My Last Week in Cusco

I never actually told you about my last week in Cusco. Well that's kind of too bad because I don't remember a lot of it. I'll tell you about Halloween and my climbing day, though!

I think it was Halloween day that I finally went to the Chocolate Museum down the street from my hostel. That place was awesome! When you go inside you get a free cup of chocolate tea, which is tea made from the husks on cacao beans. It tasted like hot chocolate, but it was tea -- crazy! You could tour the museum for free - they had a bunch of informational signs all over the walls, a couple short movies to watch, and you could watch them making chocolate. I also signed up for the 2-hour workshop in which you make chocolate starting from the cacao beans! You start by roasting the beans, shelling them, and then you have to grind them into a paste. That was a little competition for the participants - the person who ground their beans into the most pasty consistency won a bag of the cacao husks for making chocolate tea. I totally won! After that the woman used our pastes to make different drinks for us to try, including Mexican hot chocolate. I think we skipped some steps because there should have been a tempering process in there, but it would've taken too long for us, so they gave us chocolate to use for making our own candies. We got molds to fill with chocolate and other things, like sprinkles, milk powder, chili powder, almonds, M&Ms, etc etc. They kept them in a fridge for us to pick up in an hour. Very yummy! So glad I went there - it was a great museum.

That evening I ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking the plaza, which was awesome because all of the local children gathered there in their costumes to meet up with friends, take pictures, and get candy. I went down after dinner and saw so many cute costumes! There were adults dressed like Disneyland characters with photographers around for families to take pictures with. There were also people selling candy (basically to the tourists) so they could give it away to the children. I bought a bag and was instantly mobbed by little children with their hands out yelling "HALLOWEEN! HALLOWEEN!" There were so many of them I was literally getting pushed over by the huge mob. When I finally ran out of candy, those around me gave me looks as if I had just killed their dog. One woman came up to me with her crying child in her arms, expecting me to get more candy for him. It was a very strange experience because I was doing something nice, but then people got mad when I couldn't be MORE nice. Oh well. A bit later I was just standing around taking pictures and whatnot and I swore I felt the guy next to me pull his hand out of my (fortunately empty) pocket. After that I moved everything to zippered pockets, but it was another 15 minutes before I even thought to check my backpack (which I had had with me from earlier in the day) -- one of my pockets was partially opened, and someone had taken my SteriPen (water purifier). DAMN! Fortunately it wasn't my mp3 player (which was right next to where my SteriPen was), passport, laptop, or any other vitally important thing, but it was still pretty frustrating. After that discovery I went back to my hostel.

That day 4 or 5 new girls showed up to stay in my room. I got to talking with one of them (Caroline) outside the room, and a bit later another one (Yvonne) joined us, and then we decided to go out for dinner and drinks. We went to the Irish Pub in the plaza and were invited to sit with this couple (limited seating), and we got on really well with them. We stayed a couple hours and then decided to head back (Yvonne needed to bring soup to her friend in the room who had altitude sickness). By that time there was a party in the hostel - live band and some dancing, but it cleared out pretty quickly after the rain picked up. So, despite my hiccup with the theft in the plaza, my night turned out to be pretty fun.

The next day I hung around the hostel in the morning and then went out walking and exploring with Yvonne. We went to the San Pedro Market, which is a huge market with food, textiles, and gambling. We ran into a guy from our hostel there, and he offered to buy us some fertility powder. What a sweet guy. Yvonne and I also ran into some boys who had a llama and some baby sheep, so we took pictures with them. (Yeah, anyone who tells you they have a baby alpaca is lying.) On our way back to the hostel we went to a panaderia and had some delicious butter croissants (which resulted in me going back daily until I left Cusco). We got Yvonne's sick friend (Ali) from the hostel and wandered around with her for a bit, and then later we all got massages at this really cheap (but decent) place near the plaza -- $10 for an hour massage! They never actually told us when the massage was over (they had left a couple times during it to get hot stones and whatnot, so when they left the last time we assumed they would be coming back, so we all started talking and saying how warm it was under the blankets, and that we weren't going to leave until they actually told us to get out. Turns out they HAD finished, and after 10 minutes one of the women came back, peeked in to see that we were all still lying there, and said "finite!!" Whatever -- we had fun!

