Up at 2:30 am. Bus to Ollantaytambo. Train to Aguas Calientes. Hike up the side of a mountain to Machupicchu.
Breathe. That we were not looking at just another picture of this world wonder was almost impossible to fathom as we gazed over this amazing Inca city.
(By posting just two photos from the day, we’re hoping that the tease is enough for requests to see more when we get home!)
Having only partially digested all that we took in yesterday, we are off on another adventuretomorrow: a bus trip to Puno and a visit to the islands of Lake Titicaca.
Easter week in Cusco… a time I’ve read about and looked forward to for months now. On Monday (Lunes), a jam-packed Plaza de Armas— with lots of pushing and shoving and no chance for a quick escape—was not at all what I was expecting though. In retrospect, the discomfort (even panic) was worth it for me in order to experience this very unique procession. Dating back to the 1650 earthquake, the “El Senor de los Temblores (the Lord of the Earthquakes) procession takes place every year on the Monday before Easter to remember how El Senor miraculously stopped the earthquake. The photo shows the crucifix that is paraded around the square, with people throwing nucchu flowers at him. As I said, worth it for me… but Art gave me a ‘never again’ look to indicate that maybe he didn’t feel the same way about the event.
Tuesday (Martes) was much calmer, with the main event that evening being a cooking class at FairPlay. Art and I chopped carrots, drank beer, and enjoyed the resulting ‘Escabeche de Polla’.
My Spanish class with Eliana on Wednesday (Miercoles) took us to the university and the small zoo that is housed there. While I’ve been curious about llamas and what they are like up close, I was not quite expecting to encounter one so tame that he wanted to kiss me. I chuckled to myself while I snapped the photo of Larry the llama being a little too fresh with Eliana, not realizing that it was my turn next!
After class on Thursday (Jueves), Art and I finally did the trek up the hill in the back of the Plaza de Armas to visit Sacsaywaman (you can pronounce it ‘sexy woman’ if you wish; most do). This ruin is of both religious and military significance, and what an impressive site it is! The views over the entire city of Cusco from the site are not so bad either!
I can’t believe that I managed to get Art to join me at Plaza de Armas for another Holy Week procession on Good Friday (Viernes)! This one did not involve quite the mob of Monday but I could still sense Art’s disbelief that he got himself into this, yet again. As the procession came close to us, with its many, many followers, a quick escape into the doorway of a pizza joint made everything good again. And the pizza was even quite scrumptious.
It´s now Easter Sunday and we are finally getting to an Internet cafe. We managed to make it to the beautiful Cathedral for Easter mass this morning but we were on Canadian time so we caught the final blesing of the 7am mass and the readings of the 8am mass. It had a bizarre come ´n go feeling to it.
Since my Spanish classes are finished, I can join Art on vacation now. This week holds exciting plans for visiting Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca!
Art and I spent about an hour sitting on a bench in one of Cusco’s charming plazas, just watching the world go by… and around us and beside us and occasionally even stopping by to try to sell us something.
Our first visitor, a shoeshine boy, was determined to bring my dusty old Keen hikers back to life. Since “no, gracias” is hardly ever a conversation stopper with these determined entrepreneurs, I decided to continue our exchange by changing the subject. I asked him about his shoeshine equipment, if he goes to school, his name, and how old he is. He settled in beside our bench, perching on his box of polishes and brushes. I think that he was either happy for the reprieve from working in the hot sun or he was particularly amused by the Canadian woman’s tireless efforts to speak Spanish to him. Whatever the reason, we were quite taken with him and enjoyed his company.
Not long after I had run out of things to say to our new 11-year old amigo, John, a woman stopped by to show us her beautifully weaved hair ties, belts, and table runners. Like John, she also settled in for a while—but this was a period of tough negotiation (not idle chit chat) that Art will report was particularly entertaining. After about 30 minutes of exchanging numbers ranging from 40 soles to 130 soles, I ended up with an unneeded (but gorgeous) table runner for 80 soles. Muy bien, Kathy. (Now, if you are unable to stick with ‘no’, then go buy another suitcase!). There was so much more going on here than buying a table runner—she spoke of her work and how long it takes to weave such an intricate piece (2 months for the one I bought, so perhaps 80 soles was too little…?). She even provided us with a demonstration of the weaving process. This all happened in Spanish, except for the part where we took turns writing numbers on the back of her hand. After the ‘deal was done’, I asked Art to snap a photo of me with my two new amigos.
