Conspiracies, Cocktails and Conmen

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After failing to find any condor steaks in South Peru, we headed to the East in search of new and tasty meats. At the indecent time of 5am we boarded a flight to the mountain town of Cusco. Once on the plane I thought it was strange that they didn´t give us a lifejacket demonstration. "Probably because we´re not flying over the sea" someone said. "But what if we overshoot and land in Lake Titicaca?" piped up Steve from the seat behind. "It´s irrelevant anyway" said Gus, and went on to explain why. For flights passing over bodies of water, you always get a full lifejacket demonstration. If you look on the safety card there are diagrams of a nice inflatable slide which extends down from each emergency exit. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the real clincher: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A SUCCESSFUL WATER LANDING OF A WIDEBODY PLANE. The belly touches down, the plane leans slightly one way or the other and the wing tips enter the sea. This causes the wing to rip off, and the plane flips over and breaks apart. Or to quote an aviation specialist, the plane would "shatter like a raw egg dropped on pavement". Also, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in America does not even require pilots to train for water landings, because they know it´s a waste of time. So the lifejackets are purely cosmetic, to make us feel at ease. I´m sure at some point during the demonstration, when they tie that feeble ribbon behind their backs, you have thought "will that really keep me afloat?" And this next point is my own personal contribution to the topic, although it may seem like a conspiracy theory! Why are the lifejackets on planes yellow, when the entire seafaring world uses orange? If you are in a speedboat, the lifejackets are orange. If you are on a ferry, the lifesaver rings are orange. The coastguards inflatable dingy is orange. My theory on the reason? Because orange is universally more visible in the water. Whereas yellow is universally more visible under the halogen lights of an aircraft cabin ( to clearly demonstrate life jackets that will never get used)

We soon got to put the water landing theory to the test, when the pilot announced "ladies and gentlemen, we are diverting to Lake Titicaca for an emergency water landing. Please brace yourselves for impact" (only joking. I just made that up). We actually landed safe and sound at Cusco, but I was still mildly disturbed about Gus´s water landing story.

So, it was 6am and out stomaches were rumbling. For a country obsessed with milking money from tourists, someone had really missed a trick at our departure airport. Arequipa is Peru´s second largest city, and yet once you get through customs, the airport does not have food outlets of any kind! Luckily we knew of a place in Cusco of near legendary status. When swapping tips with other travellers, everyone said "when you get to Cusco, go to Jacks for breakfast". So that´s what we did. For the past THREE months I´d had the same limited choices on every breakfast menu

1. SIMPLE - Bread, butter, marmalade, coffee/tea
2. AMERICANO - 2 eggs, bread, marmalade, coffee/tea
3. EJECUTIVO - 2 eggs with ham, bread, marmalade, coffee/tea

Cereal is almost unheard of. And when you do find muesli on the menu, it´s accompanied by dodgy UHT milk that tastes like 3-day old cats milk. Fruit Salads can sometimes be had, but that´s too healthy for it´s own good and has no place on a breakfast table. So when I perused the menu in Jack´s, I was rubbing my hands in glee to see all the elements of a Full English Breakfast. So I ordered the "Gordo", which means "fat" in Spanish. Bacon! Sausage! Baked Beans! Hash Browns! Things that the average Peruvian doesn´t even know exist. Plus mushrooms, fried tomatoes, and hot buttered toast made using ACTUAL sliced bread. The others ordered the same, and we fell upon it like a pack of wolves.

Later on we explored Cusco. It´s a charming little city full of colonial architecture, lovely 17th Century churches and winding sidestreets to lose yourself in. Unfortunately it is way overtouristed, and everyone is trying to make a buck from you. Pass a restaurant and someone will thrust a menu in your face and try to persuade you to come in. When you have been hassled a dozen times on the same street, it wears you down. Some are more persistant than others, and even if you say "no thanks, I´ve eaten" they will chase you down the street waving the menu and saying "maybe tomorrow night then?". And it´s not just restaurants. Massages are popular here, and a myriad of ladies wander the streets handing out cards and saying "massage mister?". Although these are proper massages, not seedy bangkok ladyboy massages. So you´ve just dodged three menu wavers, avoided five massage touts, and had a near encounter with a lady holding a llama who wants to charge for a photo, when you run into one of many tour operators "visit to Machu Picchu mister? Horseriding?" LEAVE ME ALONE!!! Although I did find it funny that people kept trying to sell me sunglasses. They would approach me with a huge tray, and my response would be to not even break stride, not even look at them, but just point to the pair I am wearing when they start their sales pitch. Another example is the shoeshine boys. One day I gave in and asked how much to have my trainers cleaned. "One Sol mister" he said. 15 pence? Why not? I thought. So he does a good job of cleaning them, taking the shoelaces out and everything. He then uses some polish on them and announces "Twenty Sol mister".

