Cuzco - Plaza de Arma

 

After a first day of being pretty sick for me and VERY sick for Ali we dragged ourselves out of bed on Saturday to make the rounds of Cuzco. Cuzco is filled with an interesting mixture of ancient Inca ruins and walls standing side by side (and sometimes on top of) Spanish-era churches and cathedrals. The center of Cuzco for all of these is the Plaza de Arma, which contains not only the giant cathedral above, but the church below.

 

We wandered around a bit checking these out and in the process ran across the town market which was filled with various wares, vegetables, fruits and meat laying out. This is actually where I had gone the day before to find some coca leaves for Ali's altitude sickness.

 

We also found the train station where we arranged for our tickets to Agua Caliente (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong). Of course in the process of buying the tickets I somehow left my debit card in the local ATM, which soon ate it. Thankfully the banks here seem to be used to such gringo events and were quite quick about getting it back for me.

 

A bit later we hitched a bus up to the various Inca ruins right out of town, more on that soon.

Ali caught a fish this big...

 

Ahhh.. the joy that is exit rows.

We are now in Cuzco, the base camp for visiting Machu Pichu, the one thing most people DO know about Peru. What you might not know is that the city is at over 10,000 feet, which can be a bit of a shock for your system. We were fine after first stepping off the plane, but after being entrapped by a travel agent posing as hotel staff just helping us plan our weekend we started to feel the effects.

I'm feeling a bit light headed as I'm writing this actually. In theory coca tea (yes, THAT kind of coca) is supposed to help, as is chewing coca itself, but the tea hasn't really done the job yet. Ali is feeling especially bad as she has the double punch of already fighting a mild flu.

So it might be an afternoon trying to sleep off the headache before hopefully going out to explore the city a bit. We'll be visiting Machu Pichu proper on Sunday and Monday and yes, I will post the stereotypical picture that you've seen a million times before, it is after all my duty as a tourist.

Cooking Local Food

 

We decided to cook some of the local food earlier this week. One thing I hadn't really mentioned yet is the fruit stands in Lima. Every other corner has a stand of fresh fruits and vegetables available at rock bottom prices. Paltas (avocados) are about 1.50 soles while key limes have less value than water here, you can buy giant kilo bags of them for three or four soles.

One local curry and spice we've both come to love is Aji Amerillo, which is a midly spiced curry which is common in dishes here. At our Fred Meyer Wong we bought some supplies to make some omelettes back at home to top with the AA.

 

One funny thing was that the eggs we bought were absolutely huge. I've never seen such giant egg shells. And once we started breaking them we saw why, they were all double! I imagine they just pick out the giant eggs to sell for a bit more, but it certainly did make quick work of making four egg (two?) egg omelettes.

Sadly, we were so excited to dig into our mutant egg omelettes that we forgot to put the AA on. I guess that means we'll have to make more.

Oh, and Parque Kennedy was a park I'd been to before, but I just didn't know the name of. It's the one which had the church on it with no name. Ali and I ended up eating at a rather more busy and definitely slightly touristy restaurant, but it was quite yummy nonetheless.

Gato has arrived!

And she moves so quick you can't even see her!!

Ali got here Monday at some obsene hour of the morning. I had assured her and assured her that I would meet her at the airport, Lima is a dangerous, it's no place for you to just hop in a taxi and go. Besides, I wanted to see her as soon as possible! But uhm.. ya, her flight came in at 4:20 AM! Who schedules flights for those hours? I imagine the gates must be cheaper to rent then or something. Anyways, I went to bed early, set my alarm on my trusty Suunto and went to bed. So about that trusty Suunto's.. great watch, tells you the altitude, has a compass, mine can even interface with a computer and see pretty graphs of your day's skiing etc.. But.. and this is a big but, god only knows how many climbs have been foiled by this watch's absolutely anemic alarm. It's like a little mouse squeeking in a tin can with a pillow on top.. at the bottom of a pool. Or something.

So.. uh, ya, I overslept. And as these things always seem to go, you jolt up awake, check the time and it's exactly when you are supposed to be somewhere, in this case, the favorite time of pot smoking insomniacs the world over. Thirty seconds of getting some clothes on and I run downstairs to grab a taxi. Except somehow in this city containing nothing but taxis there are none to be found. Arrr!! Some frantic Francospanglish with the doorman gets one on the way for me. Not long after I'm racing towards the airport in classic Lima fashion.. no stopping for red lights, much less stop signs, honking randomly, and a new experience for me, refilling at a gas station while the car is on! Exciting stuff I tell you.

Thankfully Ali was still patiently waiting at the airport despite my tardy arrival and all was good.

