Piura Travel Guide

Yes, this is the main avenue of La Legua, a small rural centre on the way from Piura to Catacaosb. There are  alot of places to eat here, it would be difficult to say it's a jst to have lunch in a village like this, more than 30°C outside, lot of powder around, but the comuneros you will be with are very good people.You will be offered a chicha, jsut to begin while waiting for the main course and to refresh your thropat after sweating under the sun.Chicha is a beverage made of fermented maize; some women use to produce it at home and then they go selling around to small restaurants, peasants in the fields, passer-byes who recognize the freshly made chicha by the empty squash shell which is left on the door. If you hapened to seat in a favourable day, you will be served leche de tigre (tiger milk), a concentrated fish broth, densed witrh some flour so that it appears really like milk, it is served very hot as a starter.

Favorite Dish: The main course will be either seco de cabrito (roasted goat) or - if you had leche de tigre -, most probably an encebichado, i.e. raw fish marinated in lime juice. Cebiche is for sure one of the most popular and well-know delicacy of traditional Peru, it is made with almost any kind of living being coming from the sea (tuna, octopus, mackerel.... all is good with few exceptions like fatty fishes); the sacrified being is prepared in small pieces, cleaned and left submerged in lime juice for a couple of hours. The main difference between cebiche and encebichado is that the
second one is a quick and popular version of the first; encebichado is prepared in rural areas, in informal restaurants, at home and is made cutting the fishes into few larger pieces, without keeping the spikes and the skin out. The head is also offered. No need to say encebichado does not deserve the use of fork and knife. Fish in this style requests side vegetables: boiled sweet potato (a yellow local variety, with violet outer layer), thinly sliced red hot peppers and ginger will always be offered in Peru. In Ecuador, things are a bit different and sweet potato is substituted by boiled cassava, and in Central America vegetables are even less common.

You can reach Piura by airplane or by bus. In both cases, emotions will be waiting for you. In the case of the travel by road, well, 1,000 km along the Peruvian coast are ikely to be not completely quiet. In the case of an air trip, the airplane to Piura will stop at Chiclayo or Trujillo (there are also some direct flights), in both cases, the final piece, flying over the Chiclayo desert will always be turbolent because of the very hot air raising from the sands.
In Piura and around, get the taxi. Out of Piura, bus services leave from the main market place; in most cases, the alternative to bus is the collective taxi (colectivo) which will wait until 6 paying persons are ready to leave.

Within the Comunidad Campesina, comuneros are organized in co-operatives and UCP (Unidades Comunales de Produccion). While the co-operatives had already received their lands since the initial stages of the irrigation programme, the UCP were commonly entitled to remoter areas, far from the secondary distributing channels. They had to find funds and organise their own working power to dig the channels in the cheapest way. Hundreds of farmers organised themselves in working shifts to ensure the manual work required for the extension of the water distribution system. the scarce funds were devoted to machine landfilling of deeper areas, buying the pumps, protecting with cement the key nodes of the distributing network. This is a case in which the organisational skills of the Comunidad and its leaders are peculiarly evident.

In Piura, as in the rest of Peru, you should write down the license plate number of a taxi (or mototaxi) before you get inside, as taxi drivers sometimes drive you to an abandoned area and rob you or signal to another taxi driver to pull him over (to arrange for you to be robbed, pretending that he does not know the robber, and then splitting the booty with the robber afterwards). If you have the license plate number then you should denounce your taxi (driver) after the robbery even if it appears that your taxi driver had nothing to do with the robbery (as he may have set up the robbery, as I said), tIt is safe to walk around in Piura until alittle after midnight. Piura, in general, is very safe; just write down the taxi license number.

Luggage and bags: Bring sunglasses and shorts! The weather here is wonderful throughout the year, with warm weather and sun. Mosquitos are rarely a nuisance, so you needn´t really worry about bringing repellent. Fly spray would be a better purchase, as some restaurants are have flies plaguing the tables. Sunscreen is important, as the ultraviolete index can go high. Bring condoms and enthusiasm; there are _so_ many girls in tight pants here (with much to fill them)!

Clothing/Shoes/Weather Gear: shorts, tshirts, jacket, pants

Toiletries and Medical Supplies: toilet paper, Pepto Bismo