At least we got to see Sillustani before leaving Puno. Sillustani is a group of crumbling Incan and pre-Incan funerary towers. These groups of people used to bury important people in large towers...they would drop mummies of important figures in the top (along with several unlucky servants) and then cover the mummies with small rocks and clay. They would also fill the tombs with food and the dead´s possessions so that the dead would have food, etc. in their next life, and the Incas would replenish this food once a year or so. The Incans made these towers by lugging these giant, perfectly rectangular rocks up wooden ramps...it must have taken years to build one. Also, the got the rocks to be perfectly rectangular by drilling a hole into the rocks with a hand drill, inserting a piece of wood into the hole, and getting the wood wet so it would expand. Once it expanded, the wood would create perfect cracks in the rocks, helping the Incas to form perfect building bricks. Cool huh? Anyhoo, I´m going to get back to my sick girlfriend now. More later.]]> Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=135127 0 -15.8333333 -70.0333333
Sandboarding down sand dunes in HuacachinaSo, the last time I left off describing my trip, Amy and I had just finished up a tour of Paracas National Reserve and seen desert, ocean, and flamingos from afar. Let me start from the next day.

So, the next day, Amy and I took a bus down the coast a bit to Ica. Neither one of us particularly wanted to go to Ica (it´s not a very nice place and has a lot of crime), but our goal was to wind up in Huacachina, an awesome touristy town surrounding a desert oasis a few kilometers outside of Ica. Our plan was to meet up with Sarit, the girl we traveled to Arequipa with, in Huacachina, so Ica was just a stop on the way. The only thing worth mentioning about Ica was that it had bars on most of its windows and it is close to most of Peru´s wineries. Amy and I signed up for a wine tour and didn´t leave our room for the rest of the night.

The next day, our tourguide, a 25 year old manboy named Fernando, came and picked us up at our hostel. From there, he took us to three different wineries. The only one I remember was called Tacama, and the tour was actually a bit boring because it was a Sunday, so we didn´t actually get to watch anyone making wine. The different wines were interesting to taste though. The wine I have found most unique to Peru has to be Vino del Amor, or Wine of Love. This is a very sweet wine that is supposedly so delicious that people drink way too much and then in their sloppy states, make lots of babies. We had multiple people tell us at the first winery (Tacama) that we would fall in love with Peruvian men after drinking this wine and then make lots of babies. Amy and I just kind of smiled at each other uncomfortably. Meanwhile, as Amy got progressively more tipsy, Fernando started flirting with her, probably hoping to be the one that she would fall in love with. I laughed to myself and thought, "If only he knew."

At the second winery, we got a tour of a bizarre building cluttered with giant clay jars of wine and random antiques/ancient taxidermied animals. The man who owned the winery showed us the traditional way of removing the wine from the clay jars by dipping a bamboo stick with a strategically cut hole into the jar...the wine would collect in the bottom of the stick and then he would pour it into a cup for us. He gave us wine, flirted with Amy (ew, he was in his 50s at least) and, when Amy bought two bottles of wine, he gave us free clay shot glasses with the name of the winery on it...sadly I can´t remember the name now, but I do remember thinking that Amy had accidentally charmed two men so far, haha.

At the third winery (which was also a restaurant), another Fernando showed Amy and I how pisco (a liquor made from grapes) is made. Basically, the grapes are collected in a shallow pool-like structure and stepped on by a bunch of Peruvians until they are all squishy. The juice is channeled into another pool and then into a series of tubes, where it is distilled. About 50 percent of the liquor is used for drinking, while the extremely potent liquor and the very weak liquor on either end of the batch is mixed together and sold as cleaning alcohol. Amy and I tried a few different types of pisco. At this time, Fernando #2 asked what we were doing that night. We told him we would be in Huacachina and he asked if he could meet us in a discoteca there. We told him maybe to appease him. Then we ate lunch at the winery while also watching the final game of the World Cup (Holland vs. Spain) with Fernando #1. After delicately feeding Amy a piece of chicken off of his fork (it was creepy but she´s too polite to say no) we decided we´d like him to drop us off in Huacachina so we could be rid of him (he actually offered to drive Amy there by herself and come back for me later if I wanted to stay and watch the game...uh oh feeling? I think yes). After much awkward silence, he dropped us off at a hostel in Huacachina and gave Amy his phone number and email address. She died inside and I laughed, even though I secretly wanted to chase him out of the hostel and yell "She doesn´t like boys!!!" Or punch him in the face...either one, haha. Then we went downstairs and watched Spain beat Holland during overtime...well, I watched, and Amy wrote in her journal, looked up occasionally, and asked, "Are they done yet?" My girl is not a sports fan, hehe.

After the game, Amy and I had a small emotional crisis which occupied us until about 9 at night, after which point all the internet cafes were closed. This meant we could not find Sarit, who was supposed to arrive in Huacachina the same day...ooops. Feeling really guilty, Amy and I went to a restaurant whose walls were covered in paintings of fairies and elven creatures and whose occupants were all smoking marijuana. I had heard that it was easy to get marijuana in Huacachina, but I didn´t know they passed it out at restaurants, haha. Anyway, Amy and I tried Peruvian pizza, which is kind of like a giant cracker covered in tomato sauce, then walked around town a bit looking for Sarit, and went home when we were unsuccessful (sorry Fernando #2). Amy got hit on AGAIN by a man who worked in our hostel wearing an orange shirt, and every time we passed by him that night and the next morning (he was wearing the same shirt), he would exclaim, "AMY!" I think it´s safe to say that neither one of us wants to see a Peruvian man ever again.

The next morning, Amy and I hurried frantically to an internet cafe, where we found ten emails in my inbox from Sarit asking where we were and if we were alive. We found out where she was staying, rushed over there, and decided that we liked her hostel better because it didn´t have a creepy man in an orange shirt calling Amy´s name every five seconds. We checked out of our current hostel and moved our things, apologizing profusely to Sarit over and over. She was such a sweetheart about it. :) Our new hostel was also next to the lagoon, which was cool because our old one was not...Huacachina is actually a desert oasis, so it has a small lagoon surrounded by palm trees, hostels, and tourists. And best of all, giant sand dunes!

Amy, Sarit, and I went sandboarding later that day. What that entailed was climbing into a bizarre vehicle called a dune buggy, strapped ourselves into the seats, and holding on for dear life as the buggy drove spastically across the dunes, up and down some hills that definitely looked too steep to be going down, lol. Then once we were all ready to pass out, the driver stopped the buggy and retrieved a bunch of snowboards from the back of it. We rode these snowboards down the sand dunes on our stomachs! From the top of the dune, the steep slopes down looked terrifying, but once you got going, sliding down was really fun. My glasses fell off during one run and snapped in half, but it was still worth it. We also got to watch the sun set behind the sand dunes, which was beautiful...at least, what I could see of it without my glasses, haha. It was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip so far. Anyway, I have to go now and I will be on the road for the next couple weeks, so I´m not sure how often I´ll be able to update. Much love to all of you and I´ll be back soon.]]> Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=134975 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Cuy, aka charred guinea pigHey everyone! So, I don´t have much time for a long entry, but I thought I´d update on what it´s been like being back in Cusco the past week. Amy and I got a warm welcome upon returning to the homestay and were immediately served (of course), potatoes with rice for dinner. Gatita was particularly happy to see us...Manchi had her hired help (Juanita...she´s so sweet and I feel so much less awkward around her than Manchi) feed Gatita for us while we were gone, but from the amount missing from the bag of food, it wasn´t as much as we have been feeding her. She also missed cuddling with us and now never wants to leave our bedroom...Amy´s down sleeping bag is her new favorite place. Although it is nice to be stationary again for awhile, I am SO READY to leave Cusco again. I think my body is officially rejecting the potatoes and rice, because every time I sit down to eat them, I am no longer hungry. And anyone reading this blog should know me well enough to know that that NEVER happens. I keep blaming it on the altitude. Amy has been going out and having a salad almost every night so she can have her fresh vegetables and then she just comes home and tells Manchi she´s not hungry. I can´t afford to do the same thing, but I wish I could. Amy always buys me a juice though so I have something to drink while she eats, which is awesome. Besides the ruins and the spectacular mountains, juice is my favorite part of Peru. Here, it is more like pure fruit smoothies...real fruit put in a blender with no fake juices or sherberts...it´s delicious. The only problem is that often the drinks aren´t cold...most of Peru doesn´t believe in cold fruit, haha. But the juices are so good that I don´t care...I always order jugo mixto, which is usually a blend of pineapple, papaya, strawberries, bananas and oranges...it´s SO GOOD.

