Cuscotopia!

Leaving Lima

Today, I leave Lima at 7 a.m. to catch a plane for Cusco.  Now, I have heard from my tour guide yesterday that the Starbucks here makes a lúcuma frappuccino.  However, when I walked past the nearest Starbucks, about a block from my hotel, there is an armed security guard at the door.  Now, either there are so many people out there doing bad stuff that every single store, bank, and restaurant needs armed security, or there are a lot of overly armed security guys out there, and either way, it feels very intimidating and not welcoming to me.  So I was quite relieved to arrive at the airport and find a Starbucks inside (words I never thought I’d say).  I ordered myself a lúcuma frap and headed to the gate.  It is delicious, not actually coffee based, but just cream and pureed lúcuma.  It’s almost like a date milkshake, and perfect for breakfast. 

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Arriving in Cusco

I arrived in Cusco at about 12:30, and the ride from the airport to my hotel was about 45 minutes.  As we arrive at the hotel, I see a group of women across the street with BABY alpacas.  They are all in traditional clothing, and posing for photos (for a fee, of course) with the tourists.  I am like, let me out of this car!  But, I have to check in to the hotel first.  The hotel is, btw, amazing.  It’s beautiful and everyone is very helpful, and my room was super nice.  When I got to the hotel, there was a guide from the travel agency there to help me check in, and to go over the rest of the trip details with me.  He was very informative, making sure I understood the travel arrangements and times that I needed to be at different places for the rest of the week.  He took out a map and showed me the routes I’d be taking and was overall super helpful.  But also, there are baby alpacas outside… I was like ‘yep, uhuh, got it.’ And dropped my things in my room as quickly as possible.  It took about 45 minutes for all of this.  

Fortunately the ladies are still outside with the babies.  They are huddling together in the shade with the alpacas and giving them water.  Since alpacas have so much wool, they need to be kept cool.  They don’t do well in warm weather (which is why the llama place in Texas closes for the summer).  So I eagerly run over and take a photo with 2 little alpacas each about 3 feet tall.  They are so soft and fluffy.  After that, I get up and as I round the corner, there is a lady with a super small baby alpaca.  She sees me and immediately walks over to hand me this baby.  Now, this is generally considered a touristy scam, handing the baby to the tourist then demanding money.  But…. I think we were both happy with this deal, as I knew they’d want money, and they knew I wanted to touch that baby. So I cradled this little alpaca and petted for a few minutes while they took photos. The tiny ones look so much like Pooka. And their fur is so soft. I handed the ladies some cash and then headed out to find lunch.  

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Lunch

Now, this is my first day at high altitude, so they say to take it easy. I don’t plan any strenuous hikes, but I do generally walk around town.  And let me tell you, I could definitely feel the difference.  Walking around is ok, but any stairs and I was really winded.  Not tired, but breathing hard. So I took a slow stroll around the streets near the hotel before arriving at the restaurant Deva.  I decide to just jump right in to the local cuisine.  It’s approximately 2 p.m. at this point, so I’m definitely ready for lunch.  There is only one family in the restaurant when I arrive, since it’s a little late for lunch time.  This restaurant offers a market tour and cooking class with the restaurant’s chef, and this family is actually sitting with the chef, having completed their cooking class and lunch.  The waiter brings me a menu, and he brings me a small glass of corn beer and a bowl of toasted corn. He explains that they put something (I didn’t understand what) into the corn beer to keep the gas from expanding in your stomach, and warns me to be careful if I order it at other places, as they don’t always add this ingredient.  I thought it was a bit silly at first, but then I thought, maybe at altitude, carbonated drinks are different?  Who knows.  So I sampled the corn beer and ordered myself a whole roasted guinea pig for lunch (there were no options for a smaller portion). I also ordered a chicha morada, which is a really refreshing, slightly sweet drink made from purple corn (not carbonated). 

