Wednesday. The dogs are swarming on the streets of Cusco. You can hear them howl in the night from some faraway street, a yelp or two nearby when they fight, and during the day they lie in heaps by the side of the road, making life difficult for Sarah who has to cross to the other side to avoid them, in case they turn out to be less placid than their sleeping faces suggest.
More bread, improving stomachs, another day with the boleto turistico and the museums of Cusco. Today we face Qoricancha, the centre of the Incan world, a beautiful temple to the Sun God Inti which Francisco Pizarro tore down and stuck a Franciscan monestary on top of. Not noted for their cultural sensitivities, the Conquistadores.
It turns out to be the walled gardens we have been walking past every day on Av El Sol, a lush grassy area with staggered ledges for trees and shrubs, topped by an impressive church. The Museo Del Sitio De Qoricancha is underground, half a dozen rooms of pottery and figurines, the same things you see everywhere, whether in tourist shops or every other museum in the entire city. Most interesting is probably the collection of photographs of Cusco a hundred years ago. So little has changed except the shape of the cars.
The monestary itself is full of tourists wandering in groups and having some bricks pointed out to them. By this point one aspect of historical tourism in Cusco is apparent: an awful lot of time is spent pointing out the same facts in many different museums, whilst a lot of things are noticably absent. Where are the details on Incan society structures, relationships, the complex philosophical and religious views they held? At one point in the monestary you find two huge paintings side by side, one a star chart of the Milky Way, the other a diagram of lines stretching out from Cusco throughout the entire Incan empire. Each line ran through a number of Incan cities, hundreds of miles from each other.How? Meanwhile, rather than identify shapes that the stars made, the Incas found the shapes of the mystical animals in the blackness between the stars. You can see outlines of llamas, pumas, apparently a fox in there as well, with two bright red eyes. It's all glazed over a bit. Perhaps a look at Garcilaso de la Vega's History of the Inca will reveal some of these secrets, but when Incan history is the lifeblood of Cusco you'd think they might provide a more comprehensive picture of what the society actually involved.
So that's me glazing over Qoricancha, but truth be told there's only so much to say about something that once was incredible but now has something on top of it. The place is awash with things that maybe were something, but who really knows? All we really learn is that Cusco city is constructed in the shape of a puma, and that the Inca had a cyclical concept of time. A lot of reading to be done when I get home, I think.
Thursday. As you know by now, Thursdays ae mostly devoted to watching Sevilla´s Europa League campaign. This week is the first leg of the semi-finals, Sevilla at home and facing Valencia, a team I have no love for whatsoever. A big win is required ahead of the away game, knowing Valencia thrashed Basel 5-0 in the quarter-finals in the Mestalla. I am excited to say the least. Accompanying us today are Mishka and Belinda, from Australia, although Mishka´s origins lie in the gargantuan Moscow.
At Norton Rat Bar, a British motorcycle themed establishment on the Plaza De Armas, you can buy their own beer at PNS$10 a pint, a veritable bargain considering some of the muck we´ve drunk in Peru. Sitting at the bar, big tv on and all to ourselves, I sample the Brown Ale, dry and malty and a little thin but not inoffensive, whilst Sarah tackles the Pale Ale, deliciously grapefruity with some peach and apple on the edges. She falls in love with the Blonde, a standard but well constructed golden beer, and eventually I get a pint of the Porter, which deserves its reputation whilst not obviously emulating any of the big names.
I guldered at the tv for 90 minutes and Sevilla finished 2-0, good but definitely not done. Next Thursday will be stressful.
We hang around much longer than we ought to, swapping travel stories, life of the Irish and global perceptions of the Emerald Isle, and finally dip into Russian literature, idiom, and somehow finish on the lessons to be learned from Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. At 9pm, an hour before they are due to catch their bus, we head back to the hostel, wish them well, have a cup of tea or two, and collapse into bed after midnight, no ill effects from the demon drink to be had, but wishing we had bought a Big Mac meal on our way home.
