If you’ve been keeping up with our sponsored UVM student, Ian, you’ll know how hard he and the MEDLIFE team have been working to provide medical solutions and community development to the outskirts of Lima, Peru. To thank him for all of the amazing work he has done and for sharing his account of the experience, we sent him on a series of tours for his last few days in South America. Check out his  account of a Yampu culinary and bike tour of Lima below! If you haven’t kept up with all of MEDLIFE’s summer activities, check out Ian’s  weekly reports in our blogs section.

For my Bike and food tour we first started at Larcomar, a big open air mall in the side of the cliffs looking over the ocean. My tour guide gave me a lot of history on Lima and explanation of why Lima is such a great place to surf.

We then went to Barranco, my favorite district in Lima. Since I’ve been there a lot my tour guide took me to many places I’ve never been to to give me a new experience.

We stopped at my tour guide’s favorite street cart and I tried Maca, a really good drink made from a root that gives you energy. We then looked at a lot of street art around Barranco that I haven’t seen before and stopped at another restaurant to have Causa Cevichada, which is a layered dish of Yellow mashed potatoes filled with avocado, deep fried fish and passion fruit juice. From there we biked from Miraflores to the end of Chorillos.

On the way to the second restaurant we stopped at a really cool building that over looked the water, covered in graffiti art, that was paid for by the local town.

Once at the second restaurant, The Blue Coast, I had probably the best food I’ve had in Peru and best Ceviche. We had two big dishes of Rice with Shrimp and Ceviche Mixto, which is mix of amazing raw seafood.

We biked to the Christ and Cross on the top of the hill, which was the same path John Paul II took when he visited Lima. There were beautiful views of Lima and the ocean from the top!We then rode our bikes back to Barranco to have this amazing gluten free, vegan and vegetarian passion fruit cake that was so, so good. It was dense but light and fruity but not too sweet. Literally the best dessert I’ve had in Peru!

Finally we biked back to Miraflores. It was a great bike ride and so cool to look along the coast and see how far we biked. The bike ride was very easy and mostly flat. It was a half a day excursion but didn’t feel like I biked more than 30 minutes. My tour guide was really awesome and the bike tour was amazing. I would recommend it to everyone who wants to experience Lima in a short period of time.

Thanks!

Ian

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