I'm not going to do a full re-cap tonight, but I thought I'd just share a couple stories from the second destination on my trip. After spending a day in Miraflores (a touristy suburb of Lima), I took a 21-hour bus to Cuzco, a city of about 300,000, the nearest city to Machu Picchu, and the former capital of the Incan Empire.
Arriving in Cuzco
Upon staggering off the bus around 11 AM after predictably not being able to sleep, a cab driver recognized my exhaustion and gringo-induced cluelessness, and I had no chance. He had me at "hotel?".
When I got to the hotel and was shown to my room on the 3rd floor, the altitude really hit me for the first time in my life. My apartment here in Barranquilla is on the 5th floor, and even when I walk home with a ton of groceries I'm not nearly as out-of-breath as I was climbing a mere 3 stories at 3000 meters. I acclimatized quickly, but that first stair-climb was definitely a shock.
Shortly thereafter, I headed out with the intention of finding Plaza de Armas, the city's main square, for some lunch and as a launching pad to the city's attractions. But the map I was using was just a little corner of a pamphlet from my hotel, and I ended up going the wrong way and quickly finding myself off-map. I walked around for about half an hour, taking wild guesses at streets that looked like they were about to become touristy. But none of them ever did, and this wandering around gave me the impression that Cuzco was much less touristy than I had originally thought, since I hadn't seen a single other tourist the whole time.
Eventually I found a little mall where I settled in for some lunch, which I'll describe in a moment, but first let me conclude my discussion of getting lost in Cuzco's nether-regions. After lunch I got lost for a little while longer, but finally I turned a corner and there it was: the Cuzco that all the guidebooks talk about. (It really was as abrupt as that - I couldn't believe the change when I turned that one corner. It sounds cliche, but it was the most extreme version of this phenomenon I've ever seen.)
When I discovered where that part of Cuzco was, I realized I must have gone the complete wrong way when I left my hotel in the morning and ended up much farther from Plaza de Armas than when I started. OR SO I THOUGHT. More exploration eventually revealed that the mall I ate lunch in was actually like half a block from my hotel. So I walked in a giant circle for half an hour, thinking I was going in the direction of the center of town. So much for my innate sense of direction.
Anyway, I wanted to describe lunch. I was in, as mentioned, a little mall type place which had a bunch of food-stands on one side. I didn't really know what anything was, so I just ordered something called "Chaufa con Tortilla", because I like tortillas, no matter if they were talking about soft tortillas or tortilla chips. Well, turns out tortilla means doesn't actually mean tortilla in Spanish! (Um, what?) But that's okay, because it means omelette, and I like those too. I figured out Chaufa refers to little tiny slivers of some kind of meat, and the dish named after it is basically fried rice with some veggies thrown in. And the omelette goes on top. But what made this meal unique was its sheer immensity. Look at this thing.
That is a veritable mountain of food. Or, to be regionally specific, that is a veritable Andes of food. I ate until I was fuller than I had been in years, and I only got about 2/3 of the way done. It could have fed 3 people, easily. And I think it cost something like $1.70.
Oh yeah, and I got a drink, too. Banana juice with milk. (That's what it's called in Spanish, but it's really just your standard banana and milk smoothie.) And, continuing the tradition, check out the size of this thing:
That's gotta be like a liter of drink. I honestly think this is the biggest meal I've ever attempted to eat (aside from things like buffets).
Okay, fast forward 8 hours or maybe 32 hours. On either day 3 or 4 I had dinner at a touristy place near the Plaza, and while sitting there bored I noticed another dude looking bored and invited him to join me. He was some sort of secret engineer who couldn't talk about his work (or maybe he could but just didn't want to, I forget), but he did tell me some other stuff, and this is the best story he had (and the only one I remember):
So I guess there are people in India who are considered gods. I didn't know this... maybe this was a serious gap in my knowledge, and if so, I apologize profusely for my ignorance. But I didn't know this until he told me. I guess the idea is that they're re-incarnations of Hindu gods. Anyway, this guy's secret engineer work takes him all over, including to India, and he went to check out a god's house, where 20,000 people regularly pray simultaneously. It turns out one of the guy's co-workers knew the God, so they got to hang out. Apparently he's "a pretty cool guy".
Okay, one more story before I go to bed. There's more to tell from days 3-5 in Cuzco, hopefully I'll wrap it up tomorrow. Anyway, on day 5 I had to get some things in preparation for my 4-day hike to Machu Picchu which was to commence the following morning, so I went to the mall which I now knew was only a few doors down from my hotel. Now, this was Christmas Eve, so the mall was packed. Especially with shoes. Look at all the shoes!
One of the things I needed was a sweater. I checked out a bunch of different stalls, inquiring whenever I found one I liked. One of the stalls was run by a kid of about 12, and he seemed nice, so after wandering a bit more I went back to his stand. But I wasn't just going to pay the 30 soles ($10) he was asking. Oh no. This is a bargaining culture, and I wasn't paying a dime more than 25 soles. So I told him that, and he said 28. So I said "okay, see ya later!", and walked off. I had only gone a few steps when I heard him call after me "okay, 25 is fine!" I returned, triumphantly paid my 25 soles, thanked him, and left. I haggled the #$@% out of that kid.And this got me thinking: does this make me a bad person? I mean, anytime you say "I ____ed the #$@% out of that kid", that doesn't sound good. I think I'm going to hell.
Christmas Eve at the mall
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