Friday. I´m not saying there were sore heads, but we definitely could have done without a hiccup in our plans. As it was, negligence had left me without cash in my N&P bank account, the one that´s free-to-use abroad, and we had a PNS$360 bill to pay at Pan-Tastico. It was a full house for the hostel and we were moving on to another hostel, a mere five minutes walk away. A pity then that, between check-out at 10am and when we finally left at 6.30pm, we were bumming around, wasting time, making loose plans for the coming weeks and not really getting much done. An Indian buffet for lunch broke up the time, we dandered around a few pruck shops, but nothing worthwhile. In the lobby of Pan-tastico, drinking coffee and eating cookies we were no longer entitled to, we checked the N&P website every hour. Surely it would go in at midnight GMT? Apparently not. Finished with hanging around, I took the Nationwide fee and paid out bill, reluctantly stepping out into the evening and finding ourselves outside Inversiones Siete Angelitos. Or, as our initial impression would be, prison. Again.
Possibly a little unfair, but then you could generously describe the cheapest hostel in the area as 'a work in progress'. We seemed to be the only guests when we arrived, which meant having a six bed dorm to ourselves, but then we also discovered our bathroom was utterly unusable with nice big patches of dam`p swelling the corners of the ceiling. Yes, this is what PNS$25 gets you a night in Cusco. That includes breakfast. Most of the more expensive places don´t. Enough said.
We hung around long enough to get changed, then headed out, meeting our Kiwi companions at the Plazoleta San Blas to go for a drink. Warned by our host that getting back into the hostel might be difficult later, we arranged to be back for 11pm. Needless to say we were later than that, and greeted a grumpy chap at the door, closer to midnight.
Our plan to head to La Jardin Secreto for beer and live music was usurped by our curfew, so we stayed in San Blas, finding ourselves in Kilometer Cero, handy, tiny, and with delicious chicken wings for dinner. Our fine evening of Cusqueña beer and a rather bad Machu Picchu cocktail (mint licquer, orange juice and ´red´ alcohol all floating in a glass) had barely begun, the bad on the stage somehow banging out a latin version of Robbie William´s Angels, before we realised getting back into prison might be getting a little more difficult, and we parted company far too early.
The rain had started, it was cold, and we crawled into bed, a busy weekend ahead.
Saturday. Another cold day. Our weekend plans of eliminating yet more cultural sites is vague. Should we head out of town to Pisaq or Moray and Maras? Our new prison offers up a familiar basic breakfast of baps and butter and jam and hot water, which isn't bad considering. But you notice that the hostel is out of the sun, its cold in our room, although we appreciate just how quiet our new street is. We have a couple of restaurants with eager beaver staff and a mini market / laundrette across the road. Sure there's some dogs in the distance, and for some reason someone keeps setting off fireworks during the day, but its certainly not one thing we could complain about. I shan't be as unforgiving as the tepid trickle of water coming from the shower.
So we settle ourselves on visiting the stupidly close historic ruin of Saqsaywaman, commonly referred to in tourist parlance as 'sexy woman', though its more like SocksyWamman. Its the site of a famous battle between the Conquistadors and the Inca, and the closest of four separate historical spots all on the same road, though stretching out 8km over the hills and far away.
A wander back towards the Plazoleta San Blas reveals a little craft market and, as Sarah says 'You just don't have much interest in buying anything anymore, do you?' we stumble across a little woman selling handmade scarves (she was sitting weaving them there and then) and I finally buy myself a present that isn't a football shirt. We get our photos taken with her. There is no discount for buying multiples, a sure sign that we are getting the real thing.
My bank card still refuses to yield any cash for free, and we return to the hostel where I phone N&P, only to discover my 'faster payment' from Nationwide to Norwich And Peterborough missed the Friday deadline and thus won't transfer until midnight Sunday night at the earliest. Damn. I withdraw yet more expensive money from Nationwide. For all of you out there who travel a lot, I heartily recommend N&P's Gold Light Account, it has saved me an utter fortune on this holiday.
Task number two is to transfer the contents of our camera onto a DVD in a little internet cafe. We try that. An hour later, wasting time and writing some of this, our first disk dies in the burner. We leave the SD card with the chap in the shop and go for lunch, a delicious combination of Sopa de Quinoa (always excellent) and my first Alpaca steak, which is very like lean frying steak, and came in a thick rosemary sauce. Hard to complain at that combination for PNS$18.
At 2pm we collect our new DVD of photos, our SD card, and with another anti-inflammatory down my throat we begin the steep climb to Saqsaywaman. It takes about 20 minutes to rise up above the Plaza De Armas and find ourselves surrounded by men offering horseback riding (which isn't allowed in the national park) and little pots of choclo, a warm maize snack. We also catch our first glimpse of llamas just, you know, hanging around and grazing. Hardly any people about asking for money for taking a photo of them at all!