"TWENTY SOL? You said it was ONE!"

"One Sol for cleaning. Twenty Sol for Polish"

While I don´t like being conned, I had to hand it to the little ruffian for ingenuity. He must haver been all of seven years old. I bargained him down to 6 Sol and left with footwear you could eat your dinner off

We were also conned one night at a restaurant. We went in search of a recommended place called "Victor Victoria", but didn´t know it had moved to a bigger location because of it´s roaring success. A substandard restaurant had taken it´s place, and when we asked if it was Victor Victoria, they lied and said yes! the food was average, but the menu was hilarious with it´s translations

1. Panqueque al gusto - pancake to the pleasure
2. Cuy al horno - guinea pig the furnace
3. Bisteck saltado - jumped back and chips
4. Sopa de verduras - all vegetables with class
5. Pollo a la miel - chicken to the honey

Mushrooms was also spelt wrong three times on the menu - mushicoms, mushrrons and muslirroms!!

But Cusco is not full of menu-pushers and con-artists. It is just a few main streets where you get hassle, and you can generally wander around the sidestreets for hours without any bother. It is also a very safe city, with a moderate and inobtruisive police presence to maintain calm. In fact, I have only heard one dodgy story since I have arrived in Peru. A guy was mugged in a small town near the coast. He resisted giving over everything, and was stabbed in the arm. The mugger ran off, and the guy waved down a police car shortly afterwards. He told them he had been mugged, and they told him to get in the back of the car. On the way to the station to fill out a report, they got an incident call over the radio, and turned the car around in a cloud of dirt and headed towards the crime scene. They were driving down the street when two guys were seen fleeing a building, and running past the police car in the opposite direction. The driver does a handbrake turn on the dirt road, and while the car was still turning, the other policeman leaned out of the window with his gun, and shot one of the guys. The poor guy in the back is thinking "what the hell is going on?", as the police car accelerates, hitting the second criminal and throwing him over the bonnet. The driver then turns around, and notices for thr first time that their passanger is wounded. "You´re bleeding" he says "you´d better get to a hospital" and then they kick him out of the car! This might well be an urban myth, but it makes a damn good story!

Cusco is also the outdoor adventure capital of Peru. You name it, you can do it here. We did horseriding one day, which turned out to be a very scary experience. My horse was a fleabitten old nag called Lightning. She didn´t obey any of my commands, and neither did anyone elses horse. Luckily they were content to amble along a well-trodden route which they knew by heart. Lightning occasionally opened up the throttle on the straight parts, and with my feet in the stirrups I would rise out of my saddle slightly and try to match the horses rhythm. But near the end of the ride, the guide started whipping all our horses on a long stretch, and all ten of us went into full gallop! I only had one foot in my stirrup, and in my panic to get the other foot back in, my good foot came out. So my horse was in a gallop and my feet were out of the stirrups. I was bouncing all over the place like a cowboy on a bucking bronco, terrified that I was going to fall off. I was screaming at my horse to stop, using words that would make Bernard Mannig blush. At one poibnt I told it I would turn it into a ****** steak if it didn´t stop. And all around me I could hear other people screaming for their uncontrollable horses to stop. Finally they stopped, and I half swung, half fell off my horse, hands aching from gripping the saddle. This will be my last time on a horse. Ever.

The end of the ride left us at an Incan ruin called Sacsayhuaman, which is pronounced "Sexy Woman". the Inca´s skill with stonework is impressive. Without the use of any tools except other stones, they manage to make neatly interlocking brickwork that has stood for five centuries without any mortar! Some of the stones are so close together that you cannot even fit a knifeblade inbetween. I was due to see more Inca mastery over the next few days on the Inca Trail. To be continued....

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Photos

an indecent hour of the day
catching a 5am flight from Arequipa

the "gordo"
ranks in my top five breakfasts of all time

outside Jacks
fed, watered and very content!

the main square of cusco
featuring an amazing 17th Century church

the local brew
each city seems to have a unique beer. Cusco has Cusqueña (which is great), and Arequipa has Arequipeña (which tastes like wee)

multicoloured and lethal
this colourful beast is known as a "Machu Picchu"

I salute you sir!
Fake Incas roam the hills of Cusco

Inca Stonework
tightly knit and made up of HUGE stones, some of them weighing several tons

Comments

[Bob]

Cats
So Pete, how do you milk a cat?