¡Carnavales!

Somehow I had the crazy idea of actually going to the center of downtown Cusco on Sunday on the last, and biggest, day of Carnavales. When I arrived, everything was eerily calm, and I saw a crowd sitting on the cathedral steps preparing for... a parade, a festival, something...? I eyed the vendors selling plastic ponchos suspiciously especially considering that the cloud cover was steadily clearing. Fortunately after 4 months here I speak and understand Spanish passably well, and the man sitting next to me explained that yes, there was a parade, and yes, I was going to get wet. Ever prepared, I had my raincoat with me. Which at that point didn't help much with the 85F full-on 11,000ft altitude 10 point UV rating sun exposure. But in a way the gods were smiling on me and I was quickly surrounded and leaned upon by several standing 5 year-olds who blocked the sun fairly well. As did some old man with a parasol hovering over me.

During the seemingly endless stream of parade dancers, children sprayed water from backpack waterguns and foamy stuff like merengue all over the participants. When the parade ended, these weapons were quickly turned on the attendees, and as luck would have it, I standout particularly well in this country and therefore make an excellent target, even for 5 year-olds. It didn't end in the main center either, I walked back home and was blasted from passing taxis with at least 3 very heartily flung water balloons and a few squirts of spumo from the buses too. It was all in good fun, everyone laughed, I cooled off, and now the waterplay is finally over.

I also went to work that day, the dedicated volunteer that I am. Unbeknowst to me, there was a small Carnavales celebration for volunteers and employees (set up by volunteers and employees too). They set up an already cut, live medium-sized tree into the futbol field and dangling from it were all sorts of kitchen utensils and toys. At first I couldn't understand why some of the teenagers from the clinic balked at going near the tree. When I walked down, paper ribbon was wrapped around my body, someone grabbed my hand, and suddenly I was part of a dance circle complete with an falling-apart axe. My favorite are the dances with dangerous rusty weapons. In pairs we all took turns chopping at the tree, and when it fell, it was a free for all with all the presents attached. I really didn't need a kitchen strainer or plastic tupperware dish, so I only fought my way through for a whistle that I promptly gave to the crying 3 year-old who hadn't been allowed to participate further once the tree started cracking and leaning. Afterward was a feast of fried sausages and fried potatoes - never complete without mayonaise - how I have lost weight in this country I will never know, but I expect my body to grow by at least 2 sizes once my plane sets down in Seattle next week.

Oh you joker, you

Yes, I forgot to knock on wood with my last blog, in speaking about Carnivales and water. That very day I had not one, but three buckets of water thrown on me while I was walking up the street back to my house! Those little Peruvian kids are freaking sneaky! Tiny and sneaky! They were hiding inside the doorways of stores so you look down the street and naively think it is all calm and safe, and then BLAM!! SPLASH!! Fortunately I was close to home so I was able to take it all with a smile. I wasn't happy to hear that Carnivales actually lasts the entire week here in Cusco, so there are still random kids out in the street with their water balloons and bottles of white spray goo a little like whipped cream that disappears after a few minutes. But they are also about 4 years-old and have really bad aim. In fact, sometimes their throws are so short that their balloons don't even pop when they hit the ground, they just roll down the street and fall into grates, and then you have a tiny flock of 4 year-olds laying in the middle of streets with their arms down grates with taxis zooming by.

Those little kids remind me - Pampers has a new advertising campaign here in Cusco, and so there are Pampers posters on all of the little tienda doors advertising their new size of diapers - XL! Because miniature Peruvian babies need XL diapers...

I had a wonderful birthday dinner with my friend Oscar's family - his brother is also a chef and had spent the day cooking a baked pasta dish with kalamata olives, eggs, chilies and spices, and also stuffed peppers with raisins, chilies, beef and cheese. We washed it down with good Peruvian beer and a giant chocolate cake! I had plans to go out and celebrate afterward, but after so much food I laid down for a little nap and woke up 12 hours later. Yes, as you all know, I am quite the party animal. Right now it is time for a belated birthday lunch at a little Israeli place that makes the best sauces for dunking your bread in, giant falafel balls, and a piping hot milk custard dessert! For $2 US! Woohoo!

The Zoo that is Cusco

Baby Quail

Ahhh, the days of Carnivales!

Superbowl Sunday, also known as Carnivales in Cusco, is the start of a whole month of summer celebrations. Sidenote: Yes, because this is the Southern Hemisphere, it is technically summer in South America. And all the other countries and cities call this time summer, but because it is constantly cold right now with torrential downpour rains, the Cusqueñas refer to this season as winter, too. So it might be summer, it might be winter. Whatever season it is, the children are celebrating Carnivales with water balloons, water guns, and my favorite, balloons filled with paint that people throw out of moving buses. I was resting easy when a friend told me not to worry, that it is illegal to throw these things at strangers and that you can tell the police if it happens. But as it draws closer to Carnivales, I am witnessing for myself that, like everything else in the Penal Code, while it may be illegal, it still happens! I have been fortunate in staying dry, but I am apprehensive about walking down to the farmer's market this afternoon to buy ingredients for dinner.

