So we arrived in Cusco yesterday. No one ever told me it is the land of eternal solicitation. In the 10 waking hours we have walked around we have been asked to eat at restaurants 35 times, to buy a llama hat about 42 times, and to get a masage at least 50 times. I have never despised the words "no gracias" so much until now, because my brain and tongue are fatigued from saying them. I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "no gracias" on it and I wanted to rip it from his body and put it on my own. That being said, Cusco is beautiful and we are still happy to be here.
By the way, the eternal solicitation works because after the 50th massage request, we accepted. We were led into an alley, up some stairs, into a dank room with a dude listening to rock, and asked to remove our clothes. As skethy as it sounds, it was. We made sure to keep all our stuff close to ourselves. Then the music switched to the Incan rendtition of "elevator music" which was all those same grocery-store tunes but with the pan flute as the lead instead of the saxaphone. Two small indigenous women came in to massage us. Their hands were as strong as they were freezing. It felt like I was being massaged by an industrial kitchen-aid mixer that had been chilled. Mike, somehow, enjoyed his massage although he admits that his legs have rug-burn on them due to the way they skimped on the baby oil. Oh, and Mike DID buy a llama hat. One with ridiculous pom-poms hanging on strings off the ends of the earflaps. I keep telling him that I´m walking so far behind him because the cobblestone sidewalks are so narrow...
Aside from the massage, yesterday we had a GREAT lunch after I insisted we not go in ANY place where the waiters were soliciting our patronage. We ended up at a place with a great menu of the day that included Alpaca (like the llama) as its main course. Thin slices of alpaca rolled around spinach, red pepper and cheese and then braised... delicious! I felt kind of bad about it later when a traditionally-dressed woman asked if I wanted to take a picture with her and her adorrable baby llama. Anyways, the restaurant just proved that we can´t go anywhere where people are begging for us to eat there. Had a great lunch today too, after saying "no gracias" 152 times to the other restaurants. Mike wants to go back to the first place so he can finally try roasted guinnea pig. P.S. the large "last supper" painting in the main cathedral has not fish as the depicted meal, but guinnea pig!
We are glad we got here early to acclimatize and get stuff in order for the Inka Trail. We are going white water rafting tomorrow which should be fun, and then we have two more days in Cusco to chill, rent our equipment for the trail, and get more massages...
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Eating Cow Heart...Why Lima is a Great City
It´s been a great week of firsts...first surfing lessons (I went back for a second lesson and made it up without the help of the instructor which was great), first time eating cow heart, first time eating Llama, first injection in my ass from a Peruvian doctor, first time getting scammed (see below) and, soon, first (and last) hike on the Inca Trail! We are in Cusco, Peru now but my job is to summarize the 3 days that we spent in Lima. We weren´t expecting much since the guidebook said that Lima is a ´frenetic, polluted mess´ (it has a population of 7.6 million and no building is higher than 6 or 7 stories so you can imagine how vast it is) but by the end, the was probably my favorite city in South America so far.
Our hostel was pertty gross (3 out of 3 bathrooms were broken and the room smelled of moldy cheese) but it was in a great area called Miraflores which is the trendy area of Lima near the beachfront. We took a walk to the cliffs right above the beach and were blown away by park after beautiful park...lots of art and statutes...a perfectly clear sky and paragliders and hanggliders flying around everywhere (they take off right in front of you by jumping off the cliffs). I´d never seen anything quite like it.
That might we also managed to meet up with Phil Zackler...my college roomate and our longtime friend. We strolled around and went to a restaurant with an ocean view. I was still feeling a little shaky from my 102 degree fever of the day before (this is a whole other story but to summarize, the Peruvian medical system is awesome and a doc came to my room and gave me a shot in my ass and tons of drugs to help me beat the fever and upset stomach, all for about 35 bucks; what would that have cost in the US?), but we had a great time.
The next day we went to central Lima and the Plaza de Armas (every major Plaza in Peru is called Plaza de Armas). We had our best tour to date of the Lima Cathedral which has been knocked down at least twice by earthquakes in its 500 plus year history and was a weird amalgamation of colonial and modern architecture. We saw the grave of Pizzaro (the Spanish conqueror of Peru...who managed to defeat millions of natives with only a few hundred spanish soldiers), and all kinds of crazy religious relics.
We also got all Indiana Jones at the next spot, the San Francisco Monestery where we got to go down to the crypt which had been the public cemetery of Lima for like 200 years before they closed it down. Thousands of people were burried there at one point and we made our way arround the very low and very narrow corridors amonst piles of femurs, arm bones, and skulls. One room had a well that was filled with leg bones and skulls in a huge circle pattern...very creepy but very cool.
Food in Lima was also very good with the highlight being the barbeque place that we went to on the last night whose specialty was cow heart. I was a little scared to get it considering that I was like 2 days beyond my really bad illness, but it was the right decision because it was awesome...pretty much just like flanksteak.
