Cuzco, Peru

Friday, December 17, 2004:

It was 10 AM when my flight arrived in Cuzco. With my second row seat, I managed to achieve something I had only been able to dream about in the past --- I was the very first person off of the plane. This, of course, merely made me the first person to wander over to the baggage claim station. Dozens of taxi drivers, porters, tour company operators and hotel touts greeted me with a shower of informational pamphlets and shouts of "Hey! Amigo! [Sales Pitch!]" I kept my eyes at my sides, looked sullen and steered straight ahead for a position at the front of the luggage conveyor belt. The sun was blazing in through the windows and I was tired from only a little more than two hours of sleep in the stifling Lima humidity the night before. Putting my sun glasses on not only helped to soothe my eyes but it also served to increase my apathetic, unfriendly appearance. Other passengers followed soon enough and were met with a parade of fliers and calls of hungry attention. I was left unmolested.

I didn´t just look sullen, I felt sullen. I was hungover from a night in one of the Gringo bars and also felt myself coming down with a cold. Adding to that, I could feel the effects of the altitude on me already, Cuzco standing at just over 3300 meters (11,000 feet) above sea level. I decided that I needed to get to a place with a nice bed and a hot shower, to sleep before doing anything else. Forget the buses and shared collectivos; I headed for the taxi stands.

I was mobbed by a host of competing dispatchers within seconds.

"Where to, amigo?"

"Taxi?"

"You need a nice hotel?"

I steered a path for the most professional-looking one of the bunch. By "most professional," I mean the one that was molesting me the least. It might have been that the guy I went up to was the slowest to the draw and simply hadn`t noticed me.

"Hotel Wiracocha," I told him, giving the name of one of the better-sounding joints listed in my increasingly questionable Lonely Planet guide.

He quoted me a more or less acceptable rate of $3 and led me to the driver. In the cab, the driver introduced himself in nearly fluent English and began to ask me questions about where I was from and what my plans were. He seemed relaxed and friendly enough. Nevertheless, when he asked me if I had a reservation at Hotel Wiracocha, I lied and told him I did. No use inviting him to recommend an alternative, which seemed to me the only reasonable motive for his asking that particular question.

As we drove, the driver helpfully pointed out sights: This is a commemorative statue in honor of one of the Incan rulers; that is a remnant from the walls the Incas built to surround the city; the church over there was built by the Spaniards in the 16th century; and so on. I was impressed by his willingness to give a miniature tour of the sites along the way. I was also impressed with what I was seeing of downtown Cuzco. The cobblestone streets were lined with old colonial and baroque style buildings. Small shops and restaurants were interspersed with the inevitable throng of travel agencies and internet cafes. And people were absolutely everywhere. "There are nearly 500,000 people in Cuzco now," the driver told me. It wasn´t hard to believe it. For all of its old architecture and small-town feel, the city sprawled outward for miles and bustled with an intensity that far surpassed that I had experienced in the Miraflores district of Lima. A person dropped in one place for 10 minutes and then the other would have a hard time figuring out which place was part of an 8,000,000 person metropolis.

After 10 minutes, we pulled up to Hotel Wiracocha. This is where things got weird and it took me some time to piece together what exactly had happened. Basically, there was a clean-cut, professional looking man in his late thirties, sharply dressed in a blue, double-breasted suit, waiting for me in front of the hotel. He seemed to have been expecting me. The minute I left the taxi, he began trying to help me with my luggage and wishing me a warm welcome to Cuzco. Of course, rather than feeling welcomed and warmed, I was paranoid and suspicious.

The man introduced himself as Juan. "Come in, come in," he said to me. His English was perfect. We walked through the reception area of the hotel and into a wide open courtyard with benches, tables and chairs, a garden and even a miniature fountain. The hotel had two levels, with the rooms opening up onto the courtyard from the ground and second floors.

"Would you like anything to drink?" Juan asked. "Coffee, tea, mate de coca?"

I declined. I wanted a room and I wanted to go to bed.

"How much are rooms here?" I asked, trying to cut to the chase.

Juan didn´t know. "I´ll ask the receptionist now," he told me, hustling rapidly over to the woman behind the counter.

"Are you with the hotel?" I asked him, a bit irritated.

"Yes," he said.

He then conversed with the receptionist and told me the price per single room was $20 per night. This is expensive, although I knew I was heading to one of the pricier places listed in the Lonely Planet book. I was dead tired and I didn´t feel like going anywhere else. I said I wanted to see the room, but that it sounded OK.

"How long are you in Cuzco?" asked Juan, "Please, sit down for a moment. Are you sure you don´t want something to drink?" He gestured to a set of chairs and a table in the courtyard. I sat down. I was still bewildered, not knowing who this guy was, waiting for me in the street, dressed in a suit, saying he was with the hotel but not knowing the nightly rates.