There are some funny animal things here: In the farmer's market, there are people with tiny carts filled with almost featherless quail who lay eggs, and as the eggs are freshly laid, the Quail People boil them, peel them, and fill plastic sacks with quail eggs ready to eat. While I tried Alpaca last week, I haven't been brave enough to try farmer's market quail eggs. People from the country bring their baby goats and sheep into town for picture time, and these farm animals follow them around like dogs. It is not unusual to see a llama or two tied up to a lamppost on the sidewalk, or following you up stairs in alleyways. They especially like the little tufts of grass growing out of the sides of the adobe buildings. Yesterday in front of my house, a pickup truck pulled over in a fit of panic: In the back of this tiny, not standard, pickup was a large black bull, cow, and calf with a roof of chainlink fence fencing them in. An 8 year-old boy was riding on top of the cab, wide eyed and holding on with only one hand as the bull began freaking out, bellowing, sticking its foot-long tongue out of the side of its mouth, and repeatedly trying to kick the fence and truck but actually kicking the cow and the calf. It was jostling the truck so badly that the two old men in the cab had to pull it over. I had images of wild cows running up and down Calle Arcopata. Dogs run pretty wild here, so it is not unusual to see them laying down just inside a fancy alpaca sweater and jewelry store, or hanging out inside an upscale restaurant, and pretty much lying down in every dry place possible. My neighborhood dog has taken to following me to internet cafes and chewing on the computer cables and foam pads of headphones. She gives me dejected looks when I get into a taxi in the mornings.

My art studio is going well, although getting interrupted by the typical Peruvian way of life. Last week the gates were shut and padlocked without any explanation. I found out later that the girls went on some kind of religious and hot springs retreat in the mountains. Yesterday class was cut short because the girls had to attend a traditional Peruvian dance class. These interruptions mean I am extended my studio by an extra week, because the girls absolutely love this time. You should have seen the look on the face of the new girl, Elizabeth, who arrived this week when I handed her her very own sketchbook to start working in, it was priceless.

Meanwhile, it seems I have also started something of an art studio at my morning clinic with the disabled children. For some reason, this time of year, during their summer break when they don't have school or anything else going on, their playground is locked shut. Usually I try to set up a little art space for a few children, but the nurses see that suddenly the children have entertainment and suddenly I am doing art with 30 kids who can barely feed themselves much less make art without a lot of support. I make about 100 trips to the kitchen sink every morning. My favorites are the kids who think dumping the giant can of crayons and pens, repeatedly, onto the floor is great fun. Yesterday my three teenagers, Yosmar, Andres and Ermitaño, had a sparkling moment of insight (and we were fortunately that it was also a sparkling day out) to paint outside at the tables with umbrellas. We had a splendid morning of painting, joking, and making fun of the security guard, and I only had to make one trip to the sink.

The Lost City of.... Rain and Fog!

I am probably the only person in the world who is enjoying the small little gateway town of Aguas Calientes almost more than I did Machu Picchu!

Aguas Calientes is a small town in the Peruvian 'cloud forest' of about 1500 residents and a whole bunch of tourists. Although, this is the off-season and thus the 100 or so restaurants, which open at 5am for the first batch of tourists heading off to Machu Picchu, each have about one or two people sitting in them. Aguas Calientes (hot waters, for the non-Spanish speakers), besides having the amazing raging Urubamba River next to it, which makes me drool about the idea of river kayaking but not drool about the high possibility of a dramatic and quick death, is home to... hot waters. Hot springs to be exact. After a 10 minute walk through a dramatic, dripping with water and ferns and flowers, boardwalk along the river, you arrive at a little resort with about 5 pools. And a bar overlooking the pools. And a bar next to the pools. And a bartender at the pools who comes around and takes your orders and returns promptly with your 4-for-1 drink special. Personally, my favorite part is the bar and balcony overlooking the pools. Apparently it isn't just my favorite, it is also the favorite hot spot of several I am sure very hard-working, diligent, and extremely loyal local guys who like to gawk, I mean, watch over the pools just like lifeguards. They seem especially concerned about the younger more delicate women in bikinis as I am sure they are much more susceptible to those 4-for-1 drink specials. Because you know everyone is safe, you are much more easily able to relax at these pools compared to other more secluded spots. Anyways. If you turn your back to these guys and look around, you see you are surrounded by amazing natural beauty, soft summer rain, and the sound of the Urubamba drowns out the whistles and hi-fives from the balcony. And while this is a small, quiet town without cars, it is still a tourist haven. And despite most people needing to get up at 5am to get to the opening gates for Machu Picchu, I woke up at midnight to a raging, hilarious Capoeira lesson going on outside my window in the main square. Nothing like adding alcohol to the already dangerous and horrendously difficult national martial art of Brazil. Although it looked like a whole lot more laughing and falling down than Capoeira.

