Festejando Mi Cumple en Peru!

Buenos Días desde Cusco, Peru! It is an absolutely GORGEOUS day outside here high en las montañas de Peru! I cannot get over the beauty here. I cannot get over the beauty I have seen everywhere I go - it is striking, stunning, breath-taking. Cusco is very very high - over 10,000 feet - thus my first few days were spent huffing and puffing my way around town as I tried to acclimatize after being at sea level. One night I even woke up in the middle of the night with my heart racing. But I am loving the challenge, the way it feels to push my body. And I am thoroughly enjoying this here town.

I came here 4 years ago during my Spring Break when living in Ecuador. And while I was only here for 4 days, I somehow managed to do most of the touristy things that many of the agencies offer - visit Macchu Pichu, raft the Río Urubama, bike through the Sacred Valley to see some salt mines and Incan ruins. So this time around, I came to visit Santiago, a friend I met when I was in Futaleufu, Chile, and to check out some of the less visited sites around Cusco, as well as wile away some time in Cusco itself. It is amazing. So much yummy food to eat, so many steep, winding, narrow cobblestone streets to explore, markets to wander through, and interesting people to meet. Unfortuantely, I have only seen Santiago for a total of maybe 45 minutes as he works as a raft guide and has been working since the moment I got here, but it has been a good opportunity for me to truly put myself out there and make friends on my own.

I feel like even though I have been traveling "solo" for 6 months now, there are very few times when I have spent more than a few days truly on my own. I have been fortunate enough to have met enough people that I often end up going from one town to the next meeting up with one friend or another. But since leaving Blanca last Tuesday, I have been on my own to explore as I wish and make friends as I may. Im not the best person at striking up conversations with random strangers, but there is something liberating about being in a foreign country on your own where no one knows you. It makes me feel like I have the liberty to put myself out there without fear of making a fool of myself because no one knows me and most likely - in the case that I come across as totally odd or ridiculous - they will never see me again. So with that attitude in mind, I spent my first few days talking to shop owners, random people in restaurants - I am usually eating alone, and, thankfully, this actually serves to make me more open to having random strangers start talking to me - and visiting the local South American Explorers Club to find out about potential hikes I could do on my own in the area. And along the way, I made a few friends - woohoo! I am sure it very much has to do with the fact that I am a bit of an oddity being both a female traveling solo and that I speak pretty decent Spanish, but it has been exciting to feel that challenging myself to do things that I often find make me uncomfortable has resulted in me making a friend or two. I met the director of the local cultural center who invited me to join his friends and family for a big party on Saturday night celebrating the Lighting of the Cross, another guy who invited me to celebrate his birthday with him at his friend´s cevichería and who later accompanied me to some of the nearby Incan ruins high above the city, and - best of all- a local guide who has taken me to two Incan ruins sites outside of town.

I usually will just go off on my own to do hikes, but here in Peru the hikes arent very clearly marked, so while getting information at the SAE club office, I met Jose, a guide from the nearby town of Ollantaytambo, who offered to accompany me to Tipon, an Incan site about an hour outside of Cusco. On Friday morning, we hopped aboard a local bus for the hour long journey to the "Pork Nugget Town." There are several towns outside of Cusco known for one particular food item (the Guinea Pig town, Bread town, Duck town, and Cake town - YUM!!) and if you have a hankering for such food, you hop aboard the bus with your family and make your way to the town for a big feast on said food. As it was 8 in the morning, pork nuggets did not really make my mouth water, so we headed on past the pork nugget stalls and up into the mountains looming over the town. I had spent the previous two days climbing up and down and around Cusco getting acclimatized, but this was my first true climb and boy did I feel it. I thought my lungs might bust out of my chest. But, OH, the SCENERY!! Thanks to some 6 months of rain, this entire area is green, green, green. I once again felt like I was in a scene out of Braveheart, exploring new territory as we climbed above the city and into a valley where there were no people, houses, cars to be seen. Just us and la naturaleza. Further along into the hike, we passed a small mountain community where the boys were herding goats, the men harveting potatoes, and the women chewing on coca leaves as they weaved garments for sale at artisan markets in Cusco. And after a few hours of climbing up up up and then down again, we made it to the Incan ruins of Tipon. Most people just drive up from the Guinea Pig town, walk around, and then leave, but since Jose is from the area, we were able to take the road less traveled and arrive from above, climbing down along an ancient Incan canal to enjoy the ruins. And after taking picures and staring in awe at yet another Incan ruin - there must be thousands throughout Peru, and I can´t say this one was any less awe-inspiring than Macchu Pichu - we headed down into Guinea Pig town (Pork Nugget towns neighbor)and took a short bus ride to the nearby Bread town to chow down on bread fresh from the wood-burning oven before making our way back to Cusco.

