Happy New Year!

iNo, I´m not crazy. It was the first day of winter here and to the Quechua and Amyara (probably spelled that wrong) people, a new year. I was in Tinhuanacu for the famous winter solctice celebration there. And my verdict is: no vale la pena (not worth it).

The trip almost didn´t happen for us. We wanted to leave for La Paz (a 7 hour bus ride) at about 6, but the person who went to buy the tickets found out there was supposed to be a road blockade so there werent any buses leaving between 4:30 and 9:30, so we had tickets for the 4:30 bus. And at 4:25 we were sitting in traffic in a cab for a 4:30 bus. I was annoyed because my sister, and the other girls in the house, had been taking there sweet time getting ready to live the sister´s store. I know its Bolivia and things never go on time, but I thought that maybe we could have left a little sooner than about 4:20. And then each block took a few minutes to cross (have I mentioned how here, red lights are treated as stop signs, not red lights like in the US? People just go right on through if there´s no car coming from the other street). Part of the problem was just afternoon traffic, but it was also because there was a march taking up the whole street. People here seem to march a lot, like the road blockade. According to my sister, its usually ingiginous people, because they´re the ones living along the highway, and their protests aren´t really helpful in getting anything done (although Bolivia does have an idiginous president, the first in South America). Anyway, we were meeting people at the station who had already bought tickets for us. One is German, so I figured he´d be even more worried about the fact that we werent there than I was. But I asked my sister if he worked on German time or Bolivia time, and she said he was more Bolivian than she was! But at 4:25 he and his girlfriend were calling to ask where we were! Finally we got out a half block from the bus station and ran...and of course the bus wasn´t even loading yet, although it was past 4:30. We finally left at 4:47. The ride was pretty uneventful - only one time did the bus pull off the road and turn the motor off, which had us all worried and had other passengers yelling ¨lets go!¨´Fortunately maybe my bad bus karma is over, because after only a minute or two with the motor off, we got going again. And I only saw 2 cockroaches - my sister had taken the line to La Paz another time and there was a ¨rainfall of cockroaches!¨along with a breakdown, and waited 3 hours for the next bus. One of my favorite parts was seeing a "dont throw trash on the road" sign and maybe 20 meters later all kinds of trash on the road - it literally looked like someone had taken their kitchen wastebasket and dumped on the ground. After our food stop, they put on a horrible movie. My host sister knew what it was "Freddy versus Jason." Just as I was maybe starting to fall asleep, we arrived in La Paz. At midnight.

There was 10 of us, and my sister knew of a hostel downhill of the bus station, and someone else knew of one uphill...we stood on the side of the street debating what to do for about 10 minutes while about 15 taxis (ok, 5) stopped on the street waiting for us - a baunch of people with backpacks at midnight is usually a jackpot. But we decided to split up and all walk. The first two places we went didn´t have space, and I was a little perturbed at the absuridty of walking around La Paz at midnight looking for space for 10 people. But the next place, Inn of the Witches (right near the witch´s market, where they sell, among other things, llama fetuses for people to sacrifice when they open a new business). We just put our stuff down since we wanted to go right to the Solstice Festival. It turned out that the inn (I use the word losely, if you´re thinking hearty breakfasts in the morning, claw foot tubs and florar walls, you´re dead wrong. This is Bolivia and it costs $3 a night a person for a room with its own bath, cable TV and 4 beds) was right next to the Hard Rock Cafe. They actually have one in La Paz! As we waited outside for the rest of our group, about 10 Israelis left. Of course. Its getting to the point where whenever I see people with darker skin who aren´t speaking Spanish, I assume they´re Israeli. The inn is also around the corner from what I have dubbed "The Israelito (I think the Spanish word for Israeli, but I didn´t pay much attention to the lesson that day) street." The signs at practically every store from internet to hair salons to a dry cleaners have Hebrew.

At about 2 am we all got into a trufi to take us about an hour to Tihuanaco. To make a long story short, we got there at 3, the gates opened at 5, and we spent the time in between either in a restaurant, walking down the street with sleeping bags wrapped around us, or on the line to get in. When the gates didn´t open at 5, people were yelling for them to open, and when they finally did there was extensive pushing. I think Americans are often considered to live in a rude culture, but I just dont think that would have happened - people understand that it takes time to check tickets and let people in. Once inside (it was still completely dark) we sat in a place to overlook the temple, where some torches were burning. My sister and I huddled together under a sleeping bag, and I just wanted to be sleeping! I think if I´d had my own sleeping bag, I would have lain down on the ground and tried...although the point of being there was to watch the sun rise. At around 7 am people down in the temple (which is completely open air) started talking on a microphone, but I wasn´t that interested in what they said. From about 6 it started getting progessively lighter behind the mountains, at some point the sun finally peaked out and everyone turned towards it and held their hands out towards the rays. When it had risen completely above the line of the mountain, everyone clapped, it got slightly warmer, and it was pretty much over. The other American girls said "it was so worth it when the sun finally came out and warmed us up" but I wasn´t that impressed. It happens every day without fail. Today it just happened later than it does any other day. After walking around the site a little bit and watching some traditional dancing and music, we were ready to go. some of us, at least. Traveling in a group of 10 people kind of sucks. Especially when you´re from New York and don´t have too much patience.