The site is covered by the boleto turistico, and its located on a hill overlooking the whole Cusco city. I shall have some photos here posthaste, as the valley is beautiful, green, barely a three-story building breaking the view. Great grey clouds roll back and forth over Cusco, over the whole surrounding area, and you can watch the rain streaking down dozens of miles away. It spits a little around us as we ascend but fortunately no worse than that.
Saqsaywaman is a huge site, much bigger than anything else we had seen, and probably a good primer for Machu Picchu. Enormous and intimidating grey blocks seal off steeply tiered levels which the Inca defended fiercely. How on earth anyone attacked this complex is a mystery, because you would be utterly breathless on the charge, you'd probably just cowp over and die. I masticate away at my coca leaves which I assert are helping with the varying altitudes, and Sarah gives me a stern anti-drug look, which I ignore. The evidence suggests that a teaspoon of coca flour every day would help end the vitamin and mineral deficiencies of two hundred million people, so rich is the leaf. Good job its still banned because some people can't sit in the pub without a little bag of marching powder to aid their inane conversations.
Grrrr.
The Kiwis had recommended we take advantage of a guide up on the hill, but sadly no one seemed to be about and offering their services, so we followed the path in reverse, none of which made any sense, and took some great photos instead. An awful lot of Germans were milling around at the top, all very underwhelmed by the whole thing, and a couple of guys were kicking a football around, which you aren't allowed to do. We could hear men cheering in the distance and an awful lot of dogs barking, and from around a hill came the sound of a Radio One Roadshow, except it was all classical music. Strange atmosphere indeed. We roamed around at length, spotted a lot more llamas and alpacas, a shepherdess encouraging them on with a stick beaten off an empty plastic bottle, and lots of people without very much idea what was going on here at all. Cusco suffers a little from day tourists, bussed in from nearby Urubamba, who look at the pretty buildings and pay top dollar in a fancy restaurant on the Plaza De Armas, then get whisked back in a bus for bedtime. Its not really that sort of a city. In fact, eight days after our arrival, I'm still a little loathe to leave here, because there's so much to do and explore. The city has a very different feel depending on whether the sun is shining or obscured by Ulster clouds, or whether its day, night, weekday, weekend, its always changing. And Cusco is alive, a city and district capital that pulses with humanity outside of the shallow touristic experience. When you spot union parades, police standing around in gangs for no apparent reason, odd little street fairs selling fresh produce of no use to the casual visitor, and all the other people all pursuing their own agenda, you know that when the chaps endlessly asking you if you want to buy their paintings from their leather portfolios on the street go home, there is a side to this city that you need a keen eye and a lot of patience to truly uncover.
That said, sometimes a shallow experience works too. We descend from SexyWoman, down steep staircases to streets with little women selling woolen hats off rugs, and find our way back to the Plaza de Armas, Norton Rat Pub our destination again. We watch some football highlights and play some pool. Actually, we play a lot of pool, and Sarah starts showing some skills. "Don't play like Moyes" I preach "You have to take risks, because if you don't take risks you can't achieve greatness" at which point I send the white ball across the table and miraculously sink some balls I had no physical right to do. Sarah glares again. Luckily later, when she starts winning every game, I'm not such a bad loser. But then she is much more competitive than me.
We meet a few Canadians who stagger in later, a few guys from Scarborough in Toronto (or 'Scar-town' as its popularly known, due to its gentle reputation for gang violence) and I end up teaching them how to play darts, which I thought everyone knew how to play. Suddenly, however, we are hungry, and we depart the now-busy pub for the cool streets of Cusco. A few feet away from our hostel we are encouraged into our local pizzeria, where at long last we receive a decent pizza, and we warm ourselves next to the stone oven. It doesn't last very long though, our tiredness overwhelming, and we are safely tucked up before 11pm.
That leaves today, Sunday. Only two things on my mind: football and ballet. Not a normal combination, but I shall explain. Today Sevilla play Athletic Bilbao in San Mames stadium, should they win then both will be on the same points, and challenging for the elusive fourth spot in the Spanish League, the remaining Champions League spot. Should Sevilla lose, they could virtually give up on that hope. Not to mention that they have the Europa League game on Thursday ahead of them, arguably more important.