The next day (11/2?) Yvonne and Ali had plans to go climbing and zip lining in the Sacred Valley, and they had invited me to join them. I agreed, and so we all got picked up at the hostel around 8am. It was an hour or hour and a half to get to the site, and the route we took was the reverse of the Sacred Valley tour I did with my dad, so I recognized a lot of places we drove by. When we got to the place (a parking lot with a giant metal storage bin that housed a toilet and little snack stand), they got us all (there were 2 vans... about 20 people) fitted with harnesses and explained procedures and whatnot.

Ali and I were under the impression that "climbing" meant "walking up the mountain on a nice clear trail". What it actually meant (which Yvonne thought was obvious when she said "climbing") was scaling the side of the mountain by climbing up metal rungs and clipping into a safety wire with carabiners. As soon as we saw this, Ali and I just looked at each other like "oh crap". We were debating joining the group that actually WAS just walking up a safe little trail, but then Ali decided to jump on it and try climbing first (which was super awesome of her). She got like 5 meters up and then froze, with Yvonne on the wall halfway below her. Yvonne climbed back down, and we decided we would all just go on the hike once the guide got Ali down. Little did we know, the guide went up there to coax her further... so we were going to climb the side of the mountain, apparently. The guide with Ali stayed with her pretty much the entire time. Yvonne and I decided to go last, thinking that the other guide would take up the rear. In the end, the second guide mainly bounced between Yvonne and another girl further up who kept getting stuck/nervous. I was dead last, which was nice in the sense that I took a bunch of pictures while waiting for everyone else to move, but it meant that I also had to wait for everyone else to move. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had no problem with the heights, including when we crossed over a suspension "bridge", which was essentially two cables to balance on and another to hold. After a few hours of climbing, we finally got to the zip lines. (There were four zip lines and one belaying section to get us back to ground level.) I've never been zip lining anywhere else, but the Sacred Valley seems like the most amazing place to zip line. It was absolutely fantastic! After the climbing adventure was over, we had an hour and a half ride back to Cusco, and then some of the climbers/guides went out for dinner. Later that night a couple of us met up again for salsa lessons (which may have been a mistake given how sore we were from climbing), but all in all that was a pretty amazing day!

I spent the next couple days wandering around Cusco, hanging out at my hostel, shopping, eating, and generally just relaxing. Tuesday (election day) was the day I left for Puerto Maldonado to start my 2-month jungle adventure! But I'll save that for the next post (which HOPEFULLY doesn't take as long to get to as this one did... sorry!).

Lake Titicaca

First off, I'm posting this using the Blogger app on my tablet, and it doesn't seem to like pictures, so this may be picture-less for a while. But I'll work on it.

I left off with that wonderful, first class day that we had with the nice hotel and the fantastic train ride, yes? Well here starts the problems of budget travel...

My dad got picked up to go to the airport around 10am on Sunday. Surprisingly, check-out of the hotel was at 9am, so we sat around in the lobby for a while, watching some parade going down the street. Turns out the entire plaza was filled with people dressed according to the group they were with, and everyone was marching around the plaza. I thought it was some kind of spectacular celebration, but the same thing happened this past Sunday, so maybe this is a weekly thing...

After watching the activity in the plaza for a little while, I wandered the couple blocks to my hostel, checked in, repacked my things for my trip to Lake Titicaca, and then spent a few hours at Starbucks, reading and watching the plaza. The Starbucks here is huge, as in there are 5 different rooms with a ton of tables, couches, etc, and windows all over the place to enjoy the different views. There is also a doorman who opens the door for you. At first I thought he was pretty cool, but it turns out he also walks around and makes sure things are tidy, which can get kind of annoying at 5-minute intervals for 3 hours when no one has even entered the room I'm in to make a mess. Oh well.

