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.
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