If that wasn’t enough to qualify for a ‘best day ever’, things got even better. For lunch, Art and I found a restaurant around the corner with a sunny veranda and a band playing traditional South American music. (Yes, of course, we bought a CD (or two) from them.)
So, that was Sabado.
Domingo (Sunday) was our bus tour of the
Sacred Valley (El Valle Sagrado)—a valley that begins about 15 km north of Cusco and, in my mind, indescribable in terms of its beauty. Even though what we signed up for was, in the words of my Lonely Planet guidebook, “a whirlwind tour”, both Art and I were so pleased with all that we were able to see and do in such a short period of time—from the Inca citadels of Pisac and Ollantaytambo, to the snow-capped Andean mountains, to the artisan demonstrations by the Quechuan woman of the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales in Chinchero. I had read and heard that this valley of the River Urubamba is beautiful, but nothing could prepare me for what I saw and experienced. Indescribable. Best just to leave it at that.
Three days between blog entries is way too long! How do I choose what to write about? And what pictures to include? Would the reader like to know all about Cusco, highlighting the sights and sounds on a typical Kathy & Art walk? Or perhaps it would be more interesting to read about our recent visit to 3 Inca ruins, which included an 8km walk (mostly downhill, from 3800 m to 3400 m) starting at Tambomachay, moving on to Pukapukara, then to Q’enko, and ending with a delicious meal at el restaurante romantico Pachapapa in San Blas? The photos below show what I mean by not being able to choose…
(Pictured below: Inca ruin at Tambomachay, vendors set up at Tambomachay (if you look closely, you can see the 4 hats we bought); Kathy doing her part to preserve the Inca ruin of Q'enko; llamas around the ruins; our walk back into Cusco, through San Blas; Art and the narrow alleys of San Blas; a view above Cusco on the walk; Art and the menu at Pachapapa)
But what about my Spanish classes, you ask? Well, I am dreaming in/of Spanish, if that says anything. I have visions of pronombres, articulos, sustantivos, infinitivos; questions of ser o estar, el o la, eso o esto, agua o cerveza? (That last question is an easy one—dos cerveza, por favor). But seriously, I am pleased with my progress… that is, until today, Friday. By today, my head was so full of new words that when I spoke, what emerged was either nonsense or French. Today I told Eliana that the musician was playing a mandarin; I called Art my wife several times; and I asked Nellie if she was a salad. Both Nellie and Eliana have infinite patience and really seem to enjoy their jobs. Like all the teachers at el esquela FairPlay, they are single mothers who have been trained as Spanish teachers through the non-profit NGO FairPlay. My classes are one-on-one—each day begins with Nellie and 2 hours of grammar in a small outdoor classroom with a whiteboard (where Nellie writes notes and assigns copious amounts of homework—muchas tareas!); this is followed by another 2 hours of walking and conversing with Eliana. So far, Eliana has taken me to a mercado (market), a park, an outdoor festival in Plaza de Armas, and El Molinos (Cusco’s version of a dept. store—thankfully, nothing like Wallmart). The experience has been fantastic and I’m really pleased with my choice of school. (Muy bien, Kathy)
Speaking of school, I think I asked Eliana to take me on a field trip to the university (Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco) next week. I say that I think I asked because it is Friday after a long week of thinking, talking, and dreaming in/of Spanish… it may be that I asked instead for something completely different! We’ll soon see.
Hoy dia es Martes. Yes, I have started my Spanish classes, with Nellie (for grammar) and Eliana (for conversation). It´s fun and I´m learning lots, but it’s exhausting! Of course, Art finds life back at the apartment while I am at ‘school’ also to be quite taxing… so many e-books, so many naps.
The weather here has been fantastic. We’ve realized two big things so far: we need to take sunscreen more seriously and it’s best if we bring our walking speed down a notch or two—all out of respect for that 3400 m elevation I wrote about.