I figured it out soon enough. "Let me give you some information on tours," Juan said. "It will only take a few minutes. Tell me, are you signed up for the Inca Trail?" (The Inca Trail is the 4-day hike that many visitors to Cuzco take to reach Machu Picchu. Because Machu Picchu now receives nearly one million visitors per year and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, efforts to regulate and track tourism inflow have resulted in new requirements that, with some limited exceptions, require Inca Trail hikers to sign up for set dates at least 30 days in advance of the start of their trip. Because I wanted flexibility on my trip, I did not want to lock myself into a date. Rather, I planned to take a train to Machu Picchu Pueblo, a small village just 4 miles from the site, where I would see the ruins at my own pace, perhaps with a guide if one could be hired at the last minute.)

"No," I said. In retrospect, I should have lied. However, I did try to cover my tracks by telling him that I planned to take a train there myself and see the site independently. This didn´t help.

"We have some great tours," he told me. He launched into detail. There was a half-day tour of Cuzco and several surrounding Inca ruins. There was a full-day tour of Vilcabamba, the sacred valley some 10 miles away from Cuzco, where one could visit indigenous markets and see other ruins. In addition, there was a one-day tour of Machu Picchu, though it was possible to stay overnight in Machu Picchu Pueblo and return independently to Cuzco the next day. He explained each tour slowly. He repeated himself several times, often verbatim. I found this extremely frustrating because he was taking far more than a "few minutes." After 25 minutes, he finally seemed to be reaching the end. I should add that at this point, though exhausted and exhasperated, I was ready to admit that Juan gave a very slick, polished delivery as to why the tours were a good value and why his company was better than others. I also thought that he was respectful in his presentation, though the imposition of the presentation itself was decidedly lacking in respect. He compounded this disrespect severalfold with his final spiel.

"So," he said, "Because of the schedule, why don´t we start you off with the City Tour today at 1:30 PM, the Vilcabamba tour tomorrow, and the Machu Picchu tour on the following day." The way he phrased it, it wasn`t even a question. He began to calculate the price for me.

What? What an asshole, I thought. I had agreed to give this guy 5 minutes to give me information and he had wasted half an hour. Now he was putting the pressure on. I hadn´t agreed to sign up for anything and I certainly hadn´t planned to sign up for all three tours he had mentioned. This Leap-On-The-Tourist pitch was well-delivered, but it was still very painfully obvious, not to mention insulting.

"Listen," I said calmly, "I am not going to be doing anything today." Although I was angry, I spoke gently and matter of factly. "I have had next to no sleep and I really just need to get some rest right now. I´m also meeting a friend here who I might take the tours with and need to talk with them first." This last part was a lie, but how was he to know? He´d just taken up half an hour of my time with his pitch under the assumption that I had come to Cuzco with no plans whatsoever and no clue as to what my options were. I was another idiot to be had, so far he seemed to be concerned.

Juan frowned but nodded as he wrote down his number and told me to call him when I knew what I wanted to do. He told me he could stop by first thing in the morning to discuss the tours in more detail, but I told him this wasn´t necessary. "I´ll call you tomorrow," I said. I smiled warmly as I delivered this lie --- he deserved it. I had realized that Juan wasn´t with the hotel at all, but that he obviously had an arrangement with them (later on I would discover that many hotels have their share of affiliated tour company touts who hang around to snag the newcomers to Cuzco). As to how Juan came to be waiting outside the hotel for me in the first place, I had few doubts that the taxi dispatcher or driver had contacted him: "Tourist heading to Hotel Wiracocha, tourist heading to Hotel Wiracocha..." Its a clever operation, in a sense. With hundreds of largely indistinguishable tour operators in Cuzco, you needed a way to get your claws into the customer first. What wasn´t clever was the annoyance factor. I wasn´t going to sign up with Juan on principle, even if his company ran the best tours in Cuzco. On top of everything else, I really didn´t appreciate his interjecting himself between me and the hotel receptionist, thereby ruining my chance to try any bargaining.

When Juan left, I inspected the room. Large but devoid of furniture other than a bed and a desk, it was acceptable. The shower delivered warm water as promised. I unpacked, showered and headed out to explore Cuzco a little. I was exhausted, but wanted to get my bearings.

I wandered over to Plaza de Armas, the main square. Two enormous churches, including the 16th century cathedral (built on pillars from an old Incan temple with materials the Spaniards plundered from Incan ruins) dominated a park and
numerous shops. The area bustled with crowds of tourists and with shoeshine boys and vendors and touts of all kinds. It was hard to walk for more than a few feet without somebody trying to pitch a restaurant, tour, postcard, shoeshine, or sweater to me. It got to the point where I could have said "no, gracias" over and over continuously without looking for a specific person to address it to.

I returned to the hotel at roughly 3 PM and slept until 7. I then went for a light dinner and explored a little more, before heading to bed for another 12 hours.
[I woke up the next day to knocking on my door at 9:30. I groaned and answered with an annoyed "WHAT?" The knocking subsided and I heard footsteps leading away. When I went downstairs, the receptionist told me that Juan had stopped by. I checked out and moved into another (far cheaper) hotel. I obviously didn´t leave Juan a forwarding address.]