The next morning (Monday) I got up early to get a taxi to the airport for my 10:55am flight to Juliaca (near Lake Titicaca). The hostel was great about getting my taxi and storing my huge bag while I was gone for the week. So I get to the airport around... 8:45ish. The StarPeru line was relatively short, which was awesome, until I got to the counter. The guy asked if I was flying to Puerto Maldonado or Lima, and I said Juliaca. He looked at me with bug eyes (that's never a good sign) as I passed him the ticket I purchased from the StarPeru website in August. The only thing he said was "we don't fly to Juliaca". Umm... WHAT? I pointed at the ticket that I bought from the StarPeru website and showed where they charged my credit card, asking how I was charged for a flight that didn't exist. He got up to ask someone about it, came back a few minutes later, and said that no, they don't have flights to Juliaca. He suggested that I take a taxi to the StarPeru office in Cusco and ask for a refund, which I pointed out still wasn't going to get me to Juliaca. He said I could probably find a bus company in Cusco that would get me there in 5-6 hours (what bus company? where are they located? what is their reputation?). I asked if there were any other airlines that had flights to Juliaca that day, so he went around asking and found one through LAN at 4pm for $208. I left the counter and tried to think what to do. At that point I was really upset and annoyed, particularly because the ONLY reason I chose to fly to Juliaca was because it was far cheaper ($60) than the train ($210). I decided I should just buy the plane ticket because it would be easier/safer than a bus company I know nothing about. So now I was paying the same price to fly as it would have been for the train, but instead of enjoying 10 hours of beautiful scenery on the train and really nice food, I was suffering through 7 hours of sitting in the airport with crappy food, uncomfortable seats, and loud children.

I. Was. Furious.

Somehow I was slightly comforted by the fact that a woman in my row on the flight also bought a ticket through StarPeru first. We ended up sharing a "bus" (a very large van) to Puno, which is the city right by Lake Titicaca where all the hotels are. Fortunately my hotel was pretty nice - there was good wifi reception in the room (which isn't very common, even among good hotels), there was free tea, and a huge shower.

Tuesday morning I was supposed to be picked up from my hotel by a tour agency and transfered to the pier for a 2-day tour of Lake Titicaca. I had emailed the guy several days earlier asking what time I was getting picked up, but he never responded. The online trip notes said 8:00 - 8:30am, so I just went with that. At 8:30 I asked the hotel to call the number provided for problems with pick-ups (which turned out to just be an answering machine in Cusco). Then they called the emergency number, and fortunately the guy who answered quickly arranged for someone to come get me. Unfortunately, it was so late that my boat had already left, so I had to catch up to them on another boat. Fantastic. The really crappy part was that the first stop was the Uros Islands, which are the floating islands made of reeds, the main reason I paid for that tour in the first place. Everyone else got over an hour to explore the various islands, talk to the people living on them, learn about them, etc. and I barely got 10 minutes. Starting to dislike this whole budget travel thing... (I emailed the guy who arranged the tour, and he forwarded it to the complaint department, so hopefully something happens with that).

The rest of the day went quite well - it took us 3 hours to get to Amantani (?) Island, where we were divided up for our homestays. I ended up staying with 2 Brazilian women in probably one of the nicest houses - there was an actual toilet to use (flush by dumping a bucket of water in the toilet bowl) and even a light in our room! Another couple told me that had a bucket out back for a toilet and one candle in their room. All of the houses were made of mud bricks, but ours had something like a layer of plaster over the front of the house (to make it look nicer?). We were definitely living the high life.

