Last Day in Peru

I wake up early yet again and pack my bags yet again. My flight is at 4 p.m., so I don’t leave for the airport until 1. So I have one final morning to go wander through Cusco and enjoy the parades and have a lunch. My feet are a little battered at this point, so I drop my bags at the hotel and go find myself a nice spot to sit down and watch the morning’s parades.

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I am out on the town square for the first groups of the day at 8:30. There are barricades up now, so I find a nice spot to sit on the curb right behind the metal barricades and watch through the bars. It’s not yet crowded, and I am in no mood for standing or walking. The parade this morning is shifting back to dancing, but more like folk dancing than the previous parade. The folk costumes are so vibrant and colorful and detailed. And the spot that I have chosen is like the final place that they perform their dance before arriving at the grandstand to perform for the mayor.

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The dancers look to be mostly high school aged, and I remember my first tour guide, Joana, telling me about moving here with her children and the kids having to learn all of these dances in school. It’s really a community event and commitment to learn and practice these dances. Anyway, I have to continually remind myself that it is 9 a.m., because these kids are on it. They are energetic, jumping, twirling, chanting/singing, stomping. I think I got some really lovely photos of the girls twirling their colorful skirts.

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There were a few specific dances that stood out, though. There is one group of men in giant hats made of…. a grain or straw of some sort? They come out and do their dance and they are energetic and jumping around and there is just floating grass/grain/chaff(?) flying through the air as they twirl. It’s an allergy nightmare, but really shows the vigor with which they are performing.

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There is one group that I saw earlier getting dressed, and they have interesting farming implements as props. These are real metal, and they do a dance where they are slamming them on the ground. The girls have like a flat wood handled thing with flat metal on the end…perhaps a hoe type implement. The boys have something that looks like a shovel, but with a unique shape to it. They do a dance that mimics hard farm work, at one point slamming the shovels down, spitting in both hands, and grunting before resuming their labor. It’s one of the more intense dances of the morning.

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There is also a group that I saw a couple of days ago but didn’t get photos. The guys walk in to the parade with girls on their shoulders. These guys are wearing huge fluffy yarn … tutus? They are so big that they stand out from their bodies quite a bit. They really look like ostriches roaming the streets. They do dances where they are constantly bending over and shaking their tailfeathers, so to speak, so there’s a lot of movement and focus on these cool yarn accessories.

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Throughout the dances, the girls are often doing an interesting gesture where they pick up their skirts and kind of hide their faces behind it. Several dances featured this. Also, at the end of each performance, the guys get on all fours, like a crawling position, or into a kneeling position, and the girls stand on their back or their knee and receive applause.

Lunch

From there, I grab a cajeta-filled churro from a lady selling them on the sidewalk and wander off to the next square to look for lunch. Joe has given me a hard time about not trying any of the local beers, as I have been drinking only pisco sours this trip. So I try to find one of the local places that have interesting local beers. I find a place that’s a bit touristy, but has 5 or 6 pages of local beers on their menu, so I decide to check it out. I ended up ordering a causa and a plate of taqueños and I tried 3 different beers.

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There are guys in the town who walk around with leather binders of paintings that they always claim that they themselves painted and want you to look at. Almost free! One sol! I don’t talk to these guys, and they are always like ‘Ok, you’ll come back later. Maybe tomorrow!’. And one or two of those guys pass through the outdoor tables where I’m sitting. I don’t give them the time of day, so they leave me quickly. The Spanish speaking family seated next to me also does not get hassled for long. But in the corner table, there is a blond backpacker guy, young, college age(?), and I listen to him talk to the guy. Where I’m just like ‘Nope, not interested’, I listen to this blonde kid try to say ‘Oh, I have a small backpack, it won’t fit to carry with me’, and ‘It will get wrinkled or torn’. No, dude. Just no. So the salesman brings out a little tiny poster tube and before long this guy is looking through a binder of paintings under increasing pressure. He buys one and I chuckle to myself. Whatever, it’s probably $5 for this kid, but a life lesson.