We took a cab back and I sat in the front, and was slightly worried that we werent going to make it back to La Paz because we stopped twice for gas without getting it. Then to console myself I told myself that maybe he was just trying to fill up outside the city because gas is cheaper than in La Paz. That was the Lee in me talking, but I needed some way to assure myself that we weren´t going to b sitting on the side of the road for an indefinite amount of time. When we passed another gas station without stopping, I assured myself that we weren´t in dire need of gas, and finally we did get some, although we weren´t stopped long enough for the tank to have been filled.

Coming in and out of La Paz you need to go through El Alto, a growing city with mostly indiginous people from the country coming to the city to find work. It is essentially filled with red brick 1960s communist apartment buildings. Not exactly charming. An interesting thing about La Paz is that even though its so high (something like 4000 meters - that´s meters, not feet), it is actually situated at the BOTTOM of a canyon, so Al Alto (where the airport is) is even higher.

After getting back to the city, we headed out for some food and to check out artesenal shops (like knit alpaca stuff). We ended up eating in a delicious Cuban place, and had a discussion about the inability of Americans to travel to Cuba, ways around it, and the punishment if caught (I´d heard a story of a $10,000 fine per person). Then I walked around the city, which has some part thats are nice, like one plaza, and others that are not at all attractive, like another huge plaza that has a market right next to it. I actually find La Paz a lot more appealing than I thought I would, but its probably because right near the hostel are tons of restraurants of all kinds of food and super cheap.

Plans for tomorrow TBD. Saturday morning my plane leaves for the jungle, although planes to this destination are notorious for not taking off on time or at all during the rainy season (Which this isnt).

And, we´re back

If any of you have been using Gmail and gotten disconnected from the internet, you might have noticed google chat on the left hand side saying that the internet connection had been lost. And then when it is restored, it says: "And...we´re back." That is sort of how I feel sometimes here. Things are frustrating, at least the not understanding Spanish part of life, and then things get better and there´s nowhere I´d rather be.

I was annoyed with myself on Saturday morning because I hadn´t gone to an animal refuge that I should have just planned to go to, instead of hoping that tentative plans to go to nearby thermal swimming pools, which didn´t interest me much any way, would pan out (they didn´t). But after a huge lunch, I was hanging out with the family, reading a book, and was happy. At night one sister, Rommy, and I went out to meet up with some of her friends (Bolivian and German) who are goingto La Paz with us tomorrow for a winter solstice festival in a place with ruins, I can never remember the name. Because the world, or at least Cochabamba, is small, the Peace Corps guy who I met the week before was at the cafe we went to, along with in the end about 10 other Peace Corps people. It was nice to speak English for a little while guilt-free, but then I returned to Rommy and her friends. We went to this circus-like party, but decided not to go inside because it was so crowded, and returned to a bar across the street from the cafe. We spoke Spanish all night and I guess because I was either with Spanish-as-a-second language (or in the case of the Germans, probably fourth) speakers, or Bolivians used to being with foreigners, I actually understood most of what people said.

Sunday, being a weekend day, meant of course: fiestas! There were 2 birthday parties in the family, and the sisters and I headed to the house of the mother´s sister first, for her birthday. We had to take 2 trufis to get there. The house itself was huge but looked like what most Americans would consider unfinished...no balconies on some of the porches, concrete floors, broken windows. I think that is what makes Bolivia very different from a developed country. The aunt has been divorced from her husband for 4 or 5 years but he still lives there because neither wanted to sell the house. So he, the daugher and the exwife all have their own floor, but I don´t think there´s more than one kitchen or bathroom so its not like a department building. After eating my millionth soup in Bolivia, the sisters and I hung out in the cousin´s room (shes about our age). She is the equivalent of an Avon or Mary Kaye lady in Bolivia, so we had fun smelling different trial sized vials of perfume that she had. I felt like I understood a little more of the conversation than I have been. Then we left the party, returned home and picked up the father to go to his niece´s birthday party.

That party was at the home/restuarant of the father´s sister and her daughter, who is married with kids. We ate fish, played a popular dice game that is very similar to Yatzee, and then ate another meal, or a rice with cheese that isn´t as good as you might think, some kind of dry-ish root vegetable, and chicken. Even for me it was too much food in one day (the sisters and I ate a big breakfast with french toast and eggs). We also drank chicha, a fermented maize drink that used to be made with saliva and I hope isn´t any more, and I drank some kind of an alcohol made from grapes but it isnt exactly wine. The sisters and I left around 7, before the dancing. Waiting outside for the taxis, I noticed a dummy hanging on the electricity pole. On it was written: "Neighbors, help us hang all theives." The sisters asked the aunt who had put it up, and she replied without any shame, "Me!" She said there were five overall. I think the sisters thought it was as strange as I did...