The photos below share a bit about Sunday’s activities: we walked and walked and climbed and ate cake.
Just three days into our trip and there are already many stories to tell… about crazy taxi cab rides; surfers on the beaches of Lima; an exhilarating plane landing skirting the mountains of Cusco; the pleasure of meeting Beatriz, our landlady, and getting settled into our apartment; the great food adventures we have experienced… I think I’ll start by sharing a food story.
Learning Spanish cannot come soon enough for me, starting with the translation of menus. While Art and I were walking around Cusco yesterday checking out the location of my language school, we stumbled upon an interesting looking place to have lunch. This was not one of those tourist restaurants with both English and Spanish menus; the choices for the day were scribbled in Spanish on a board hung on the wall. As the waitress stood by us, waiting for our decision, I desperately flipped through the pages of my very inadequate Spanish-English dictionary in an attempt to locate some (any!) of the board items. Feeling the pressure of the young woman’s stare, I began to use some sort of sign language to show that I was confused by a few words. “Lengua?” I mumbled inquisitively. Suddenly, I went from not knowing the meaning of one word to being utterly confused by the twenty or so words that she used to describe what lengua was. With a quick consult from Art, we both decided that the word reminded us of linguini, or some kind of noodle, so we both nodded and said “si, uno lingua, por favor”. (For those readers who know some Spanish, stop laughing!). In retrospect, I cannot figure out why the young waitress did not just open her mouth slightly and point to her tongue, rather than using all those words to describe this delicacy—that is, the slab of tongue that I made Art eat. He was a good sport about the whole thing and we both agreed later, as we looked up the word back at our apartment, that it’s not what you know, but when you know it.
That was Friday. Saturday was not much more successful in the gastronomy category. We decided on a pizzeria, ordering one called ¨milanesa de polla¨, which we were sure was chicken pizza but then out comes a deep fried chicken cutlet, surrounded by white rice and fries. Hmmm. This is going to be more challenging than I thought.
I thought I’d include a few pictures of our Saturday sojourn through the historic centre of Cusco. Our apartment is located about 2 km downhill from the centre—well, it’s really only a slight hill but as flatland, (almost) sea level folk, we need some time to adjust to altitudes of 3400 metres!
It seems like just days ago that I unpacked my suitcase from my New Zealand trip, and here I am packing ‘er up again for the next journey. It’s been an eventful 5 weeks at home in Regina though I must say. Margaret and I put the finishing touches on our paper, submitting it to Teaching and Teacher Education on March 17; I revised another paper for the July Mathematics Education and Contemporary Theory conference, and submitted that paper to Educational Studies in Mathematics on March 27; I endured a root canal on March 9, only to realize a week or so later that “it didn’t take” and so now I expect I’ll have to go through it again(!);I curled, arranged a trip to Malawi, reviewed conference papers, paid bills, went swimming, had a few massages, caught a bad cold, and got 4A’d from SSHRC—all in just a few weeks.
Now I’m doing laundry, replenishing supplies, and bugging Art about how many fleece tops he’s bringing (even though I have travelled more, he still manages to pack smarter than me every time!). Our itinerary for Peru is quite straightforward: except for a day in Lima on either side of our trip, we will be chilling out in the beautiful ancient city of Cusco:
Cusco, located in southern Peru, is a city with perhaps the most beautiful views in the world. It is surrounded by six mountains, some more than 6,000 meters high, as well as being the oldest city in the western hemisphere and the cradle of the ancient Inca civilization. And, of course, it is known all over the world for its proximity to the amazing archaeological ruins of Machu Picchu. (http://www.aboutcusco.com/cusco/
I guess I should have said that Art will be chilling out in Cusco; I will be studying Spanish at FairPlay (http://www.fairplay-peru.org/en/Volunteers/Spanish_Courses/) every morning for at least the first two weeks of our stay. Whether I continue my studies beyond that point depends on how envious I am of Art’s relaxed mornings in bed with a good Sony e-book.
com/)will probably not have Internet access. Fear not blog readers! We will venture out to an Internet café about every 3 days so that we can share stories about our time in Peru.