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So I set out to enjoy my beers and I try 2 different varieties. The first is what they have on tap: a quinoa pale ale. It’s pretty light and delicious. Not overly sweet. The second is Paqcha coca leaf pale ale. This one is actually really good. It has a very grainy, biscuity flavor to it. I would believe it was brewed with oats. It has that oatmeal stout kind of mouthfeel and flavor, only it’s a pale ale. I don’t know what effect, if any, the coca leaves have on my energy levels, but I got through 2 daytime beers just fine.

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After lunch, I walked back to my hotel, and took another photo with the ladies with the baby alpacas. And I sat in the lobby looking through a bridal magazine (the hotel advertises a variety of wedding packages) while waiting for my guide. The bridal magazine is super cool, full of wedding dresses that combine fluffy white Western style wedding dresses with intricate colorful embroidery details to add some regional flare. There’s even a photo of a woman in a wedding gown, holding a baby alpaca.

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Shout Outs and Honorable Mentions! – None of this is sponsored 😉

First off, I of course have to thank Joe for being awesome and supportive. This trip started as an idea to spend 2-3 days going to Texas to visit a llama farm, and morphed into a full blown adventure when I got a new job offer. He stayed home and took care of Pooka and we chatted every day about his work and my adventures. Also Joe hooks it up with my tech supplies. He makes sure I have more than enough battery power for anything I could imagine doing before getting back to a hotel to charge. He manages the Google Fi and keeps me connected.

Next – Google Fi. You guys, I had signal everywhere. Literally, while hiking to the restricted part of Machu Picchu, I was texting Joe, letting him know where I was going. I was able to share photos with him, and post them to FB. At one point, he asked if I had dyed my hair pink, and I was able to send him a photo of the pink scrunchy I bought….while I was holding onto a steel cable on a precarious ledge. It was awesome. I was able to be present and in the moment when I wanted to, and to feel safe and able to contact family if I needed to, wherever I went. And it’s reasonably priced. Definitely get it if you are traveling. I used it in Russia and China and Mongolia, all over Europe. While it didn’t get me internet in the vast expanse of Siberia, it always worked when in a town. And it worked every step of the way in Peru.

Peru For Less – This is the tour company I used and I can say without reservation that they did an amazing job. They were able to create a custom, personalized private itinerary for me. They worked on my short time schedule and made it happen. My travel advisor was Megan, and she was super responsive and answered any questions I had, both via email and phone. She made everything happen and made sure that it was the kind of trip I wanted, and handled all of my neurotic questions. I would hug her if I met her! The tour guides provided by Peru For Less were by far the best tour guides I have ever experienced. They were professional, provided me with information and experiences without trudging through scammy places where they get kick-backs for taking unknowing tourists. I felt safe and respected the entire time, and like they truly cared about what experiences I wanted to have. AND they were knowledgeable enough about the very specific area to make those things happen. (I have historically had terrible luck with tour guides, so, seriously, I can’t say enough great things here).

The tour guides! From the first day with Haku Tours to the rest of the week with Peru For Less guides, everything was seamless. The guides were absolutely engaging and informative and helpful. Trusting a tour guide is trusting them with your most limited resource: time…more specifically, time while traveling. After the financial and time investment to get to another country, these are the people you trust to provide you with that feeling of awe and wonder. They can truly make or break your experience, and I am so thankful to the people I worked with this trip for making it the best. I did my best to tip well (especially since I was solo, and there was no tour group), but it felt so inadequate in exchange for what they provided. <3

The llamas. They welcomed me into their home and ate alfalfa from my hands and let me give them some little scritches. They’re the best. My final count was 61 individual llamas spotted. I didn’t count same llama on a different day. But I did have about an infinite number of llama photos. And I made this awesome llama video. <3

Until the next adventure!!

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