This week I´m two-timing when it comes to teachers. Monday and today I had classes with 2 different teachers in two different places...a little tiring getting from one to another! I just have one teacher tomorrow and will probably continue with him when I get back. He´s got a whole system going and there´s lots of drills. I´m back to being frustrated with things...11 weeks of classes and I still have tons of trouble deciding between the two verbs for "to be." Why do there have to be two verbs for to be???

Yesterday morning my first class was at 8 am, and its a 45 minute walk to the profesor´s house. But I couldn´t take a taxi or trufi because I only had a 50 bolivano bill. Thats only about 6 dollars, but with costs in Bolivia what they are, its the equivalent of having a 50 dollar bill in the states and wanting to takea $1.50 bus ride (trufis cost B1.50). So I walked all the way there, and then to my next class with only a half hour in between. It felt great to go to the bank and get some cambio....I felt richer than I´d been in the morning, even though I had exactly the same amount of money. Ah, the ceaseless fight in South America for cambio (change).

In the afternoon my sister and I went to a women´s weaving cooperative in a little town 50 minutes from Cochabamba. They use alpaca, which is warmer than wool. Rommy´s boyfriend knows of a store in Maine that wants to sell their goods, but Rommy wants more modern sweaters, not the traditional thick ones with kind of ugly designs. The stuff the women showed us was more for 60 year olds than 20 year olds, and we´re both not sure they can do what Rommy wants (really thin alpaca "wool" is really expensive). For me the visit was interesting because there´s a Peace Corp volunteer working with the women, so I got to see a tiny bit of what its like to be a PCV. And Maggie, I take my hat off to you for having done it. Yes, her rent is 100 bolivianos a month (about 13 dollars) but I just don´t think I could live in a really small place for two years. She said she´s there until November 08. I know I won´t be graduating from law school until long after that, but its one thing to be in NY and studying for 3 years. And another to live in a place with 50 other people for 2 years. And she´s lucky to be only 50 minutes from a "big" city - some volunteers are much further.

Tomorrow to La Paz and then probably a few days in the jungle after that, which should make for much more interesting pictures than I have right now.

To market to market

I bet you wouldn´t think that people traveling on public transportation to a town with a market 4 hours from where they live would buy large things like washing machines, TVs or 9 different comforters. But you´re wrong. In Bolivia they do. The day didn´t start off so great as I was tired. Not only was it 4:20 in the morning, but I hadn´t gotten home until 1:30 or so...I called a Peace Corps volunteer a teacher had given me the number for, and went to his house to watch a movie. There was another PC vol there. At first I wasn´t sure about them...they were very California, but in the end they were super nice. Then we went to a place called High Class Bar that was decidedly not high class, where 3 other volunteers came too. It was fun to be social. The next day my mother told me she was delighted I had gone out - why does everyone in South america seem more concerned with my social life than I am?

I tried to sleep on the 4 hour bus ride but wasn´t sucessful. We got to the town around 9 am and took a trufi - a minivan that serves as a bus - to the market. As for the market imagine a town with maybe 4 streets, 6 blocks long each, that are essentially the contents of a Wal-Mart outside the store. It wasn´t touristy, which was nice, but there wasn´t much I personally had interest in buying. My sister bought backpacks, tents, hiking boots and sleeping bags for her camping/travel store. The mom and the neighbor bought about 10 sets of sheets for either family members or "customers" plus the aforementioned comforters. I did a lot of standing around waiting for them. We ate some typical dish of the city that I think included mutton and various things I have no idea what they are...there were these black things in the dish I thought might be dried llama meat, and I only ate one, but it turns out they may have been potatoe. I really couldnt identify the susbstance from the flavor. The daughter and I then went to the main square while the parents did I dont know what, and then got lost in a trufi that was supposed to go to the terminal but didnt. When we did get to the terminal, loading up the bus was madness because so many people had bought huge boxes worth of stuff and seemed desperate to load it underneath the bus ASAP. Then when we got to the bus station in Cochabamba, outside it was madness as well, trying to get a taxi. FYI apparently in Bolivia a red light doesn´t mean that you don´t go through the intersection...its really treated like a stop sign in the US.

When we got to the house 2 American college girls, friends of the daughter´s boyfriend, were there to stay for a few days while they looked for an apartment while they volunteer for 2 months. Now they´re going to stay the whole time, which I´m not excited about and it might mean I leave earlier than I would otherwise...we´ll see. They each spent a semester in Chile and are pretty fluent in Spanish, maybe I´m just annoyed because I hate every American that speaks better Spanish than I do. Saturday night I was happy to get to sleep and sleep without an alarm on Sunday morning.

