An Emmerous Adventure

I feel that I have been guilt tripped into updating sooner rather than later, which is good as things will be fresher in my mind. All the same, so much has happened that this may not be the most detailed of posts. let´s call it highlights.

*Absolutely freezing bus journey from Arequipa to Cuzco, only got about an hour of sleep. At one point we were stopped by what I think was a protest and we had to reverse back for a while then go onto a dirt road for a while and the bus filled with dust. In the end, i did arrive in Cuzco safely.
*Staying in a great hostel on a hill, the view makes it worth it. I´m in a dorm with really cool people and it´s super easy to meet other people. There aren´t a whole lot of people travelling alone, but there´s enough. Lots of people are travelling in groups of people they met over here. I´ve also met lots of people who are heading in my general direction, so I may run into them (the gringo trail makes South America a small place). I feel like I now have a billion e-mails. One slight problem or advantage, depending on how you look at it is that you can just put things on a tab at the hostel bar, from breakfast to water to beer. It´s heaps of fun, but also very easy to just chill and not really get out too much, I´ve been out to do stuff everyday, but the amount of conversations I´m having in Spanish have severely dropped. In conclusion, I will be leaving Cuzco for Puno soon, probably tomorrow, I´ve already spent longer than I planned to hear, but as I said, muchos Fun.
A note on Alcohol – It´s not that i´ve actually been drinking a lot, but the altitude plus not eating much means that I haven´t quite figured out the conversion if you know what I mean. It´s widely acknowledged amongst the people at my hostel that hangovers are far worse at high altitude.
*Cuzco is a whole lot more Andean in terms of culture and society than Lima or even Arequipa. It is common to see women with the impressively folded sacks with babies or other things in them around town.
*Everyone is trying to sell you a massage or something else. Can´t blame the people of Cuzco, their city has been overrun with gringos, but it´s been hard to meet Peruvians in Cuzco, they have been far more friendly in other places. I´m yet to gt a massage but will probably go for one this afternoon as I am still a bit sore from Machu Picchu.
*We´ve had two drunken incidents in our dorm (neither of which I was involved in)
Firstly, there was the 3 drunk Australians who came in at about 5 am. One of them was ultra drunk, he started rambling about all sorts of stuff. This is almost a direct quote:
¨I´m going to spit. I´m going to spit in this corner. I hate this corner, it´s MY corner!¨
nonsensical at best.
The second was when Jeramy, a really nice Irish guy, came in sometime in the morning and had no idea where he was. He wandered around the room trying to get into bed with people before a couple of guys turned on the light and pointed him in the right direction to his bed.
Both of these escapades have been hilarious in retrospect, but some have been more frustrated than others. Luckily, because we have a friendly room, we´ve all been able to laugh over it the next morning.
*Went to Pisac in the Sacred Valley with Mina and Tanya, two girls from LA. Went to a huge market and took an uncomfortable bus ride. It was my second day in Cuzco so i think the altitude was hitting me pretty badly.
* I have had quite a bit of trouble with the altitude, as have lots of people not used to being a ridiculous heights. I have gathered 2 pieces of wisdom.
1. Coca tea is the tea of gods.
2. I never want to live anywhere that isn´t sea level or close to it.
*I have been reading awful book exchange books, all so far have been crime novels or things like that of consistently low quality. but they´re free so i guess this is what i´m reading for the next 7 months.
*I´m actually craving music, I should have brought something with my own tunes. Luckily the bar at my hostel plays good music (from Little Birdy to Guns and Roses to Peter, Bjorn and John to … other god things). I´m thinking of buying a cheap disc man to play cds on. You can buy cds (most stuff, burned) for 4 soles , less than $2 aus dollars.
*Went on a Sacred valley tour with Emma from Ireland. It was pretty good, we got to see some great incan ruins. Unfortunately, sometimes we would be on top of a mountain surrounded by incan architecture and somebody´s phone would ring. Also, people kept on getting on our bus trying to sell us things like DVDs of Peru and Anais liqueur.
*Found an Australian Cafe- bar place that serves ´food from home`, sandwiches and Indian and Asian food. It also has a news from Australia wall. which is a good excuse to go there. I went there with two really nice women from Seattle who I hope to visit when I get up there, it would be a ton of fun. They also play good music, from Sufjan Stevens to the Cat Empire. Better than most of the other bars and clubs that play what can only be described as eclectic music, you might get jet than the grease theme then techno for half an hour.
*Have been collecting music recommendations as well as contact details, so upon my return to Aus i will be able to spread the cool music of the world.
*Inti Raymi was fantastic, though I have yet to find another traveller with the same enthusiasm as me for it. There had been things going on in the town all week, lots of parades and dances. I even saw a Peruvian band covering old rock songs like ´Smoke on the Water´. ´Born to be Wild´and ´Cocaine´ as part of the festival. The day itself, June 24th was very enjoyable. I went up with some British people from the hostel, but then lost them and found some others, lost them, ran into people who I met in Nazca, lots them, ended up with a great view surrounded by Peruvians. they called me ´Australia´ and gave me some of their potatoes and chicken for lunch. Turns out they don´t actually sacrifice a Llama, though they pretend to. I had a bet going with Irish Jeramy that they didn´t, we´ve heard a whole lot of conflicting reports, but I think the end result is that they don´t.
It was colourful and Busby Berkely hundreds of years before he was alive.
*Took the next day slow as the night before I went to a couple of clubs with the women from Seattle amongst others. Also met a nice Swiss guy at the hostel who is going to be doing a similar thing to me at Uni, nice to find that people over the other side of the world have the some ideas as you, makes it seem less ridiculous.
*Left for a two day MP thing on the 26th with Emma and jeramy from Ireland. We had to get up really early, left the hostel at 5 am. We actually did something really stupid which resulted in us getting to Aguas Calientes later than planned, but it´s still a bit too embarrassing, so I will reveal the Comic Tragedy later.
Went to the Hot springs in Aguas Calientes (means hot waters in English), which were fantastic. there were pebbles at the bottom of the pool that made my feet feel properly clean for the first time in a while.
had to get up at 5am the next day too, caught a bus up to MP, didn´t see the sun rise, too misty, but as we were at the top of the ruins at the best position to see them, the fog lifted for about 10 minutes. It was stunning, a magic place. Smaller but better in person.
We took a tour for a couple of hours which was good. Then we began to climb Wayna Picchu, basically straight up a mountain. It was really hard, but completely worth it. The view from the top was amazing, it felt like we were on the top of the world. the walk down was hard too, I almost slipped a couple of times.
I have about a billion photos now, so expect more soon, even with me in them!
Plus lots of Videos actually, so I might set up a You tube account so that you can see them.
*That brings me up to today, when I´m still sore from MP.
I have to go buy a train ticket to Puno now for tomorrow morning, so I will say Adios.
Hope that satisfies your vicarious urges,
Em

Tags: Cuzco, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.