Again we are in a black hole as satellites go. No internet. So I will send these out as soon as we get service again.
Painted boldly on a dockside warehouse screams the epithet CALLAO—THE PORT HUB OF WEST COAST SOUTH AMERICA. Hub schnub. They moored us in the middle of the container district again. Oh well. I’m getting used to seeing the loading gantries at their constant, steady labour, and the semi-tractors entering and leaving.
I did not schedule a tour for Callao. I am hanging out, resting yet, just messing around. The canal is coming up, as is a monkey watch tour out of Fuerto Amador. I don’t want to poop out early. Besides, moments after we tied up at the pier, I scored two new life-listers, the Andean Gull and the Peruvian Golden Plover. I shall go out tomorrow for a while (we sail tomorrow at 4:30 pm), without expectation of seeing much, other than pigeons. Callao may be a hub, but it’s flat and almost totally industrial, a pragmatic hub with no parks or greenery. Not many birds (other than the ubiquitous pigeons) hang out in flat, asphalted places inhabited by very large trucks.
As I watched this afternoon, four Inca terns went fishing off QV’s starboard bow, successfully. A stately Peruvian pelican came floating around, caught something plus a pouch full of water, expelled the water, and floated away. Hundreds of Andean Gulls are lined up on the hawse lines again. Down under the quay, a black-crowned night heron is sitting hunched over, looking bored, waiting for dark. And overhead, the turkey vultures ubiquitous down here were riding thermals. What can they hope to find to eat in this sprawl?
I must have mentioned in the past that the Queen Victoria boasts a two-story library, decks two and three. Most of the books are published in Britain and are pretty much all British authors. This is excellent because there are really great books here that I’ve never heard of. There are titles of authors I like, for instance, Simon Winchester, that I have not seen. The non-fiction here is small but choice.
And cookbooks. Weird cookbooks, sort of like 101 ways to serve quinoa. [Incidentally, you quinoa lovers, I saw your grain before you did. It was waiting quayside in Arica for shipment to North America. Bolivia exports tons and tons of it, grown on the altiplano and trucked down to the coast. There is heavy loading equipment designed just for that grain. The same equipment is set up here in the hub of South America’s west coast, so I would guess the Peruvian high country is muscling in on the quinoa market].
So far I have collected a couple dozen recipes out of some charming British cookbooks. The latest title I perused is Around the World in Eighty Dishes, by David Loftus. He follows Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg on his epic journey, providing recipes for local foods and drink all along the way.