Bailout!

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Cute Things Falling Asleep

Check out this blog to see some hilarious and very cute videos. What a great idea. As seen on CNN.

La Trattoria di Mambrino

This has been one of our favorite restaurants for years now. I did a review on their Bodega restaurant in January. It received an almost perfect score. La Trattoira di Mambrino, Ugo and Sandra's first restaurant, is even better. You can find both of them from time to time making the rounds at the restaurants. They stop to greet most of the tables personally.

We recently visited on a weekday night. It was our first time that we've been able to sit in the back area (only a year or so old) near the wine cellar. We've previously sat at the bar (fantastic drinks!) and in the main room a number of times.

The service, as expected, was fantastic. The waiter knew every detail about every dish and certainly appeared as if he had sampled them all! This sort of knowledge is extremely rare in Peru (where many waiters don't get to eat any of the food at the restaurant). His descriptions and recommendations were right on!

The environment was relaxing and comfortable. There was music in the background sung by Italian artists (in Spanish) like Laura Pausini, Tiziano Ferro, and Eros Ramazzotti. We weren't far from the brick oven where they were preparing fresh breads. The aroma was great!

The big surprise for us was that the menu had changed. They have added many new seafood dishes. The most exciting new additions include Peruvian octopus. La Trattoria has had an octopus appetizer for years. It was always great, but left you wanting more. The problem was that there were not enough selections of main dishes that included octopus or seafood.

Our appetizer was a new grilled octopus skewer with pallar sauce that was extremely tender (melts in your mouth) and tasty. For main dishes, we had:

Mashed potatoes with a center of grilled octopus and portobello mushrooms. The presentation was great and the taste was even better! All 3 of the flavors combined well and I was extremely happy with my selection.

Fettuccine with octopus, capers, olive oil, and olives. There were some other flavorful touches, but those are the standouts. The octopus was very tender and had an amazing flavor. The whole thing worked together well and my wife was in heaven.

Finally we had Seared Tuna with an arugula salad in dijon sauce. The tuna was top quality and seared perfectly. The flavor was exactly what I was craving (yes, I stole a good portion from our guest). The salad was a perfect match. The dish was light yet extremely satisfying. Almost every trip to Lima we search out a really good Tuna dish. We are very pleased to say that one can now be found at La Trattoria.

This has been our location for numerous Valentine's, birthday, and other special events. It has never dissappointed. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys fine cuisine. I would even say that it is a 'must visit' location for any trip to Lima.

Quality: 10
Flavor: 10
Presentation: 10
Selection: 10
Value: 9
Environment: 10
Bathrooms: 10
Overall: 10

Back in Arequipa: Greeted by a 12 hour power outage

Well I've been out of town for a bit lately for business. Now I've only been back in Arequipa for about 5 days and there has already been another power outage. This one was scheduled for 5am until noon on Sunday the 14th. But for an unknown reason, the power did not come back on until after 5:30pm on Sunday. We made about 40 calls to the electric company and none of them were answered. I'm not sure what areas were effected by the outage, but certainly Cayma was among them.

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) now in Peru

The financial leaders and political heads of state of 21 pacific countries are in Peru now. This includes George W. Bush. To reduce the congestion and possibility of riots or strikes, the government has given all state employees, in Lima, vacation during the conference (Nov 20-23rd).

There are numerous articles about this event and how it has effected Peru on the Living in Peru site. Of course this event may have some effect on the US as well and you might want to search some US news sites for information about that. I know that Bush has planned to seek some support from the group to stimulate global economies and reduce the 'crisis'.

Cayma power problems

There was a brief power outage yesterday that lasted about 30 minutes here in Cayma (a 'county' of Arequipa). Luckily the power came back on quickly.

Now today the power has gone out again, during the middle of the work day (~10:10am). This outage lasted about 20 minutes and we now have power yet again.

Thank goodness I have a UPS system.

Arequipa without water!

So we found out today that the water tank for the building was low. The landlord said there was no water to fill the tanks in the whole neighborhood. But when asked what the problem was or how long it would last, he had no idea. He said that no warning or information was sent out before the shut down.

We found out just a couple hours ago that some other family on the other side of town has also been without water for 6+ hours. I searched Google in English and Spanish to try to find information, but no current information was available.

We called the water company here in Arequipa and they didn't have any information, but gave us 3 other numbers to call. All 3 of those phone numbers were either constantly busy or not answered.

Edit:
I just heard on the local news (TV Peru) that 80% of Arequipa (a city of about 1 million people) is currently without water. They said that a pipe broke (and apparently has no backup) and needs to be repaired. The state run water company (SEDAPAL) has just started setting up to perform repairs. They hope to be able to fix the problem by the morning.

Edit #2:
Thank god they did get it fixed last night. We had water again around 4am. That meant no hot water this morning, but at least we did have drinkable running water. So in the end it was just over 12 hours without water, but the water tank lasted for about 4-6 of those 12 hours. In the end, not all that bad, but I'm certainly glad it wasn't worse.

South Park vs Peru

South Park recently aired 2 episodes based on Peruvian Pan Flute bands and an invasion of the US by a certain group of Peruvians. The first episode can be found here and the second here. It is extremely funny though some may find it startling and even furry.

For those who do not know, these are adult cartoons and are not meant for young children.

Customer Service, the great unknown.

Being a typical gringo from the US, I expect and demand a certain level of customer service in most all business interactions. Even in the US, there are many examples of bad customer service. But after living in Peru for 3 years, you start to wonder if perhaps Customer Service is only a North American concept. In some tourist establishments, you can find it here in Peru, but these are normally owned and run by North American or European investors/citizens/migrants.

