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Published: September 12th 2006
THE BEAUTIFUL CITY of CUSCO, PERU
SPIRITUAL AND TRIPPY ENCOUNTERS IN CUSCO Cusco- Peru, my last and final stop in South America, will be more memorable than the trips past. Getting out of your comfort zone, discovering yourself with trippy drugs, getting completely shit-faced and seeing some cool ruins and meeting a lot of cool people and having some cool conversations.
DESIGN OF CUSCO They should design all cities like Cusco. It is easily one of the most amazing cities in the world, with contrasts of ancient and new, well 80's new anyway.
It is designed like a pit, with hills and mud brick houses scattered over-looking the center of the pit, is the busy Plaza De Armas.
Cusco thrives off tourism; little kids sell postcards on Machu Pichu and llamas and shine shoes for 1 sol swarm the main Plaza De Armas. With cafe's and balconies over looking the Plaza, you can see hands swinging with cigarettes over the balconies.
It is easy to get lost and stare at the busy Plaza De Armas all day from these cafes. My favorite in particular, is the Cappuccino Cafe, they make possibly the best tuna sandwiches and
coffee is and it is one of the best places to sit and people watch and stare at the enormous fountain in the center of the Plaza.
Surrounding the Plaza are night clubs, Artisan markets, art dealers, pharmacies, kiosks, tourist agencies, internet cafes and laundry stand on every corner as well as police standing like soldiers with batons ready for play.
In the Plaza De Armas you can see young ladies carrying around punnets of strawberries for sale, no oranges here, like La Paz thank god, I have to say I am so sick of seeing and smelling those bloody oranges!
Cusco has excellent markets down side-streets filled with colorful blankets, bags and jewelry, as well as ceramic carvings of people having sex in any which way position possible. Inside some market stalls you can find kids working while knitting and watching cartoons on small black and white televisions sets. Or very old women shouting out “passé amiga, passé” as you walk past their little shops.
Cusco and Arequipa reminds me a lot of Sydney, in particular The Rocks. With its winding side streets with cobbled roads and steps, grand colonial buildings and monuments over looking
a glittering city. I was walking home one night and realized how similar Cusco was to Sydney and pointed out to someone where the Centerpoint tower and the Harbour Bridge would fit in this picture.
Percy, the postcard boy.
I was waiting for a friend at the Plaza De Armas on my first morning in Cusco and a little boy approached me with a wooden box filled with postcards showing off this beautiful city. His name was Percy and I am not usually prone to buying postcards. But Percy sat with me for a solid hour and practiced his English, which was surprisingly good. We exchanged email addresses and every so often he sends me an email about what he has learnt in school and so forth.
…
HOSTEL LOKI What goes on in Hostel Loki you could say is strange. It is a beautiful hostel which used to belong to the President apparently. It has dozens of dormitories and private rooms, hammocks, free internet and a TV room as well as a gorgeous bar that overlooks the glittering city.
During the day, it is very rare to see the residents of Loki, including the workers. You
The five lies of Loki
Here´s a really cool t-shirt that´s for sale at the Loki Hostel and every lie is trueare more likely to find them asleep in their beds or in the TV room rolling a few.
When the evening suddenly hits, dinner is served quite late, at 9pm and a line from the TV room to the bar will proceed to fill up with hungry, hung over people. The food is excellent, it is the same every week, but rotates daily from chicken satay, roasts, barbeques, pastas and Thai curries.
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TEQUILLA SUNRISE IN CUSCO Just after midnight the bar empties and everyone heads out to a few well-known clubs that surround the Plaza De Armas in the city, such as Mama Africa, Mythology, Chaos, Bar Seven and Up Town which is only a ten minute walk from the hostel or a two minute cab ride for three soles.
These clubs are packed full of gringos and locals and play from typical Peruvian music to funk to Bob Marley, Brittany Spears, Shakira and the Spice girls. After a while you are so drunk from all the free Cuba de Libres these bars lure you in with you don’t care what you are dancing to and quite obviously, neither do the locals.