Sunday was the birthday of the father. And apparently even though it isn´t a popular dish in Bolivia, he really likes cuy (guinea pig). It was even worse this time, not roasted on a spit but sort of boiled...the meat was ok but I wasn´t going to go near the slimy skin. You know something is extremely odd when I don´t enjoy eating a food, especially meat. There was also the possible potatoes from the previous day´s dish with the cuy, but at that point I was still thinking it was dried llama meat, and I really couldn´t eat them.

I´m getting tired of feeling awkward so until about 8 at night, when the party/dinner finally started, I sat in my room reading. After the dinner, which included something called oca, a sweet-ish root that I thought was delicious, there was dancing. I get a little bored of constant dancing and was happy whenever I felt like I could take a seat. At this point, attending a party in South America is no big whoop so I have no more to say about it. Except that the surprise for the father was a marachi band - I guess he really likes them.

Two months of magical discomfort

I have gotten past the whole I-don´t-understand-what-is-going-on/have-no-idea-what-to-do part of being in a country where I don´t understand the language, but that doesn´t mean I enjoy it. At the same time, I can´t imagine going to a foreign country to learn the language and not living with a family (except in the very beginning, as I didn´t really enjoy that first week with a family in Guatemala). Not only does living with a family force me to listen to people speaking in Spanish, but I have seen things I never - and even the most outgoing backpacker - would see. Yesterday was a national holiday for a Catholic holiday, Corpus Christi. First I went with my host sisters to the market because they wanted to buy some pirate DVDs. They had pretty much every TV series you´d actually want to watch on DVD for 10 bolivianos - about $1.25 each. Plus tons of movies. Then we took a trufi...a minvan with about 4 rows, that costs $.15, to their aunt´s house outside of the city. And while I´ve been thinking that once again the culture of Bolivia isn´t that different from home (last night my sisters and I used the internet, watched The Holiday and the season finale of Gilmore Girls), visiting this house was more of a different experience. We got off on the highway from Cochabamba and walked about 7 minutes up a dirt road, and it definitely felt worlds away from a city. There were lots of overgrown bushes and weeds and about 5 dogs, chicken´s running around and stealing meat from bowls of soap left on the floor, and some goats in the back. One of the cousins had a bow with a big chicken foot in it, and she was taking the foot, sucking off toes and then spitting out some kind of bone---or was it the toenail? I am a pretty open eater but I´m not sure if I could have eaten my soap if it had had a chicken foot in it. somehow the first is entirely different than the leg, which I happily eat. Maybe its because of the skin...There were also peanuts, oranges and grapes, but I was scared to eat the grapes because they´d been washed in an outdoor faucet and I didn´t trust the water. The family said they eat fruit on Corpus Christi (something to do with the body of Jesus) because fruit is clean, but a teacher at the school had not heard that.

At one point, they might have been talking about me and the fact that I didn´t understand (although I did understand "its probably better") but they might have been talking about my sisters not understanding Quechua, a native language their cousins and aunts speak. Yes, I understand so little that I´m not even sure if people were talking in Spanish or Quechua. This is going to be an uphill battle...

I didn´t even go in the house, because we ate on a patio and I´m not sure there was much inside. I tried chicha, this fermented maize drink that is popular in Cochabamba - some is alcoholic, some not. Then after eating, people started to work in the garden - we´re talking hoes, machetes...and that was when the standing around commenced. I would have happily taken a broom and swept, but there didn´t seem to be any more and no one asked me, and I didn´t feel like challenging myself by asking in Spanish, although it wouldn´t have been that hard. Granted, if I was with a friend´s family that I had just met and they all spoke English, and they all started doing farm work it would be awkward too, but it was just more so because I was in Bolivia and can´t communicate well, etc. There´s nothing I can do in the moments when I´m with a lot of people, I can concentrate as hard as possible and still wouldn´t understand, so I don´t mind it that much (its just not worth being too sensitive about it)...but there´s a reason I had so much fun last week when I was traveling, beyond the people I met.

Speaking of meeting people, I had emailed the Israeli guys I stayed in the hostel with onSunday night, and didn´t hear back from them - I also left them a note with my phone number. So I figured they just didn´t like me. But then on Wednesday I ran into them on the street (the downtown, touristed part of Cochabamba isnt that big). One of the emails had bounced back and apparently the other guy´s email wasn´t working at all. We arranged to meet for dinner at this fancy restaurant they´d found. But when I got home I didn´t have a chance to tell my mom I was going to meet them for dinner, and she was already making a plate for me. So I ate a dinner at about 6. It was ok since they didn´t want to go to the restaurant until 9:45. It is one of the fanciest places in town - waiters who pull your chair out for you, wearing bowties etc. And a steak plus 2 side dishes costs...$4. The guys were very cute about it, saying they´d never been to a place that fancy and they wished they had their cameras, more for pictures of the waiters than anything else! And they were so happy with the food as well, smiling broadly. It was quite endearing. I would have been happier with more unusual Bolivian food, but it was a nice night and since I didnt have school the next day I didn´t mind being awake past my bedtime! They´ve moved on to Santa Cruz, the biggest city in Bolivia (were you thinking it was La Paz?) but maybe they´ll come back through Cochabamba.