The whole experience of Lima was slightly marred by the experience of our last night. We met a guy who said he knew a great place to get Pisco Sours (the traditional cocktail of Lima). We ended up sharing a drink with him which lasted like two and a half hours because when the drinks came they were freaking HUGE. Anyway, very, very long story short, at the end of the whole thing he suddenly got really weird and said that the bill was like 250 soles (something like 85 bucks)...keep in mind that is probably the cost of 3 or 4 nights at the hostels that we have been staying at. I threw down 200 soles in a rage and ran out of there with Laura. Then the women from the bar came running after us saying that we hadn´t paid at all. The guy had just pocketed the money and told the waitress that we were running out on the tab. In the end, police came over to see what the problem was...they went up and arrested to guy and put him in the back of their cop car. He of course only had 50 of our soles on him (keep in mind they literally strip searched him in the bar in front of people...crazy) so I guess he handed they money off to someone while we were outside. So, all told we lost about 60 bucks, but it could have been much worse. And the lesson was learned. You just cant trust anyone. We are now going to be far less trusting of people that we meet and will be much more on our guard so it wont happen again!
We ended up buying a flight from Lima to Cusco, which was great because it was an enjoyable 50 minutes flight rather than a 27 HOUR bus ride. We are adjusting to the altitude...its a beautiful setting high in the Andes but its horribly annoying because people come up to you every 10 seconds to sell a massage or art or whatever. Traveling in South America definitely taxes your spirit a lot more than Europe. But we are in high spirits becuase we are going river rafting tomorrow and probably doing a scooter tour the day after that and then on Monday we leave for our 4 day Inca Trail hike. It´s going to be a great week! Hope everyone is doing well...I´m sad to miss the first Cal game, I hope we stomp Maryland.
Our hostel was pertty gross (3 out of 3 bathrooms were broken and the room smelled of moldy cheese) but it was in a great area called Miraflores which is the trendy area of Lima near the beachfront. We took a walk to the cliffs right above the beach and were blown away by park after beautiful park...lots of art and statutes...a perfectly clear sky and paragliders and hanggliders flying around everywhere (they take off right in front of you by jumping off the cliffs). I´d never seen anything quite like it.
That might we also managed to meet up with Phil Zackler...my college roomate and our longtime friend. We strolled around and went to a restaurant with an ocean view. I was still feeling a little shaky from my 102 degree fever of the day before (this is a whole other story but to summarize, the Peruvian medical system is awesome and a doc came to my room and gave me a shot in my ass and tons of drugs to help me beat the fever and upset stomach, all for about 35 bucks; what would that have cost in the US?), but we had a great time.
The next day we went to central Lima and the Plaza de Armas (every major Plaza in Peru is called Plaza de Armas). We had our best tour to date of the Lima Cathedral which has been knocked down at least twice by earthquakes in its 500 plus year history and was a weird amalgamation of colonial and modern architecture. We saw the grave of Pizzaro (the Spanish conqueror of Peru...who managed to defeat millions of natives with only a few hundred spanish soldiers), and all kinds of crazy religious relics.
We also got all Indiana Jones at the next spot, the San Francisco Monestery where we got to go down to the crypt which had been the public cemetery of Lima for like 200 years before they closed it down. Thousands of people were burried there at one point and we made our way arround the very low and very narrow corridors amonst piles of femurs, arm bones, and skulls. One room had a well that was filled with leg bones and skulls in a huge circle pattern...very creepy but very cool.
Food in Lima was also very good with the highlight being the barbeque place that we went to on the last night whose specialty was cow heart. I was a little scared to get it considering that I was like 2 days beyond my really bad illness, but it was the right decision because it was awesome...pretty much just like flanksteak.
The whole experience of Lima was slightly marred by the experience of our last night. We met a guy who said he knew a great place to get Pisco Sours (the traditional cocktail of Lima). We ended up sharing a drink with him which lasted like two and a half hours because when the drinks came they were freaking HUGE. Anyway, very, very long story short, at the end of the whole thing he suddenly got really weird and said that the bill was like 250 soles (something like 85 bucks)...keep in mind that is probably the cost of 3 or 4 nights at the hostels that we have been staying at. I threw down 200 soles in a rage and ran out of there with Laura. Then the women from the bar came running after us saying that we hadn´t paid at all. The guy had just pocketed the money and told the waitress that we were running out on the tab. In the end, police came over to see what the problem was...they went up and arrested to guy and put him in the back of their cop car. He of course only had 50 of our soles on him (keep in mind they literally strip searched him in the bar in front of people...crazy) so I guess he handed they money off to someone while we were outside. So, all told we lost about 60 bucks, but it could have been much worse. And the lesson was learned. You just cant trust anyone. We are now going to be far less trusting of people that we meet and will be much more on our guard so it wont happen again!
We ended up buying a flight from Lima to Cusco, which was great because it was an enjoyable 50 minutes flight rather than a 27 HOUR bus ride. We are adjusting to the altitude...its a beautiful setting high in the Andes but its horribly annoying because people come up to you every 10 seconds to sell a massage or art or whatever. Traveling in South America definitely taxes your spirit a lot more than Europe. But we are in high spirits becuase we are going river rafting tomorrow and probably doing a scooter tour the day after that and then on Monday we leave for our 4 day Inca Trail hike. It´s going to be a great week! Hope everyone is doing well...I´m sad to miss the first Cal game, I hope we stomp Maryland.
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