There is always this
Hostel Loki
the garden, yes with hammocks! in Loki, joyyy one guy in the club, who seems to come to Uptown every night and dances like a duck to 'Walk like an Egyptian' in his head with inspector gadget arms. He is nuts and takes up the whole floor and his sweat flies onto everyone, he won't dance with anyone but himself. I’m not sure what he thinks he’s doing but he’s fun to watch regardless.
These clubs attract major sluts, particularly Peruvian sluts. Although incredibly beautiful with model-like features, they are nasty, jealous and desperate for men’s attention. I witnessed in Mama Africa’s one night that two Peruvian birds were dancing on the arm of this unaware gringo. They were sliding seductively up and down the sides of his body and throwing nasty looks at one another. All of a sudden, I heard screaming and turned around to see one of the girls was standing over the other throwing punches in her face and stomach, while the other was pulling her hair. They had to be escorted out, no one seemed to make much fuss except for security, so I figure it’s quite common play here.
In the bathrooms, everyone is snorting coke or having sex. Girls
Hostel Loki
me, Emily and Nick at the School party in Hostel Loki are lining up in queues to re-do their make-up and you can hear the unmistakable sniffling going on behind the cubicle doors.
After Mama Africa’s you head to a few more clubs, like Chaos. Which attracts everyone from 16-year-old Peruvian girls to 40-year-old men and play mostly Peruvian Salsa.
Three very drunk British girls were dancing in front of me one night and started to pull at each other’s clothing. I wasn’t sure how far they would take this, so I watched and waited to see what would happen. Eventually, they started to pull off each other’s tops and bottoms. Two girls and a guy started to rip off one of the girls jeans, she was laughing insanely, but she didn’t realize the whole club was laughing and pointing at her breakfast. If my friends did this to me, I seriously think I would chuck a fit, no matter how drunk I was.
It is very difficult not to get picked up when you are at these clubs. If someone knows a way to repel these men, please let me know- because it reaches a stage where it can actually drive you fucking crazy.
I’ve had
Hostel Loki
Here´s Jess one of the owners of Loki and Josh at the school party many pick-up lines in these clubs and danced with many strangers. But the most memorable was given to me by this 50-year-old man from Denmark who told me one line that left me laughing like a donkey. It was just too cheesy to be real. He said to me,
“You are so beautiful, when I die you’re face will be the last thing I remember.” Another man who was on crutches was so desperate to dance with me, while I was dancing on the stadium thing he got up there alter several failing attempt and asked me to dance, he was huffing and puffing, that climb obviously took a lot out of him, so I had to give him a dance.
The night usually ends in Uptown, with me sitting on the balcony waiting for the sun to come up and watching the city lights turn off one by one, looking over the Plaza De Armas.
One night, I was sitting in my usual spot and a man called Fernanda came up to me and spoke with me for an hour or so about his life. He was Peruvian and living very poorly. The conversation got so
The Loki Hostel
Me and Simon in bed... grr. I know how incriminating these photos look! intense that he started to cry on my shoulder. Was this a scam? Did he want money? Because I had nothing on me. I sympathized with him but at the same time was very uncomfortable about the situation he had put me in, finally one of my friends saw and came to my rescue and we left.
As we were leaving, you see children selling cigarettes outside of clubs from 12am to 7am in the morning.
Where the hell are your parents and why aren’t you in bed?!! I keep asking them the same question and they keep trying to sell me fake cigarettes and if I don’t want to buy them, then the kid will try to sell me single cigarettes. No Thank you.
You don't hail the taxis here; they hail you, when you turn into a street you suddenly have a car pulled up to you with a little man shouting
"taxi, taxi??" So we jumped in one and as we were driving off I noticed two fourteen-year-olds being chased by two security guards across the Plaza De Armas. The taxi driver said they were pick pockets, the security guards eventually caught up with one
Hostel Loki
Deb and Hannah, crazy Irish chick of the kids and tackled him to the ground. It was like watching a documentary with jaguars and deer’s. What a night.
After the clubs we get back to the hostel as the sun rises and proceed to the TV room for MTV and joints. Some of the people we are with prefer to take coke at this time and a couple of times we have had to hide the coke under the couch while the cleaning lady comes in an starts to sweep under our feet. She can smell the weed and the smoke in the air and knows what we're up to, but she's so polite she won't say a thing to us except for
Buenos Dias, Comestas followed by a shy giggle.
