Hotel Response

This was a response I got from a hotel in Puno, Peru which is on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Doubt I'll go there since they don't seem to be lowering their prices for the low season, but the email amused me. Especially the "NOTE" at the end. If only my Spanish were this good!

Good Evenings : Ms. Teri
We if we have availability 01 single room for 07th,08th,.09th,10th,11th Of January, 2008 for 4 ninghts The rooms are very wide and comfortable with private bath, water warms 24 hours of the day, heating, television, tv cable, telephone in the room and IT INCLUDES BREAKFAST BUFFET and the Internet service., the price of the room is 55 American dollars for room and in night and if we accept card visa.But if you pay in cash and for low season we can do to him a discount of 50 dollars the room. If you want to realize the reservation it can realize it for the same way.We wait for his prompt response.
NOTE: located to half a stable of the square of weapon.
Best Regards
Veronica Aguilar

Moving Around

In a few days I'll be moving to my temporary quarters in Arequipa. My apartment won't be vacated until December 19 and while I could probably stay where I am until then, it's a little expensive. I have a room in the house of one of my Spanish teachers that will cost about a fifth of what I'm paying here. It doesn't have a kitchen, but it does have a private entrance and bathroom, though I'm not sure if I'll have hot water.

I have my keys for my apartment though, which is exciting. It's a big place which the current occupants call "The Tree House" because it's all wood, floor to ceiling. And it has views! It's an attic apartment so it's high, but it also has lots of windows. Windows aren't a big thing here, I've seen many apartment buildings that have hardly any windows, it's odd to me.

So I have to pack over the next couple of days, which shouldn't take long as I never thoroughly unpacked here. I move on Saturday and on Monday leave for a few days in Chile.

I have to cross the border by December 6 and decided to go to Arica, Chile. I'll fly to Tacna, a Peruvian border town and then take a taxi or bus across the border; the two towns are about 30 miles apart

In Arequipa - yea!

Wow! I can't believe I've been in Arequipa for almost a month now! I really like it here - it has almost all of the things I wanted in South America, except for beaches. But it's WARM, while Cusco was not. I've also been much happier with the food here. In my seven weeks in Cusco, I only had one meal in a restaurant that came close to being satisfying. Here, I've found a few. I was told by a schoolmate in Cusco that the food was better here and he was right!

I did have fun my last night in Cusco, which happened to be my birthday. It was supposed to be movie night at my school, which consists of anywhere from 4 to 10 of us in a small room gathered around a TV. The movie always had a Spanish/English mix of audio and subtitles. We watched several Pedro Almovadar movies while I was there, but I digress. When I arrived for movie night they had a party set up for me. We drank, played (drinking) games, drank, ate, drank a little more and then went dancing. I'm not great with the set dancing steps when sober, so though Martin tried to show me how to salsa he finally gave up, and we all just danced in our own way!

ah the scarf game. Start with a circle of people and 2 scarves. One person takes the first scarf and a person a few people away takes the second. Scarf 1 needs to tied around your neck with a single knot, then untied and passed. Scarf 2 needs to be tied around your neck with a double knot, untied and then passed. The person who ends up with both scarfs at once is the loser and has to take a drink. I swore when I left the Y that I wouldn't play "icebreaker" games again, but this one was really fun. Perhaps the rum added to the entertainment.

I've really enjoyed Arequipa so far, and will definitely be here through February. I'm in school again here, only for 2 weeks this time and am in my second week now. After my first day I went to lunch at my favorite little restaurant, Cafe Fez, and a woman from my school was there with her husband. We talked over lunch and as it turns out, they are living here for a year and a half, but will be traveling from December 19 through the end of March. They were planning to leave their 2 bedroom apartment empty and pay the rent, but said that if I wanted to sublet that would be great! I'm not planning to stay through March because I have to cross the border again in the beginning of March so I think that I'll just leave Peru at the end of February. Until then I have an extra bed (after Dec 19!) if anybody wants to come to Arequipa.

The top of El Misti, one of the three volcanos that dominate the skyline in Arequipa. I thought I got such a cool and unusual shot with the well-placed cloud, but when I looked it up on Wikipedia, there was a similar picture with a much nicer foreground, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Misti.

Llama Farm

My school in Cusco took a field trip to a llama farm. It's a cooperative that gathers people from all over Peru who know how to do the traditional weaving, which is in danger of becoming a lost art. They raise the llamas, alpacas and vicuñas for their wool and for meat. Vicuña wool is the finest, followed by alpaca with llamas at the bottom. Not only is the vicuña wool the softest and warmest, the vicuña can only be shorn every 2 years and are almost impossible to domesticate.

All the wool gathered at the collective is either left its natural color or is dyed using only vegetable dyes, which is the traditional way. People who are part of the collective come for 10 days at a time to dye and weave the wool and then return to their villages to sell what they have made, leaving some for the collective to sell in their store. It's very expensive but fortunately not my taste. A table runner was around $350 and a bedspread for over $1000 (picture-taking in the store was not allowed).

