Cusco, aka gringania

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The Incas built Cusco in the shape of a Puma and I have been living just north of its anus for 8 days now. I´m in this great dorm complex with a huge courtyard, full kitchen access, and great stories from the transients. Vacant, old town Cusco is actually a pretty impressive colonial site with imposing churches staring down various plazas along with cobblestone streets and other Spanish remnants, some of which still on Inca foundations. Most of the day this is somewhat obscured by hordes of gringos you don´t see in the smaller towns along the way.

I´ve been taking six hours of one-on-one language school a day and so far it´s been pretty good. Excruciating and draining, but good. The school is an NGO that trains single mothers to teach Spanish and most of the money goes straight to them. I just got back from a cooking class offered by the program with an odd mix of innocently flirtatious twenty/thirty-something single mothers and ten struggling students, sputtering toddleresque castilliano (¨It´s not Spanish!¨). The food was a potatoes and vege dish on top of tatoes with a side of taters and it came with a pisco sour, the national drink of peru. Both were delicious.

The following is for those of you who think life ends after kids:

There is a German-Swiss couple staying at my hostel who left their place in Vancouver with their two and a half year old boy fifteen months ago and have been travelling this way since. That is admirable by itself, but here is the hook: they are on bikes. John, now an angelic, if incredibly loud, four year-old, started out in a handlebar seat until his helmet started knocking his mom Rebecca´s chin in Mexico. Further down the line his father Florjen´s chin started to rub raw and they got him an enclosed trailer. Mom rides behind to protect the trailer and John plays with toys, ¨reads¨books, and talks with with his parents in English, German, and some Spanish on the quieter mountain roads. He is now learning to ride his own bike with training wheels, which they attach to the back of mom´s bike to make a sort of tandem, though he still rides in the trailer. The hope is to make it to Tierra Del Fuego, hop a boat to New Zealand and then Australia and eventually the Euroasian continent, ending in the Swiss Alps.
I.e. Freedom after parenthood, should you choose to accept it.

As for me, I still don´t have a timepiece. I wake up with the sun and I know it´s time to get up when the second table in the courtyard lights up. I´m trying to finish this four week course in three weeks so I can see a few things around here before I need to head for La Paz and fly out to Indonesia to meet the family for Christmas. In a week or so I plan on doing an 8 day trek to the Inca city of Choquequirau (2-3 days) and on to Machu Picchu. Until then, love you guys. Andy

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Photos

Market Goodies
Nothing like cow fetus con lung to stimulate the appetite.

Johnny towing around his make-shift guitar
This he did for literally about 30 minutes, after which he stopped, picked up a Eucalyptus shell, and proceded for another 15 minutes with his new game. Ah, the sound of metal on pavement.

Comments

[anonymous]

good! i'm glad you're going to get to choquequirau... it's some pretty amazing country out there... if you can, do the hike to machu picchu, not the train... if you do the hike, you get there before all the people with micky mouse ears and cameras.. and yeah... cusco is the gringo capital of south america... em