Peru

We had so enjoyed our pretend trips to Brazil and Argentina that we were keen to explore more of the continent of South America. Peru was an obvious choice – especially since the kids have been really into watching Paddington Bear lately and he is from Peru.

Making Pionono

Having successfully created Dulce de Leche previously we found a great recipe for a Peruvian cake to use it in. Now I confess that I was short on time so rather than bake a sponge cake we bought a Swiss roll and scraped out the inside and then replaced it with the Dulce de Leche. It was so sweet! Penny has a sweet tooth and I think she could have eaten the whole thing like a sandwich. If you wanted to be more authentic, there is a great recipe here.

Exploring the rainforest

Our initial plan was to go sand dune tobogganing like we did in pretend Canada, as I had seen that in Peru you could go and race sand buggies round their desert – but it was raining heavily on our Peruvian weekend. So we decided to visit our local woods and pretend they were a rainforest instead. Our woods are inhabited by red squirrels (amazing but not very rainforesty) so we bought our own monkey and chameleon and hid them in the trees. The rain came and it was big big rain! The kids hid in a den built in the forest as it poured down. It was super cool.

Llamas and Alpacas

I had really wanted to visit some Alpacas, and to my surprise there were quite a few farms over the North West. If you live in the area then these guys seemed super kind and helpful. Sadly because of the corona virus when we were ‘visiting’ Peru they were all closed, so we used the kids Llama toys to make our own farm in the garden. I’m definitely going to take them to visit the alpacas as soon as we can though.

Peruvian National Dress

Penny was really interested to see what Peruvian national dress was like and I downloaded some free colouring in sheets for her here. Penny loves colouring and spent ages on her Peruvian lady. You could also do some weaving with kids which is simple enough to set up – we loved weaving when we were in pretend Turkey.

Machu Picchu

In the past we have hoped the culture of a country would rub off via the activities we did as we didn’t want to be too schooly on a weekend. But now Penny is seven I thought she might enjoy a documentary, and she did! Two minutes into this (on Disney+) she asked if we could visit Peru. I found the documentary fascinating too and I think it made the whole thing far more real to Penny.

Paddington Bear

We counterbalanced this with probably the least authentically Peruvian thing ever. But in the U.K. I think Paddington Bear is what everyone associates with Peru. So we ate our Marmalade sandwiches and laughed at all of the silly things Paddington did. A definite highlight for Freddie and I’ve promised the kids a movie night to watch Paddington 2 soon (which I believe is an outstanding movie).

A Peruvian Doll

eBay can be a great source of entertainment for round the world travels and Penny was thrilled with this little Peruvian doll which I picked up for £1. Her costume was also the source of much interest and I think things like this can really help children learn by touching and looking rather than being told. Penny called her Mary because she had a baby.

An Amazing Peruvian Meal!

The thing I was most looking forward to was an authentic Peruvian meal. I’ve never eaten Peruvian food before and so I was really excited when I found a Peruvian caterer in Liverpool who made us a delicious feast and even sent us a lovely Peruvian mat for the table.

My favourite dish was a creamy chicken with boiled eggs and Mark loved the Lomo Saltado which is a steak and chips dish. Penny was all about the pudding (of course) but she did try everything. Freddie is going through a very picky phase now he’s three but I find if you keep offering things to him, he eats them in the end.

And so despite (or perhaps because of) the rubbish weather, we had a blast in pretend Peru. Having been initially horrified when it rained in the the ‘rainforest’ it turned out to be Penny’s favourite weekend memory and I think it was mine too!