Once we got to our house, our Mama (the mother of the house) cooked us lunch, which was quinoa soap, little potatoes, some kind of root, lettuce, tomato, fried cheese, and tea. It was actually quite good (especially the cheese, but I wasn't crazy about the root). Then we had a little siesta during which the other women napped and I read. Sometime in the afternoon we met up with the rest of the tourists and guide to climb to the top of the ... larger-than-hill-but-smaller-than-mountain ... to see the sunset. First of all, that was exhausting. We were over 12,000 feet of elevation, so walking up a flight of stairs is tiring, let alone climbing a mini-mountain. Needless to say it took quite a while. Second of all, the air there was incredibly dry. I was constantly finding blood in my nose, and we all woke up the next day with dry throats. It made the hike that much more difficult. It was at the top that I also realized that other people really suck at taking pictures. A number of people asked me to take their picture, and I'm not saying I'm a fantastic photographer, but I know how to keep my fingers out of a shot, not take pictures directly into the sun, and include actual scenery as a background rather than a rock wall. After looking at some of the pictures other people took of me, I think I might be better off taking facebook-style pictures of myself. Anyways, once the sun went down it got quite cold quite fast, so we wandered back down to the houses. For dinner our Mama made maize soup, rice, eggs, and tea. There was another guy who joined us for dinner (who I found out the next morning was the president of the community - each community has a president who is elected every 3 months. This guy was staying in one room in our house - I'm not sure if the president always stays at this house, or if it changes based on the president.). After dinner the father asked the president to help his son, William, with his math homework. It was basic geometry, areas and stuff. I was surprised because the president read the problem, and then said "oh, okay here's how you do it..." and then did the whole problem for the kid. He got stuck on a later problem, so he had to translate it to English for me so I could explain it to him, but rather than make sure William understood the concepts, he just wrote down the answers. Hopefully William learns it at some point...

After that our Mama provided us with traditional clothing to put on so we could go to the fiesta in the library! It was a little party that happens every night (apparently there are tourists most nights) - there was circle dancing (just like in Zuleta), but with hand-holding. There was a 3-person band and a little table to buy refreshments from. The president asked me to dance like 4 times (when was the last time YOU danced with a president?), and then we all wandered back to the house around 9:15 (in bed by 9:30... crazy). Unfortunately I only had one sheet and one thin little blanket, so I froze my ass off that night. It was really cold! I was also next to the window, which despite being closed probably let in a lot of cold air. Plus, when the Brazilian in the bed next to mine started snoring, I reached for my ear plugs... and dropped them under my bed where they rolled into the corner. I did not get much sleep that night.

The next morning we were up at 6:30am, ate breakfast (which was a simple pancake and tea), took pictures with the family, and then got on the boat at 7:30am to go to Taquille Island. The ride was only about an hour and a half, but the waters were incredibly rough. We were in a tiny little boat, and it was rocking from side to side so much that the water was just rolling onto the deck. Waves were crashing into the front of the boat so hard it sounded like a hammer. Our guide tried to be funny by pointing out where the life jackets were, but no one laughed (by this point most people had moved to the back of the boat, outside, and were being sick). Thankfully I applied what I learned in the Galapagos and just smooshed myself against the window and stared at the horizon like it might disappear any second... and I didn't get sick, yay!

Once on Taquille Island, we wandered on the beach for 10 minutes (enjoying land), and then started our hike across the island. Fortunately there wasn't much elevation gain, so it was a pretty easy hike, but it was at least an hour or more. At the other end of the island we stopped for lunch. Our choices were trout or an omelet, so I opted for the omelet. Overall there was quinoa soap, the omelet (which was HUGE), rice, and fries. I only ate half of mine (because it was huge, I didn't want a full stomach for another boat ride, and I was the last one to be served by about 20 minutes), and then we had another 20 minute walk to the boat and about 500 stairs to climb down. After that it was a 3-hour ride back to Puno (fortunately the waters were much more calm), and then we were transfered to our hotels.

Thursday I ended up staying at the hotel all day. I was really tired from traveling and Puno didn't look like the nicest city. In retrospect I should have gone out a little because staying inside made me forget to drink water, so I wasn't feeling great by the evening. Also, this seems silly now, but when there is one TV channel in English, it is infuriating when the episodes shown in the morning are repeated in the evening.