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Then my lunch arrived. They bring out the plate with the whole roasted guinea pig, let you take photos, then offer to cut it up for you. They even asked if I wanted them to serve it with the head or not.  I declined.  Maybe they use them for stock or something.  I’m definitely not going to eat it. So yes, let’s jump right in.  First, the guinea pig.  (You can skip this part if you want) They just quartered it, so there wasn’t really a lot of butchering done.  There is very little meat, and there is a lot of bone.  So I began, with fork and knife, removing the tiny bits of meat and eating them.  The chef actually came out and told me it’s better to eat with my hands.  So the waiter brought me a small bowl of water with bits of flowers floating in it, to rinse my fingers off between bites.  So back to work I went, pulling meat from the bones.  The rib bones are really thin and flexible, much like fish bones.  So they were the hardest to get out of the meat.  But overall, there’s definitely enough muscle there to eat.  I would say there’s really enough for 2 people overall.  The meat wasn’t gamey, but it did have a very VERY strong flavor.  I couldn’t quite determine what the flavor was at first, but I definitely didn’t like it.  I tried eating the crispy skin, which had a wonderful texture, much like pork skin. But still, the overall flavor was the same.  It turns out that the traditional way of preparing cuy (or guinea pig) is to slow roast/smoke it over a eucalyptus fire.  This is the flavor… kind of a menthol-smoke flavor.  It’s just such a strong flavor.  So I discovered that I don’t like eucalyptus bar-b-que. The texture of the guinea pig was very similar to the dark meat of chicken, perhaps even more similar to duck.  It was dark and stringy, but very tender and moist.  I think, outside the eucalyptus flavor, that it would have been delicious.  

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The sides served with lunch were some roasted potatoes, which were good.  They had some herbs and salt on them, and were quite tasty.  There was also a small side salad, which was a good contrast to all of the warm heavy foods. And then there was a pepper, stuffed with sausage and scrambled eggs. This was actually the most delicious part of the meal, and I really enjoyed it.  Only after lunch did I learn that the sausage inside the pepper was alpaca sausage.  So well, I guess I’ve eaten all the foods now. 

Exploring Cusco

After lunch, I head out into the world and walk around the main square for a bit. The main square is full of people, tourists and locals. Around the square are tons of shops for buying all manner of alpaca-based goods. You can buy things made of alpaca wool, or things made to look like alpacas, or things made to look like alpacas that are made from alpaca wool. It’s like any tourist town, with people on the sidewalks offering you to touch the wool scarves, or enticing you to eat at their restaurants, or to visit their tour company.  Oh yes, and the ever-present offers of massages.  After walking around for days, a foot massage will sound like a good idea. But today is my first day out, so I just walk through, enjoying all the hustle and bustle. There are dancers in the street, practicing for the festivities later this month. 

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I have scheduled a photo shoot for tomorrow, so I am looking for something fun to wear to that. However, I was expecting to find some flowy light dresses, but this is their winter season, and everything in the shops is wool sweaters and ponchos.  I’m not sure they have light dresses in the summer season here in the main square. It’s all alpacas all the time. There are a million things to choose from, and I never quite found what I was imagining in my head.  But so it goes.  I ended up picking a purplish poncho/wrap thing to wear with my purplish dress tomorrow. In hindsight, I really should have gotten something a little more colorful, but I really struggled while shopping to thread the needle between finding something too costumey and something too plain and bland.

Also, side note: There are lots of tourists here, but my general observation is that about 60% of those tourists are from other South American countries. They’re usually just dressed in normal clothing, sporty clothes, yoga pants, etc.  The general fashion worn by the American and European tourists, however, seemed to be either to dress in full brightly colored Peruvian poncho or to go full colonialism with khaki pants, white shirt, and straw hat. I made an effort to avoid the second look. 

Parade!

After shopping, I decided to walk back to my hotel to drop off my things before going to my dinner reservation at a restaurant with a cultural dance show. But along the way, I ran into a parade! This was a super fun parade, with tons of people just partying in the street, dancing, having a great time.  So much energy.  I wish I had more information about the point of the parade and the origin of the dancers, but I don’t know anything about *why* they were dressed the way they were or what their costumes represented.  The entire parade was just dancing groups, each with their own band following behind, playing music.  The costumes worn by the dancers were amazing.  

