand new swipe card-operated bus system with its own lanes which stretches north-south along Lima; for the next couple of weeks, it’s free, while they’re trying it out, and they have wardens in yellow vests, telling people where to stand and how to use the system. The queuing is orderly, we completely bypass all the traffic, and it makes going into the centre of Lima a pleasure rather than a chore.

There’s an enormous TV screen set up in the main plaza, flanked by giant inflatable Coca-Cola bottles – ‘blatant self-promotion on the mayor’s part’, according to Mike. A massive crowd is watching the World Cup game, while another, smaller crowd, is watching the changing of the guard. The goose-stepping is out of synch, just like last time.

Mike takes me to some discount book shops, where they sell a mix of illegal photocopies (including the book I seek) and proper versions. The search takes two minutes. I should’ve set him a more difficult task.

Foraging for food often seems to take up the entire day, since Lima is so huge, and Mike’s favourite places are so far apart. On the first day, we then catch a bus to the Jesús María area, where no tourists venture, just to find Cevichería Mary, a local institution famous for its leche de tigre – fish juices mixed with onion, lime juice and spicy rocoto pepper that in other places you’d knock straight back, but here it’s like a mini ceviche in a cup – it comes with battered, fried calamari. I try the leche de pantera – the same thing, but made with little black molluscs (conchas negras) only found along the north coast of Peru. My drink is the colour of muddy water, but it tastes amazing, and leaves you feeling energised.

In the evening, we go to another local institution – an anticucho stall on a street corner that’s been given the seal of approval by Gastón, so we get there early, when they’re just rolling the grill out; a few minutes later, the queue stretches around the block. There seems to be a street food revival, because beef heart kebabs are as ‘street’ as you can get, but the queue here consists of well-to-do yuppies. And oh my gaaaaad, are the kebabs good! We stick around to watch the mesmerising spectacle of the two chefs who systematically oil the grill, making huge flames shoot out, chop the kebabs, and deftly flip them so that they don’t burn, all in a shower of sparks.

Mike has less work this week than normal, so we’re free to wander the city at our leisure, going straight from breakfast to a juice stall at the local market, then walking off the food on the way to lunch at Pescados Capitales, for example – an excellent upscale fish restaurant where we lament the lack of good fish and seafood in the UK over exotic ceviche with peach and mandarin and seared tuna steak, or going to Lima’s Chinatown for a superb all-you-can-eat buffet. Then it’s another long ride or walk in search of dessert – the best ice cream in Miraflores at an Italian place frequented by the Mafia, or La Maga, the hole-in-the-wall offering the best tres leches pudding (also approved by Gastón). Then we typically have a siesta before settling down for several hours of work in the afternoon and evening.

I visit the local South American Explorers’ Club clubhouse to see what kind of facilities/information they have to offer and come away satisfied; they give me ample information for the Basics section of the Peru chapter – the part dealing with all the practicalities. I'll definitely send young Georgia their way (the new writer covering Lima and the north half of Peru).

I give Mike and Monica some time to themselves by going to see Sex and the City II at the nearby cinema. Those are two and a half of my life that I’ll never get back. I was a big fan of the series, but they were really pushing it with a second film; the plot is cringeworthy, and the women are really beginning to show their age – ‘Carrie Bradshaw’ in particular has a chicken neck.

Am beginning to fret a little about the amount of work I have to do over the coming month; progress seems slow, and I’m hacked off with my predecessor for clearly not putting enough effort into the updating work two years ago. To me, it's important not just to fulfil the norm, but to actively improve the existing guidebook, and I wonder why not everyone seems to share my view.  The maps in particular take a very long time, because I’m particularly finicky when it comes to maps and wish to get every single detail right. I spend at least an hour poring over the road map of Peru in order to make sure that all the now-paved main roads are marked on correctly on the Rough Guide Peru map. I really need to get a move on, because not only do I have to finish the two chapters by the end of July, I also need to plan my next major venture – the trans-Siberian journey, due to commence at the beginning of August. Aaargh!