On Wednesday there was a little party at school during the break, and I had my first salteña and really liked it- They are sort of a big empeñada filled with meat, a quail´s egg (which I had for the first time in Lima with Fernando at a chinese restaurant), olive, maybe potatoes and raisons, and some juice (not fruit juice, like the broth from a beef stew). It was a little bit sweet and I loved it. Apparently they only eat them in the morning but I would be happy eating them at any time of day!

I love the family here - they really want me to feel comfortable, take food when I want it, etc, and I take my book and go to the living room to read unlike in Guatemala or Ecuador (and read for about 5 minutes before I turn on the TV - they have cable too!). Having two daughters my age who are willing to talk to me, unlike the family in Ecuador, helps. But I´m not that happy with the school. I just had a sort of miserable week of classes although it might not be the teachers´s (I had 2) faults as much as mine for not having studied enough what I´ve already learned. But there´s also about 2 other students here and no afternoon activities...so I´m not going to take classes here next week. I´ve emailed some private tutors since I´m not missing any social experience by not being at the school, and am going to try a teacher at the German-Bolivian cultural center on Tuesday. There´s a school that is more "conventional" with more students, but its a 15 minute trufi ride outside of town and that´s annoying. What I really need to do is memorize the rules so that I can apply them. I am staying with the family for the week though, and because of them don´t want to leave for Sucre, another town in Bolivia that is supposed to be really nice and has some schools. We´ll see.

Tomorrow I´m going with the family to a city 4 hours away that has a market. One daughter has an outdoors store and wants to buy some backpacks imported from Chile that don´t reach Cochabamba. We leave at 5 am...yikes!

The end of the road

So after about 2 months of thinking about it and researching the internet about traveling here, I am finally in Bolivia. And I´m not sure what I think. I really like the family here - they have two daughters about my age, and all seem very warm. And two of my friends from Cuzco both spoke Spanish really well (granted they had been living in South America for 9 months each), inspiring me to study hard once I got to Peru so I could be as comfortable speaking the language as they were ( a little bit of competitiveness: If they can do it, so can I!). So sometimes, I´m counting backwards the days I need to travel back from Bolivia to Quito in time to make my flight, maximizing my time here. While the school barely has any students and doesnt have activities the way my other schools do, there is a little more of an ex-pat community here so if I take some initiative I can find people to hang out with, and there´s places I could talk to about volunteering. And I just like the idea of living with a family for almost 2 months, because while there´ll be other chances in my life to travel in Bolivia, Ecuador etc (maybe with one of more of you?) I won´t have the time again to live with a family and experience "immersion."

But I am not really enjoying being in classes this week. I have two teachers, each for an hour and a half a day, and while I think one is good, I´m not sure I like her. The other one I like. I think part of it is that its hard to go from a week for vacation, mostly speaking English, being social, and speaking Spanish when I felt like it, to being in classes and studying subjunctive, which is really hard to begin with, requires a lot of memorization and feels like it won´t be mastered no matter how hard I try. And if I´m not going to be really good in two months, maybe I might as well leave it now. We´ll see.

The bus from Cuzco to La Paz was relatively painless, except that I found it rather freezing during the night (I had read this was the case). I lost my hat at some point the night before so wrapped my scarf around my head. I also had an inflatable neck pillow from Israir (that and the slippers were the only good thing about that flight), along with an eye mask, so was pretty much in my old world. I have no idea whether or not I slept. Another girl on the bus said she was really hot overnight so maybe the heating didnt reach the front seat. We arrived at the border at 6:20 even though it didn´t open until 8. And then at 6:40 am, after I paid 10 cents to use a really disgusting bathroom - such is life in South America sometimes, but I prefer the African way - just find a spot behind a bush by the side of the road - the bus drivers told us to get in line for the police, which opened at 7:30. We had to go there first for them to make sure we still had our entry card...then across the street to immigration, than walked across the bridge to Bolivia. Neither town was attractive, but how many border towns are? We left about 8:15 and they put a movie on, but I wanted to sleep more. More quickly than I though, maybe 2 hours later, we were in the outskirts of La Paz. When we got to the bus station, the bus next to ours had a sign for Cochabamba, my destination. And lucky for me, even though it was supposed to leave at 11:30, it waited to find more passengers, and I had time to get money from the ATM, buy my ticket, pay the bus station exit tax (which they have in Ecuador and Peru too, ranging from 10 cents to 33 cents in Peru), and get on the bus. I sat behind two guys from Israel (of course, I think 50% of their under 30 population is currently traveling in South America) and chatted with them, and we stayed in a hostel on Sunday night. There was another girl there from Israel who was happy to find more Israelis. The guys are traveling with a little stove to make Turkish coffee, along with these sprinkle-size crackers that they put in soup in Israel...the Israeli girl was so excited to eat some, and they made me have some even though I insisted that I´d eaten them before (which was true, and I´m not sure I understand the fuss. Yes every now and again I crave Chinese food or look forward to having New York pizza, but there´s no food from home I´d go to the effort of carrying around, or would pay a lot of money to eat. And I think I like food just as much as anybody else. Maybe it´s that I am less discriminating).

