Buenos Dias from Cusco, Peru

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!


Catch up with you in a few days...