Pachamanca

You know how they say a dog often looks like it's owner? well I think that for my friends Amy, Natasha and I, we look like our home stay moms. Well, maybe not look like, but we definitely have parallel personalities. I was able to see this more closely at our Pachamanca a few weeks ago.

So this was similar to the Watia(Huatia) that I explained before. A tower of rocks were heated to cookable temperature, then collapsed and layered with potatoes, oca (another tuber), sweet potatoes, fava beans, and bananas! BUT THEN you throw slabs of chicken, pork, and lamb drenched in green "condimento" on the piping hot rocks. Cover it all with the remaining stones so and paper so that the alphalpha and dirt that THEN went on top didn't get in the food. 

We let it sit for about an hour while we prepared sauces and cut heads off the baked cuy (apparently it doesn't taste as good in the Pachamanca). Then it was ready! everyone got a plate with a bit of everything. The table was pretty much quiet as we ate... Diving into the mountain of food with our hands and pulling apart ever delicious piece until it was gone. To help digest all that food, shots of pisco are passed around the table as you finish. Followed by a glass of sweet rose wine. And then the beer flows.

My friends here Amy and Natasha and I have host parents that are all cousins, so we go to experience this together. As the beer continued to flow, the conversation took off. We sat around with our host mothers animatedly conversing for hours and hours. My host mom Ana just kept opening bottles of beer and placing them in front of us. It was funny to see how Natasha was just as sweet and cute as her adorable host grandmother, Amy was just as dramatic and funny as Maria, and I like to think that Ana and I are both pretty strong and opinionated women. 

This was probably my best night in Peru so far. Part of the conversation was spent trying to convince me not to leave, or discussing how I should come back after my trip to Nicaragua, or even after going back to the states. 

This is what I love about latin america. Animated conversation and these beautifully emotional relationships between people. It will be hard to leave the people who have become my family for the summer.