Happy Thanksgiving From Peru, Where the Chicken Tastes Like French Toast

We spent our Thanksgiving Day taking a nine hour bus from Loja, Ecuador across the Peruvian border into Piura.  Despite the length, it was actually a nice bus ride due to music being played at less than earbleeding levels, the lack of an over-amorous couple next to me (which has happened twice now) and the scenery.  Setting south from Loja, the bus wound its way through lush, green mountains before making its way into a red and brown landscape that looked like it was imported from Arizona's Sonoran Desert.  As we traveled southwest into Peru, the mountains became more and more distant and eventually disappeared.

Piura has been the least impressive city or town we have visited so far.  The sides of the road coming into the city are covered in trash; the litter is so pervasive and evenly spread that it seems as though it's someone's job to drag around a huge garbage bag with a hole in the bottom.  The traffic here is much more chaotic than anything we saw in Ecuador, and looks like what I've read the traffic is like in Bangkok.  There are cars everywhere and traffic signals nowhere, and most of the cars are taxis (I would guess that taxis outnumber private vehicles at least ten-to-one).  Taxis here, like in most cities around the world, hold little regard for human life.  At least getting across the streets in this city is good practice for Southeast Asia.

We ate our Thanksgiving Diner at a little restaurant in downtown Piura.  I ordered chicken supreme, which I assumed was a rotisserie chicken, since that seems to be popular around here.  It was instead a breaded, pan-fried chicken filet, but it still looked good.  After my first bite, I could taste cinnamon, which was a little odd but the spice seems to be used more often here than in the US, so it wasn't completely surprising.  However, even aside from the cinnamon, the taste was weird but familiar, but I couldn't immediately put my finger on it.  A few more bites confirmed that it tasted exactly like french toast.  Magge and I came to the conclusion that it was fried in the same pan that fried their eggs and sweet plantains.  Bread + eggs + sweetness + cinnamon = french toast.  I love french toast, but not when I'm expecting to taste chicken.  Worst Thanksgiving dinner I've ever had.  As I tell Magge (when I'm trying to deflect how terrible something is): it's all part of the experience.