The workers at the hostel seem as though they've been hand picked, they are the best of the best, I can't imagine any on else being better than they are at their jobs. They are all so cute and friendly and sweet and helpful and funny. The two reception girls, Nasef and Mary are really gorgeous. Mary in particular, is really beautiful and shy and I can easily say I will miss her
Hostel Loki
me working at the bar the most and miss our late nights of boy-talk and Chinese take-out.
...
WORKING IN THE LOKI HOSTEL In order to save money and gain experience behind a bar I have started to work at Hostel Loki. I work about 20-hours a week and alternate with the rest of the staff on reception and bar work. As well as this, they have put me in a room with the rest of the staff. In the beginning we had more people, but slowly long-term workers of Loki have left to continue their travels or go home. I find this unbelievable that people have actually left alter months and months of being here. Everyone says, that once you are here you never leave and I find this very true.
One night at the bar, I was working with one of the managers, Osgur. Osgur is an insane Irish man and told me that there’s a rule with working behind the bar, you have to be shit-faced. So Osgur got me very shit-faced and I was running around completely off my nut, serving drinks and making toasties and collecting glasses. I was so drunk that I think I broke about five
Hostel Loki
Me and Mary at reception at the Loki glasses that night from sheer stupidity. The next morning everyone who came to the bar remembered me the night before and congratulated me for being so completely drunk.
When it was time for the bar to close, Osgur gets up and says to me,
“And this is how we close the bar”. He jumps on top of the tables and shouts,
“Ok, the bar is closed, now FUCK OFF!” Some people are a little slow, they are all drunk after all, so Osgur doesn’t stop at that. He ushers them out with,
“Come on now, fuck off, get out, get pissed, see you later”. He means well and is a fucking great guy, but the most I can yell out is, “last drinks”, I’m pretty sure someone would throw hands with me if I attempted such a ballsy stunt.
Osgur told me about this famous guy who used to work in the Loki, who I had happen to meet in the Loki in Lima, they call him The Glider and has a shot named after him in the bar. Osgur opened up this PowerPoint presentation behind the bar with all the quotes that the Glider used to
Hostel Loki
Me making Springbox Shots at the bar say, such random shit, like…
Glider:
“She’s fucking mental isn’t she………I’d still do her though.” Glider:
“I hung around with him even though I knew he fancied me………. I don’t care who fancies me.” Glider:
“Should I draw a bit of poop coming out of her?” Glider:
“Oh my God, there’s a whole new world of ass in here.” Glider:
“Her baps look like fried eggs.” Jess:
“You’d still lick her fanny, wouldn’t ya?” Glider:
“Yeah, but I’d probably go for the buttcrack first Glider:
“I wouldn’t mind living in her anus.” Apparently, Glider was working and living in Loki in Cusco for over eight months and the other staff were starting to get concerned about his health. He had taken too many drugs and would party non-stop. So one morning, they bought him an air ticket out of Cusco and presented it to him with a line of coke on it. After the line, he saw the ticket and pissed off to Lima, where he now stays with his Peruvian girlfriend and has apparently calmed down... a bit.
After the bar closed, I hung around with Osgur and Loz, another worker
Hostel Loki
These are my new shoes that Fernanda made me, how fucking cool!? who’s been there way too long and they decided the best thing to do at that moment was so scar themselves permanently. So Loz put a fork on the fire and branded Osgur on the arm with it and Osgur took it with his head down and banged the bar table with his fist to relieve the pain. After this was done, we had a look at the finished work and poor Osgur has a horrible black rubbery mark in his arm in the shape of a stupid kitchen fork. Something to remember Cusco by.
At the moment, I am sharing a room with a crazy Welshman- Simon, who’s bed the girls commonly crawl into in the middle of the night. A cool Iris chick- Sarah, a burly Brazilian- Bencico and a hilarious Mexican shoe-making bird- Fernanda.