Friday I got up early to pack, eat a quick breakfast, and get a taxi to the train station at 7am. There is only one type of train that runs from Cusco to Puno - the Andean Explorer. This train was nearly as nice as the Hiram Bingham (tablecloths, roses, comfy seating, window curtains, etc). I had my own little seat and table by a window (solo traveler) - it was super cute. At the back there was even a lounge car with a bar and comfy chairs everywhere, and behind that was a car with an open back and windows all over. Lunch and afternoon tea were free, but breakfast and anything else cost money (needless to say there were not endless bottles of free wine - only one free glass of house wine at lunch). One unfortunate thing was that our car got incredibly warm. I mean, I find that I can't handle heat as well as other people, but there was another group of travelers that were just short of finding a crowbar to get their windows open. And the thing that killed me was that a server kept coming by asking if I wanted anything hot to drink... NO! I asked if she had anything at all that was cold. She suggested a soda with ice, and I happily risked digestive issues for some sweet relief. Soon after we stopped at a station for a few minutes and they let us wander around outside, so that definitely helped, too. (By the way, that station was 14,172 feet above sea level - highest elevation I've been at.)

OH! And food on this train: I ordered scrambled eggs for breakfast and they were delicious, then I got a yellow potato with mushrooms in some kind of chili sauce, followed by sirloin beef and quinoa with ... something with traditional Andean flavors. For dessert there was some kind of 3-layer ... thing (I should really be a food critic). It was fancy, but I wasn't a huge fan of it. For afternoon tea we had finger sandwiches (I think one had some kind of egg salad, and I know the other had at least a tomato), a little skewer of fruit, and two little chocolates filled with stuff. Yum! By the way, the trip was absolutely beautiful. There were also creatures pretty much throughout the entire trip (cows, sheep, llamas, donkeys, etc.). At one point we passed what must have been a llama/alpaca farm - there were hundreds of them! It was like that scene from Return of the King (used by all those Energizer commercials or whatever) where all of the horses are gathered together and Aragorn is making some kind of inspirational speech... yeah, it was that but with llamas and alpacas.

So that was pretty much the end of any planned travels. Saturday and Sunday I basically ate breakfast at my hostel, read in the plazas, sat at Starbucks for a few hours sending emails, doing blog stuff, and applying for more jobs, and tried food at various places. Turns out my hostel has pretty good food for super cheap - twice I've gotten a plate of spaghetti with mushrooms, red peppers, and onions, cooked in wine, and topped with cheese... for $4. Might have to stick to eating at my hostel. Monday I went to an Irish Pub (the highest one in the world). They had DELICIOUS chicken quesadillas with bacon, guacamole, and other stuff, and didn't question me at all when I ordered a beer at 11am (had no idea it was still that early). After that I walked to the StarPeru office for my refund. They told me to come back later because the guy who deals with money wasn't in. So I sat at Starbucks for a couple hours (breakfast beer and afternoon coffee...) and went back at 5pm. The guy didn't speak English, but he had already been told I needed a refund, so it was pretty straightforward. However, he gave me my refund in US dollars (that's what I paid in initially). I asked for it in soles, and he said no. StarPeru inconvenienced me with 7 hours waiting in an airport (essentially a lost day of travel) and 2 separate trips to their office, and he couldn't give me soles?!? If he had spoken English I would have argued and not left until I got soles, but it wasn't worth it to try and do it in Spanish. Now I have $63 which I am refusing to pay to change into soles.

Speaking of money issues, I've learned that ATMs here are really stupid. Since I'm not using Chase ATMs I get charged a flat fee for every withdrawal, so it makes sense to take out as much as possible only a couple of times rather than many small withdrawals, yes? Well the ATMs give you the largest bills possible, whereas US ATMs don't give you anything larger than a $20. So I end up with 100s and 50s, which no one wants because they don't want to give up all their change.

I have three more days here in Cusco until I fly to Puerto Maldonado, spend a night, and then take an 8-hour boat ride up the river to the Tambopata Research Center. Can't believe it's so soon! I'll hopefully get another post in before then to finish up my time in Cusco. I haven't gotten to Halloween or climbing a mountain!