2 March 2025 – Long ago, I lived for a while in Peru. Only slightly less long ago, I lived for a while in Indonesia. And now, on this one afternoon here in Vancouver, I revisit each — in new physical experience, and in old memories as well.
1 – Bike to Baik
First, courtesy of the VPL (Vancouver Public Library) Staircase Sounds series of noon-hour musical events: a program of Indonesian gamelan music, performed by the Vancouver group Gamelan Bike Bike.
The name Bike Bike is a double, and bilingual, play on words.
In English, it nods to the fact that the musicians complement traditional gamelan instruments with ones they build themselves from old bicycle parts.
See? On the red table-tops: segments of old bike frames (left & far right) and bike sprockets (second from right).
Even their shirts, custom-designed and created in Indonesia, continue the theme, with bike chains and sprockets in amongst more traditional design elements.
The group of musicians is very good — and that is the second, bilingual, part of the play on words. In the Indonesian language, baik baik (virtually the same pronunciation) means exactly that: “very good!” (Literally, good-good.)
I sit for an hour, awash in the intricate beauty of the music as it pulses and swirls through this Vancouver space. Awash, also, in memories of another time and that other place.
Baik baik sekali. Saya senung sekali.
2 – to ¡Bueno!
And then, my head full of glorious music, I leave the glorious Central Library building (thank you, Moishe Safdie) and walk five blocks north to Silvestre (“gusto latino”) on Water Street in Gastown.
More precisely, this deli-bistro offers “gusto peruano,” for it was founded by Peruvian immigrants and is dedicated to Peruvian cuisine and ambiente. I’ve never been here before, but I’ve checked the menu online, and I know what I want: an alfajor dessert (two shortbread rounds, filled with dulce de leche and topped with icing sugar) and a mug of chicha morada (a purple corn drink, slightly tart and refreshing).
The young server treats me to widened eyes and a dimpled smile when I speak with her in Spanish. And I smile — oh, how I smile — when she delivers my order.
Odd thing, memory.
Tracking down alfajores in Vancouver had become an obsession; chicha morada was an afterthought. But now, as I sit with the physical reality again before me and in my mouth… the power is in the drink.
The alfajor is delicious, but it is not tied to any one moment or place we’d visit while in Lima. The chicha morada, however… It is absolutely tied to the one very small café in the High Selva village where we lived, and to the people with whom we conversed in that café, all those people who deepened our knowledge of the language and the place and how best for us to be there with them.
All these decades later, that taste is again fresh in my mouth — and old memories are again fresh in my mind. ¡Qué bueno!
Bike-baik-bueno.
WALKING WOMAN 
Bronlima
/ 3 March 2025Just made some alfajores.drippiing with manjar blanco. Can buy them from the shop on the corner where I live, but well….. why not! Although British I have lived over forty years in Peru. I love this, my adopted country. As with all countries, it has its problems but has a beautiful soul, as is reflected by the many people I have met on my many travels. So, how long were you here? Where did you live when you were here?
icelandpenny
/ 3 March 2025We went in 1967, as CUSO volunteers (like VSO), to support a community radio project centred in the then very small pueblito of Bellavista, Dpto de San Martín. The Carretera Marginal de la Selva had reached the village — https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carretera_Marginal_de_la_Selva — & its neighbours just a year or two earlier and was the first road, and a very humble dirt road, not what you see now. Until then traffic moved by balsa in the Rio Huallaga and by air (DC3s, of the govt-owned Civico line, on direct airfields).Balseros still regularly stopped on the shores, that’s how a lot of supplies still reached the village. I next lived briefly in San Isidro area of Lima; I next passed through parts of Peru in 1970 doing some radio documentary/CUSO documentary work; and was back again briefly in 2018, that time based in Ayaviri and connected with a community-based Andean-art restoration program. So you see why I love your blog! Thanks to you, I revisit the country. (I have no desire to revisit physically Bellavista — I googled it and gaped at the size and other changes. It has no resonance for me now.)
Bronlima
/ 4 March 2025How interesting, you have a had a lot of experiences here in Peru! You without doubt will know what I mean about it having a beautiful soul. In a few days, as usual in March, I will be going to Mejia on the south coast via Arequipa. No festivals this time, just a deliciously easy going, quiet coastal town. Relax, chelas y chilcanos!!!!
icelandpenny
/ 3 March 2025re alfajores: bravo making your own; while Silvestre’s tasted good, it was stingy with the manjar blanco (I called it dulce de leche, a better-known term…)! There are other sources here, incl. even an ” Alfajor Co.” so I shall investigate further…
bluebrightly
/ 6 March 2025I love gamelan music so thank you for that…and also for teasing out the difference between one memory’s strength and another’s.
icelandpenny
/ 6 March 2025So glad to have given you a gamelan fix! The large library space was full, with a great range of age/culture/style; smallest kiddies on up. And, yes, isn’t memory interesting? Where the resonance turns out to be, and not to be…