Anyway, back to being in Cusco...Amy´s mother Melisa arrived Tuesday morning to accompany us on the remainder of our trip with us, which has been new and fun. We´ve been showing her around Cusco for the last few days...we took her to the Museo Inka, which is a really interesting museum dedicated to Incan as well as pre-Incan cultures. There, we watched a group of women as they made traditional weavings...the process is so intricate and fascinating to me...first they tie two parellel groups of strings (that they have dyed and spun themselves from alpaca and sheep wool) to a large pole. Then they stretch the yarn towards them and weave a third length of yarn in and out of the two parellel lengths of yarn to make the most intricate patterns...I have no idea how they have memorized which strings to go under and which to go on top of, but the weavings come out absolutely beautiful. Occasionally they push all the string together using a sharp piece of bone or readjust the parellel layers of string with the pieces of wood separating them. Each weaving takes about 3 months to complete and the women receive about 50 US dollars for each one. Can you imagine spending 3 months of your life working on this very complex and beautiful weaving and then only receiving 50 dollars for it? I don´t think it´s fair, but these women make a living somehow. Also, one more cool thing about the weavings...the third length of yarn (the one that goes in and out of the two parellel layers) is completely invisible in the final weaving...somehow, the women weave it in and out in such a way that you never see it. Cool, huh?

Okay, so now that I am done babbling about the weavings (I just think they are sooo cool), I am going to talk about another interesting experience Amy, Melisa, and I had on Tuesday. Upon arriving home for lunch, another homestay student (a Belgian named Maxim) told us that he and Manchi were going out for lunch at a cuyeria, a restaurant specializing in cooking the regional Cusquenian dish of guina pig, and would we like to come? None of us had ever tried cuy (aka charred guinea pig, which is quite a luxurious food in Peru) so we decided to accompany them. First, we took a bus waaaaay up into the hills of Cusco...the cuyeria had an amazing view of the city, and for a few minutes, I was fairly relaxed just sitting in the sun and staring out over all the red-tiled roofs. Then the waitress brought our appetizer...a soup full of unknown types of meat. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), I have been to the market enough times to be able to identify odd cuts of meat that we would not eat in the US and recognized them floating about my soup. For example, the spongey, white meat covered in tenticular villi on one side was intestine. The gray, somewhat translucent, fatty meat with little black things poking out of it was pig skin (the black things were HAIR). And so on and so forth. I went into denial mode and ate most of the soup, just so I could add intestine and pig skin onto my list of bizarre meats I have consumed. Most of the meat was far too chewy for my liking, but kudos to Peruvians for not wasting ANYTHING.

Then came the next big challenge...the cuy. Shortly after clearing our soup bowls (all of which were not empty except for Manchi´s, haha), the waitress brought us five plates of what looked like giant barbequed rats stuffed with a large quantity of greenish black herbs. They still had teeth and eyeballs and tiny little paws with tiny little nails, and suddenly all I could think about was my childhood friend Kyle Kavanagh´s guinea pig Henry who used to squeak excitedly at us from his cage. But being me, I ate it anyway. Once I got over the my memories of Henry, the hardest part was penetrating the charred skin and ripping the poor dead thing open with my hands (I had tried to do it with a knife and fork and was promptly corrected by Manchi, who told me I couldn´t rip the bones from the meat without using my hands). The meat had the consistency of chicken, but was more flavorful...don´t ask me how, it was just good. There wasn´t much meat on the poor thing though, so as tasty as it was, I don´t think it was worth killing the poor animal, seeing as I was still hungry afterwards. Poor Amy just kind of poked at her cuy like the biology student that she is and couldn´t really eat it because it still had a face, among other things...I had to tell her that she was awesome many times in order to make up for the fact that I dragged her up there to eat what had once been a giant, cuddly hamster. But it was an interesting cultural experience, as most of Peru has been.
]]> Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=134687 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556 Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=134576 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Paracas National ReserveI believe I left off describing Amy´s and my adventures in Paracas. First, we took a boat tour out to the Islas Ballestas and saw thousands of birds/lots of bird shit...I wore my hood the whole time because our guide (Luis) said that having your head shat on while you are out in the boat is not that uncommon...I decided not to test him on this, haha.

The second half of the day, Amy and I were also on a tour...for some reason though, no one else was as interested in this tour, so it was just Amy, Luis, the driver, and me. We went out to the Paracas National Reserve, which is a huge desert...right next to the ocean. It was a little bizarre to see such a barren stretch of land next to something so blue and lively. Luis said that the desert was the dryest desert in the world...it only rains some very small amount of millimeters in a year. This is because the Andes Mountains are nearby and they are so high that the moisture from the ocean can never rise high enough in the atmosphere to condense and become rain...interesting, huh? Keep in mind that this is a super simplified version of what he said...there was also some wind blowing in from the east involved, haha. Anyhoo, we tramped through the desert and saw a ton of fossilized shells...then we walked next to the ocean and found beautiful seashells that had been washed up on shore...they were whole and colorful, the kind that people pay good money for back in the states at craft stores and whatnot. It was very scenic...I will upload pics once I´m on a computer that can perform such a feat, haha. For lunch, Luis took us to a seasfood restaurant where Amy and I tried cerviche, which is kind of like the Peruvian version of sushi...it´s very raw fish marinated in lime juice. And we´re talking all kinds of fish, including mussels and octopi and squid and some kind of conch with a bright pink organ (we think it was the liver) still attached...it was tasty, but my stomach could only handle so much. Afterwards, Luis and I hiked through the desert in search of Chilean flamingos...they hang out on the edges of the reserve but are very shy and very endangered, so they can be kind of hard to see...I got a few blurry pics from a distance. Anyhoo, I need to go now coz Amy needs a salad (she´s such a rabbit, haha) but I´ll finish our adventures later.]]> Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=134080 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
San Blas, an artsy district of CuscoWell, I am back in Cusco now as of a couple hours ago. And I never thought I would say this, but I am SO GLAD to be back...mostly because that means I am finally off the bus, which I was on for 22 and a half hours...it was a long twisty turny drive through the mountains, so I´m happy to be back on solid ground and proud to say that somehow I didn´t throw up! Also, Cruz del Sur played the movie Mamma Mia for the last two hours of the trip, which was the clincher for me...I needed to be off that bus and away from ABBA as soon as possible, haha. But now I need to go home and see Gatita...just wanted to update real quick. Much love, more later.]]> Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=133970 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
"Candleabra" carved into the sand in Paracas by an unknown sourceWhere to start...I feel like many things have happened since Amy and I left Cusco last week. Many good things...it feels amazing to go out and create my own adventures again and see new, exciting things rather than sit in Cusco and be accosted by vendors and taxi drivers and Manchi, our host matriarch-type figure. I feel like an adult/backpacker again rather than a poor kid/student who is stuck in one place and at the mercy of the people around her. Anyhoo...firstly, Amy and I took a nightbus to Arequipa last Monday night and arrived around 5 am. Luckily, we were on the bus with Sarit, a fellow traveler we had met a week and a half prior in Pisac as we all stumbled down the mountain from the ruins we had been visiting...it was dark and all we had was my headlamp (I always keep it in my bag), so it was kind of a bonding experience. Anyway, Sarit had reserved a hostel in Arequipa called Amazing Home Hostal...it had a fun name and good reviews, so Amy and I decided to go with her. The very nice man who ran the hostel gave us all beds we could crash in without charging us an extra night for arriving super early in the morning. We slept, ate delicious banana pancakes for breakfast on the roof of the hostel, and soaked in a very nice view of Arequipa from above. Later we went to a really cool convent/monastary called Santa Catalina...it was established in 1580 (I think?) and was basically a party convent for women from rich families until the 1800s, at which point a new head nun was shipped over from Europe to straighten the convent out. Now only about 30 nuns still live there and the rest of the convent is open for tourists to peruse through. We decided to peruse at night, which was deliciously creepy and cool...we wandered through all the old bedrooms (eerily enough, called "cells") of the nuns...most of them were decorated with macabre crucifixes and statues of mourning women, and the entire convent was illuminated with candlelight and lanterns...between the statues and the shadows the candles cast, the creepiness factor was pretty high. Being me, I LOVED it. The architecture was beautiful so I´m sure it would have been neat to see it the daytime, but I just loved the eeriness of the night.