Fernanda makes these awesome shoes from wool, they are very popular in the hostel and I’m pretty sure she’s going to be very successful making them and working on some beach in Brazil. She made me a beautiful pair of black and bright pink, I absolutely love them and on the bus from Cusco everyone was commenting on how gorgeous they
Hostel Loki
Fernanda making my shoes were.. and they were only 35 Soles! I think she should up the price, she has a list of people to make shoes for and she is always sitting on her little cushion and sarong outside the room knitting a way… how cute.
After waiting four months for my package to arrive in Bolivia, it finally arrived in Cusco four days ago. I was working at the bar and eagerly opened it up to find jackets, jumpers, CD´s, a camera lens and of course two tubes of vegemite! I was so excited I immediately made two slices of toast with vegemite and butter, lots of butter and a little vegemite, the way us Aussie love it! The package is so late that I am going home in a few days so I gave one tube to a group of Aussie girls who now worship the ground I walk on. It’s funny how the simplest pleasures make us so happy. It was perfect timing as well, because Steve Irwin just passed away, so we had a toast to that crazy crocodile hunter from Oz.
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AYAHUASCA JOURNEY I went to the markets one day in Cusco, to look
Iowaska with the sharmans
My turn! Me drinking the Iowaska for jewellery and blankets to bring back to Australia. A frizzy haired man with huge googly eyes, called Angel said hello to me and invited me into his store, he showed me the most beautiful jewellery, monkey skulls and hash pipes made of horns and bones and crystals.
He gave me a little red card that says that he is a Shaman and performs rituals with a well-known hallucinogenic drug grown in the area, called Ayahuasca.
I put the card in my pocket and forgot about it, but was wondering as I walked back to my hostel what a Shaman was anyway and what Ayahuasca did.
When I got back to my hostel, I met a very cool American girl; she’s a photojournalist and writing a book and knew all about Ayahuasca from a National Geographic article.
They call it an Ayahuasca journey.
The purpose of this drug, is to see yourself in a mirror. Usually, when you have a problem, you tend to blame everyone and everything else, you never see yourself when you’re busy blaming other people. Which means, any problems floating around on your surface which have been around for a
Iowaska with the sharmans
Two Sharmans preparing sacrafices for Pachamama while, like an invisible sickens will present itself… and the Shaman’s role is to help you get through these problems and he explains it as a cleansing process to us.
So, a small group of us went to the Saschywoman Ruins, pronounced
“Sexy Woman.” We were surrounded by beautiful forest and mountains and were accompanied by three Shamans. Two of them sat on blankets and prepared sacrifices to Pachamama while the other, blessed us.
The Shaman, who blessed us, did this by taking us deeper into the forest and shouting singing and crying chants. He put a drink in his mouth and proceeded to spat it out on our heads, arms and legs. I found this extremely funny at the time and held my self from laughing; he then sprinkled us with cocoa leaves, confetti and oil.
Then we sat around and drank the Ayahuasca in a circle one at a time. We had to drink it in one shot; it tasted like the most horrible shit imaginable.
After we were sitting for a while in silence and I was starting to feel dizzy, my ears felt like they were covered and all the sounds around
Iowaska with the sharmans
I took this photo because I was looking at this for two hours me were softened, it made me feel like being quite myself.
Apparently, the first few times you take this drug you vomit it back up, it’s a necessary part of the process and it’s suppose to cleanse you and activate the effects of the drug. First the American girl, Emily was sick, then me, then another American named Nick, and then the Shaman’s were sick too.
We hadn’t eaten anything or had alcohol for the last 24-hours, so it wasn’t a lot of throw up; we had to fast to prepare for this trip.
When I felt it was my time to be sick, I went to a secluded area in this forest and I was delirious from being sick for about five minutes. When that horrible experience was over I wiped my mouth clean and noticed I was in a clearing with trees, flowers, sea shells and old burnt charcoal around me and a great big sky with funny shaped clouds over my head. I found myself in the same place the Shaman took us earlier when he blessed us.
Everything was beautiful, bright, sharp, vibrant and clear. My senses were all excited but at
Iowaska with the sharmans
The Sharman is performing a ritual to Pachamama the same time my body was completely floating in a relaxed state. I didn’t care about anything and I thought about nothing but concentrated on how I was feeling and once in a while I caught myself laughing at myself for feeling so completely out of my skin and realized that I was on a completely different plane now and no outside world existed but the one in my head.
