Jenkins and my first dinner on the Amazonian leg of our trip came after our boat ride to look for alligators that lived near our eco-lodge. After such an exciting experience, we were definitely hungry and ready to eat something tasty! You’ll notice that must of my pictures are quite dim as there were hardly any lights in our dining area. Bright places attracted bugs at night so we found that most of the places in our lodge that did have lighting had very low light.

Our dinners always started with soup and on our first night, we had a type of lentil soup. The soup was very flavourful although it was a bit salty for my taste. I really enjoyed the ground Brazil nuts in this soup though as it gave it a nice extra flavour.

Jenkins had a curried chicken with almonds on rice. The curry was very mild but the addition of nuts was different and gave the curry an extra dimension. The rice was prepared in a similar fashion to steamed jasmine rice and went very well with the curry.

I had a popular Chifa dish called Lomo Saltado, which is basically beef with peppers, tomatoes, and onions. The Lomo Saltado was a bit watery but the combination of the beef with veggies was tasty and very similar to a Chinese-style dish with basically the same ingredients.

Dessert was poached custard apples, an Amazonian fruit, with dark chocolate sauce. The apples tasted like a cross between an apple and a pear and almost had a creamy texture to it. I would have actually preferred the poached apples on its own as the chocolate was a bit overwhelming for the apple’s delicate flavour.

We discovered that brochettes are pretty popular in Peru. I had a grilled beef brochette with sides of green beans and fried potatoes. The beef came with a roasted pepper-like sauce which I really enjoyed but I found the beef cubes themselves to be a bit overcooked.

On our last evening, I had some pasta with a beef, tomato, and black bean sauce. The pasta was actually cooked al dente and the black beans in the sauce added something different to the dish.

Jenkins had rice with a creamy chicken, leek, and mushroom sauce. The dish actually was quite light despite the fact that it looked quite heavy.

For dessert, we had a rice pudding-like dish with raisins. I’m not a huge rice pudding fan so this was not one of my favourites.

Both Jenkins and I really enjoyed our first crack at trying Peruvian food. We’re not sure if all the dishes were authentic Peruvian dishes as the staff liked to joke around with us and make up names for some of the dishes. For the most part though, everything was quite tasty although I think dessert was not one of the lodge’s fortes.

Jenkins and my first stop on our Peru trip was at the Corto Maldes eco lodge in the Peruvian Amazon. I really enjoyed this leg of our trip and I think it was a great first stop to get us immersed in Peru. One good thing from a food perspective was that all the food we ate in the Amazon was prepared by the lodge’s chef who specialized in French and Peruvian food. I would say that the food tended more towards the Peru spectrum rather than French and gave us a good preview of what Peruvian food was all about.

Here is the main lodge where we ate most of our meals.

All of our breakfasts came with freshly squeezed juice from various Amazonian fruits. Jenkins liked to call our drinks Jungle Juice because we never had any clue as to what fruit was used to make the juice. One such juice is the one below made with the fruit you see in the foreground. I don’t remember what the fruit was called but it was related to the tomato so it had a hint of tomato flavour crossed with an orange.

Breakfast was usually a pretty simple affair. Along with some scrambled eggs, we were always served a plate of fresh fruit. The fruit would vary from day to day but the one below had pineapple, watermelon, banana, and a type of passion fruit. I really liked this variety of passion fruit because it was not overly tangy and I enjoyed crunching down on the edible seeds.

Snacks during our hikes usually consisted of some crackers, mandarin oranges, and bananas. I particularly liked eating the bananas in Peru because even though they were yellow and brown, they always remained a bit firm. I hate eating mushy bananas so I really enjoyed eating these firmer Peruvian bananas.

Jenkins and I really enjoyed eating a Peruvian-style “tamale” called the Juanes. It came wrapped in banana leaves, which helped the Juanes to retain quite a bit of its heat.

Inside, the Juanes has rice, chicken, vegetables, olives, and a boiled egg. The salty olives permeate the rice and it is flavoured with some spices and the vegetables helped to bind everything together. As you would expect, it is quite filling and also very tasty.

Another interesting thing we ate for lunch was chau fan. Chinese food is immensely popular in Peru, so much so that Peru has its own type of Chinese-Peruvian fusion food called Chifa. All throughout Peru, we saw several Chifa restaurants that served its own unique spin on what we would consider traditional Cantonese dishes. Jenkins and I thought it was especially interesting that most of the Chifa dishes were pretty much direct translations of its Cantonese name, such as chau fan.

Chau fan is a bit moister than regular fried rice and is bound together by a soy sauce-based sauce. The version we tried in the Amazon was made with chicken and also had peppers and some other type of leafy green vegetable. Our guide told me to try the rice with some fresh lime juice and mayo and it turned out to be quite tasty. I would argue that it is quite different from regular fried rice so you can’t even do a direct comparison.

In addition to the limes and mayo, I also added some fresh chillies that our guide had picked for us out in the jungle. Now that I think about it, that may have been a bit sketchy but these surprisingly spicy chillies really added a nice heat to the rice.

Next up, I’ll share with you some of the dinners we had in the Amazon!

Jenkins’ and my first stop in Peru was to the small-ish city of Puerto Maldonado. It is the gateway for most travellers who are headed to the Peruvian part of the Amazon jungle. Jenkins and I were to stay for a few days in an eco lodge about an hour’s boat ride down the river from Puerto Maldonado city itself. After our friendly guide met us at the airport, she took us for a walking tour around the city as we waited for the rest of our fellow travellers to the eco lodge to arrive at the boat docks.

Also joining us for the walking tour was a British family that happened to live in Lima, Peru. We were pretty fortunate because the family pointed out to us all the good snacks during our stay in the Amazon. The kids in the family wanted to stop for some ice cream because it was extremely hot that day, probably 35 degrees Celsius and very humid! After we found an ice cream shop that sold what the kids were looking for, I asked if they could recommend something interesting for me.

They suggested that I try the Alaska popsicle, which was a fruit juice popsicle made with an Amazonian fruit that was tangy and similar in taste to a guava mixed with a passion fruit. I forgot to take a picture of the popsicle itself but it was a similar colour to the wrapper and none of the black seeds were showing. It was slightly tangy and very refreshing on a humid and hot day. This only cost $0.30 so I easily could have eaten a second one if it wasn’t for the fact that the rest of the tour group was waiting for me.

Soon, it was time for us to pile onto the boat that would take us to our eco lodge, Corto Maldes. After an hour’s boat ride down the muddy Madre de Dios river, we finally arrived.

We were directed to go to the eating area upon our arrival, where were greeted by the lodge’s bartender. He promptly served us some fresh passion fruit juice, which tasted nothing like the passion fruit juice I get in Vancouver mixed with my bubble tea. It was slightly chilled and was less tangy than I would have imagined. I really enjoyed the juice and only wished that I was served a larger glass.

During our stay in the Amazon, all of our meals were either eaten at the lodge or were eaten off-site but the food was prepared by the lodge staff. As for what we ate, you’ll just have to come back and read the next post! Most of the food we ate was a local or Peruvian specialty so we had a really good preview of what was to come during the rest of our trip.