The next day, Wednesday, Sarit left to go on a tour of the nearby Colca Canyon, leaving Amy and I to wander about Arequipa by ourselves before catching our 7 pm bus to Paracas. We went to the Museo de la Universidad Catolica de Santa Maria, where we saw Juanita, the ice princess. Juanita is a 500 year old body (she´s more of a frozen body than a mummy) who, when she was alive, was sacrificed by the Incas to appease the gods of the nearby volcanos. She was around 13 years old, and according to the museum tour, she was led to the top of the volcano by Incan shamans, where she was given chicha (corn beer) as a sedative and then struck in the head, thereby ending her life. Apparently this happened more than once...I believe 14 similar bodies of child sacrifices have been found scattered throughout the Andes. The children were usually royalty from Cusco and being sacrificed was an honor reserved for the most beautiful of these royal children--the more beautiful they were, the more they would please the gods, and being chosen for such a task was a privilege because dying for the gods would in a way secure a position for these chilldren among the gods. The Incas would do this every El Nino season...the changes in the weather from El Nino would cause an influx of a certain type of orange shell to wash up on the beaches of Peru, and every time this influx occured, the shamans thought the volcano would erupt and kill their people unless a child was sacrificed. Therefore, 500 years ago in Peru, El Nino meant you had to kill a kid...makes El Nino years in the US seem less extreme, eh?

So that same night, Amy and I got on another 14 hour nightbus from Arequipa to Paracas...if anyone wants to know how that journey went, they should consult the entry before this one...I am still cringing from the experience, haha. We arrived in Paracas the next morning and were so relieved to find a quiet little beach town that smelled strongly of ocean and where the vendors did not attack us with offers as we walked by. We stayed in a new hostel for cheap because parts of it were still under construction...however, our room was very nice and had a private bathroom with HOT WATER...I almost died of glee. Amy and I went on a long aimless walk down the beachfront lined with newly constructed and still empty beachhouses that look like they were craned straight over from southern California...we collected bright orange and purple seashells and Amy pawed at the sand looking for the perfect conch shell...it was very pleasant. On Thursday, we took a morning tour of the Islas Ballestas, also known as the Poor Man´s Galapagos...these islands were COVERED with birds, including humboldt penguins, which were so cute! Amy and I took lots of pictures. Apparently the guano (aka shit) from these tens of thousands of birds is harvested every five years to sell as fertilizer...people take shovels out to the islands and scrape away at the guano for 2 months. Exciting job, eh? We also saw the mysterious figure carved into a sandy hillside on the way out to these islands...resembling a candleabra, the figure was carved into the sand and has never been erased because the wind does not hit that side of the hill. No one knows how old it is...the primary theory is that it is from the Paracas culture, a pre-Incan people who worshipped a cactus with hallucinogenic properties...this cactus could be mistaken for a candleabra, I suppose. Anyway, my hour is almost up, so that´s all for today...more later.]]> Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=133376 0 -12.05 -77.05 Also, on the bus ride from Arequipa to Paracas, I found out what exactly Cruz del Sur does when you are in need of something besides their "Urine Only" bathrooms. What happens is that they tell you you will need to wait for an hour and a half until they can pull over at a random Cruz del Sur terminal somewhere in the middle of the mountains. You sit in extreme discomfort watching the classic (or not) comedy The Hot Chick which has been dubbed over in Spanish so that you can kind of only understand its already IQ-lowering plot. Finally, after 90 minutes of clenching, the bus sputters to a stop and you are told that you can finally go meet your non-"Urine Only" needs. You Spring from the bus to the terminal, which a cleaning lady has to unlock for you because it is 10:30 PM. Finally, you duck into the not-so-clean-but-in-this-case-you-will-make-an-exception bathroom stalls, glad that you had enough foresight to put toilet paper into your pockets before Springing from the bus. And then you get to go...until you hear the bus roaring away two minutes in. But you cannot move from where you are. Upon finishing, you leave the bathroom to find the cleaning lady pointing down the street at your bus, which is parked much further away then it was when you left it. You sprint to the bus because the engine is on and you already heard it drive away once. Once back on the bus, your girlfriend informs you that the bus did indeed leave without you and it wasnt until the attendent came up to her and said "Wheres your friend?" that Amy realized I was not on the moving bus and told the attendent, who promptly and panickedly called the driver and told him to stop. The bus then backed up 500 feet and parked in the place where I found it five minutes later. Perhaps next time, until Cruz del Sur improves its non-"Urine Only" policies, I will continue clenching.]]> Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=132964 0 -14.0869444 -75.765
CuscoLast night, I survived a nightbus from Cusco to Arequipa. This entailed sitting/trying to sleep on a bus/trying desperately not to throw up as we wound through mountainous terrain for about 9 hours. We took a nice bus line, Cruz del Sur, in hopes that the higher bus fee would ward off any thieves (they can be kind of common on night buses) and were rewarded with a dinner (which I could not eat due to my stomach tying itself into knots), a second story view of various mountains/town lights at night, a movie, and reclining chairs. It was pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself. However, one thing that distressed me was that the bathrooms on board were proclaimed to be "Urine Only" bathrooms. Now, I'm not sure if this is a problem for Peruvians who have been raised driving crazy mountain roads/eating food that my stomach could not begin to digest, but for tourists, this is an issue. For someone like me, who was certain she may throw up at any given time, knowing that I could not ran back to the bathroom and throw up to my heart's content in said bathroom was rather distressing. Instead, the welcome video at the beginning of the bus ride told me, "Should you have other bathroom needs, please tell a Cruz del Sur attendant. We will tell the driver to pull off to a place on the highway where your needs can be met more suitably." So, what I want to know is, if I had felt a sudden need to puke, would the entire bus have pulled over on a windy mountainous road with no guardrail so that my bathroom needs could be met more suitably by a cliffside? And if the bus had pulled over, would it have done it quickly enough for me to not vomit all over everyone within ten feet of me? Luckily, I did not have to test Cruz del Sur's promise. But I might tomorrow night, or the night after, or the night after that...if Amy and I want to head up the coast as planned, going by bus is really the only affordable way to do it. Pray for me, okay guys? Thanks.