Lately I am seeing repeatedly reinforced examples of how Customer Service is not considered or even known here in Peru. The focus is all on how to get the customer's money and repeat customers seem almost undesirable or unneeded. Here are some recent examples:

1) La Italiana restaurant in Arequipa - We ordered pulpo de olivo and specifically requested the version that comes cold with yellow potatoes and olive oil. When the order arrived at our house 45 minutes later, we found that it was incorrect. The Octopus (pulpo) was hot and contained no olive oil. Instead it had some hot soupy broth, olives, carrots, etc.

We called the restaurant to let them know that we had been very specific in our order (it was exactly what was on the menu, but they have different versions available) and that what arrived was incorrect. The lady on the phone immediately told us that we were wrong and that we had received the correct dish. Then she asked if we had eaten any of it. We told her 'no'. Then she tried to convince us to eat it rather than wait for them to send the correct dish. Then we got put on hold for about 5 minutes.

Her tone basically suggested that we were trying to steal from the restaurant by eating part of the meal and then sending it back to get more. Finally she agreed to send the correct dish and told us to have the hot dish ready and untouched so that we could give it to the delivery man. I guess she wanted to make sure that it got thrown in the trash rather than us getting 2 dishes for the price of one. I certainly hope they didn't plan to serve it to another customer. At no point did she appologize for sending us the wrong dish. At no point did she offer us any kind of gift certificate, refund, or anything else to try to correct her mistake.

So in the end, they screwed up our order, accused us of fraud, and then sent the correct dish 45 m later with no appology or attempt to remedy the situation.

2) Sur Motors/Login Store - I've already posted at length about this topic. But I've seen this behavior at so many places lately. You walk up to a cashier or service desk, say hello or good afternoon. Then they just ignore you and don't even say hello, one second, I'll be right with you, or anything at all. They aren't on the phone or anything. They generally just stare at their computers for a while. Then after a minute or two of standing there having them ignore you, you have to say something more forceful to get their attention. Sometimes even that doesn't work.

3) House/Apartment Rentals - Peruvian rental law, like most rental laws around the world, require that the owner of the property provide some sort of maintenance. This includes repairing pipes, water heaters, walls, floors, and other appliances that are included in the rental property. This comes at the owner's expense if it is a problem caused by normal usage. But the client's expense if it comes as a result of misuse, abuse, etc.

We've had numerous experiences over the last few years where we've run into problems with pipes breaking (and flooding our house), faucets leaking water, etc. Almost every time the landlord has asked us to pay for these repairs. He claims that since the house was new when we moved in, there is no way that anything could possibly break from normal use (even after 3 years). I recently had a talk with them about this, after they tried to get us to pay them monthly fees for security guards for the neighborhood. They fully believe that any problem with the house requires the client to pay, no matter what the cause. They claim that the houses were new and perfect. They do not acknowledge that things need repairs over time. I pointed out the rental law of Peru to them, but they didn't seem to be aware of the law or interested in what the law said at all.

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Customer protection laws exist here, but have almost no teeth. They are also subject to the Peruvian Judicial System which is a complete mess. Simple cases can be drawn out over numerous years. This includes eviction proceedings... meaning if you want to kick someone out of your rental property, it could take you years of court proceedings before this can be completed. The whole time this renter may not be paying at all.

The main purpose of business in Peru is to take someone else's money. Being able to do it more than once to the same person is not a concern. Having that person being happy that you are taking their money is not a concern. Having that person come back unhappy and complaining about what they received, again, not a concern.

More business issues in Peru, this time Punto Celeste

http://www.puntoceleste.com.pe
Lince, Peru

We contracted them to print up and design all of our invitations. We worked with them for about 3 weeks to finalize the design. It was something new (based on US versions) but they said that they could do it. It took many weeks and many test prints and examples until things were finally ready.

Then once we had finalized the design we took a look at the final example. There one a small issue with those prints, but Catherine told us that would be adjusted for the final design. We approved this design and just had to finish our messages.

During the couple weeks it took us to finalize the messages, send them to Punto Celeste, receive the demo prints, repeat, etc. Catherine was sent into the 'field' rather than working in the office. So we suddenly stopped getting replies to our emails and requests for help from Punto Celeste. After a number of phone calls and a lot of confusion, we found out that the lady we had worked with for over 2 months was no longer going to be helping us at all. We also found out that her replacement had no idea who we were or what we wanted. Apparently Catherine had not written everything down and did not pass any of it on to her replacement.

It took a couple days more for her to setup a meeting with her replacement and transfer some of the knowledge. We had wanted the printing to start about a week before this but we could not contact anyone who knew what we needed. So an additional couple days of delays was a big problem, but we had no choice. We were flying to the US in July and had planned to send many of the invitations from the US, but because of Punto Celeste delays this wasn't able to happen. This will end up costing us an additional $100-300 in shipping.

Finally after we talked to the new girl and re-explained every single thing to her again (a couple more multi-hour visits to the office), they finally started printing up the invitations. We had initially been told it would take about 7-10 days, but it ended up taking about 3 weeks to complete.

Then when we finally got the invitations, they (reception, wedding, rehearsal dinner invites) were incorrect. Apparently Catherine had forgotten to tell the new girl about some of the details and there was a missing step in the printing process.

We spent many hours working on these invitations with them over the period of 3 months or so. But Punto Celeste messed them up and now we don't have time for them to reprint everything because they have already delayed so much. They have offered us 100 free Thank You notes, but we haven't been able to go take a look at samples of those yet.

The missing and incorrect parts of the invitations cost us over $330. So hopefully these Thank You notes are very nice.