Sunday, 29 November, 2020 I’m still so happy about last week’s trek around Mt. Ausangate! The mountains here are one of the biggest reasons that I wanted to move to Cusco. It’s really amazing to see how different the climate here is, depending on the altitude. When you get down below the altitude of Cusco, you realize that you’re really close to the equator. Even just going to Machu Picchu, which is only about three hours away, takes you into the cloud forest and the very edge of the Amazon rainforest. When you head up into the mountains higher than Cusco, you are immediately in the high altitude ecosystem, where all plants are tiny and very few trees or crops can grow. I’ve always wondered why, and finally took the time to look it up. Part ... read more

Sunday, 15 November, 2020 Today was so overwhelming I don’t even know where to begin. Covid is definitely not the top story right now. The whole country has been protesting for a week now, which finally convinced most of the new cabinet to resign. A majority of the cabinet resigning forced Merino himself to resign today at noon. There were already protests planned for today at 2pm, in response to the url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/15/interim-president-of-peru-steps-down-after-two-protesters-killedpolice killing two young protesters yesterday. Merino’s resignation just two hours before protests were scheduled to start certainly calmed some of the anger. Instead of demanding that Merino step down, the protests were left with their secondary purpose, to hold a candle-light vigil for the two people killed and to protest police brutality. I stayed home,... read more

Sunday, 1 November, 2020 Today I was invited to a birthday party and learned that here people have birthday cake in the morning. You start the day with singing happy birthday, have breakfast together, eat cake, then go on about your day. Breakfast here is also quite different from the breakfasts I was used to in the US, France, Morocco and even Istanbul. For most Peruvians, there is very little difference between breakfast and lunch. In Cusco, in touristy areas, you can get coffee and toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast, but if you are walking in non-touristy neighborhoods, the breakfast available at restaurants is likely to be chicken and rice. This morning we had adobo, which was cooked with pork. I asked for a bowl of just the adobo broth, without a chunk of pork. ... read more

Sunday, 25 October, 2020 226 days since Covid was first diagnosed in Cusco Tourism is back! After over seven months of being shut down, Machu Picchu will open in one week! Even better, for the first two weeks, it will be free! Unfortunately, all of the free tickets for Machu Picchu are already gone. What is left are free permits to hike the Inca Trail from KM104, which does take you to Machu Picchu, but you have to walk there. There are obviously a lot more people who want to take the train to Machu Picchu than who want to walk there. Getting permits to hike from KM104 ended up being more complicated than I thought it would, but I did manage to get train tickets and Inca Trail permits for myself and six friends, with ... read more

Sunday, 11 October, 2020 212 days since Covid arrived in Cusco Today something finally happened for tourism in Peru: a Japanese tourist who waited for seven months in Aguas Calientes got to visit Machu Picchu, which is still closed. Conociendo Perú reported on Facebook that the Peruvian government had relented to pleas to let Jesse Katayama visit Machu Picchu. He was accompanied by two photographers, but otherwise had the place to himself. As you can imagine, this made quite a few of my friends here very jealous. Some of my expat friends moved to Cusco on purpose, well before the pandemic, and intended to live here. Several of them are just stuck here and most of those who are stuck haven’t been to Machu Picchu. My former housemate, and current nextdoor neighbor Kerry, intended to leave ... read more