Ali can now attest that some things I said were true, act as an importial witness if you will.
1) yes, there really is very little to no litter here. It's crazy!
2) yes, the food is fantastically yummy, even for a vegetarian
3) yes, it's impossibly loud. Apparently to bring this point home, they started some kind of remodeling on an apartment three floors down from us. And apparently, this remodeling involves quite a bit of demolition work. As in, they've been pounding something to death for two days straight nonstop. I really don't understand how it's physically possible for them to swing hammers for so long. These people must be PopEye incarnates. But it has brought the point home. Noise noise noise.

We are going to go check out Parque de Kennedy tonight, which was recommended by my neighbor as a great night spot to grab some food. We'll let you know how it goes.

No new news

Jeez, how do people blog every single day?? I mean, sometimes nothing really happens.

I guess that means I'm getting pretty comfortable in my routine as really not a whole much happened today. Went to my class in the morning, where we proceeded to spend another 90 minutes on telling time.. ahh!

Eric, Vaughn and I are on a big push to finish up our latest game, so that's been taking up most of my time. Most of the time all the honking outside the window doesn't bother me, but now and again when they are just leaning on them I feel like sticking my head out the window and yelloing "Un Sacapuntas!", which until recently was the only Spanish I knew.

I find myself constantly frustrated at my lousy retention. It's like my brain is broken, but it drives me nuts that I can't see something once, commit it to memory and move on. So many wasted cycles on something that really ought to be easy. Understanding is one thing, memorization, I'd happily pay 100 grand to have an implant in my head that would give me perfect recall.

So instead I have flashcards, which drive me bonkers because they only drive home the point of how imperfect said brain is.

I'm going to go watch some Spanish TV now. Wish me luck.

Being Four Again

 

I decided it would help me with my sentence structure if I got a book to read. Of course, I can't read just any book, but some hunting around in the bookstore found me a collection of children's stories. Perfect! One even talks about chicken pox, which I've never had, so maybe it'll be educational too. The cashier asked if I wanted it wrapped, to which I replied "Mi libro", to which she laughed and asked if I was learning Spanish, "Si si".

Day two of class was much like the first, except I can tell time now. It's the little things in life. I also met a swiss named Patrick who's here for a few months alone, so we might hook up later in the week and on the weekend to do some exploring, time will tell. I hate Europeans, he's speaking to me in English, but of course German is his native tongue and he seems much more adept at Spanish than I already.

I'm becoming a regular at the hole in the wall around the corner. The menu is just too cheap to pass up and I haven't had anything less than excellent there. Plus they kind of know me now so don't ask too many questions. I show up every day with my "Eating in Peru" book, start translating the options then try to order something I haven't had before. So far it's working out alright.

I also had my first private lesson yesterday. That was incredibly helpful. She walked me through conjugating the three primary families of verbs and answered a few of my pressing questions. I'm still completely hopeless when it comes to forming sentences though, so I'm going to try focusing on those kinds of scenarios from now on.

I have to admit I'm actually getting a bit homesick. I ALMOST walked into the TGIF last night because a burger and milk shake sounded terribly wonderful and familiar. Instead I wandered some more and found a fairly generic local chicken restaurant that was ok but nothing to email home about. The best meals are had in the small local places. Sadly the part of Miraflores (more like San Isidro) I'm in is lacking many, especially at night.

Can't wait for Ali to get here so we can do some more exploring in the evenings (and of course go to Cuzco and beyond)

First Day of School

 

I attended my first day of Spanish class today at ICPNA (Instituto Perunivano Norte Americano, believe it or not, they just pronounce it as ICPNA). I'd only been there when first registering and it was dead, but today it was packed with young kids attending various classes. I came rather close to walking into an English class by mistake, having misremembered the room number. I would have been quite the star there.

Instead I was the kid who can't speak any Spanish. Ok, so I wasn't the worst, but I'm pretty close. I'm actually a week behind as classes started last week, but I'd studied over the weekend and am mostly caught up. Of course the class is taught entirely in Spanish but it's at a reasonably comfortable pace.

It's been a long long time since I've been in a class and I kind of remember why I dropped out of school. Not being able to really guide your learning, focusing on parts you need more help on and vice versa is terrible! You are either feeling rushed and confused or bored. It's no fault of the teacher or class, just of the system. No, I don't really have any suggestions on fixing it. (interactive software?) Regardless, I'm learning from it, it's just frustrating that it's not more quickly.

To that end I've hired a private teacher to work with me a bit every afternoon as well, hopefully that will help in a more self guided manner that is more effective.

In other news I have interweb again! A technician arrived at 10:30 and promptly diagnosed my modem as dead. For some reason he doesn't carry spares though, so with a little help from Google Translator he related that I needed to exchange mine at the eMax office in San Isidro. Finding the office was fairly straighforward, but it took them forever to reprogram the modem.

Oh well, at least I'm no longer a thief. I've seperated my WiFi router and the WiMax router, so hopefully they won't interfere if that was indeed the problem.