Basic breakfast out of the way, a few emails sent, and we darken the doors of Norton Rat one more time hoping to watch the football and eat a decent breakfast. Fat chance. Some Americans want to watch the MotoGP. Who on earth watches motorbike racing on tv? We exit and try Paddy's, where everyone is about to watch a repeat of the Liverpool v Chelsea game. No thanks. The Secret Garden doesn't have DirecTV, and I've given up hope of seeing it when we stumble across Bar Indigo, a Thai themed bar that is hosting a Dutch Party. Yes, I was confused too. Later on I see a poster and realise they are celebrating the Netherlands' first king in over a century. Later still we spot some of the Dutch staggering back to a noted 'party' hostel. Cusco has a fierce reputation as a party town. We are delighted to have avoided any such locales.
Anyway, the bar is happy to show the Sevilla game and feed us Pad Thai and Bami Goreng (nice!) as a group of middle aged Dutch folk sing along to famous Dutch pop songs, including the international 'A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and A Pizza Hut'. Sarah has no patience for this type of fun today, nor for the drunken Australians in the corner in their wifebeaters all looking like minor-league thugs. We just never get invited to parties, and we are okay with it.
So Sevilla get beaten 3-1 and go ten-men down, but it wasn't a bad showing, and the line-up suggests everyone relevant was being saved for Thursday's adventure anyway.
Back out into the baking Sunday heat, the sun powering down on us, and our next destination is clear: the Teatro Municipal. Earlier in the week we spotted a poster outside a museum advertising a free ballet show. It turns out that the Ministerio de Cultura, in its remit to ensure public access to the Arts, has sponsored a nationwide tour of the Ballet Nacional to perform some classic dances along with one modern piece. We intended to go on Saturday night, but Sarah considered herself under-dressed for such a cultural event, so we put it off a day.
A wander round San Pedro market, nice leather bags and lots of pruck and dead meat and tourists drinking fruit juices, and we end up outside the theatre with a hundred or so other folk just after 2.30pm. Half an hour later and the queue stretches to the end of the street. The 600 guest limit will easily be met. We take turns stepping off the pavement and out of the hot sun, and just after 3pm we file into the theatre, getting decent seats with a head-on view of the stage. There seem to be a hell of a lot of young children here. Naturally they turn out to have little to no interest in the proceedings, having more fun just running up and down and screaming. Sarah and I are clearly the whitest human beings to have ever set foot in this theatre, which is unusual.
At 4pm we get treated to four pieces; the pas de deux from Swan Lake, another pas de deux, this time from El Corsario, then a fine Spanish-themed piece called Majistero, and after the interval we have a new work called 'Degas', a tribute to Edgar Degas's paintings of ballerinas. Whilst the first three dances were in the classical style, the 'Degas' featured classical, neo-classical, and modern interpretative dancing. For my first ballet I have to admit it was excellent. Sarah was rightly spellbound. Best free ninety minutes I've had in a long time.
So here I am typing this up at 11.10pm, sitting in the strange little duplex at the back of our hostel, Sarah watching a broken television screen showing everything in green with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Spanish. We are packed, ready to head off in the morning to Ollantaytambo where the Inti Killa hostel awaits, along with more ruins, more small towns, and another stinking phonecall to the UK Passport Office. Sarah is not planning to be too polite this time, we have been ignored twice now. I don't think there will be a third time.
More bread, improving stomachs, another day with the boleto turistico and the museums of Cusco. Today we face Qoricancha, the centre of the Incan world, a beautiful temple to the Sun God Inti which Francisco Pizarro tore down and stuck a Franciscan monestary on top of. Not noted for their cultural sensitivities, the Conquistadores.
It turns out to be the walled gardens we have been walking past every day on Av El Sol, a lush grassy area with staggered ledges for trees and shrubs, topped by an impressive church. The Museo Del Sitio De Qoricancha is underground, half a dozen rooms of pottery and figurines, the same things you see everywhere, whether in tourist shops or every other museum in the entire city. Most interesting is probably the collection of photographs of Cusco a hundred years ago. So little has changed except the shape of the cars.