So I´m again thinking about the stay-or-go scenario, although I have a few weeks that I could still stay here and have enough time for the traveling I want to do in Bolivia and in Ecuador. Or I could decide to move to Sucre, a city that also has a language school that is supposed to be good, but I´d be taking a chance again on the family. I think I should spend the rest of the week studying (although I have said that before) and see how I feel after I feel like I´ve done enough studying - am I still frustrated? And maybe at this point, it is less about the Spanish than it is about being in another country and learning about it. There´s a great library at the school and I took out a dry looking book about the history of Bolivia. I might as well learn something while I am here if it isn´t Spanish.

The Gringo Trail

I am having such an amazing time here in Cuzco. I´m staying at a huge hostel that is very social, and have talked to people from the US, UK, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland and Israel. I think that half of the under 30 population in Israel is actually staying in the hostel. Ok, so that isn´t true, but there´s at least 20 people here from Israel. My grandmothers would be so proud - tonight I went to dinner with 4 Jewish boys. 2 from NY, one from Israel and one from South Africa.

As soon as I arrived in the Lima airport at 4 in the morning on Tuesday, I realized that Cuzco is indeed quite the tourist destination. The line was full of gringos, and I think I wrote earlier about how I always find it strange to be around large groups of Americans when I´m traveling. At the ticket counter, I asked whether there was a better side to sit on and whether I could have a seat there, and she gave me one. I´d like to think it was because I asked in Spanish, but I don´t think that was really the reason (I´m also sure the people at TACA in Lima speak English, so its not like she wouldn´t have understood if I´d asked in English).

Sometimes yo read in guidebooks that certain airport landings are hairy, but I hadn´t read that abot Cuzco...and I think it deserves a mention. We passed the airport, then hung left after we passed a mountain and were really sharply pitched while turning. I don´t know what the turning radius of an Airbus A-320 is, but I really wasnt sure we were going to complete the turn before we got to the next mountain! But it was all fine and a smooth landing. Luckily when I arrived at 8 am my bed was open, so I slept until noon. In the previos 4 nights, I´d spent 2 on a bus and oen not sleeping at all, so it felt good to lie down. I´d planned to just spend Tuesday in Cuzco acclimitizing (is that how its spelled?) and planning my trip to Machu Picchu, but the tourist in me took over, plus I didn´t feel sick at all, so I ended up going to a ton of tourist sites, mostly churchs and museums. I went to a dance performance at night and was in bed pretty early.

As for Cuzco, its definitely VERY tourist - every restaurant that isn´t gringo-owned (you can just tell) has someone standing at the door with a menu asking you to come in. People come up to you on the street to sell postcards, gloves, paintings etc. I think for that reason, I wouldn´t enjoy staying here for a long period of time and studying here. But at the same time, its a very populated city, and there are plenty of people you can just tell live here and walk about the streets going about their own business, not interested in hustling tourists. There´s more of a sense of the real Peruvian life here, say, than Antigua, which is smaller so the tourists have more of a presence. And the city is beautiful night and day. At night the hills are lit up with lights from houses and the churches in the central plaza are softly lit. I also haven´t felt at all unsafe here, or that so much more guard is needed in other places I´ve been, although I have read all kinds of stories of people getting robbed in Cuzco. I´ve enjoyed eating in the restaurants, especially since living with families I have´t been able to choose what to eat. I admit I´ve been going for the more American fare...granola, yogurt, fruit and honey for breakfast, asian style chicken for dinner one night, a dinner at the hostel with my friends - because I´m not sure I think that Peruvian food is that different and I´ll have plenty of local food eating with the family in Bolivia.

