July 4
The flight was scheduled to take off
well before Stupid O’clock, meaning our alarm went off at 3:30 AM to allow Milthon to
get us to the airport. We had already
started taking the altitude pills the day before, and packed them with our
normal morning vitamins and such to ingest en route, which would be closer to
what sane people would call morning.
Our gate was one of the downstairs
ones, and we knew that meant we’d groggily, zombie like pile onto a bus in the
early morning coastal Peruvian air to be driven out to our Airbus.
Having an older plane was excessively
welcome. The leather and roomier seats were just the comfort we needed.
In a massive switch of how we usually
fly:
I slept (instead of Rosa). In fact the only other airplane ride I slept this
easily on was when Rosa took me on this flight before we were married.
Anabelle read an entire creepy book
(instead of me). More horror genes.
Cuzco is up at eleven thousand feet, which I only learned on this trip is several thousand above Machu Picchu. Exiting the plane, we were greeted with a large bowl of Coca
leaves, because chewing on them or making tea with them can help with the
altitude issues.
It can also make travelling back to
the states interesting if you forget them in your coat pockets.
We walked out of the airport unable to find
anyone looking for us in the sea of taxi drivers. Rosa called our hotel, and was told that
because of a teachers strike demonstration, he couldn’t get to the airport.
The guys at the "get a ride" desk let us know
that hotel taxi guy NEVER comes to the airport…
Good to know.
Rosa booked us a licensed taxi, and
Anabelle napped the whole way into Cuzco proper. This was probably for the best
as we passed gangs of police in riot gear getting ready for the teacher’s
strike. The strikers were never violent,
the cops just wanted to be prepared.
The radio played “Livin’ in America”
and “American Woman.” I originally
thought it was a greeting for us, but it may have been that was July 4th. Rosa set us up with an afternoon tour of
local ruins with the driver on the way in, as opposed to our original plan of
using the non-appearing hotel taxi.
No, you can’t borrow my wife.
The Hostal El Chaski overlooked the
Plaza De Armas right in the center of Historical Cuzco. It was set up like all of the repurposed old
Spanish buildings were. Downstairs housed a
small convenience store, called a Bruja for reasons I never got an explanation
for. Other places had travel agencies at the bottom. Upstairs
was the lobby/ offices and rooms to hire.
Restaurants were upstairs in many of
the other buildings following the same pattern.
I was impressed at the number of gay
pride flags all over in this traditionally macho country…
Until Rosa explained the rainbow designs
on nearly every building were Inca Flags.
I can be forgiven for not knowing this
as I confirmed a suspicion when we got home that native cultures of the
Americas did not use flags. Somebody
made one up in the Seventies. I’m glad I waited until I got home to learn this,
as they tend to frown mightily on those who bring up the “made one up” part down
there.
The outstandingly attentive and
friendly staff sat us down and gave us some Coca Tea, which is what everyone
does when you first arrive in the mountains.
A) Because it helps counteract the altitude and B) Because almost
everyone is outstandingly attentive and friendly.
There were two rooms available with
private bathrooms. One was up an extra flight of stairs, and the other had a mini
balcony, but what we initially thought was a slightly smaller bathroom. The balcony view on to the main square was
phenomenal, and the stairs were a big deterrent to our recently oxygen deprived brains at that juncture.
Once we’d settled in, the magnitude of
the “slightly smallerness” of the bathroom sank in.
The door opened in, requiring a
cha-cha-cha to enter or exit the room as it barely cleared the sink. To the left of,
and I can’t stress the power of these words enough,
RIGHT NEXT TO
the sink was the back of the toilet. The toilet seat was rubber, because it would take absolutely no effort to sit on it and take a shower simultaneously. The drain for the shower was under the sink, insuring anything in there that was not removed would get wet, including one of the rarest of Peruvian commodities, the toilet paper.
and I can’t stress the power of these words enough,
RIGHT NEXT TO
the sink was the back of the toilet. The toilet seat was rubber, because it would take absolutely no effort to sit on it and take a shower simultaneously. The drain for the shower was under the sink, insuring anything in there that was not removed would get wet, including one of the rarest of Peruvian commodities, the toilet paper.
Hot water could be generated by the
shower head itself, through a series of scary looking wires, which provided an
explanation for the electrical tape around the shower knobs.
Then again, we were there to sightsee,
not shower, and the room was phenomenal in that regard.
We rested a bit, while Rosa walked out
to find a place to fill our Peru phones with minutes. A group of students marched loudly through
the square banging drums and blowing horns protesting the same thing the
teachers were striking for, because they wanted to go back to school and
learn.
How’s that for culture shock?
Anabelle was kind of out of it. She
didn't react well to the altitude and her lack of sleep and empty stomach
didn’t help. In an attempt to recover, she napped a bit.
Rosa tried to get her some safe
grilled chicken. She checked two places
we were sure would have some, but came up short. The places were a McDonald's, and KFC along the
town square in the heights of the Andes mountains.
How’s that for depressing anti-culture
shock?
Anabelle was bummed since she wanted
to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Fourth of July as some sort of show of
patriotism.
One of the many restaurants had a
Menu’ with plain grilled chicken and some rice.
Rosa had the soup and sides, and I ate the main dish. Anabelle tried a little but didn’t like it
and was not acclimating. In fact, she was having a hard time standing. Even
with the pills we all started taking the day before, she had “soroche,” along with well over half the tourist
population given everyone’s reactions.
I was a little dizzy too, but with me,
it’s hard to tell if that's just a natural state of being.
Rosa went to get some Coca pills, and
any advice to help Anabelle get better.