I lay on my back with my hands behind my hair and started to laugh at the sky and draw circles with my fingers, I notice the clouds dispatch and immerse like watching cells form and instead of questioning creation, I accept it.
I realized several things about myself, and every so often the Shaman would approach me and let me know that the drug was effecting me the way its suppose to and he was very happy with my progress.
Then, after a few hours of being out of my body, the drug was wearing off and I started to think… and what I thought about upset me greatly. I started to feel anxious and the Shaman came up to me with a worried look on
his face. He put his hands on my chest and told me to stop thinking like this. He then told me WORD FOR WORD what was going on in my head, specific dates and details that no one, but me could know. I started to cry because I couldn’t believe what was happening, that he could actually read my mind and he hugged me and kissed me and gave me some advise and afterwards I felt a lot better.
After some soul searching and seeing rainbows and shit, we all walked back and talked about our experiences. It was extremely cool and I would recommend it to anyone. It was one of those great, once in a lifetime experiences.
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MACHU PICHU Many tourists here visit Machu Pichu, which is one of the main attractions and reasons to visit Cusco. Once they have returned from the usual four grueling days of hiking up hill and camping and freezing their bums off they are greeted on their return to the city by people throwing massage pamphlets in their faces. When you are walking around the Plaza De Armas tourist agencies stand outside their shops with heavy pamphlets, shouting to
you,
Excuse me friend, information about Machu Pichu?? I am proud to say that not once did I give into the hype and tours and I am fortunate to have done Machu Pichu without a guide and tour group, I feared that it would ruin the experience for me.
...
It’s slightly cold and moist and I sit up here waiting for the sun to rise over Machu Pichu.
This was the highlight of my trip and now that I am here I am thinking of everything that I have been through and all the people that I have met along the way and feeling very happy about it all.
Looking out to the mist and fog that are covering this labyrinth of clouds, trees, mountains and unprotected paths below us. I can start to see outlines of trees and mountains in the distance and the clouds over these ruins are moving quickly but as I am watching them so carefully it’s like waiting for a kettle to boil.
I am so eager to see it as a whole but I am enjoying the suspense and holding my breath to see the rest of this picture and
I feel the blood being drawn from my face from the altitude and the effects this place is having on me.
Every so often I get a glimmer of a little patch of brilliant green and sandy stones from the grass and the ruins, they look like a complicated labyrinth, how did they bring all the stones up here, and why? Are they crazy!?
As you walk though these ruins you are filled with these sorts of questions and are overwhelmed by how advanced these people once were.
A local is sitting by himself, he is completely covered in the mist, only his outline is seen. He is playing the flute very beautifully and birds are swooping around him high and low in zig zags that can almost be seen, they are flying in and out of the fog disappearing and reappearing again.
I can hear a tour guide just above me talking to his small group, he says that we are eight thousand feet high right now.
I am sitting patiently under the tropical rain waiting for Machu Pichu to appear. Once the mist starts to clear and you think you see everything your
eyes roll upwards to see that there are even more mountains surrounding this valley and even more mountains looming over them. What an insane place.
All of a sudden you are you again, even after all those late nights and hang-overs, I honestly wasn't sure if I’d be able to connect with this place, but it pulls you in unwillingly. Something begins to stir in you, like a little kid with curiosity for adventure. Everything smells different and reminds you of a time you used to play imaginary games with your sisters and neighborhood kids with dinosaurs, warriors and princesses on your mums bed.
We thought that we were sitting at the top of Waynu Pichu, which is a massive mountains that stares down, shadowing Machu Pichu. It's the place to go for the view of the whole valley, surrounding mountains and Machu Pichu. When we realized that we were on the baby version, we quickly picked ourselves up and headed for a two-hour trek up this insane mother-of-a-mountain.
So up we went, and it began to rain. The walk itself is quite grueling, but do-able and almost always uphill and with the rain, it added a
few more curse words to the mix. In the beginning, I was completely out of breath, but I had taken anti-altitude tablets which made me a lot better than many other people doing the walk. Towards the end as we were reaching the top of this mountain my legs and thighs were so sore I was ready to kill someone. We finally reached the top and could see this whole picture, the sight was breathtaking.