Wednesday morning at the hostel I happened to be in the bar for breakfast at the same time as a girl from San Diego who´d been living in a town in Ecuador 5 hours south of Cuenca, teaching Spanish, and she was talking to a guy she´d been on the plane with, and then another sat down at the table...and that´s how you meet people traveling alone. For me I feel like its all luck since I´m not usually one to approach people...so it all depends on the circumstances whether or not I start talking to someone. I walked around in the morning with the girls and then went off on my own to stick to my original plan to walk up to one of the ruins just near Cuzco. When I got to the entrance a guy convinced me to go horseback riding for $10, showing all the sites we´d visit that I wouldn´t be able to reach on my own. It wasn´t really true, but before I decided to go, I said I had fear of horses, and the guy selling the tour assured me they were more tranquilo than horses from other places. We walked a long way to catch up with 2 other people - a guy from Chile and a girl from Lake Tahoe. While we rode the horses, our guide walked. He was twelve. Yes, twelve. For about 10 minutes it was cool to be on a horse riding through the hills of Peru. Then it got old. I don´t really like horseback riding. In fact it took me 20 minutes to remember that I´d gone in Israel last year (I also went donkey riding there). Anyway, if I´m ever with one of you and say I want to go horseback riding, please remind me: I don´t like it. I don´t really want to go. By the end of the trip (where we didn´t visit every site the guy told me we were going to visit), I was ready to GET OFF THE HORSE. There´s a reason humans have legs. It allows us to get around without needing to ride a horse.

2 nights ago I checked out the nightlife of Cuzco with some friends...not too impressive, but at least its a lot less image conscious than other places - no one cared what anyone was wearing.

Today I went to Pisac, a town an hour bus ride from Cuzco that is famous for its Sunday market. It also has ruins that were supposed to be very nice. Even though I could barely go up and down the stairs of the hostel this morning, I decided to go to Pisac and do the walk up and down (I probably could have taken a taxi to the top for 70 cents and walked down, but I realized that too late). I walked 1 and a half hours up and explored the 3 different sections of ruins. The scenery was absolutely beautiful and although it was really hard, it was worth it. It wasn´t until I got to the top that I saw more than 2 tourists, but the ruins itself were full of people who had come on bus tours from Cuzco. The walk down was only abot 40 minutes, and I actually made my first souvenir purchases in Peru. There are a lot of hand painted beads in Pisac. I have no idea what I´ll use them for, but I got 20 for 66 cents.

To get to Pisac and back, I took the public bus, which was like a shortened coach bus. On the way back I saw shotgun, next to a lady who sat in a jump seat and managed to sleep a lot of the trip, despite the curvy road and occasional potholes. I really enjoyed doing things at my own pace and figuring out the public buses.

Tonight for dinner I went to the guys to a nice restaurant, where myself and another person (who just graduated undergrad from Michigan business) each had alpaca. It was good, far better than guinea pig with the added bonus that I never had an alpaca as a pet, but not as good as kangaroo, which will probably always be my favorite exotic meat. The meal was hysterical because the guys were all really funny, and we sat outside in the pretty courtyard with a heat lamp. I´ve been really lucky with the peopl I´ve met in the hostel, becaude I think its really random who you are sitting next to and strike up a conversation with.

For my last day in Cuzco there are a few more tourist sites I want to check out, but I also am going to give my legs a break from the hiking (except for the set of stairs on the street of the hostel that leave everyone breathless). My bus for La Paz, direct, leaves at 10 pm.

Machu Picchu

I realize I am hardly the first person who has taken pictures of Machu Picchu so these aren't really that exciting.

As for the day...My friends - I have friends in the hostel, very exciting - wanted to stay overnight in the town near MP so they could be at the ruins before all the other tourists arrived in the morning. But I'm not such a ruins person, and I dont really begrudge other tourists from being there since I am one too...so I only wanted to do a day trip. I bought roud trip train tickets for Thursday not from Cuzco but from a town 1 and a half hours away, which were a little cheaper, and that is what my friends were doing so I could travel up with them. We took a taxi to the town with the train station - Amy bargained him from 60 soles to 40 soles for the ride - but he didn't take us all the way to the train station, and when we got there he wanted 5 soles more. But he was hardly in a position to bargain, and we didn't like that he neither took us all the way to the train or asked, so we didnt give it to him. When we got to the station I started thinking it was a bad idea not to have bought more food to bring with me to MP - I did have some Ritz crackers and a little chocolate - and 2 English guys we knew from the hostel were sitting at a table eating a dish of chicken and rice that was 2.5 soles - about 80 cents. I decided to eat it solely on the basis of not feeling like I was getting ripped off from the price - it was tourist central. So even though I was a little concerned about eating street food, I ate it all up...and then felt really nervous for the rest of the day, wishing that for the sake of avoiding inflated tourist prices I had just bought a bar of chocolate instead. Right now its about 23 hours later and I don't feel bad yet, and I feel like stomach problems usually hit within 24 hours, so hopefully I am in the clear. On the train I sat in a near empty car with the 2 British guys, who were really nice, my friends had bought their tickets before me and were in another car that had nicer seats but was packed to the brim...Anyway the train ride took about an hour and 40 minutes and was STUNNING. Practically worth the journey just for the train! MP is actually about 1000 feet lower than Cuzco so the climate is tropical. For the whole day I really could have worn shorts. The weather was just perfect...it was sunny the whole day. But I am getting ahead of myself.

