Hi,
The pace of adventure has slowed a little since arriving in [Cusco], hence I have the time to be on the Internet more than is healthy.
Really since we arrived in Cusco we haven't done too much except organise Paul's Inca Trail, some rafting and our forthcoming rainforest adventure next week.
Yesterday we organised all that and spent the afternoon sitting in a cafe with a nice balcony overlooking all the locals fleecing the tourists which is always more fun to watch than participate in ( this morning we spent sitting on another balcony eating breakfast, this was the [Breakfast Balcony]). Following that and our evening meal we went to an Australian bar called "Los Penos" which doesn't sound too Australian to me. There we were privelidged to watch some South American football, let me tell you it is every bit as exciting as the English sort.
To make up for the intellectual vacuum created by prolonged exposure to football we spent the rest of the evening drinking the dicy local beer and playing chess. Paul beat me 3-1 which is a source of much annoyance to myself. Later, having been sick thanks to the nasty beer, we wandered home to the hostel and some well earned rest.
Today has been equally action packed, arising late we navigated our way skillfully through all the resteraunt touts, hat sellers, cigarette salespeople, children begging, jewellry vendors, postcard entrepeneurs ( strangley each person selling postcards can identify at least one member of their family in one of the postcards - "this my father, very nice please buy amigo" ), shoe shine boys and the general peruvian population to a nice place for breakfast, the post office to send some postcards ( very expensive indeed ) and then the central plaza to plan our next move - what would we do ? Visit a museum, travel to some Inca ruins, tour [Cusco Cathedral] or go and appreciate the fine artwork in the convent.
The first thing we did on sitting down was attempt to fend off the attentions of a small girl who seemed to be wanting something but couldn't express what exactly - in English at least. Totally failing to fend her off she first of all 'talked' to Paul for 30 mins ( we found out her name was Tracey ) and then me for a bit. In the meantime she introduced us to her brother ( Christopher ) and showed us the box they were booting around the square. Eventually she got bored and left and we decided the best plan was to escape to the pub.
Now having got back from the pub and had some "Pollo La Bolga" which is apparently chicken and was for a change quite nice - apart from being served with rice - we have nothing really to do since we have to get up early tomorrow and therefore a drinking session is not a good idea.
We have booked all our rain forest excursions with the most amusing travel agent we could find. Basically every single travel agent in Cusco ( and we have tried most of them ) were offering identical tours from the same place and with the same guides, only the price varied. That being the case the only real basis for deciding who to book with was the quality of the travel agent. The one we chose scored points in my book when we were asking her if we could spend an extra night in the jungle over the 4 days she was offering us:
"Why would you want to spend an extra night there? All there is in the jungle are animals, lot's of animals, lots of birds -noisy, hundreds of spiders etc. If you've seen one you've seen them all and after the 4 days you will spend there anyway you will be fed up with lots of animals. No I advise you just go to the town, the have a good disco there and the jungle women have a reputation - you might like to meet them. I don't know what there reputation is because I too am a girl but maybe you will find out for me?"
I thought that opinion of the attractions of the jungle was great coming from someone trying to sell us a 4 day holiday there. This and the fact she will randomly start roaring and banging things or bursting our laughing makes her by far the most entertaining travel agent to watch so far.
I don't think the jungle food can be much worse than the food here generally but I am always open to the possibility of more extreme culinary horrors.
Almost 2/3 rds of the way through now and it seems like we have been here a lot longer than that. I just really wish the peruvians would hurry up and get some chair lifts and decent facilities installed on their mountains, as soon as that happens I will be back like a shot.
The favourite Peruvian expression seems to be "...maybe later?" after every unsucessful attempt to sell something it is "...maybe later" so the next time they see you it's "Amigo! Remember me? You said you'd buy XXX". Then you have to explain that "later" is a very flexible time frame. After this kind of exchange has been repeated a number of times with the same person it becomes a kind of duel of wills and quite amusing. Quite often we have eventually succumbed under 2 or 3 days concerted attack by the same person.
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