I love mountains and to see these ones in Peru, so old and so incredibly huge left me stunned for several minutes. I stayed up there admiring this view for an hour or so and felt like I was in a meditated state. We were up so high right now that the clouds in front of us were moving towards us at an alarming speed and soon consumed us.
Many people find that they are lucky with the weather when they come here, blue skies and no clouds or rain, but I am so happy I came at this unusual time, it made the experience all the more unique for me.
We finally decided to leave after spending eight hours at Machu
Pichu and took the bus and train home. On the bus I noticed this little Peruvian man wave to us outside and yell something that sounded like
“graciiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasss”! I didn’t quite hear him as his voice faded as were driving away. Then as we reached another corner we saw the same man huffing and puffing, then standing straight as we drove past shouting
“adddiiiioooooooooosss”! Every one in the bus had a WTF look on their face and continued their usual chatter. Then, as we reached another corner we see the same man running down the steps and standing straight like a soldier with a big grin on his face yelling
“ccccchhhhoooooooowwww”!! Everyone on the bus suddenly broke out in enormous laughter as we realized this man is doing this for our benefit. This continued about six or seven more times until we reached the bottom of the mountain and we see the same man again, this time he is running in front of the bus, turning around every so often he breaks out a smile though the panting. Then we stop and he gets on and the gringos on the bus eagerly give him two soles each for his enjoyable
show.
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Anyway, this is my last and final entry for now on South America, I've had loads of fun and can't wait for my next blog in a new country.
I am heading off to England for the next three months to live and work and save up some cash and then go somewhere else before heading to Sarah and Eli’s wedding in Israel in May! Hoorah! There's nothing like a last minute change of plans so I am sure it will keep changing as the months go by.
Thanks for listening and I hope you have all cried, laughed and peed a little from my blogs, otherwise what the fuck am I dong this for?
My last quote on this trip…
“Yeah, well something I’ve realized is that we have so much time, nothing is a hurry, so you should do whatever you want, whatever makes you happy, right now while you’re still young and full of cum”. A Quote from a book I found in Bolivia...
“You are never going to get anywhere with your eyes closed”. Stay clean. Deb
WHAT I WILL MISS IN SOUTH AMERICA Inca Cola
The Inca´s substitute for Coca Cola, very popular here in Peru -The lighters here suck, so I have collected a bag full of broken lighters
-El Che cigarettes
-Inca Cola
-Drinking beer in the middle of the day
-Meeting strange people and learning about new cultures
- Speaking Spanish
-Seeing different landscapes and experiencing different climates within countries
-Glider shots at the bar
-Hang overs and waking up really really late
-Saying,
“What the fuck happened last night?!” -TVs in bars with Shakira or the Simpson’s playing in Spanish
-Mayonnaise in sachet packets
-Bob Marley playing in night clubs
-On my way to Cusco, I spent 20-hours on a bus from Lima and woke up with heavy arms in my face waving and lots of shouting going on. They were playing bloody bingo on the bus and it was 1am, thank you but I’m going back to sleep now.
-Dreaming about vegemite
WHAT I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO IN SYDNEY -Oh yeah, I’m really looking forward to flushing toilet paper in the toilet instead of the bins and washing an apple under the tap water and walking around the house bare-foot, seeing my family and friends and getting up to the usual mischief.
-Watching series of Lost, Friends, Family Guy and
the death of Steve Irwin
We had many Aussies at Loki and it was very sad to hear about the death of such an Aussie legend. We saluted to him with vegemite on toast. Futurama
-Singing with my sisters and lighting one up on Bondi Beach.
Check out more of my new photos at ...
http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/debsi_photos/my_photos
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Phish MD
non-member comment
Fuckin Great Read
To all u lazy fuks who (includin myself) this last blog, while just as long, is the best! If ur interested in cat fights, strip shows, drugs and a spritual awakening, u must have a read. Particularly impresed with guildars quotes and the fancy pick up lines. Workin under the influence is tough, surprised u only broke a few glasses. Congrats on completing a 6mth south american experience! I dont say this enough, but ur fotos r tops!