The monestary itself is full of tourists wandering in groups and having some bricks pointed out to them. By this point one aspect of historical tourism in Cusco is apparent: an awful lot of time is spent pointing out the same facts in many different museums, whilst a lot of things are noticably absent. Where are the details on Incan society structures, relationships, the complex philosophical and religious views they held? At one point in the monestary you find two huge paintings side by side, one a star chart of the Milky Way, the other a diagram of lines stretching out from Cusco throughout the entire Incan empire. Each line ran through a number of Incan cities, hundreds of miles from each other.How? Meanwhile, rather than identify shapes that the stars made, the Incas found the shapes of the mystical animals in the blackness between the stars. You can see outlines of llamas, pumas, apparently a fox in there as well, with two bright red eyes. It's all glazed over a bit. Perhaps a look at Garcilaso de la Vega's History of the Inca will reveal some of these secrets, but when Incan history is the lifeblood of Cusco you'd think they might provide a more comprehensive picture of what the society actually involved.
So that's me glazing over Qoricancha, but truth be told there's only so much to say about something that once was incredible but now has something on top of it. The place is awash with things that maybe were something, but who really knows? All we really learn is that Cusco city is constructed in the shape of a puma, and that the Inca had a cyclical concept of time. A lot of reading to be done when I get home, I think.
We call into Paddy's Irish Pub (with a name like that? Surely not!), the highest Irish-owned pub in the world (apparently) but it's bunged with folk watching Real Madrid v Bayern Munich, so we end up in Papacho's Burger Place next door, where a tasty veal burger is the meal of the day, accompanied by a quinoa beer. The beer was not as exciting as it sounds.In fact, it was about as mediocre as the football that we watched. Given that it followed the awesomely dull Athletico Madrid - Chelsea game the day before, that's really saying something. At least the food was good (although fecking expensive).
We have just enough time to call into the Museum of Sacred and Medicinal Plants before sundown. There we learn, from a wealth of laminated cards in English, about the coca leaf and the history of cocaine (not to mention the wilful ignorance of the health benefits and cultural importance of the leaf by the United Nations). About half the museum is dedicated to coca, followed up with plenty on tobacco (interestingly named after the native name for the island of Tobago) and the ayahuasca ceremony. You finish off with a few big books of medicinal herbs and a brief diatribe about Bio-piracy. Basically its a museum dedicated to noting how Western Europeans have taken ny number of plants and medicines from indigenous American cultures and abused them out of their healing context. Tobacco was certainly never meant to be smoked in the form of cigarettes.
Feeling enlightened, we browse through some shops on our way back, Sarah as ever searching for presents. This time nothing jumps out at us, and back at the hostel we make polite conversation with fellow guests before calling it a day.
We have just enough time to call into the Museum of Sacred and Medicinal Plants before sundown. There we learn, from a wealth of laminated cards in English, about the coca leaf and the history of cocaine (not to mention the wilful ignorance of the health benefits and cultural importance of the leaf by the United Nations). About half the museum is dedicated to coca, followed up with plenty on tobacco (interestingly named after the native name for the island of Tobago) and the ayahuasca ceremony. You finish off with a few big books of medicinal herbs and a brief diatribe about Bio-piracy. Basically its a museum dedicated to noting how Western Europeans have taken ny number of plants and medicines from indigenous American cultures and abused them out of their healing context. Tobacco was certainly never meant to be smoked in the form of cigarettes.
Feeling enlightened, we browse through some shops on our way back, Sarah as ever searching for presents. This time nothing jumps out at us, and back at the hostel we make polite conversation with fellow guests before calling it a day.
Thursday. As you know by now, Thursdays ae mostly devoted to watching Sevilla´s Europa League campaign. This week is the first leg of the semi-finals, Sevilla at home and facing Valencia, a team I have no love for whatsoever. A big win is required ahead of the away game, knowing Valencia thrashed Basel 5-0 in the quarter-finals in the Mestalla. I am excited to say the least. Accompanying us today are Mishka and Belinda, from Australia, although Mishka´s origins lie in the gargantuan Moscow.
At Norton Rat Bar, a British motorcycle themed establishment on the Plaza De Armas, you can buy their own beer at PNS$10 a pint, a veritable bargain considering some of the muck we´ve drunk in Peru. Sitting at the bar, big tv on and all to ourselves, I sample the Brown Ale, dry and malty and a little thin but not inoffensive, whilst Sarah tackles the Pale Ale, deliciously grapefruity with some peach and apple on the edges. She falls in love with the Blonde, a standard but well constructed golden beer, and eventually I get a pint of the Porter, which deserves its reputation whilst not obviously emulating any of the big names.