Saturday was an amusing day for me as I decided to try my hand at taking one of the local "carros" to a fruit and veggie market on the outskirts of town. I wanted to get a look at some of the hundreds of varieties of potatoes for sale, as well as the countless varieties of corn they grow here - purple corn, anyone?! After asking 3 people and being personally escorted to the proper bus stop by one kind Peruvian lady, I boarded the "carro" - basically a minivan that stops at every corner picking up and dropping off passengers. I was not really sure where I was going or where to get off, but in the end, I not only managed to get off at the right stop, but after wandering around the market, I managed to get back on another carro headed back to the center and exit just outside of the restuarant where I was to meet two new friends I had met the night before at the disco. After eating some super tasty and super fresh ceviche and washing it down with chicha morada - a juice made from purple corn among other tasty fruits, Omar - one of my new friends - and I hiked in the rain up to a large statue of Jesus Christ - no South American town is complete without one! -to get a view of the city just as the sun came out and a rainbow spread over the center of town. I ended the day with with a salsa lesson and a bit of dancing at the disco -Rene, I WISH you had been there)!!

And then, yesterday, I celebrated my birthday early with another hike with Jose - this time in his hometown of Ollantaytambo. This town is truly unique as it lies in the heart of the Sacred Valley and many of the Incan homes remain intact. Not only that, but the locals actually live in these homes. They are not just for oohing and aahing over! The town is surrounded by mountains and on one side of the town, there is a huge Incan fortress embedded high in the mountains overlooking the town, as well as several Incan temples rising up into the mountains on the other side. In 9 hours of hiking, I managed to hit both of these important sites, as well as hike a bit outside of town deep into the river valley and then up up up again to the ruins of Pumamarka where we had the ruins to ourselves! What a view! Lush green mountains all around, horses and goats grazing on the ancient Incan terraces carved into the hillside, and these ruins that invoke the image of one´s own personal gigantic dollhouse to play in. I kept climbing up and over the walls and through the windows to discover secret gardens of flowers and daisies inside - such fun!

And on our way down, we came across happy pigs digging up roots, campesinos planting crops in the terraces, and a lively fellow who offered Jose and myself some of his homemade chicha - more or less homemade beer made from yellow corn. I opted not to drink too much of the stuff for fear of what it might do to my ever-increasingly sensitive belly... But it was fun to hang out for a bit! Once we made it back to town, we stopped at a local house to have more homemade chica - again, I only had a little - as this is what the locals do on a lazy afternoon, or any afternoon, really. And when in Ollantaytambo... It was such a lovely day and I felt so happy and blessed to see and experience such beauty - and with someone who knew the ins and outs and secret passageways, no less! My ride home on the bus was a bit of an adventure as I changed from the crowded mini-van to mini-bus in Urubamba where I fought alongside the locals for breathing space before being deposited in the dead of night back in Cusco where I met a Peruvian woman who escorted me to the proper bus stop to make it back to my hostal. I ate a large pot of quinoa soup and passed out in my bed. What a day!

And today, life has ben much lazier - reading, writing, eating, and, hopefully, meeting up with some friends later today to eat dinner and go dancing to celebrate turning a quarter of a century - oh my! VIVA!