Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [40]
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HABITS & CUSTOMS
Meals in Peru are a conversational, leisurely affair. Other than the bustling business-district restaurants in downtown Lima, don’t expect anyone to be in much of a hurry – including your server.
When sitting down, it is polite to say buenos días or buenas tardes to the server. And when dining with locals, wish them buen provecho (bon appétit) before eating. Tips of 10% or more are customary at finer restaurants, but not expected at casual dining establishments such as pollerías. More upscale places will also include the propina (tip) in the bill – along with a 19% tax.
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Sumptuous photographs and recipes of local specialties are available in Tony Custer and Miguel Etchepare’s hardback tome The Art of Peruvian Cuisine. Log on to www.artperucuisine.com for a delicious preview.
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Do note that if you invite locals out to eat, the expectation is that you will pay. Likewise, if you are invited to someone’s home, it is considered good manners to bring a gift. Flowers, sweets or pisco are customary items.
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Alpaca meat tastes like beef but has only half the fat.
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EAT YOUR WORDS
The following is a list of foods and drinks, with their English translations and pronunciations. These should provide a good start to your comprehension of Peruvian menus. For further pronunciation guidelines and useful phrases, see the Language chapter, Click here.
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Noted American chef Douglas Rodríguez has compiled an extensive list of recipes in his comprehensive seafood guide The Great Ceviche Book.
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Food Glossary
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Environment
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THE LAND
WILDLIFE
NATIONAL PARKS
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
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THE LAND
Few countries have topographies as rugged, as forbidding and as wildly diverse as Peru. The third-largest country in South America – at 1,285,220 sq km – it is five times larger than the UK, almost twice the size of Texas and one-sixth the size of Australia. It lies in the tropics, south of the equator, straddling three strikingly different geographic zones: the arid Pacific coast, the craggy Andes mountain range and a good portion of the Amazon basin.
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The origin of the word ‘Andes’ is uncertain. Some historians believe it comes from the Quechua anti, meaning ‘east,’ or anta, an Aymara-derived term that signifies ‘copper-colored.’
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On the coast, a narrow strip of land, which lies below 1000m in elevation, hugs the country’s 3000km-long shoreline. Consisting primarily of scrubland and desert, it eventually merges, in the south, with Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth. The coast includes Lima, the capital, and several major cities – oases watered by dozens of rivers that cascade down from the Andes. These settlements emerged as agricultural centers over the centuries when irrigation canals deposited fertile silt all along these desert valleys. They make for strange sights: sandy, rocky desert can give way to bursts of green fields within the course of a few meters. The coast contains some of Peru’s flattest terrain, so it’s no surprise that the country’s best road, the Carretera Panamericana (Pan-American Hwy), borders much of the Pacific from Ecuador to Chile.
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The Amazonian drainage system covers a surface area equivalent to continental USA.
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The Andes, the world’s second-greatest mountain chain, form the spine of the country. Rising steeply from the coast, and growing sharply in height and gradient from north to south, they reach spectacular heights of more than 6000m just 100km inland. Peru’s highest peak, Huascarán (6768m), located northeast of Huaraz (Click here), is the world’s highest tropical summit and the sixth-tallest mountain in the Americas (the highest peak