On another note, something I've really been wanting to write about lately is the bizarre and somewhat distressing relationship between tourists and Cusco locals. Now, I understand that we probably get a bit frustrating...we're all over Cusco, not knowing Spanish and filling up tables in the restaurants and confusedly walking in front of taxis saying "The map says such and such attraction is this way!" But for the most part, I don't think we mean anyone any harm. Not only that, but we provide Cusco with 85% of its income...Cusco NEEDS tourism. And many tourists come to Cusco to volunteer as well as sight-see...most of the tourists I have met have genuinely wanted to helped the Cusquenians...we DO have more money and we DO have more resources, and unlike many people who just sit in the states waiting for interest to accumulate in their trust funds, we actually go out into the world and distribute our money! And so many volunteers want to connect with the locals and form genuine friendships. However, (and this does not go for all Peruvians, or even Cusquenians, but does apply to the majority I have met) so many of the locals here are just out to rip us tourists off. It's impossible to sit in the Plaza de Armas without having about fifteen locals coming up to you in a 20 minute period asking you if they can sell you fingerpuppet dolls or a hat with llamas on it or shine your shoes. I always say, "No, gracias" as politely as possible, but they are so persistant...often they won't go away unless you yell (which I did once and it made me feel like shit) or completely ignore them, either of which is very rude. I don't like feeling like a rude person! I don't want to be a rude person! But I feel like I have to be. And then they feel justified in treating me like a bitchy tourist. It's a vicious cycle. A few days ago, Amy and I had some guy walk up to us on the street. He said something we couldn't understand and then smacked Amy on her wrist. Before either of us could react, he came up to me and hit me on my shoulder. And these were not gentle hits...these were I'm-trying-to-inflict-pain And then he just made a disgusted face and walked away! I have no idea what to think about this. The only thing that separated us from the other people on the street (and there were lots of other people) was that we were white.

Another example...last night Amy and I caught a taxi to take us to the bus station, a ride that should not have been more than 5 soles. Usually when you catch a cab, you negotiate with the driver before you get in, and only once you two have agreed on a price do you accept the ride. Amy hailed the cab and asked "How many soles?" but instead of giving her an answer, he hopped out of the cab and took our backpacks and made small talk until we were in the cab...then he said "Ten soles." Amy and I said no because we knew the price was too high, but he repeated "Ten" and we were already in the cab. I was so mad and so tired of feeling like I was being ripped off all the time (this is after we almost got robbed a couple weekends ago...I'll tell that story later), so once the cab got to the bus station and the man gave us our bags back, I only gave him 6 soles. He looked at me confusedly and I said, "That's all I have." He said it was our fault, and I felt bad so I dug around in my pocket and found him another sol and repeated that that was all I had. He knew I was lying. I knew I was lying. But I didn't budge...he was trying to rip us off, and I wasn't going to let him. I shouldn't have even given him 7...the ride was worth 4 or 5. But I left the situation feeling like the bad guy. I wanted to yell at him and demand to know if he thought I was stupid, but I didn't. It's clear that he did...or he thought I was too passive to fight with him. I don't like having to fight. *sigh* Anyway, people keep telling me that things will be better now that I'm out of Cusco...I guess we'll see? Gotta go, more later.]]> Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=132254 0 -16.3988889 -71.535
Gatita, our baby!Amy and I took Gatita to the vet today and she´s not pregnant after all! Yaaaaay! Also, we are leaving Cusco tonight! Yaaaaaay! We are going to Arequipa and will then head to the coast and move north. My communication may be a bit spotty over the next couple weeks until I get back to Cusco around the 20th. But no worries, I´ll be here whenever I can. Also, look at this picture of Gatita. Cutest ball of disgusting ever? I think so.]]> Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=132092 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556 Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=132014 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556 One Monday night (June 14th?), Amy and I got invited to go to a yoga class by another FairPlay student, Will. We went to the class and afterwards we all went out for drinks at Paddy´s, an Irish bar in the Plaza...it´s very touristy and a really nice place to escape to if you are feeling overwhelmed by culture shock. Anyway, a group of us all hung out and this bar until about 12:30, at which point Amy and I decided it was time to go home because we had school the next morning. Upon arriving back at our house, we found the door to be locked. This was kind of a shock to us because we had never stayed out late before and whenever we came home in the early evening, the door was always unlocked. As a result, we felt no need to bring our keys with us and instead of being tucked away in our backpacks, they were inconveniently in our bedroom on the other side of the locked door. Ooops. I knocked on the door a couple times, but we heard no movement from inside the house (although about 3 dogs from various locations in the neighborhood started barking). I was really uncomfortable--we where making so much noise, and even though I wanted one of the family members to wake up, I also didn´t want to be the one waking them, so I stopped knocking. At this point, Amy sat down on the sidewalk and I came up with a not-so-brilliant idea.

"I´m going to go around the back, " I told her. She looked at me like I had told her the door had just opened on its own. "I´ll be right back!" I exclaimed, ignoring the obvious doubt all over her face, and disappeared behind the block of houses.

The first obstacle I encountered was a large adobe wall separating me from the backyards of the houses I needed to crawl through before finding my own backyard. With a mighty "hurrrugh" I pulled myself on top of the wall and jumped down onto the other side, landing on a cushion of soft dirt that squished disconcertingly beneath my feet and sloped toward a small creek that ran through the middle of the backyards. It was only at this point when I was away from all the streetlights that I realized I would be slinking through the backyards in the dark.

Cautiously I set forth, poking my toe at the ground with every new step before planting my foot firmly down. I knew there was a creek somewhere and I could feel the earth sloping towards it underneath me, but I couldn´t see exactly where it was/if at some point the slope just turned into a drop. Perhaps this is why I almost fell down into the ditch when the slope actually did turn into a drop. Fortunately, I was able to grab a tree to prevent myself from falling in.

As I clung to said tree, I decided that it would probably be best for me to cross the creek at not-so-scary point so that I wouldn´t have to worry about it anymore. Carefully, I let go of the tree and crawled to a point where the creek felt crossable. I flung myself across and grabbed onto the post of a fence on the other side--it wasn´t until I ran my hand along the wire attached to the post that I realized the fence was made of barbed wire. I was very grateful that I had grabbed the post of the fence and not the pokey in between.

Steadily, I kept walking, balancing myself on the small mound of dirt between the barbed wire and the creek. More dogs in the neighborhood were barking...I was not doing a good job of keeping quiet. Still, I kept going, climbing over a pile of tires until I came to the base of what felt like a hill made of old bags of cement. Looking up, I could see the top of my house and I knew I was almost there...all I had to do was climb this hill of cement bags and Í would be in the courtyard. I reached out and began scaling the wall. All was well until I was almost to the top...at this point things became rather slippery. To keep myself from falling, I grabbed the branch of a tree at the top of the wall. As I did, a pile of roofing tile next to me slid off the hill of cement bags and crashed to the ground below. Whichever dogs in the neighborhood that weren´t already awake and barking were definitely making a shit ton of noise now. But it was okay, because I was almost there.

And then I heard a sickening cracking noise and suddenly things weren´t okay anymore...the branch I was holding onto was about the break off the tree. With a high-pitched "eeee!" I grabbed onto another branch and hoisted myself up and over the wall in one swift but incredibly clumsy movement. I landed in a pile of junk on the other side, but I didn´t care...I was in the backyard! And I hadn´t woken anyone up but every dog within a mile of me! Quite proud of myself, I slunk around the corner into the courtyard...and the first thing I saw was Manchi looking down at me from the balcony with a terrified expression on her face. Oooops.

"Hola Manchi," I said sheepishly, coming out of the shadows. Her mouth dropped open. Before she could say anything, I said,"No llaves, lo siento," meaning, "No keys, I´m sorry." She just kept looking at me like I was a loony, so I walked to the front door and opened it for Amy. We fell asleep to a chorus of dogs barking for another 10 minutes and ate breakfast the next morning to the sound of Manchi laughing and telling us that next time, we should knock louder.]]> Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=131817 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Kari Grande, the street we live off of.So, I realized I havent given any great descriptions of what a typical day here is like for me. Im going to do that now and im going to do it without apostrophes because the keyboard im typing this on is on crack.