She asked about the Coca chocolate and had one of many awesome Cuzco residents
admit she could tell her it helped so Rosa would buy it, but it really
didn't. Speaking of awesome people, when
she heard Anabelle was having issues, the woman who ran the Hostal El Chaski
brought us in an entire hot water dispenser and a bush’s worth of Coca leaves
to make tea. Anabelle still didn’t like it, but Rosa and I enjoyed many a cup,
which helped my dizziness to be much more occasional.
In the quest to find remedies for
Anabelle, Rosa had already left the room several times. I volunteered to go
instead. Anabelle propped herself up long enough to tell me, “You wouldn’t
survive.”
I tried to make a case that there were
many tourists, the store was nearby, and all I needed to know was, “Yo tengo
agua, por favor.”
Once my family stopped laughing at me,
the catch phrase for any time on the trip I tried to speak or understand
Spanish was my daughter saying, “Uh huh.
I have water, please.”
Needless to say, Rosa went to buy the
water. Instead of a couple small replacement bottles, she got one of the seven
liter Cielo jugs. We then proceeded to irrigate the tiny bathroom using it to
fill our normal sized bottles.
We could tell Anabelle improved
somewhat when she announced, “I'm bored.” However, she was still in no shape
for sightseeing, and camped out on her bed playing airline with our receipts
and reading a little. I was alternating between taking in the nifty view and
reading myself. Rosa was watching TV on the other bed. None of us were in any real shape for a tour that day, and we cancelled it to save our energy for the next day's excursion.
We thought another protest was coming
through, but it sounded much more impressive.
It had a full marching band. A
bit more nifty viewing on my part as they passed around the square let me see that
it was really a funeral procession.
My wife is known as a light
sleeper. On normal evenings, an acorn
bouncing off the roof, a stray insect flying around the room, or someone
snoring…in the next county…will easily wake her up.
After tying to discuss the marching
band playing outside our window with her for a while, I walked over near the TV
to try to get her attention since she hadn’t answered me.
She was out cold and remained that way
through the band’s entire forty five minute performance, providing me some
future ammunition. Granted, it was
nowhere near, “I have water please,” levels, but it was something.
Eventually we all reached the point
where boredom and hunger surpassed exhaustion and we strolled out into the
plaza, stopping to sit and rest fairly often. In a flashback to our last
Peruvian visit, a shoe shine guy chased us for a stretch while insulting the
lack of cleanliness of my footwear.
On the way back we stopped in the
little overpriced market area and Anabelle got a writing book. (That’s my
girl.) They also both picked out some earrings from a street vendor. Or maybe it was just Anabelle, even typed, my notes can be a bit disorganized.
My life is weird.
Rosa had been telling us about a place
that served a mix of all the Andean foods Anabelle wanted to try. She took us down a side street to find the
owner, who greeted us like members of her own family, gave us all big hugs and
took us to her restaurant.
Figuring she was one of Rosa’s old
school friends who had moved up there, I asked my wife how long she’d known
this person who was treating us with such kindness and familiarity.
“Since this afternoon.”
In case I haven’t mentioned it enough,
the people up there were awesome.
With all of us past crazy hungry
(yes…again) and Anabelle still afraid to eat from the soroche, we came very
close to giving up and leaving before ordering.
That near catastrophe was averted by the timely arrival of garlic bread.
Finding everything we wanted to taste
on the menu, we ordered the Parilla.
“Una Parilla, por favor,” appears to be
Spanish for, “Please bring a teeny barbecue covered with a massive mound of
skewered meats to my table.”
“I have water, please.”
We couldn’t get a straight answer on
whether the trout was grilled, fried, filleted, or live; and therefore asked
for extra chicken, which blew away the afternoon’s chicken, and most other
chicken I’ve eaten.
There was also chorizo which I heard
were fantastic, but vanished before I could get any.
The alpaca was exactly as spiced and
flavorful as I remembered from before we got married.
The cuy, an Andean delicacy Rosa’s mom
told Anabelle that she really liked was…
Well…
It was a section of a Guinea Pig with
its little foot waving at us.
And to describe the taste, I have to
fall back to a quote by Basil Fawlty addressing Manuel over his pedigree Siberian
hamster:
“Is rat.”
The music alternated between a guy
playing local folk instruments, and the sound system playing pop and rock music
that was on the play list of my freshman dorm in the late Eighties.
Then there was a weird combination
when the guy played, “My Heart Will Go On,” and “Careless Whisper” on the pan flute.
The only problem with the outstanding Plus
Restaurant that night (aside from the rat on a stick, which is more of a
cultural issue) was they were out of pie.
We grabbed some dessert from the Bruja
store connected to our hotel, and went in for the night.
While we were getting ready for bed,
Rosa asked, “Do you know what the problem with picking this room is?”
I guessed, “The fact that I can’t fit
both of my shoes in the bathroom at the same time?”
What she was referring to, was the
fantastic view of the Plaza meant we would hear the people passing through the
square all night.
Anabelle chimed in, “I bet they’ll be
quieter than the marching band…
Unless they come back.
ONE MO TIME!!!!”
I must have been tired as I was
surprised to find out the amazingly thick and warm alpaca blankets were from
Cosco.
That is until I realized they really
said, “Cuzco” which made more sense.
Anabelle played airline some more and
I requested a bulb for the lamp and the electric heater they said was
available.
In all the times I put things in and
out of the suitcases, I never noticed the boots in there were my heavy work
boots, not my comfy hiking boots. Along
with extra soreness and tiredness, this led to an epic itchy feet attack over
the night.
When I got up to find cortisone,
Benadryl or a hack saw, I nearly froze because the heater had gone out. I moved the plug to another outlet leading to
a small shower of sparks, and the cord being warm by morning.
We decided to stick with only the
super warm blankets the next night.
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