I guldered at the tv for 90 minutes and Sevilla finished 2-0, good but definitely not done. Next Thursday will be stressful.
We hang around much longer than we ought to, swapping travel stories, life of the Irish and global perceptions of the Emerald Isle, and finally dip into Russian literature, idiom, and somehow finish on the lessons to be learned from Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. At 9pm, an hour before they are due to catch their bus, we head back to the hostel, wish them well, have a cup of tea or two, and collapse into bed after midnight, no ill effects from the demon drink to be had, but wishing we had bought a Big Mac meal on our way home.
Friday. I´m not saying there were sore heads, but we definitely could have done without a hiccup in our plans. As it was, negligence had left me without cash in my N&P bank account, the one that´s free-to-use abroad, and we had a PNS$360 bill to pay at Pan-Tastico. It was a full house for the hostel and we were moving on to another hostel, a mere five minutes walk away. A pity then that, between check-out at 10am and when we finally left at 6.30pm, we were bumming around, wasting time, making loose plans for the coming weeks and not really getting much done. An Indian buffet for lunch broke up the time, we dandered around a few pruck shops, but nothing worthwhile. In the lobby of Pan-tastico, drinking coffee and eating cookies we were no longer entitled to, we checked the N&P website every hour. Surely it would go in at midnight GMT? Apparently not. Finished with hanging around, I took the Nationwide fee and paid out bill, reluctantly stepping out into the evening and finding ourselves outside Inversiones Siete Angelitos. Or, as our initial impression would be, prison. Again.
Possibly a little unfair, but then you could generously describe the cheapest hostel in the area as 'a work in progress'. We seemed to be the only guests when we arrived, which meant having a six bed dorm to ourselves, but then we also discovered our bathroom was utterly unusable with nice big patches of dam`p swelling the corners of the ceiling. Yes, this is what PNS$25 gets you a night in Cusco. That includes breakfast. Most of the more expensive places don´t. Enough said.
We hung around long enough to get changed, then headed out, meeting our Kiwi companions at the Plazoleta San Blas to go for a drink. Warned by our host that getting back into the hostel might be difficult later, we arranged to be back for 11pm. Needless to say we were later than that, and greeted a grumpy chap at the door, closer to midnight.
Our plan to head to La Jardin Secreto for beer and live music was usurped by our curfew, so we stayed in San Blas, finding ourselves in Kilometer Cero, handy, tiny, and with delicious chicken wings for dinner. Our fine evening of Cusqueña beer and a rather bad Machu Picchu cocktail (mint licquer, orange juice and ´red´ alcohol all floating in a glass) had barely begun, the bad on the stage somehow banging out a latin version of Robbie William´s Angels, before we realised getting back into prison might be getting a little more difficult, and we parted company far too early.
The rain had started, it was cold, and we crawled into bed, a busy weekend ahead.
Saturday. Another cold day. Our weekend plans of eliminating yet more cultural sites is vague. Should we head out of town to Pisaq or Moray and Maras? Our new prison offers up a familiar basic breakfast of baps and butter and jam and hot water, which isn't bad considering. But you notice that the hostel is out of the sun, its cold in our room, although we appreciate just how quiet our new street is. We have a couple of restaurants with eager beaver staff and a mini market / laundrette across the road. Sure there's some dogs in the distance, and for some reason someone keeps setting off fireworks during the day, but its certainly not one thing we could complain about. I shan't be as unforgiving as the tepid trickle of water coming from the shower.
So we settle ourselves on visiting the stupidly close historic ruin of Saqsaywaman, commonly referred to in tourist parlance as 'sexy woman', though its more like SocksyWamman. Its the site of a famous battle between the Conquistadors and the Inca, and the closest of four separate historical spots all on the same road, though stretching out 8km over the hills and far away.
A wander back towards the Plazoleta San Blas reveals a little craft market and, as Sarah says 'You just don't have much interest in buying anything anymore, do you?' we stumble across a little woman selling handmade scarves (she was sitting weaving them there and then) and I finally buy myself a present that isn't a football shirt. We get our photos taken with her. There is no discount for buying multiples, a sure sign that we are getting the real thing.