So, Amy and I wake up at 6:30 am every day to get ready for Spanish classes. We both moan and groan and Amy makes lots of homocidal faces because it is freezing here in the mornings and getting out of our sleeping bags seems like the worst thing ever...going into the bathroom long enough to brush my teeth is enough to make my jaw chatter like a jackhammer. Somehow we get ourselves down into the kitchen, where Manchi makes us each a fried egg for breakfast. We eat it with flat, white bread (bread in Cusco doesnt rise because of the altitude) and instant coffee (for some reason, Peruvians dont drink real coffee, but its not as crappy as instant coffee in the US). Then we catch either a taxi (if we are running late) or walk a couple streets over to catch a combi (Doradino and Arco Iris are the combis we use, but there are many different ones with random names like Batman). Usually getting off the bus is interesting because there are so many people on it that we have a difficult time seeing out the window and finding our stop. At times, we have been dropped off far enough away from the school that it takes us many moons to walk there and we end up late and sheepishly apologizing to our teachers. But then again, most of the time we are late coz we cant get ourselves out of bed, haha.

So, once we arrive at the school, I go into a classroom with my gramatica teacher, Mary Luz, and Amy disappears into a different classroom with her teacher, Ana. I like gramatica...Im a visual person so having everything im learning written out on a white board is much easier for me than conversation. Mary Luz is a tough teacher (she is one of the only profesoras who assigns homework and actually expects her students to do it), but shes very organized in her instruction and makes a lot of sense to me. And she knows bits and pieces of English, so if she says "perro" and I say "huh?" and she cant get her point across by barking like a dog, she will say the word "dog." Shes super cute...she is short and curvy and has freckles across her face. She has a 10 year old son. I like gramatica a lot.

After gramatica ends at 10 am, I have 2 hours of practica with my profesora Eliana. During this time, we stroll about Cusco and use the Spanish I have learned in actual conversations with each other, which is super difficult for me but also super important. Eliana has taken me many cool places during practica...she took me to the market (notice I uploaded a pic of the butchered cow heads), the Cusco cemeterio, a couple musuems, parades, Corpus Christi, and both of her childrens dance performances (she has a 15 yr old son and an 8 yr old daughter). Usually we have to push our way up Ave. El Sol, a main street in Cusco, to get to the Plaza from the school...pushing is required because for the last two or three weeks, there have been dances and parades blocking the streets EVERY DAY. Cuscos birthday is June 24th and every year there is a huge celebration in the Inca ruins outside the city called Inti Raymi where people dance traditional Peruvian dances and reenact an old Incan ceremony that celebrates the sun, which was very important in Inca culture. Anyway, we saw a shit ton of dancing...children, teenagers, adults, even elderly individuals....it was awesome but made it difficult to get anywhere fast because of the crowds. Anyway, Eliana is wonderful...she is also short, cute, motherly, and stretches her words out when she thinks I cant understand her Spanish. I ask her lots of questions, like "Why are there so many stinkin parades here?" and she gives me nice, slow answers. I feel more like an insider with her around.

After classes end at 12, Amy and I usually walk back to our homestay, which is a good 45-60 minute walk...it helps us feel like we are burning off all the starchy rice and potatoes we are being fed. We are always super hungry/hot/cant breathe by the time we get home because the days in Cusco are pretty warm and we have a bigass hill to climb up on the way back. We pass the street where people wash taxis all day and family-owned convenience stores where women peel apples and oranges to make juice and leave the peels sprawled out and spiraling upon the sidewalk. We pass several universities that, from the outside, look purely functional...no beautiful green campuses here. We pass vendors on the street selling chocolate bars and tabloid magazines and bootleg DVDs. We pass empty lots where holes have been dug and the dirt lies in gritty piles on the sidewalk, waiting to be turned into bricks for someones house or fence/wall. We pass walls where the family behind them could not afford to string barbed wire across the top so they have broken a million glass bottles and adhered the jagged shards to the top...its quite a violent-looking way of keeping people out. And we pass a million dogs, most homeless, all dirty, eating trash and sleeping in the sun. There is a dead dog in the canal near our house that has been there for over a week...once they fall in, the walls are too high for them to climb out. But no one has removed it, so it just lays there in the water, looking more and more dead. I am NEVER drinking water that has not been boiled here.

Once we arrive home, Manchi serves us lunch, which usually consists of soup (corn soup, noodle soup, potato soup, barley soup) and a main dish. The main dish ALWAYS has white rice and some form of potato, most often potato chunks covered in sauce...occasionally there will be other vegetables and about twice a week there will be meat. We eat, thank Manchi, feed Gatita, and spend the rest of the afternoon doing various things...going to museums or shopping, using the schools computers, hanging out with friends from school. Every so often we wash our clothes in our bathroom sink...we cant go to the lavanderias in town because of Amys detergent allergy, so we wash everything by hand. We take showers, probably not as often as we should because the water is either cold enough to give one hypothermia or scalding enough to burn through 10 layers of skin...its kind of a toss up. I am soooooooo excited about coming back to the states and being able to take a real shower...its one of the things im looking forward to most, sadly enough. Then at 7 we eat dinner (always the same thing we had for lunch) with John and the other homestay students, who are usually fun and interesting and always changing. We will sit and talk to them for hours, so grateful to be speaking to someone who knows English, haha. Then we either go out with friends (dancing or drinking or both) or sit in our room in our sleeping bags in bed doing our homework and freezing our asses off like two old people, haha. Whatever, we always have school the next day...2 am bedtime and 6:30 wake-up time are not a happy combination. Im pretty satisfied with our lives here for the most part...the only thing i really REALLY want is a normal shower. Can someone please send me one in the mail?

All that being said, my schedule is now changing rapidly. My last Spanish classes were Tuesday, thanks to studet loan-induced financial setbacks. Amys last day is Friday. After that, we are off to explore other parts of Peru! We will come back to Cusco around the 19th or so because Amys mom is flying in and we need to meet her. Im happy for a break though...as much as i like some parts of Cusco, its really kind of dirty and overwhelming at this point...i think im getting mid-trip homesickness, so hopefully new places will distract me from that. Anyhoo, I best be going now...have to meet up with my friend who will sadly be going home next week...she contracted typhoid and wants to be sick at home rather than here (by the way, the 60 dollar vaccination was TOTALLY worth it). Much love, more later.]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=131136 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
The clinic I went to for my excellent medical care...before the lady doctorSo, last Wednesday evening, I found myself flat on my back in a doctor´s office in a third world country with my feet in stirrups. Don´t worry, those are the only personal details I´m going to give. But really Universe, wasn´t the mouth cancer incident enough? Why is my trip to Peru littered with medical problems?!

By the way, the biopsy for the lesion in my mouth came back benign. Woohoo!

But back to last Wednesday...it became apparent I needed to go to a medical clinic. The first one I tried to go to that Lonely Planet recommended was for tourists...I went there because I thought they would speak English. To my disappointment, the clinic no longer existed. So instead, I went to the clinic fairly close to the FairPlay school that I had overheard John recommend to Amy when her altitude sickness was all wonky. It had a big friendly sign over it that read (in English): "Travel safe, come back soon!" I was pretty damn sure I did not want to come back soon, but the inside looked clean and the sign was in English, so I went in anyway. I asked for an appointment and was told by a very nice man that I would have to see a specialist. He said "The specialist is not here but we will give you a complimentary ride to her office in our car. Your friend can come too." I agreed (only because John said the clinic was legit) and Amy and I waited in a nice room with two hospital beds and a TV until the car was ready. We climbed into the car (the nicest/least smelly car I´ve encountered in Peru) and the nice man behind the wheel drove off. It wasn´t until we had been driving for about 15 minutes and it started getting dark and the driver twisted and turned through what seemed like progressively more rural/less clean neighborhoods (there were dirt piles in the middle of the road) that Amy and I looked at each other in the rearview mirror and thought "Oh god." The driver pulled up in front of an indescript door with no label on it, stopped the car, got out, and rang the buzzer. No one came. I turned to Amy and said, "So, how do you feel about being sold into slavery?" Leave it to Peru to have an unidentifiable medical specialist in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. At that point, a boy child of about 12 years opened the door. I said, "If he´s the doctor, I want my money back."

