Well after all my travels I have finally made it south of the equator, down to Peru! After quite a fiasco with the airline (changed my flight to a flight 8 hours earlier) and coercing them to pay for a hotel ( in the ghetto) for a night, Kate and I met up in Lima. We definitely did not want to stay in Lima so we trekked to Miraflores, which is a very upscale and modern part of Lima. We found a hostel and bunked dorm style with about 6 or 7 other people. Now I might need to mention that south of the equator is winter, so Kate and I have been popsicle status since day one with no reprieve from the chill seeing as no one has heaters in houses or hostels. Now to make matters worse our hostel had a broken window which was cleverly covered by an owl painting, neither of which made me very happy. We enjoyed walking around town but the best part of Miraflores was the Peruvian cooking class we took at Skykitchen (highly recommend it). We learned how to make 3 typical Peruvian dishes: papas a la hauncaina, ceviche of course, and aji de gallina. All were super delicious! Then that night we decided to go out for dinner. We ordered a dish that looked typical Peruvian food. It was an assortment of meats, a salad, and French fries. Our meats looked interesting but we ate it anyways only to find out the next day that we had been eating cow heart, tripe, and cow gizzard. That was a bit of surprise for us, but we figured we were still alive so it couldn't have been too bad. Ah the adventures we have! After an imperative purchase of an alpaca blanket, we headed to the airport to go to Cuzco.
Upon arriving in Cuzco we waited for a while for our program to pick us up. When no one showed up we decided it was time to call. Well Kate was the one who called and for some reason she had convinced herself that the person in charge of the program was named Maximo (our program is called Maximo Nivel - maximum level) she kept asking for Maximo and at the end of the conversation she says gracias Maximo. Perhaps it was the altitude but we couldn't keep ourselves
from dying of laughter at Kate's misunderstanding. Finally we were picked up by our volunteer
program and taken to our host mother's house. I should mention that Cuzco has an altitude of over
11,000 so needless to say it is cold and takes a while to adjust to such altitude. A bit of a headache ache, some breathlessness, and nausea
are symptoms of altitude sickness. Thank goodness for coca tea which alleviates most of the symptoms of altitude sickness. We have been downing cups of coca tea, and no it doesn't get you high, not only for its benefits but because it is so dang cold that tea helps warm us up. After about a day we decided to make some necessary alpaca purchases of mittens and socks to beat the cold, especially at night. So if you are interested in alpaca wear just let me know because there is no shortage here at all, especially with the ever fashionable llama on it.
Our host mom is a super sweet lady, her name is Amanda and she is what I would call a Peruvian hippie. She is a vegetarian and practices yoga and meditation. In fact she practices meditation every
Monday, Wednesday , and Friday at her house. Kate and I joined her twice for a meditation session
and it was fun and interesting. We get fed three meals a day provided by our host mom and we love chatting it up with her at meal times. Cuzco is a very adorable town nestled high up in the mountains, because of its altitude it is a rather chilly place. Kate and I have learned many new dances included the llama sock shuffle and the sleeping bag shuffle ( you might note that llama socks are quite slippery on wooden floors and believe me you want to get to the bathroom and back as quickly as possible for fear of losing an extremity to the cold)
There are also some interesting food options in Peru. While there is the well known and absolutely delicious ceviche and lomo saltado, there is also the very tasty and slight spicy aji de gallina. Less well known perhaps is alpaca and cuy or guinea pig. Of course Kate and I could not leave Peru without trying alpaca and cuy. The alpaca went well, slightly salty and chewy but overall not a bad experience. While cuy in the other hand was quite a different story.. We went to a highly recommended restaurant where there is a meal and a show. Kate, the more adventurous food explorer ordered cuy and I the always delicious lomo saltado. The thing about Kate and I traveling together is that we always go halfsies on food. So technically half of the cuy was also mine. They bring out the cuy whole including its little paws and all, also stuffed with some green leaf looking things which were unidentifiable to us. There is very little meat on a guinea pig and what little meat we could find was disgusting! Though it's a food you must say you've eaten, it's definitely not one to order again.
Other noteworthy adventures include:
A hike up to Cristo Blanco which was exhausting because of the altitude and the straight up hillness. Nowhere and I mean nowhere in Peru is flat! On our hike up we encountered our first loose llama which we attempted to get close but looking back we were quite far away lol. We were the only ones at the top of the mountain and we encountered a sole cusquenan sitting at the top dressed in traditional attire with a guitar. He invited us to sit for a song which he serenaded to us in both Quechuan and Spanish. He was the sweetest little man and low and behold his name was Maximo! We enjoyed the sites from the top but also enjoyed llama hunting in a nearby field. We approached it Jeff Corwin style and couldn't control our laughs!
Checking out the Inca Museum where we learned much more about the pre-inca and Incan civilizations. It has truly unbelievable how these civilizations were able to be so efficient and smart. I realize now how google dependent I am, and how much smarter our ancestors were.
Last but not least of course our main objective was to be teaching English there. Unfortunately Kate and I were rather disappointed in our program. We were supposed to be teaching English as an after school program in a very poor area of Cuzco. The problem with this is that there was no consistency in the attendance of the students thus very difficult to make any real progress in learning. With that said we did meet a lot of very interesting people and some very sweet students. Overall it was a great learning opportunity for us and we are so blessed to have had this experience both the the good and bad of our adventures.
I apologize for the lack of pictures but we are unable to upload pictures onto the iPad. Stay tuned they will show up eventually!
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