My bank card still refuses to yield any cash for free, and we return to the hostel where I phone N&P, only to discover my 'faster payment' from Nationwide to Norwich And Peterborough missed the Friday deadline and thus won't transfer until midnight Sunday night at the earliest. Damn. I withdraw yet more expensive money from Nationwide. For all of you out there who travel a lot, I heartily recommend N&P's Gold Light Account, it has saved me an utter fortune on this holiday.
Task number two is to transfer the contents of our camera onto a DVD in a little internet cafe. We try that. An hour later, wasting time and writing some of this, our first disk dies in the burner. We leave the SD card with the chap in the shop and go for lunch, a delicious combination of Sopa de Quinoa (always excellent) and my first Alpaca steak, which is very like lean frying steak, and came in a thick rosemary sauce. Hard to complain at that combination for PNS$18.
At 2pm we collect our new DVD of photos, our SD card, and with another anti-inflammatory down my throat we begin the steep climb to Saqsaywaman. It takes about 20 minutes to rise up above the Plaza De Armas and find ourselves surrounded by men offering horseback riding (which isn't allowed in the national park) and little pots of choclo, a warm maize snack. We also catch our first glimpse of llamas just, you know, hanging around and grazing. Hardly any people about asking for money for taking a photo of them at all!
The site is covered by the boleto turistico, and its located on a hill overlooking the whole Cusco city. I shall have some photos here posthaste, as the valley is beautiful, green, barely a three-story building breaking the view. Great grey clouds roll back and forth over Cusco, over the whole surrounding area, and you can watch the rain streaking down dozens of miles away. It spits a little around us as we ascend but fortunately no worse than that.
Saqsaywaman is a huge site, much bigger than anything else we had seen, and probably a good primer for Machu Picchu. Enormous and intimidating grey blocks seal off steeply tiered levels which the Inca defended fiercely. How on earth anyone attacked this complex is a mystery, because you would be utterly breathless on the charge, you'd probably just cowp over and die. I masticate away at my coca leaves which I assert are helping with the varying altitudes, and Sarah gives me a stern anti-drug look, which I ignore. The evidence suggests that a teaspoon of coca flour every day would help end the vitamin and mineral deficiencies of two hundred million people, so rich is the leaf. Good job its still banned because some people can't sit in the pub without a little bag of marching powder to aid their inane conversations.
Grrrr.
The Kiwis had recommended we take advantage of a guide up on the hill, but sadly no one seemed to be about and offering their services, so we followed the path in reverse, none of which made any sense, and took some great photos instead. An awful lot of Germans were milling around at the top, all very underwhelmed by the whole thing, and a couple of guys were kicking a football around, which you aren't allowed to do. We could hear men cheering in the distance and an awful lot of dogs barking, and from around a hill came the sound of a Radio One Roadshow, except it was all classical music. Strange atmosphere indeed. We roamed around at length, spotted a lot more llamas and alpacas, a shepherdess encouraging them on with a stick beaten off an empty plastic bottle, and lots of people without very much idea what was going on here at all. Cusco suffers a little from day tourists, bussed in from nearby Urubamba, who look at the pretty buildings and pay top dollar in a fancy restaurant on the Plaza De Armas, then get whisked back in a bus for bedtime. Its not really that sort of a city. In fact, eight days after our arrival, I'm still a little loathe to leave here, because there's so much to do and explore. The city has a very different feel depending on whether the sun is shining or obscured by Ulster clouds, or whether its day, night, weekday, weekend, its always changing. And Cusco is alive, a city and district capital that pulses with humanity outside of the shallow touristic experience. When you spot union parades, police standing around in gangs for no apparent reason, odd little street fairs selling fresh produce of no use to the casual visitor, and all the other people all pursuing their own agenda, you know that when the chaps endlessly asking you if you want to buy their paintings from their leather portfolios on the street go home, there is a side to this city that you need a keen eye and a lot of patience to truly uncover.
That said, sometimes a shallow experience works too. We descend from SexyWoman, down steep staircases to streets with little women selling woolen hats off rugs, and find our way back to the Plaza de Armas, Norton Rat Pub our destination again. We watch some football highlights and play some pool. Actually, we play a lot of pool, and Sarah starts showing some skills. "Don't play like Moyes" I preach "You have to take risks, because if you don't take risks you can't achieve greatness" at which point I send the white ball across the table and miraculously sink some balls I had no physical right to do. Sarah glares again. Luckily later, when she starts winning every game, I'm not such a bad loser. But then she is much more competitive than me.