While there, we were able to get up close to the animals and feed them. In that respect they reminded me of the goats at a petting zoo - they knew we had food and they wanted it! Except this little tiny brown guy that I think was sick, we laid sprouts right in front of him, but he just ignored them, and us.

I also got to see two of them spit, but not at each other. One spit very close to me, I think I felt a little spray. Usually it's something they only do amongst themselves and is akin to a dog growling in animal parlance.

Many of the llamas reminded me of shaggy dogs, but my favorite one also had goofy, protruding lower teeth and a lumbering, graceful walk (video below). Oh, and there was one who looked like my classmate Alex. Of course it could just be the way the photograph is framed...

I found out that the look this llama in this video gave me is actually typical of them. Today, in a park in Arequipa, I think one was thinking about spitting at me just for looking at him, but he was tied up and I was too far away.

Machupicchu, Day 2 (Wayna Picchu)

After a night of not great sleep (crazy man howling, crying and moaning outside my window off and on for hours) I received my 5am wake-up call. I didn´t get up until 5:30 and then had to pack since I´d been to tired the night before after my long, hot bath, followed by a hot shower with water pressure - those two things alone made the trip worth it. After I packed, I ate breakfast, which was nice for a hotel complimentary breakfast: fresh fruit and juice, granola, yogurt, pancakes, eggs, ham and cheese sandwiches, cake and very strong coffee. Then I went to the bus station to get my bus to Machupicchu, it was around 6:45.


The bus left a few minutes after I boarded and we got up to the entrance around 7:20. I had to wait in line to go through the checkpoint. When I got near the front of the line I was asked for my ticket and since I didn´t have one was sent to the ticket office. The office isn´t marked, I just saw a place that said "Oficina" tucked away in a corner, so I went in. There IS a charge to get in! It´s 120 soles (about $40). So Amy didn´t get suckered! I told the woman that I hadn´t bought a ticket the day before and got in. "You walked in without buying a ticket?" "Yes." "And you actually went to Machupicchu?" "Yes, for hours." She just gave a look to her coworker, said something in Spanish (don´t know what, far from fluent).

Before I left the hotel, I decided to make my bag lighter and put my big wallet in my luggage and just brought my change purse with all the cash I had, about 50 soles, which I thought was plenty for the day. I left my bankcard in my wallet. So I couldn´t get into Machupicchu without returning to my hotel. It was too early to be able to catch a bus back down, so I had to walk, which took 2 hours. By the time I got back in town, it was too late to be able to get back and do the hike I wanted and since I spent several hours at Machupicchu the day before, I decided not to go back. Oh well, it´s a reason to return. And with my extra time, I was able to finally download some pictures. But given that it took me almost four hours to finally download just 19 pictures, I don´t know how many more I will be downloading while in Peru. But I do have have pictures of the sometimes perilous stairs I walked down! Unfortunately, those are not some I was able to download.

To see all the pictures I did download, go to http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=181849070/a=30879917/t_=30879917. It´s at Snapfish and you need an account to be able to see them.

Machupicchu

Machupicchu, Machu Picchu, MachuPicchu. All three spellings seem to be used interchangeably; spelling variation is something I appreciate in a word.

It really is spectacular. I keep using that word to describe it, although I looked for others. Synonyms found: amazing, astonishing, astounding, breathtaking, daring, dazzling, dramatic, eye-catching, fabulous, fantastic, grand, impressive, magnificent, marked, marvelous, miraculous, prodigious, razzle-dazzle, remarkable, sensational, splendid, staggering, striking, stunning, stupendous, theatrical, thrilling, wondrous. They all fit (with the possible exception of razzle-dazzle, but I just couldn´t delete it) though all together they may be a bit over the top.

While I was planning this trip, I talked to a woman in my school, Amy, who is also from San Francisco, and she said something about her ticket to Machupicchu. I asked her for more specifics, because nothing in my travel guide*, or online said anything about needing a ticket only about paying to take the bus up there. She said she didn´t know since she went through a tour company - I planned my own trip.

The bus up to the top is $12 roundtrip and takes about 20-25 minutes on a road that winds up the mountain, not really switchbacks, but serpentine. When I got there, I went through the checkpoint and there was a book that looked like a sign-in book and I asked if I need to sign and they said no. Guess Amy was suckered by a tour company! I spent a few hours there, took a LOT of pictures and really marvelled that they didn´t charge to get in. There were llamas grazing all around. And though there were a lot of people there, it was pretty easy to get nice shots without the crowds, it was just a matter of waiting.I decided to go back the next day to do the big hike to Wayna (or Huayna) Picchu, which is at the top of the mountain that you see towering over Machupicchu. It´s an hour-long hike each way and the for the last part you have to crawl. It sounded like a whole day in itself, not something to add on and I had 6 hours the next day and that was leaving myself plenty of time to get lunch and go to the train station.