From the train station you need to tak a bus 20 minutes up a hill, and I wanted to get on th first bus possible because I was feeling a little anxious about only having about 4 hours at the site. So when we got in to the station I was first off the train, raced to the bus station to buy tickets, and then it turned out that the bus wouldnt leave until full. Maybe 15 minutes later it was, and we headed up anothr stunning journey to the MP entrance. When I got there I headed for the back, where there's a hike to something called Waynapicchu. Its like a mountain just behind the ruins, and if you hike up you get a great view of MP. But they only let 400 people in a day and it was about 11.30 when I arrived at MP, which opens at 6, so I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it. It was also supposed to be 1 hour each way, which definitely was going to eat in to my time in MP, but I felt like the hike was part of the experience. Anyway I arrived at the entrance, which is in the back of the ruins, in less time than I expected so figured that I didnt need that long to explore the ruins themselves. And I was person 364 in. I was right behind two American girls and chatted with them for a while, but then left them behind because I really didn't have time for a stop and smell the roses hike...I wanted to get up and down as fast as possible. I know that wouldn't be everyone's perference but I'm more of a "do more with less time for each thing" kind of person because I don't have a lot of patience. Anyway the hike was steep and hard, and I was definitely huffing and puffing when going at my own pace. When I was stuck behind people and going at their pace, it wasnt that hard. I guess I am a better hiker than I think I am, because I made it to the top in about 35 minutes. The view really was great...365 degrees around and tons of sun. But I didn't stay too long and got lost for a minute going down, but then figured it out. There was a wait for a while - I think a lady hyperventilated. Like almost every hike I have ever done, I was 90% glad I did it and 101% glad when it was over. The views really were beautiful.

Anyway, I was out of the hike in an hour and five minutes, with 3 hours left to explore MP. I had a hard time figuring out the map at first but then got a hang of it. I didn't have a guide and was thinking of trying to eveasedrop on other groups, but most of the guides were speaking Spanish and I didnt have the patience for that, plus it was kind of fun just to explore on my own at my own pace. Twice I ran into a guy from Germany I had met the night before, and he was also on his own and have listened to some guides, so he showed me one place I was looking for and then we walked around together. He pretty much refuses to speak in English - he said now that he has learned Spanish he can't speak English well - so at least I got some Spanish practice in. It turned out that I didn't even want all the time I had at the site....there's only so much ruins I can look at, and it was more about soaking it all in and appreciating that I can't imagine how the Incas found the site, got up there, and built things! Anyway we took a bus down and walked aroun the 100% tourist town. We stopped to get a pizza which the waiter said would take 10 to 12 minutes. Apparently that doesn't mean the same thing that it does in the US because 10 minutes later they started firing up the wood burning oven. And I had a train to catch, and was getting nervous about making it. The couple next to us was also waiting a long time for their pizza, and started talking to us - they were from Argentina and really nice, they shared their chips and guacamole with us. Finally the pizza was out, and at about 4.10 I started running for the train station for my 4.20 train...and I was really tired after all the hiking in MP. I think I went more out of the way than I needed to, and then when I was running through the market with my train ticke clutched in my hand, a lady pointed out to me the right direction. I arrived at the train about 4.18, and it left at 4.22 so I had a bigger cushion than I thought. Unlike the morning's comfortable train ride, this time the coach was full and I was stuck in a section with what I first thought was a group of college students but then realized were just high schoolers. And then I figured out they were from Boston, when they started playing a game called "Concentration" - the one where you clap and chant and call out things in a category. A game that should NOT be played in a closed environment with other people around. Yet they did. And they also played games like naming people in their class and saying what first came to mind about them...why oh why hadn't I brought my iPod? So the train ride back was not too fun and although I had a window, somehow the scenery wasn't as impressive as on the way up.

Back in Ollataytambo, which I can never say, I was going to find a place to eat chocolate cake and look at the ruins lit up at night, and then catch a public bus back to Cuzco, but amongst the madness of 300 plus people getting off the train essentially 99% heading back to Cuzco. People who had booked their whole train ticket-visit-hike etc had taxis waiting for them, but there were also tourist buses calling out "Cuzco 5 soles" and I decided to just take the easy way home rather than figuring out a public bus. In the end my return to Cuzco was way more comfortable than I would have imagined...a tourist class coach or a colective in a 1980 minivan where they stuff in 15 people into every space imagable for the same price? I've done plenty of more local transportation and it was nice to have a comfy seat and a window.

So that was the day, which was wonderful. I really wouldn't have wanted 8 hours at MP, as stunning and impressive as it is. I do want to find a book or more information about the site, but as it is I'm really pleased with the experience.

I will try to write more soon about other things in Cuzco, and I have more pictures. For today I think I am going to take a bus to a town with supposedly impressive ruins that are another hike, even though my legs definitely hurt. As long as I feel certain my stomach is ok. Tonight I'm going to a "Full Moon" party with some friends, which isn't something I normally do but I figure it might be interesting.