At this point I’m going to beat a dead horse and repeat myself a third time – Peru has the best food we’ve had in South America, hands down. This was continually evidenced in every meal we had in Lima, and we had lots… In order of best to really damn good, here’s a few of the fantastic places we’d love to go again:

• Osaka – Fantastic Japanese + Peruvian fusion with both traditional dishes like sushi, but also unique flavors that really can only be described as the best of both worlds.
• Lady Bee – One of the top 50 bars worldwide, the funky drinks here definitely didn’t disappoint. Every cocktail was one of the most complex drinks that I’ve ever had in my life, and given that they were still actually good, I can see why they are so highly rated…
• Isolina – Overall a fantastic family-style meal location, with incredibly flavorful meats and vegetables (already a win to see some other than potatoes and corn!).
• Panaderia Cultivo – A great bakery with very traditional offerings (almond croissant, cinnamon bun, etc.) but done very well.

Outside of all the eating and drinking, we did find the time to do a little sightseeing as well… primarily outside of Lima, in a seaside town called Paracas. Based on the swarm of tourists in the town, it’s quite the popular summer destination – we drove down quite early and by the time we made the 3hr drive here it was only 9am, but the whole town already seemed to be in the port waiting for a boat out to the national preserve… Nevertheless, we hopped on a tour boat and headed out to the Islas Ballestas, an old guano mining site turned national preserve around 10-20mi offshore. Honestly we didn’t know what to expect since Jesus just told us that we’re going on a boat tour, so when we got to some of the most biodiverse islands we’ve seen before we were blown away! Not to mention the fact that we got to see some penguins while here… not even 2000mi further south did we even get close, so chalk that up as a win!

I’m sure we’ve left out plenty of things from our time in Lima (and all the locations before that…) but the key point was that our time in South America was a fantastic adventure – yes we ate a lot, especially in Peru, but hopefully all those miles in Patagonia, and all the walking around Argentina and Peru made up for the caloric surplus… Overall we loved the time we were able to spend together, but also with friends and family who were able to meet us in the various locations along the way. Now time to go to Atlanta for a bit of travel downtime, then back on the road – next stop, Tokyo!