Seems like this has been my first free weekend since I´ve gotten here. I guess I´ve just been doing too many important things for the good of the children of Cusco. So I finally had a chance to check out some of the popular shady crawls of the Cusco night scene.

A lot of these places cater primarily to tourists. It´s kind of weird to be in the middle of the Peruvian andes, and come accross Patty O´Flaherty´s Pub, or Norton Rats Tavern. I finally found the Mama Africa, where there was a pretty jumpin salsa band wailing out. So I stayed over there and did a bit of dancing and mingling with the locals and local tourists. Good times were had.

On Saturday I learned the art of the marketplace haggle. In the afternoon we went to the local artisans market, a wharehouse filled with booths of people selling almost the exact same items. It´s an amazing place to get great deals on crafts and tourist merchandise. Hours could be spent wandering around, haggling over prices, and trying to escape the clutches of overzealous vendors. I would probably be spending a bunch of time their picking out some mementos of Cusco for the folks at home.

After that, I attended a folk dance performance at the local Municipal theater, as one of the guys I met down here was performing in it. There were groups from different parts of Peru and also Bolivia. There were all different styles ranging, from simple dressed farmer dances, to crazy elaborate dances with shiny colourful suits and lots of jangly things. Afterwords, we went out to meet some friends at a local pub to shoot the breeze for awhile, before heading over to the popular club, the Mooky.

The name Mooky for me brings about some mixed feelings. Mooky was the name that we had given to a dead mouse that I had found in the woods with a couple friends when we were younger. We subsequently held a short memorial service and cremated him.

Mooky, the dance club, though, was somewhat different. It was kind of like a mysterious stucco cave filled with people and load music. I believe I also saw a midget in some sort of a strange costume, but I don´t know what he was doing. We cut the rug for a while, and headed home with my host sisters at some ungodly hour. This morning we had tamales for breakfast, they were delicious.

Another thing I should mention here, as the big family lunch ended in a waterfight, is the carnival tradition here. It seems that every year, for the month before the big festivals at the beggining of February, there is a citywide waterfight going on. You can scarcely walk anywhere without seeing someone discretely carrying a water balloon, or a small child with a ginourmous super soaker gun. You may think, how wonderful that this citywide tradition of games still happens everywhere. It´s not so wonderful though, when your walking down the street and a waterballoon beans you in the back, or a small child with watergun assaults you and giggles and runs away. Apparently its sort of a war of the sexes, with boys trying to saturate girls completely and visa versa. I say, it is time for us to set aside childish things. It´s like walking around in the middle of a 5th grade war zone. Sure, its all fun and games, until someone loses an eye, then what?