Luckily, he wasn´t the doctor. He showed us into a large, tiled waiting room where the smell of incense wafted down from the massage clinic above, and I relaxed/felt slightly less sketched out than I had outside. Then a woman walked up to me, shook my hand, and asked me if I was the patient...in Spanish. I balked a bit...the man at the other clinic had spoken English. I asked her if she spoke English and she said "Un poco" and I thought "Well shit, that means no." And that´s how, after only 2 and a half weeks of speaking Spanish, I ended up on my back in a bare, yellow-walled room in a third world country with a doctor between my legs babbling in Spanish and poking at my cooch. I suppose it´s a testament to FairPlay and its school that I was even able to communicate with this woman at all. But somehow, between broken Spanish and English, drawings, and much gesticulation, I was able to tell her the problem and she was able to tell me that I was fine. PHEW!!! And it only cost 80 soles (28 US dollars) even though the clinic was private. Now, you all are witnesses to this...I am BEGGING the universe for no more medical emergencies surrounding my trip to Peru.

Also, Amy and I have adopted a cat. There was this little kitten running around our house who the host family said was a stray and they weren´t feeding her. However, she would not leave the house and she was the most emaciated little thing I have ever seen so Amy and I decided to buy her some food. Now every time we come home, she runs up to us and meows and after she´s eaten, she curls up on our laps and purrs and is sooooo cute. The only problem though is that (like most animals in third world countries), this cat probably has worms, which are transmittable to humans. Therefore, every time I see her, I am torn between cuddling her and running away to save my own insides. Amy says as long as we wash our hands after we touch her, we should be fine. But I worry, coz this cat is a little ball of the cutest disgusting I have ever seen...her fur is all thin and weird and uncared for and she smells like shit and looks like she´s on the brink of death from starvation. But she´s sooooo cute and small and will always be that way because starvation has stunted her growth (she´s actually about 2 and is not a kitten at all...Amy checked her teeth) and now the host family is saying she is our cat. We call her Gatita, which means "Little Cat." Mom, Dad, will you kill me if I bring her home?]]> Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=130923 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Cemeterio, Cusco.Things that are different in Peru than in the United States:

1. Granola bars: they are not made of granola. They are made of quinoa and other grains that remind me of the millet I feed my birds at home. They have the texture of styrofoam but are cheap and comparatively healthy.

2. Markets: there are some traditional supermarket type establishments, but most Peruvians acquire their food from "mercados," or big flat, cemented areas covered by plastic roof sheeting. Under this sheeting are hundreds of individually run stalls. Some sell produce, some sell chocolate, some sell ponchos and hats and other articles of clothing. Some will whip up any kind of fresh juice, or jugo, you want in a blender (very tasty but not very sanitary...the vendors "wash" the glasses in a bucket of water with no soap and fruit debris...I realized this after drinking a jugo de mango and my shit hasn´t been solid in a week...sorry for the crudeness, Mom and Dad). My favorite, however, are the meat stalls...they smell delightful and you can buy any kind of raw meat you want. I´m talking massive piles of cow intestine, skin, and feet with hooves still attached. The most frightening thing for me, however, had to be the cow heads...the top portions and the skin were missing but, as Eliana informed me, you could buy the jaws with teeth still intact. What you do with this, I have no idea.

3. Toilet Paper: you don´t put it in the toilet. Apparently Peru has very fragile plumbing and putting toilet paper in the toilet itself causes all sorts of unsavory problems. Therefore, every toilet has a little plastic bin next to it in which the toilet paper should be deposited. I keep accidentally putting it in the actual toilet and then freaking out that I´m going to clog my host family´s toilet...that would be embarrassing. Also, many establishments such as restuarants are not equipped with toilet paper...you gotta bring your own. Also, most toilet paper is fragranced due to its being put in a bin instead of flushed away where it can´t offend anyone.

4. Dogs: there are dogs everywhere here perusing the streets. Some have homes and some don´t, but they all look about the same...dirty. I want to pet them but the thought of rabies and worms (Amy says most animals in third world countries have worms) deters me. Even the pets have diseases because most Peruvian pet owners can´t afford to take their animals to the vet or don´t prioritize veterinary care. I suppose if you live in a place where your people are starving and your buildings are falling down, pets come as less of a priority.

5. White girls: here, being a white girl gets you extra attention. Known as gringas, we have a reputation for being supposedly more exotic/sexually open than Peruvian women, who are supposed to be more Catholic and chaste. Therefore, in combination with the higher prominence of machismo in Peruvian culture, the men here believe that it is okay to honk their horns and make comments and/or kissy noises whenever a white woman passes them by. Amy and I have even been told "I love you!" by one especially sexually frustrated man. Amy doesn´t get as many comments because she has dark hair, so from behind she looks more Peruvian...I am considering dying my hair black.

6. Cemeteries: yes, for those who know of all my morbid fascinations, my practica teacher Eliana took me to a Peruvian cemetery!!! It was huge! There were mausoleums galore and even some crypts! What I found most interesting though was the way the majority of the dead are buried...actually, they´re not really buried at all. The cemeterio is actually one giant labyrinth of cement walls with hundreds of bodies encased within. The body is placed into a hole in the wall and the hole is sealed with more cement. This is the part I like though: the cement does not completely fill the hole, so outside of each grave is a little hole in the wall, the bottom of which serves as a ledge. On this ledge, the families place personal items of the deceased...photographs, small figurines, flowers, crucifixes. Some families go even further though...they´ll put in miniscule bottles of Coca Cola or cerveza (beer) or miniature models of food if the deceased was a special fan of such things. One women must have been a restaurant owner because her ledge was covered in dollhouse-sized kitchen furniture, including a table and chairs, an oven, and stacks of mini Coca Colas. Anyhoo, these ledges are then closed behind glass doors, kind of like the doors on fireplaces, and only the families have the keys. I like this personalized approach...it seems like a better way to remember the dead for who the person was.

7. Potatoes: they are in EVERYTHING, followed by rice. It´s tasty, but not exactly a low starch diet. Also, when you order french fries, many restaurants will bring you a little dishes of mustard, ketchup, and this delicious white substance that I decided was my favorite. After consuming a shit ton of it on my fries, I realized this tasty Peruvian delicacy was mayonaise.

8. Weather: the day is hot, but the nights and mornings are FREEZING. I wear my long underwear to school, take it off once my lessons are done for the hot walk home, eat lunch, go back into town, and by the time I´m ready to go home for dinner, they are on again. I never know what to wear. I brought too many pairs of shorts (by that, I mean I brought two).

9. Trash: it´s everywhere. The streets are dusty, and trash lives in this dust. Sometimes the trash is shoved into cracks in the walls. There is a huge pile of it at the bottom of my street that the dogs sniff through every day. Once again, I guess if your people are starving, trash disposal is not on the top of your priority list.

10. Tea: most people here drink coca tea, tea made from coca leaves, the same leaves from which cocaine is derived. The tea, however, is very...unconcentrated as far as cocaine goes. Most people here drink it to help relieve altitude sickness, which is common at 11,000 ft.

11. Streets: most are made of cobblestones, not asphalt. Also, many are very narrow with miniscule sidewalks, so walking down one with a car driving up two inches away from you can be slightly disconcerting.

