Saturday, July 31, 2010

The return of the croissant



Many of you my friends from home or from the road have asked me you have not spoken aout croissants or baguettes for a while!!!!



Well, did not post on it but it is still part of my trip. I love wandering in the side streets or in the marketplaces in hope of finding this one bakery that would become the one.
In all honesty I found 4 great bakeries where either croissants or baguettes (or both) were excellent.

All these bakeries had a common point: they were pretty expensive and were not really local. In Ventiane, Cuzco and in Sydney they were French owned. Japan is really crazy about France and French products; what they do there, they send apprentice bakers for internship in France so that they get the French technique and then the bakeries import all ingredients (flour....) and as far as the oven to make sure they get the same taste. They also get French names such as Delices de France. But they also put a Japanese touch to it with a croissant having orange taste (it´s delicious). The best bakeries in Japan were in the luxury department stores.

The famous croissant a l orange

I have never found a really good baguette anywhere else and I am more or less convinced by now that my taste is too biased to find one outside France.


As for croissants, well, I have had good surprises with decent ones at times in Ecuador and Peru. But opne thing about croissants: so many countries like to have them with ham and cheese, what a sacrilege!!!! I sometimes even think about the morning croissant of AH (in Holland) as quite good that is to sy hopw few times I have found some.

During my trip I have added a few items to the list of bakery items I was craving for:
The first one, much easier to find than croissant, is the pain au chocolat. Ok, a good pain au chocolat is not so easy to find because many bakeries lay think that a pan au chocolat Scandinavian style is better: the difference is that chocolate is spread on the tpo instead of a bar inside. Anyway since when Vikings are good at making delicacies?

The good and the pale copy

Then they are the chiffones or kind of yoghurt cakes called chiffon with a vanilla or orange taste. I could find them in most of the countries of South America I have been and they re really good (mention speciale a Cuenca and Cuzco) and are perfect for trekking.


Ok, they are not small but I do not mind carry them

Oh, I have to mention the amazing chocolate cookies of the premium brand of W (I do not make ad for supermakets). First they have converted me to cookies and secondly everyone who tasted them on my advice agreed on their quality.

Also the fruits ice creams Dolci + Gelati in Cairns just made with fruits were exceptional (pineapple, strawberry and mango) and even beat the ones of my mum!!!.


from the website

And I cannot finish without speaking about the crepe au Nutella from Thomas in Cuenca. I was just coming from a week of illness and they were perfect to recover.

So overall, where do I stand on bread?
Well, Thailand is a bread desert while Australia and New Zealand are swamped with toast bread (ie, this is not bread to me).

Boooooohh

South America is not a baguette continent but luck can make you cross the way of a decent ciabatta or some local bread usually with the form of a bun (petit pain). (the ironic thing is that it is usually found in supermarkets which shows how bread as I like it is not part of the local culture).

Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam really are a step-up for baguette-like bread and that made my life easier for breakfast.



Japan still tops my list for the reasons I have explained earlier.

This ranking (where New Caledonia does not appear because this is too close culturaly to France) does not reflect how I liked countries because except Thailand and to a lesser extent Vietnam I loved them all. But even these two I would be happy to visit again to change my opinion. At the moment Japan remains the most exotic (= different) country I have ever been to, the natures of New Zealand, Patagonia are dreamlands for me, the Asian food is the most delicious, the beaches of Thailand, New Caledonia and Australia the most beautiful, the people of New Zealand, Colombia and Chile the most friendly, Laos the most relaxed country and South America my favourite continent because I feel so good here!!

Monday, July 19, 2010

Trekking spree

In the last month and a half I have spent 17 days doing multi-days trekking because this is the activity I like most Huayhash, Choquequirao and Ausangate all brought me wonderful moments in the nature.



I know there are many reasons to wonder why I love it:
It´s freezing cold at night (-10/-15 degrees in Ausangate) and when it´s not cold mosquitoes see me as fresh meat for their meal,
Usually it´s almost impossible to have a shower except if you like showering in water less than 10 degrees (I hear some of you saying, whatever, you´re French you almost never shower anyway!!!),
Average food feels like a treat to your mouth (I love puree), and
as soon as the sun is down you feel the only place you could be comfortable in is your sleeping bag.

But I love the absolute silence when at times even the wind stays quiet, I love the panoramic views that come as a reward after ascents, I love drinking water from stream, seeing wild animals/birds, small stone/wooden houses in huge spaces, stars at night in the sky or the moon highlighting the snow of the highest peaks.



And because I love trekking so much I decided to try to do a lot before the end of my trip. Because, yes, this time I can say it with more or less certainty that I will be home for Christmas (maman, tant que je n´aurais pas achete mon billet et posé le pied en France ça peut encore changer mais cette fois cést sur à 95% que j´ai une date de retour) so I want to enjoy my last 5 months of travel.

