trece

Cuzco

This morning, as I put in my contact lenses, my eye is siezed with the most incredible burning sensation. Perhaps I didn´t let the solution sit long enough? No, it has been brewing for ten hours. I blame it on the hostel´s shitty towels. No contacts today. And because it is drizzling outside, no glasses either. I´ll just feel slightly "off."

Early, we stop at a grocery store for neccesary provisions. We buy bread, cheese, manzana, chocolate, manjar, fudge, V8, and Doritos. On our way to the Pisac bus, we buy manjar filled pastilles. It is raining on and off.

Today, we see four sites of ruins.

MACHAY TAMBO This site used to hold ceremonial water baths. Or something like that. We sit on a dirt mound opposite the ruins, and watch while a team of Peruvian construction workers re-builds the crumbled structure. Behind us are a group of Frenchies, all using walking sticks, the kind that look like cross-country poles. We will see them several times today, and wonder each time, why the sticks? Walking out of the site, we buy mini Inka calendars made of stone.

PUCA PUCARA These ruins are made out of pink stones that apparently are pretty at sunset. They are like Peruvian Jerusalem stone. We walk around on the site, which may have been a hunting lodge.

On our way to the next site, we meet up with a thirteen-year-old Peruvian girl who shows us a shortcut across a field. It´s a ten minute walk, and we have several sputtering exchanges. We learn that the schools here are on three rotations--there are three possible timeslots for school for each child. Presumably, this is to save space. Although, who knows. We also learn that the totally awesome track suits we keep seeing on kids around this country are, in fact, school uniforms. Kids have two uniforms, their "nice" uniform (skirts, boy scout looking duds) and an athletic uniform. WE NEED TO GET OURSELVES SOME PERUVIAN TRACK SUITS.

QENKO While waiting at the entrance to this site for Wade to pee, I have a laugh with some natives. One man is showing me pictures of the site, and the various animals that can supposedly be seen in the rock. I say, Como Say de say WOW?" and they laugh that the translation is just WOW or OH or OOH or AH. I was understood!! I made a joke!! I was laughed WITH, not AT!! A SMALL VICTORY FOR ADINA, the clown.

These ruins are really cool. There is a huge cave carved into a huge rock, a cave with a huge alter on it, large enough for me to sit on. And pretend I am a sacrifice. We eat lunch in the cave, because it has begun raining again.

SACSAYHUAMAN There are two awesome things about this site: The name, and the rocks. The name is pronounced SEXY WOMAN, though it actually means Satisfied Falcon. The rocks, they are cool. After seeing so many Inka ruins, I can begin to recognize which rocks are Inka, and which have been reconstructed for the tourists by Peruvians. The Inka rocks are huge, and very geometric, and fit together in the most magical way. For example, Sacsayhuaman was a fortress with four sets of parallel zig-zag walls. The walls are not made of rocks in a brick pattern, or a graph-paper pattern. They are composed of various shapes, squares and rectangles and trapezoids and more. Yet they are fitted together perfectly, with no space in between. One patch of wall was like Utah fitted to Montana. Another unique feature of Inka stonework is the rocks themselves. They are rather bulbous, rounded out a bit and not flat.

Apparently most of the original fort was destroyed by the Spaniards and used to build churches and other buildings in Cuzco proper. From the top of the remaining structure, we can see all of Cuzco.

Another part of these ruins are huge, polished stones with cutouts in them. These cutouts are called The Thrones. We sit here for a while. I decide I am a bit Sexy Womaned out, and we pick up a combi on our way back to town.

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Mercado Central

The Mercado Central is this crazy, huge, tented area where the Real Peruvians go to shop for food and stuff. We see shirts, hats, dresses, aprons, eggs, raw meat, tea, vegetables, buttons, and everything else available in this country. I buy some more alpaca hats, because, I don´t need any justification.

We then embark on a quest to find a track suit uniform. In Peru, the schools´uniforms are one of two things: a boy-scout / prep school uniform, or the athletic track suit uniform with school´s name and logo on the back. We would like the latter. To take home with us. And wear in the States. Sadly, the fellow who sews them tells us he cannot sell these glorious uniforms to random strangers.

While looking around the neighborhood for counterfeit track suits, we run into a small market party, Peruvians dancing around to the band, drinking chicha and beer. They invite us to take a sip. We decline. They invite us to dance, which we are more likely to do, but instead just watch. Someone tells us it is the anniversary of the market. They are celebrating.

Pretty soon I get cranky, and we turn our backs on track suits and search for a restaurant. We find a greasy, sketchy place that has a drawing of an alien in the window and a framed poster of The Lady and the Tramp. I have rice with fried egg and fried plantains. Huevos de la Cubana.

As we are eating, a parade marches down the street. This parade only has ten people and no costumes. It does not do it for me.

On our way back to our hostel, we stop into AeroCondor to see about getting plane tickets to Lima after our trek. THIS TAKES ONE HOUR. Not one hour of looking into flights and finding available seats. No, that takes about three minutes before we get the flight we want at the time we want. The lady at the desk says that they switched over from manual tickets to E-tickets YESTERDAY, and they are still learning the system. It takes three women one hour to print our tickets with the correct names and passport numbers. However, the office did have good candies, so there is that.

We internet for a while, listen to rocket and firecrackers outside, read some Bill Bryson, and have a nice sleep.