12. Schools: all the kids here wear uniforms and ride the crazyass combis to school.

That´s about all I can think of for right now, but I´m sure there will be more. ¡Hasta luego!]]> Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=130022 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Machu Picchu!!!Okay, so when I left off yesterday, Amy, Katie and I had just arrived at the gates of Machu Picchu. These gates are actually fairly depressing...someone paid someone else a shit ton of money to build the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, this terrible, large building right at the gates of Machu Picchu. The disturbingly rich can stay in this hotel for $1,000 (US) per night so that they can get dressed in their finest Gucci hiking gear and take the ten strenuous steps into Machu Picchu. Then there are bathrooms (for which you pay a sol for toilet paper), a snack stand (where a bottle of water costs 8 soles and a sandwich costs 25), and a few gates that the tourists are channeled through (you get stamps...Dawn, I got a PERU stamp!!!). Once you´re on the other side, you go around a corner and suddenly you are surrounded by ten foot Incan walls. You wind through a narrow passage and then the stone walls give way to an open hillside of terraces. Each terrace consists of a 7 foot stretch of grass that drops into a 3 foot stone wall, and together they cascade (well, as well as anything rectangular can cascade) down the hillside. According to the Peruvian guide we hired outside the gate, these terraces served as agricultural planters/bathrooms...when the Incans had to go they would go out to the terraces and fertilize them...interesting the things we remember about tours, eh? Anyhoo, behind these terraces stood stone walls, buildings, and stairways of various shapes and sizes, interspersed with green lawns and an occasional llama. We wandered to the Temple of the Sun, a cylindrical tower with an altar inside...I´m not exactly sure what purpose it served because our guide had a really thick accent, and after asking her to repeat herself 3 times, I finally felt bad and gave up, haha. I did hear though that the temples were made out of special stones called Inca Imperial Stones...each one was a perfect rectangle and they were reserved especially for the temples...all the other stones were kind of bumpy and...well, stone-like. It´s amazing though how the Incas were able to sculpt/move soooo much stone with very limited resources...I´m a dork and i get excited about things like that. :)

Sooo, other points of interest at which I could understand our guide...one was the living quarters where important guests got to stay...these were the only quarters in the city with bathrooms because the Incas thought it was impolite to make their important guests hike out to the terraces and shit out in the crops, haha. Anyway, these bathrooms consisted of a room with a hole in the floor that connected to the city´s system of water channels...hopefully not to the drinking water. This system of water channels was actually pretty advanced...I guess the Incas had two water systems, one that went through the city and one secret well underground that the Incas could drink from if they ever suspected that an enemy had poisoned their water supply. Cool, huh?

Other things that are noteworthy...the Temple of the Condor was really cool. This was a building in which a flat slab of stone in the ground represented a condor (it didn´t look like a condor to me, but I´m willing to give the Incas the benefit of the doubt since they were mighty and brilliant and whatnot). This is where the Incas brought their dead to mumify them/sacrifice llamas. Once a llama had been sacrificed, the spirit of the condor would carry the spirits of the deceased up into the sky. Then the mummies were places into rectangular crevaces in the wall until the Incas could bring them up into the hills to be properly buried. Once again, cool, huh? We also saw these circular reflecting pools that the Incas used to study the stars...apparently it was sacriligious for them to look directly at the stars, so they studied the stars through their reflections in these pools. We also went to the Temple of the Moon, the rock quarry from which the Incas got all of their rocks to build with, and a giant sundial the Incas used to study the sun. It was cool to hear about all these places, but mostly it just felt kind of magical to wander through the ruins and stare out at the mountains surrounding them and think about the people who used to live there and what their lives were like and what they would think if they knew this city they had worked so hard to build was now one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world and 2,500 people come to see what was normal to them every day. I wonder if our cities will ever be cherished and studied and picked apart the way Machu Picchu is today.

Sooooo, now that I´ve gone on a philosophical rant, once again I must stop for the day. Even more (I know, right?) to come.]]> Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=129619 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Doesn´t even need a title.There is not enough time in the world to do amazing things and then write about it. And even if you do have time, the writing won´t do it justice.

Having said that, I did something AMAZING this Saturday! After lusting over the idea for a very long time, Amy and I finally saw Machu Picchu! We weren´t planning on doing it this weekend originally...Amy´s mom is coming at the end of our time here and we wanted to go with her. But then a girl from Fairplay, Katie, asked us if we would like to go with her coz she didn´t want to go by herself. She is nice/seemed a bit lonely/it was her last weekend here/she provided us an opportunity to indulge in our lust so we said "Sure!" This was Thursday and we decided the best time to leave for our trip would be the next day.

Funnily enough (but not surprisingly), it takes a bit of planning to go to Machu Picchu. Whoops. But in proper Whirlwind-Kirsten fashion, Katie, Amy, and I were able to pull everything together at the last minute. We bought online train tickets from Ollantaytombo to Aguas Calientes, the town one must go to in order to catch a bus to Machu Picchu, on Friday morning during our Gramatica classes (ooops but Mariluz didn´t seem to mind). Then during Practica class, Amy and I got Carmen and Eliana (our respective profesoras who teach us how to do useful, practical things in Spanish) to show us where to find the bus terminal so we could catch a bus to Ollantaytombo that afternoon...apparently you can grab a combi to Ollantaytombo for only 5 soles...the only problem is that you have to survive a two hour bus ride on a combi. Once we knew where the terminal was, we met Katie at the school, raced home in a cab (well kinda...there was a parade blocking traffic...there´s always a fucking parade, haha), inhaled a quick lunch, threw our things into our backpacks (for some reason both Amy and Katie managed to put everything in their small bags while I needed my entire huge backpacker´s bag...I am a pathologically heavy traveler, even for weekend trips) and took another cab to the bus terminal. From there we caught more of a taxi/minivan than a combi (thank god...it had seatbelts!) and spent the next couple hours winding through the hills surrounding Cusco, which was beautiful...the Andes/the more rural towns we passed through all seemed very refreshing after a week in dirty Cusco. Around 4 we reached Ollantaytombo, a small Andean town with a set of ruins itself. There we went to the Heart Cafe, an awesome little cafe in the Plaza that was founded by a British woman who was appalled by the poor living conditions those living in rural Andean towns had to face. She started the cafe to raise money for more nutritious food, water purification systems, birth control, antibiotics, and a shelter for battered women and children. Check it out at www.livingheartperu.org. Anyhoo, Amy got to have a salad there, which was her first salad in a week...here is Peru most people subsist off of rice, potatoes and other starches and Amy´s salad had lettuce, beets, carrots, avacado, tomato, onions, scallions, and potatoes, all washed in disinfected water...I swear, the girl almost had an orgasm. :P

Anyhoo, back to our journey...after our dinner, we walked to the train station in Ollantaytombo. Usually at this point, tourists get onto a train. Unfortunately, part of the train tracks washed out in a flood earlier this year so part of our journey had to be undertaken via bus on the dirt backroads of several Andean mountain towns...we drove through so much brush that I felt like I was on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, haha. It was cool, albeit slightly nauseating. I was glad when we finally got onto the train. There I had a Spanglish conversation with a man from Spain...he told me my Spanish was excellent for only knowing Spanish for a week. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks Mariluz and Eliana!

After another hour and a half, Katie, Amy, and I arrived at Aguas Calientes, a small touristy town that feels a lot like Disneyland (touristy and slightly contrived but without the magic feeling and rides) and even has the same disturbingly high prices for food. The three of us checked into a hostel and went out for food. I got ice cream and a Pisco sour, the national Peruvian mixed drink. It consists of Pisco (liquor from fermented grapes), two egg whites, cinnamon, and something else I can´t remember blended into foamy, alchoholic goodness. Amy got some nachos, which was basically warm chips with cold, shredded goat cheese on top...she was not amused. Apparently nachos are actually an American food, not Latin American. Then we went to bed around 12, knowing we would have to be up again in about 5 hours in order to beat the crowds. At about this time, construction work began roaring outside our window, haha.

