Ica, Peru

On Saturday morning I travelled from Lima to Ica, which took about 4 hours. I actually stayed in a town close to Ica called Huacachina. That afternoon I went on a wine, pisco, and chocolate factory tour in and around Ica. Ica is known for their Pisco, a brandy type of drink that is about 40% alcohol. It is distilled from grapes. Ica is also where grapes, cotton, asparagus, olives and other produce is cultivated. It is known by Peruvians as the land of the sun.

There were about 7 of us on this tour with two funny taxi drivers. The other tourists were Brits and Norwegians. I was the only American. We went to a chocolate factory..... well it was more like a store where we sampled chocolate from a place called Helena. It was good, but not really tour worthy.

Then we went to Tacama, the oldest winery in South America. We saw some workers leaving for the day, and viewed their entire property from a bell tower. We sampled some red and some white wine and one pisco drink. Whoa. Pisco is really strong stuff. I was already feeling tipsy.

Then we went to a place that made all different types of Pisco, Catador. He explained the process of making pisco- the pressing, fermentation, distillation, condensation, and separation. Then the tasting. We must have had almost 10 different kinds of pisco. And they weren´t stingy with the portions.

The last place was Bodega Lazo. It wasn´t really very touristy. It was one of the local bodegas. A really nice Peruvian couple joined us in the middle of our tour. They even had relatives in New Jersey. Here, we had more wine and of course more pisco. ¨Arriba, Abajo, Al Centro, Adentro!¨

With all the drinks, (there were a lot of drinks had), the tour only cost me about $7. The wines we tried were mostly sweet. Not really my thing. The piscos didn´t really taste that great, and it smelled like tequila, but when in Peru, drink Pisco. It was a blast!