There are women in short, very full skirts, twirling and twisting. Their tops and skirts and hats are all incredibly detailed and embellished with embroidery, sequins, complex designs.  These costumes are just amazing. Most of them have hair braided in 2 braids, down the back, and they have these super cool pom-poms tied to the ends of their braids.  I totally want to have some reason to wear my hair like this!  It’s just beautiful and fun. 

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Then there are groups of men and women in matching pants and jackets.  They, again, are completely covered in sequins and embroidery from head to toe. And they wear boots with bells on them, so most of their dancing involves a good amount of rhythmic foot stomping and jumping, to get the bells to jingle.  Quite different from the twirling skirts.  And it is interesting that there are women in these groups as well, doing the same stomping dances, but there are no men in short skirts 😉 I was one of very few white faces in the crowd, so lots of the dancers in the parade noticed me, and posed for photos.  

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There was one group that stood out as being quite different from all of the others. This group looked much more like what I would associate with photos from carnival in Brazil.  They are wearing feathers and rhinestones, and doing much more…. provocative dances.  They are sweating and grinding and fun to watch.  

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And here are some short 30-second videos of the dancers, so you get an idea of the energy.

There are street vendors walking through the crowd, selling everything from drinks to churros to ice cream and popsicles. There are ladies with buckets walking through the crowd, selling what I believe is chicha, the corn beer.  When someone orders one, they take a plastic bag, like the kind you’d put vegetables in at the grocery store, scoop some of the liquid from the 5-gallon bucket into the plastic bag using a measuring cup, and stick a straw in the bag and tie a knot around the straw.  So people are walking around with little plastic baggies full of liquid, drinking from them. Also, there are ladies who are walking around trying to sell candy (usually coca candy) to tourists.  They walk up and either hand it to you or try to put it in your shirt pocket and then demand you pay like $5 for a piece of candy.  It’s a pretty common harassment technique, but one I’ve seen plenty of times, so I wasn’t very concerned. One lady walked up to me and tried to hand me a candy, but I was taking pictures of the parade, camera in one hand, cell phone in the other, and I didn’t have a shirt pocket, so she considered trying to put it in my cleavage.  But… that is one area where I am like a ninja for unwanted grabby-hands. Dramatic re-enactment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4uV3icrmw0

Dinner

Anyway, I stayed for a couple of hours and watched this parade.  It was fun and energetic and I hope all of the photos really show the movement and energy. Sadly, I had to leave the parade for my dinner at 7. Now, when I scheduled this specific dinner, I had no idea there was a parade outside that I’d have to miss in order to go there. I had requested it because it’s a restaurant with a dance show. But there’s a giant dance show right outside! So I went here to this very touristy restaurant, which is a buffet. They had a decent selection of local foods, but also tourist foods and sushi and whatnot. The dessert table was really good, and everyone was fawning over the rice pudding.  The dance show, however, was incredibly underwhelming. I was expecting luau-level cheesiness (I am a girl that loves a good luau), but this place wasn’t cheesy…. it was just a very small place without enough space for any real dancers, and no explanation of what the dances were or what region they were from or what they meant. There was a really good band with a traditional flute player and guitars, but they frequently played more modern pop music instead of traditional songs. And there were 4 dancers. But the stage was so small that their dancing was quite limited and they only danced like once every 5 songs.  Also… white women… they decided they were going to dance as if this were a place with a dance floor (it was not). They were loud and disrespectful.  This is why people hate tourists.  I had dinner, with a lovely pisco sour, enjoyed the band playing and watched a few dances, but ultimately decided I’d rather go back outside and watch the rest of the parade. 

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After watching a bit more of the parade and realizing it wasn’t going to end any time soon, I went ahead and called it an early night.  My photo walk tomorrow is at 8 a.m., and I need to shower and pin up my hair.  I will say I was very happy to get back to my hotel and find that they do, in fact, have hot water, and I sincerely enjoyed my first hot shower in days. 

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