cuzco: gets its own blog entry

so, i lied. we did not go to the colca canyon. read anthony´s blog about how we were truly wretched travelers in arequipa. we didnt even eat the spicy stuffed pepper, one of the regional dishes i had vowed to eat. me, too lazy to eat?! unheard of. really, i think its natural to hit a point of blahness when traveling, or doing anything for that matter. even the most interesting, novel things can turn routine, after a million interesting, novel things. one must be quite spoiled to develop this mentality. but then, i am quite spoiled.

what we need, when we reach this point (in anything in life. take teaching for example, something that has been on my mind very much recently, now that my teacher friends have all returned to work. while teaching, one might get so tired of waking up at 5 am and taking the same old train to the same old run down, jail-like edifice, to listen to the same old bullshit from the same old subpar administrator, to watch your students struggle over the same old three letter word. yes, one might get so tired of it all they think they cant stand another second. but then little jose pukes through his nose on little timmy, and everything is fascinating again.), is something even more novel and interesting. in my case, i was very lucky to come here to cuzco at just the right time.

cuzco has completely restored my traveling interests and ambitions (think of jose puking from the nose, as in the above tangent). it is a mysterious and fascinating city, and i dont know why more people dont die here. first of all, its at a very high elevation. not the highest in the world, but high enough, especially if you´re from nyc. second of all, the streets are narrow, wind-y, and cobblestone, which pretty much describes every city in peru and ecuador. but here in cuzco they take it to an extreme. the sidewalks are approximately 1.7 inches wide, and the streets are approximately 7.1 inches wide, and extravagantly steep, so it is absolutely impossible for people to walk down the street while a car is driving down it without dying. and of course, the streets are thronged with tourists, and the streets with taxis, and it is all very un-doable, yet i have yet to watch a single person be run over. incomprehensible. plus, at night they give out free drinks in every bar near the plaza de armas, of which there are 913, thus making the streets even more perilous. still, no fatalities, at leats not in the past three days, which is considerable, relatively speaking. knock wood.

so, there is the challenge of the streets which has perked my interest again. plus, in one of the mountains surrounding cuzco, someone has carved an indecipherable phrase. after much examination, i made out the words ¨peru´, ´glorioso¨, and ¨bin¨ (the uneven quotes are not my doing. thats just how the computer decided to make them, and i havent the will to battle it.) i had plently of time to puzzle over the carvings while sitting in our hostel, which is actually a converted farmhouse high up on a hill, with a beautiful view over all of cuzco. its really a great place. there is a little stone table with stumps surrounding it, which gets a lot of sun, and travelers congregate and have the same, yet interesting, conversation over and over again. we´ve met some cool people, and ive decided that i really like germans and irish. additionally, the hostel serves a buffet breakfast which consists of very sweet papaya, bananas, oranges, and grapefruits, fresh bread, blended juice, and actual brewed coffee. my heart leapt when i first spotted the coffee machine. plus, there is a huge kitchen and we are cooking again, which means we get to eat good food at low cost without further clogging our arteries with salt, lard, and fucking potatoes. really, a fantastic time.

but, we have temporarily left our hotel to embark on a mini trek to machu picchu. not the inca trail, but our own slog. tonight we take a night bus to a tiny town, take a combi (typically, this god awful delapidated minivan stuffed beyond capacity with people. last time i counted the people in a combi, there were 32. think average sized minivan, nothing big or fancy, with the door falling off) to another small town, walk 5 hours to another town, stay the night there, wake up at 4 am and walk another 2 hours, steep uphill, to machu picchu. we are doing this part with a nice german girl we met at our hostel, but will probably encounter many others along the way, as this is how its done if you have not booked a trek and are not a millionaire, as the direct train is insanely expensive. the way back will also be a trek´, not exactly doing the above in reverse but another, complicated route with less walking, as we are not so ambitious. still, better than we did in arequipa.

so, ill let you know how it went. wish us luck!!