On the bus ride back down to Aguas Calientes, there was a boy in traditional dress who ran down the steps that go in a relatively straight line that crosses the road on the way down. He met us each time the steps and the road intersected. The was a group of kids on the bus who were thrilled with this! At the bottom of the mountain, but still a few minutes away from Aguas Calientes, he got on the bus for pictures (and payment).

*I only have experience with this one, but it seems like "Globetrotter" guide books suck - it´s the worst one I´ve ever had. Yea for Lonely Planet.

Mis clases en español

I am in my 4th and final week of Spanish lessons and I´ve learned a lot. Actually the "new information" part of my brain is overflowing a bit. I´ll still be in Cusco for 3 more weeks, but will now have more time to do the tourist thing. I have a trip to MachuPicchu this coming weekend and later in October will go to Puno for 5 days. Puno is on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
In my time in school, I´ve had two teachers and both of them are in their early forties - I think. The first week, with a classmate, I had Sylvie. She is very nice, but doesn´t speak English well, and wouldn´t say she didn´t understand a question, which made asking for clarification difficult. For weeks 2-4, I´ve had Ana Maria. The first week with her I had a classmate, but for the past two weeks I´ve been the only student.
On our very first day with Ana Maria, the first thing she said was,¨Look at my lips, I have herpes on them¨which was true. I always wonder when I´m in a different country if certain personality quirks are cultural or specific to that person. I consider opening a conversation with "Look at my herpes" a personality quirk. She is very nice and outgoing and I´ve learned a lot from her; some things I´ve had to unlearn from my time with Sylvie (for instance, empézar does not mean "to star" as in a movie, but rather "to start" as in to begin).
Today began with Ana Maria telling me that she now has blisters on her vagina. She told me in Spanish, but no doubt that is an exact translation of what she said. Again, is this a normal thing to share or does she just give too much information? The best part is that she blames the coldness of the room we are in for the blisters. I think it´s probably more in the STD category, but didn´t say so.

El Mercado

My class, which consists of two of us, took a trip to an open-air market. They really do have everything, for tourists and locals. Clothes, fruits and vegetables, hallucinogens, dry goods, dried llama fetuses for religious ceremonies, food booths (which I´ve been strenuously warned away from) and meat. All kinds of meat, I saw so many penises hanging, I think each booth had one. There were cow snouts, whole piglets. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but I think I´m going to go back.

Alpaca Farm

Our school took a field trip to an alpaca farm outside Cusco. It´s a collective of people from all around the country who do traditional weaving using alpaca, vincuna and llama wool, using only natural dyes. There were many alpacas, llamas and vincunas; I don´t remember the differences in the three. You can go in the pens and pet the animals - if they´ll let you. I did get to see a couple of them spit, one very close to me, but not close enough to get wet, thankfully! Some of them looked like really big sheepdogs. I took a lot of photos and a movie that I can´t wait to share. The weavings were available to buy, but they were very expensive and not my style, though I did buy a hat/scarf combo.
The next night I went to dinner with some other people in my school and almost got the alpaca steak, but just wasn´t hungry enough for the huge meal. At least it comes in steak form.

First week in Cusco

i´ve been in cusco for just a little over a week now. 2 weekends and 24 hours of spanish lessons later, i´m starting to like it here more, though i do think that 7 weeks will be plenty of time. it´s a beautiful city, described by another student as a very large village. it is interesting to walk down the street and see inca ruins topped by colonial spanish architecture. Dora, one of the teachers/administrators at my school, said that there are very strict laws against doing anything to the inca ruins, even repairs. so they let structures fall and then they rebuild, which is sad.

my biggest complaint about cusco was the lack of a refrigerator. i asked dora on my third day if i would be getting one and she said that it´s too cold in cusco to need a refrigerator. as it get up in the 70s during the day, i disagreed but didn´t say anything. one of the reasons i had to leave my flat in san francisco was that i was tired of having to fight to get what i needed for my house. but then i found out that dora has a refrigerator in her house and that every other student renting an apartment has one. so i asked again, but this time asked juliana. she was more agreeable and i think i will have one within a few days. that will be nice! especially if it has a freezer because i´d like to be able to buy ice cream. now if they can just do something about the live wires in the shower so i don´t get shocked when i touch metal while showering....

i´ve only eaten out a few times with people from my school. mostly i cook, though i think that i´m going to try chifa (peruvian chinese food) for lunch or dinner today. one of my dinners out was very good trout, but i didn´t eat the head or tail, though they were on the plate. i wanted to try guy (guinea pig), but after seeing pictures of how it´s served, whole with head and feet attached, i don´t know that i can do it!

i´m still deciding if i want to do the 5-day trek to macchupichu or take the train to agua caliente, the closest hotel, and do a 2-3 hour hike. i have a few weeks to make up my mind.

that´s all for today. it´s a long ramble, i know. blame it on the lack of oxygen. seriously, i´m so light headed right now! also, maybe soon i will get used to the keyboard and be able to use capital letters with ease, which i don´t half the time anyway, so maybe not.

as soon as i figure out how to successfully download pictures i will post them here, including pictures of guy.