At 4:30 am, our alarm went off. Amy, the champ that she is, went to buy bus tickets for the ride up the mountain to Machu Picchu while Katie and I moaned and groaned and tried to force ourselves out of bed. Upon arriving at the buses, we realized we had to also buy an entrance ticket for Machu Picchu and spent a bit of time wandering around trying to find where we could do that. After paying 126 soles each (which seems like a lot but actually only adds up to about 40 US dollars) we found the buses again, hopped on one, and stared in awe as the bus switchbacked up the mountain. The further up we went, the more we could see the mountains surrounding us...they were INCREDIBLE. I´ve been to the Sierra Nevada and the Rockie and even the Swiss Alps, but in my opinion, the Andes dwarfed them all. This is just a guess based on past geology field trips I have gone on with my father, but the Andes were so sheer, each mountain a sharp peak that only connected with the other mountains at the very base...I think that means they are fairly new mountains that have not had as much time to erode as other mountain ranges have. And Machu Picchu is right smack in the middle of all of them...it feels like a very tall island surrounded by a sea of air and clouds (the Incas called it the Cloud Forest) and off in the distance you can see other mountainous islands but between you and those islands there are steep 1,000 foot drops with rivers the size of your pinky finger snaking along the bottom...it´s BREATHTAKING and enough to make anyone with a fear of heights pee their pants.

Poo...as usual, I have to go again before I can finish...Fairplay´s Peruvian cooking class is about to start! :D I´ll finish my Machu Picchu story soon.]]> Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=129492 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
A combi...if you look close, you can see it´s stuffed with peopleSo, today is my fourth day of Spanish classes and so far immersion has been really tough. I struggled with the oral communication part of French in high school and tried to avoid talking as much as possible. Now with Spanish, I have no choice. Very few people here speak more than a smattering of English, and it is impossible to communicate with my host family, my teachers, or taxi drivers/waiters/venders/EVERYONE without Spanish. I thought my teachers would humor me and clarify words in English with me when I had no idea what they were saying...turns out they can´t do that because because they have no idea what I am saying. Therefore, one of us has to learn the other´s language and since I´m paying for Spanish lessons, they expect it to be me. Which is fine, except for when my brain gets tired. When my brain gets tired, I get cranky/less receptive/have a harder time continuing the conversation. And then my random neurons in my brain start firing and I want to speak French. I haven´t taken French in 6 years and I only took 3 years in high school, but somehow it stuck in my brain enough to come back and haunt me. If I had a sol for every time I almost said "beaucoup" instead of "mucho" I could pay for soooooo many cab rides.

Don´t get me wrong though, the classes are very helpful/fun most of the time. Monday morning, Amy and I woke up at 7, had breakfast, and were met by my grammer teacher, Mariluz (don´t know if I spelled that right), who picked us up at the homestay. She walked us into town and showed us how to catch a bus, or "combi." Or rather, she chattered at me in Spanish and I smiled a lot. Amy knows more Spanish than me so she was actually able to converse with Mariluz, whereas at that point, I knew a grand total of 5 words so I just nodded like a bobblehead and tried to convey that I was terrified of getting on the combi because I thought I would probably throw up. These combis are not real buses; they are Peruvian death traps. Each "bus" is actually an old giant van (like the kind Sierra College uses for their field trips) that has been gutted and had 3-4 short rows of seats put inside. If you are lucky enough to grab one of these seats, you can look out the window and observe the combi nearly running into everything within ten feet of it (I think there´s some law of magnitism at work here that is fairly inclusive...we´re talking about cars/people/other combis/dogs here...they care as much about pedestrians as Bush cares about the environment). Usually the combi gets within a foot of whatever it is about to hit so that you wince and latch on to something "sturdy" because you are certain that you will be hearing the sound of crunching metal in about half a second. And then that sickening sound never comes and you are so happy to be alive...until it all happens again 5 seconds later. This is if you´re fortunate enough to be sitting. If you are one of the unlucky 20 people standing (yes, 20 in one van, it´s packed tighter than the freaking New York subway) then you are clinging to a handrail bolted to the top of the van, swinging into the people surrounding you (if you´re lucky enough to have enough room to swing rather than nudge) and wondering why the hell there are so many car horns honking outside and why the driver stopped so suddenly. There is also the matter of the side sliding door which allows people to enter/exit and is monitored by a Peruvian man or woman yelling "Baja baja baja!" whenever the bus pulls up to a stop. This Peruvian then opens the door to let even more people in and often doesn´t shut it again until the van is in motion, meaning that if you have just gotten in to a crowded combi and have to stand near the door, you must be careful not to fall out of it. So, in short, this is why I was afraid of vomitting, as Amy kindly explained to Mariluz.

Anyhoo, somehow I managed not to throw up or die! Mariluz, Amy, and I arrived at the Fairplay school safe and sound and I had my first gramatica lesson. Unfortunately I don´t have enough time to write about it because I´m leaving for Machu Piccu today! I´ll be back Sunday, unless I have died from happiness.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=128709 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556
Fountain, Plaza de Armas, CuscoI feel like I´ve been here a couple weeks rather than five days, mostly because I´ve learned so much since I´ve gotten here. The first night after meeting my host family and eating dinner with the other students, Brittany invited Amy and I out to meet some of her friends at the Plaza de Armas (the center of the city, very pretty but also very touristy). Amy declined because she was exhausted (we don´t all turn into sleeping machines on planes, haha) but I decided to go. Brittany showed me how to catch a cab, including how to tell which ones are legit (they typically have lit advertisements on the top and radios inside) and which ones are random people just perusing around in cars...apparently many tourists fall for these fake taxis and end up getting robbed. :S Anyhoo, we made it to the Plaza just fine. The Plaza de Armas is this square in the middle of Cusco that is encompassed in shops, restaurants and bars, and a very old and impressive cathedral and church (Brittany says they´re different somehow). In the center is a fountain that changes colors at night and is surrounded by lawns and rainbow flags (apparently these represent the Inca empire, even though they look similar enough to gay pride flags to make my heart feel a bit happier). The Plaza is teeming with tourists...Brittany and I ran into two small groups of English-speaking people she knew while we were waiting for the friends she was supposed to meet...everyone ended up knowing each other, so we all decided to go out together. It seems like it could be a nice community to be a part of...everyone seems very open and friendly and has lots of interesting traveling experience/advice...if I end up taking any trips Amy can´t go on then I could totally find someone else to go with! The whole night reminded me of a night in Dunedin, which was very comforting and exciting. :) Brittany and I left the others a bit early though...she wanted cake rather than alcohol and I didn´t want to be drinking before I had adjusted to the altitude...Cusco is at 11,000 feet! Luckily I haven´t had any issues breathing, but many people say they feel like they´re constantly walking uphill and breathing hard even when they´re sitting down. Amy and I also had some minor headache/stomachache problems (I totally thought I had contracted some evil diarrhea-inducing pathogen haha) and general fatigue but no major issues...apparently extreme altitude sickness can be serious and even fatal. :S Anyhoo, Brittany and I went out to a little restaurant and ate cake...it was probably the sweetest cake I have ever had and probably gave me diabetes, haha. Then we went home and I got to sleep foreeeeeeeever...it was so nice. The next morning (or afternoon, rather), Amy and I walked to the Plaza and saw it during the daytime. We wandered through shops and marketplaces and were accosted by Peruvian salespeople wanting to "giving ladies good price." Somehow we refrained from buying anything and ended up back in the cake place...I thought Amy could use some sweets, haha. Then we walked home before dark, and I was very proud of myself for memorizing the route from my delirious taxi ride the night before. It´s a very interesting walk because you wander through nontouristy Cusco, which is completely different than touristy Cusco...the roads are surrounded by hole-in-the-wall streets and businesses made from an odd conglomeration of plaster, wood planks, and sheet metal...it makes me think about how lucky I am that I was raised in a house with a sturdy frame and a roof that doesn´t leak. Anyhoo, more on that later...I have to be going now. Bye!]]> Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=15153 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=128542 0 -13.5183333 -71.9780556