Then it will be time for me to come back to reality and this will probably mean for me a few months between France and the Netherlands before trying my luck probably in Chile or Colombia (but this can change) finding a job and living a few years outside Europe.

But before this I really wanna see more landscapes because Bolivia and the North of Argentina are said to be full of beauties. And I feel like going again to Patagonia. I saw it in summer and I would love to see it in Spring. y only fear is that if I get there I will never be back in 2010.....

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Cuzco / Machu Picchu or the horrors of mass tourism

I hesitated before coming to Cuzco: the guidebook says that if there is only one place to visit in South America it should be here. Hummm, sounds like a tourist trap. Even Peruvians say it is really expensive and full of tourists, especially by now that we are in the middle of summer school holidays in Europe and the US. But I would have regretted to skip it so I came.

And guess what? I both hate and love Cuzco. I hate that 20 people come per day to sell me pictures I do not need, I hate that prices are more expensive than the rest of the country and that when I mention it to the people who sell these stuff they look at me as if I was the one having no idea of what I am talking about, I hate that I am offered drugs more here than other places, I hate that the music here is more Western than Latina, the same goes for the food and finally I hate more than everything that Cuzco has more tourists than travelers.

Before you start telling me: "Hey so you hate me each time I go as a tourist somewhere?" I want to point out that I mean here the tourists who not only do not learn the language at all (I can understand it if you just have 2/3 weeks) but who behave as if they were in a colony. And because these people keep having home as their reference, each price they pay is cheap even if they pay double the normal prce. And then I come behind and when I am asked the same price I say "no way!" and it is almost impossible to bargain it down. Another irritating thing is that so many people think I am Anglo-saxon (Australian or North American is what I hear most) so they talk to me in English.

But this morning as I was thinking about this article I also thought about the streets of Cuzco, one of the few cities in South America that has a real character (like Popayan, Cuanca or Cartagena),



some history, and that you are really happy to walk through. So I took my camera and went to shoot it as it is, torn between it sbeauty and its uglyness.



I will do it again one day at 6am to get rid of the uglyness and I hope I will make nicer shots of the then empty streets.

Then I thought about Europe: Venice, Florence, Brugges. some parts of Paris etc... and then I knew that Peruvians were not to blame, they just copy what we do with our nicest spots. Mass tourism is to blame, the one that transforms almost any nice building of our nicest citiues in vending machines. I hate it but at the same time I am part of it because it is mass tourism that makes things cheaper so that I can travel longer...

Finally I also met really nice people whether travelers or locals with whom I speak only Spanish and I will go next to the family of Susan whom I met in Australia. I want also to mention that some people like Mama Cuzco, the owner of my hospedaje or some street/market vendors are genuinely nice and it is a pleasure to speak with them and wander away from the main plaza (= square).

If mass tourism is the plague of Cuzco then Aguas Calientes (the village at the bottom of the mountain Machu Picchu where you have to go through to visit the site) is a plague in itself. This village has no life outside Machu Picchu and has only restaurants, handicraft shops and hotels, all this time even more expensive than Cuzco (example: a bottle of water costs 3 soles in Cuzco, 5 in Aguas Calientes whereas it is 2.10 /2.50 in the rest of the Peru). It has only one access through a train which costs more than a 1$ per Km (probably a world record) and its inhabitants are all but friendly (and this is the sadest in all this). This is a place where making you pay something at a ridiculous price is not a scam because it is the norm like our restaurant that invoiced a servicio coming out of nowhere and accepted that we did not pay it when we became furious... You know what, the most irritating thing with the train is that it belongs to an English company (Orient Express, I checked in their annual report) so the money does not even go directly to Peruvians. And even backpackers usually take it at least once because the only two ways to avoid it are challenges in themselves: a full day of 1 bus, 2 collectivos and 10 kms walk alongside train tracks or an exhausting 28 kms walk along train or on train tracks then 2 collectivos and 1 bus.


Don´t worry it was not always that narrow

But it is worth it (I did both) as I paid 37 soles return against a minimum of 60 $ ( apprx 180 soles); Sometimes it´s good to be more stubborn than a donkey.

And Machu Picchu in all this?

Machu Picchu, vu de la porte du soleil (at 2pm)

Well there is no doubt having such a city there is impressive, the fog in the morning and the little sunlight I had were cool but I cannot help being a bit disappointed by Machu Picchu and not only because I just had an ok weather.



If I compare it to the temples of Angkor built a few centuries beforee I notice that none of the rocks were decorated and that even the temples of the city have been almost completely destroyed. I was told this is the Inca architecture that is just meant to be simple. There would not be all this hype around MP I guess I would not feel that but I have heard so much bout it that I was expecting something else....