We meet a few Canadians who stagger in later, a few guys from Scarborough in Toronto (or 'Scar-town' as its popularly known, due to its gentle reputation for gang violence) and I end up teaching them how to play darts, which I thought everyone knew how to play. Suddenly, however, we are hungry, and we depart the now-busy pub for the cool streets of Cusco. A few feet away from our hostel we are encouraged into our local pizzeria, where at long last we receive a decent pizza, and we warm ourselves next to the stone oven. It doesn't last very long though, our tiredness overwhelming, and we are safely tucked up before 11pm.
That leaves today, Sunday. Only two things on my mind: football and ballet. Not a normal combination, but I shall explain. Today Sevilla play Athletic Bilbao in San Mames stadium, should they win then both will be on the same points, and challenging for the elusive fourth spot in the Spanish League, the remaining Champions League spot. Should Sevilla lose, they could virtually give up on that hope. Not to mention that they have the Europa League game on Thursday ahead of them, arguably more important.
Basic breakfast out of the way, a few emails sent, and we darken the doors of Norton Rat one more time hoping to watch the football and eat a decent breakfast. Fat chance. Some Americans want to watch the MotoGP. Who on earth watches motorbike racing on tv? We exit and try Paddy's, where everyone is about to watch a repeat of the Liverpool v Chelsea game. No thanks. The Secret Garden doesn't have DirecTV, and I've given up hope of seeing it when we stumble across Bar Indigo, a Thai themed bar that is hosting a Dutch Party. Yes, I was confused too. Later on I see a poster and realise they are celebrating the Netherlands' first king in over a century. Later still we spot some of the Dutch staggering back to a noted 'party' hostel. Cusco has a fierce reputation as a party town. We are delighted to have avoided any such locales.
Anyway, the bar is happy to show the Sevilla game and feed us Pad Thai and Bami Goreng (nice!) as a group of middle aged Dutch folk sing along to famous Dutch pop songs, including the international 'A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and A Pizza Hut'. Sarah has no patience for this type of fun today, nor for the drunken Australians in the corner in their wifebeaters all looking like minor-league thugs. We just never get invited to parties, and we are okay with it.
So Sevilla get beaten 3-1 and go ten-men down, but it wasn't a bad showing, and the line-up suggests everyone relevant was being saved for Thursday's adventure anyway.
Back out into the baking Sunday heat, the sun powering down on us, and our next destination is clear: the Teatro Municipal. Earlier in the week we spotted a poster outside a museum advertising a free ballet show. It turns out that the Ministerio de Cultura, in its remit to ensure public access to the Arts, has sponsored a nationwide tour of the Ballet Nacional to perform some classic dances along with one modern piece. We intended to go on Saturday night, but Sarah considered herself under-dressed for such a cultural event, so we put it off a day.
A wander round San Pedro market, nice leather bags and lots of pruck and dead meat and tourists drinking fruit juices, and we end up outside the theatre with a hundred or so other folk just after 2.30pm. Half an hour later and the queue stretches to the end of the street. The 600 guest limit will easily be met. We take turns stepping off the pavement and out of the hot sun, and just after 3pm we file into the theatre, getting decent seats with a head-on view of the stage. There seem to be a hell of a lot of young children here. Naturally they turn out to have little to no interest in the proceedings, having more fun just running up and down and screaming. Sarah and I are clearly the whitest human beings to have ever set foot in this theatre, which is unusual.
At 4pm we get treated to four pieces; the pas de deux from Swan Lake, another pas de deux, this time from El Corsario, then a fine Spanish-themed piece called Majistero, and after the interval we have a new work called 'Degas', a tribute to Edgar Degas's paintings of ballerinas. Whilst the first three dances were in the classical style, the 'Degas' featured classical, neo-classical, and modern interpretative dancing. For my first ballet I have to admit it was excellent. Sarah was rightly spellbound. Best free ninety minutes I've had in a long time.
So here I am typing this up at 11.10pm, sitting in the strange little duplex at the back of our hostel, Sarah watching a broken television screen showing everything in green with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Spanish. We are packed, ready to head off in the morning to Ollantaytambo where the Inti Killa hostel awaits, along with more ruins, more small towns, and another stinking phonecall to the UK Passport Office. Sarah is not planning to be too polite this time, we have been ignored twice now. I don't think there will be a third time.
No comments:
Post a Comment