Chaska in South America

My second week in Cuzco was a lot more quiet than my first. I’ve spent the past week just hanging out with my family in Cuzco and doing some stuff on my own…it’s been really nice! New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun. Matt, Kerstin, my cousin Fernando, and I went out and had a fun night. We didn’t stay out that late or do anything too crazy, but just being in Cuzco for New Year is pretty nuts. We spent midnight out in the Plaza de Armas with about a zillion other people and there was just complete chaos. The plaza was abosolutely packed and everyone was screaming, drinking champaine, and setting off fireworks all around us. They weren’t small firecrackers either…they were huge and really scary! They set them off right next to us contstantly and we would have to run off really quickly so we didn’t get hurt or go deaf. It was really fun to be in the middle of so much excitement and funny to see all the traditions. Hundreds of people ran around the plaza in a circle 12 times at midnight, there were ladies selling yellow underwear (good luck I guess), and grapes (they eat 12 right at midnight like in Spain), and there were men pushing around carts with any kind of alcohol you can dream of for the midnight toast.
After New Year’s Eve my week really wasn’t all that exciting, but I enjoyed myself. I went to see several relatives and family friends…many of which hadn’t seen me since I was about 3, and they were all very disappointed to see that my locks of golden hair have since turned brown (apparantly I was MUCH cuter when I was 3.) Also, just about every Peruvian relative I’ve seen since I’ve been here has one thing to ask me within the first few minutes of the conversation…why am I not married and when do I plan to get married? Apparantly 26 is way to old to be single and I better get married quick so I don’t end up an old maid. It’s been really nice seeing all these people again though, and I really did have a wonderful time in Cuzco getting to know my family better. My cousin Fernando and I went to Ollantaytambo, a small town close to Cusco, on Thursday and I abosolutely loved it. I had been to almost all of the other towns with ruins around Cuzco before, but for some reason I had never visited Ollantaytambo. I really think it’s some of the best ruins from all the ruins Cuzco contains.
Yesterday, I left Cuzco early in the morning and came to Puno, where I met up with Matt and Kerstin. They were in Arequipa the past few days. Matt and I were in Puno for one night just before going to Cuzco, but that was just because of our bus difficulties. We didn’t get to see any of the sites that time. Today we took a trip out to the Uros Islands, which are these amazing manmade floating islands on which several people live. It was a lot cooler than I thought it would be. The islands are made from reeds and constantly need to be added to and fixed up so that the islands don’t sink. We visited two islands and it’s so crazy, the ground is soft and it feels like you might fall through, but of course you don’t. All of the Uros people’s houses are also made from reed and we were able to look inside a couple houses and see what they looked like inside. They are VERY used to having tourists come to their islands daily so they of course have a bunch of little stands to sell their crafts and stuff. Super touristy or not though, it was still amazing to see how these people live. Here are some picture’s from my past week.

This is what the Plaza de Armas looked like more or less on New Year’s Eve…a lot of people, firecrackers, and chaos. I coudn’t really get any good pictures because the batteries in my camera kept dying.

Matt, Kerstin, my cousin Fernando, and Lindsey (Fernando’s friend) in the plaza on New Year’s Eve.

My Tia Margarita had us over for lunch on New Year’s Day. My aunt is so wonderful and loved all my friends so much. Here she is in the kitchen.

Here we are at New Year’s lunch. From the left…my Uncle Wilbur, Uncle Juan Carlos, my Grandpa, Aunt Margarita, cousin Fernando, Kerstin, me, and Matt’s taking the photo.

Here are some of my parent’s “compadres”. My parents are the godparent’s of their daughter. My aunt and I went over there one day and had so much fun. We played “sapo” (frog), which is a traditional game here. You throw coins at this wood thing with a metal frog in the middle and try to get the coins in the frog’s mouth. It’s super hard, but I did it twice!

These are the ruins in Ollantaytambo.

The town of Ollantaytambo was super cute too. Here’s the Plaza de Armas.

Here’s another picture of cute Ollantaytambo.

The busride from Cuzco to Puno yesterday was SO beautiful. It was such a beautiful, sunny day…after almost two straight weeks of rain and clouds. Here are some pictures of some scenery along the ride.

This is Puno this morning, along our walk to the dock to catch a boat to go see the islands. There were people selling fruit and other things all througout the streets. I kept thinking to myself, “You can’t feel anymore like your in South America than this.” I loved it!

These are the Uros Islands from afar.

This is the school where the Uros children go!

Here are Matt, Kerstin, and I on one of the islands. You can see that the ground is just straw and reed…it was so cool.

Matt and I each bought a drawing from this little girl…she was adorable.

These are the traditional boats the Uros ride around in to get from island to island.

You can see here how they have to constantly gather reeds and work at keeping the islands afloat. It really is amazing.

Oh, something really funny happened last night. Well, it’s really funny now anyway. Matt almost electricuted himself to death (not funny) and caused all the electricity in our hostel to go out for quite a while last night. He was downloading my photos from my camera onto his laptop for me and needed to plug the computer into the wall. It wouldn’t quite plug in, so he decided to use a metal knife to mess with the outlet and ended up with a huge shock and the electricity in the whole hostel going out…we seriously thought we were going to get in SO much trouble. Luckily we managed to pass it off like we had nothing to do with it, and eventually they were able to turn the electricity back on. It was pretty funny!

Yes, the whole hostel was this dark. Luckily, Kerstin had a flashlight, so we could work on hiding the evidence.

This was the evidence we were trying to hide. We’ve decided that Matt should become an electrician because he’s so skillful in this area.

Kerstin left this afternoon for Cuzco, where she’ll catch her flight home…so it’s just me and Matt once again. We’ve changed our gameplan for the next few weeks a lot, but now are having a few problems. We have a plane ticket to go to Brazil from Lima on February 2. However, we decided we would rather skip that flight and take a bus all the way to Brazil. We would do it over the course of about three weeks going through, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and finally entering Brazil from the very south. I was SO excited about this change in plans because it means that we’ll be able to go to Chile and back to Argentina to see places we didn’t get to see while there. We found out today though that we may not be able to skip that flight from Lima to Brazil…it’s really stupid, but there are all these restrictions on our ticket because we got it so cheap on this special route. We’re going to Bolivia tomorrow morning, and we’ll see what we can do once we get to La Paz in a few days…I really hope we can make these changes happen! Either way, I’m sure we’ll have lots of adventures over the next few weeks. I’ll keep you posted!

Tags: Travel

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