Peru 2017 Day 5- Free Cocoo Boogaloo

July 6

We were awakened, later than Stupid O’clock, but earlier than needed by the fireworks at seven in the morning in celebration of Cuzco Day.  It is equally likely that every day is Cuzco Day, I'm not sure.

In any event, we arose, and played a couple rounds of the teeny bathroom cha-cha-cha.  Then we packed as much as possible and went out to sample the complimentary breakfast.

To complete the references to our nieces that started with Mount Veronica, the owner called for Aurora to get our breakfast.    Considering we could see the place had no visible kitchen, I was wondering how they were going to handle this promise.  The answer was, as with most things in that area, fantastically due to the people making up for what they lacked in amenities.

They had liquid instant coffee along with more of the local and other kinds of tea. Aurora used a small two burner gas range in what looked suspiciously like a supply closet to cook whatever style eggs we wanted.  This was accompanied by orange juice that had been inside oranges that morning, rolls that had been dough in an oven that morning, and jam that had been growing on a strawberry bush as recently as necessary to make jam.

Sorry, I blew the parallel, but what do I know about jam?

Filled with our fantastic breakfast, we went to take advantage of a further niceness from the owner of Plus restaurant and Rosa’s lifelong friend for twenty-four hours.

She gave us a Golden Ticket!  Woo!

It stated we were entitled to a tour and sampling at the chocolatier a couple of blocks down Calle Plateros, the street of the Plaza De Armas our Hostal was on. 

The tour was a tad shorter than the Willy Wonka version, as the entire place was a single room connected to El Maques restaurant. 

They showed us the chocolate mixing pan and several varieties of chocolate infused with fruit, chilies, granola, Coca, and Maca.  I have no idea what that last one is. It turned the white chocolate kinda beige, and gave it a bit of a zing.

We sipped our teeny hot chocolates with the tasting, and bought most of the store.  The blueberry one turned out to be cranberries.  They were excellent chocolate makers, not so much in the label department.

We made a quick market stop for some souvenirs on the way back. There were American teenagers in the store that blended into the area far less than I did, which takes effort.  Back in the square, a small local lad gave us a lesson in true blending by taking a leak in the gutter of the Plaza De Armas. 

I did not need to blend that badly.

One last and laborious climb up the steep Hostal El Chaski stairs, which would not have passed code any time after the seventeen hundreds, brought us back to the lobby and our luggage.

Instead of letting us call for any of the cabs we’d used before, the owner took one of our cases and walked us out of the hotel and the square to get us a cab in the registered zone. She then bid us farewell as if we were parting company with an old friend.  Who needs amenities with people like that?

One final typical, thrill packed, mountain cab ride, featuring a baton twirling guy as entertainment at a stoplight, and we were back at the airport.

We checked in excessively early, a most unusual event for us specifically and for Peru in general. Therefore the flight was delayed for forty minutes.

Thanks to my continued lack of blending, I was the only one of the three of us who had to de-shoe going through security.  The lack of restaurants and whatever gunk built up on the airport floor adding to my itchy foot problems assured a steady diet of Power Bars and Benadryl for the flight home.

Maybe I should have peed in the gutter too?

We enjoyed the extra leg room and leather seats of the old Airbus plane once again…

And tried desperately to ignore the fact that the arm fell off the seat two rows in front of us. 

Flying with the wind down from the mountains shortened our air time, eliminating any possibility of squeezing in a food service.  As we exited the plane back in the more “civilized” area of Lima, Claro cell phone start up tones surrounded us.

Milthon met us to bring us home using an interesting if common Lima airport tactic.  Rosa called him when we landed. He drove through the lanes right by the airport doors and we rushed out to meet him, making sure our carry on was in front of us, not dragging behind. Milthon jumped out, popped the trunk and we threw our bags, and ourselves into the car before the cops came to yell at us. 

Milthon did offer to pull over a short distance out of the airport to move the carry on - wedged between the ceiling and my chest - into the trunk, but it would have been too much work to dislodge us by that point, and I told him I’d be fine for the trip home.

Before washing up, we took the time to do a family dance together in celebration of the bathroom that was several orders of magnitude larger than what we’d been using for two days.

Per our usual planning methods we changed dinner ideas about six times.  While I took my turn for some self-cleaning in a spacious environment, Rosa went to the laundromat and to get us Bembos!  WOO!

Anabelle played travel agent again, and due to reading the pre blogged Disney stories, we played, “I’m thinking of something in Disney.”

Due to enjoying the insanity of them, we watched a couple more Aquaman episodes.  We kept the volume extra low to avoid waking Abuelita….

While people slammed doors and screamed in the alley.

Comfortable sleep is all about the noises you are used to.

Rosa came back with another seven liter Cielo water jug to take care of her non native family, plus the Bembos.  Again, WOO!

After dinner, Anabelle and I went back to our tradition of marathon Doctor Who Uno sessions.  I had the first great run in years with four “Draw 4” cards in one hand. That was to be a blip along the landscape of my Uno failures.

Rosa did some manual laundry while I put Anabelle to bed, after she heard three full days of the Disney Story of course.

Rosa got the Wi-Fi generator from Milthon to work and we spent the rest of the evening getting all of our devices and computers to connect. This was mostly to back up the pictures from the preceding days’ adventures.

I had a delayed return to the fifth book of the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy before turning in, since I wasn’t going to lug that giant tome into the mountains with that little left in it.

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