Machu Picchu was, of course, amazing, and our group was lucky enough to catch it at 6am right before the clouds from the... cloud forest... moved in. And it disappeared. Fortunately four hours later, it came back. The cool thing about Machu Picchu, like all ruins here, the rooves of the houses were thatched, and therefore there are no more rooves and you can see down into all the empty, rectangular, identical buildings all over the mountain. The bad thing about Machu Picchu is that none of the houses have rooves, which is really smart thinking during the RAINY SEASON IN A RAIN FOREST. I was lucky and happened to find a Model House during a rainy time, which was also the same place that the sick and infirm of the day decided to rest. Which means I got to literally feel the popping that was occurring next to me when some Peruvian Guide with a young altitude-sick client decided to try an 'ancient Chinese' head massage which involves pinching several different bunches of hair and pulling until there is literally a popping sound creating from the skin on your scalp popping away from your skull. Mind you, nothing is being ripped out, that you can see anyway. But if you sit next to someone getting this treatment, you can feel the popping in your own skull. I won't be surprised if this woman is bald by the weekend.

Here is some interesting trivia about Machu Picchu that I hadn't realized. The people of Machu Picchu deliberately left Machu Picchu, which is why there are really no artifacts here. So they had time and planning, and did rituals to say goodbye, but just never returned. Yet, the locals say. Yet. Apparently someone did find a gold bracelet - the only gold object ever found in Machu Picchu - which was part of the goodbye ritual, and the archaelogists took it and put it in a traveling museum (currently in Japan), but then lots of bad juju started happening, so they did a goodbye ritual for removing the goodbye ritual artifacts, and there wasn't bad juju anymore. Also, like other important Incan sites, they deduct (because no one knows the true history of Machu Picchu) that everyone had 7 jobs in their young lives and then whichever one they were best at, that's what job they did for the rest of their lives. Also everyone ages 16-80 had to pay taxes, and at age 16 the boys worked as foot messengers between here and Cusco, and the 80 year-olds got to watch the crops to make sure the animals stayed out. I think my Bacca Gene already does that! Speaking of foot messengers, it takes 4 days to hike the Inca Trail from Cusco to Machu Picchu. It took the Incan foot messengers 4 hours.

Back in Aguas Calientes after a hard day of taking pictures, I just polished off a strong cup of capuccino and a flavorful, mind you cholesterol-free, alpaca steak. Time to go rest up before I have to board the train for the 4 hour trip back to Cusco.

The Crazy Life

The city fires off canyons every morning to celebrate life, so every morning is punctuated with a near heart-attack before I realize what is happening.

My neighbor's dog has grown on my roommates and I - a sweet heeler mix with eyes lined with eyeliner and a fluffy tail. Sometimes we let her into our house and give her a snack. Sometimes when she sees us on the street she likes to walk with us to school. Normally this isn't a problem. But now it is officially Springtime and apparently she is a hot item on the doggy streets of Cusco. This morning I had a line of four dogs following me into town, arranged by size - in back, the smallest terrier mix just twice as big as a chihuahua and about three times smaller than the much-desired Fair Maiden. She sat with me while I worked at the internet cafe while the gentlemen got chased out by the owner. Speaking of Springtime, my friends and I were walking our little, innocent kids from the clinic around the gardens the other day and the clinic's three llamas were going at it. I mean, seriously, how does that work?? Our kids were seriously confused but managed to double over with laughter during their confusion.

A visit to the local Quiropractico yesterday was a true test of my Spanish skills, and the application took about 10 minutes to figure out. The questions I absolutely couldn't understand I decided were really not relevant to my aching back anyway. After two pages of Spanish words and phrases I have never seen, my doctor turned out to be Canadian. Hopefully he worked his magic because I have spent most of my time this past week laying on my back in bed. Thankfully I have had a good Lance Armstrong-Tour de France book to entertain me, which maybe isn't so good now that I think of it because it makes me want to race bikes. Except when I read about the crashing parts, and there are a lot of crashing parts.

Modern Marvels

Sometimes I walk around thinking, 'These people are the from the same race who built Machu Picchu with exceptionally sophisticated engineering??'

Today I got to experience more Love from the Cusco Post Office. A package, sent from the US one month ago arrived last week and I finally received the pick-up notice yesterday. You can only pick up packages at the post office between 8am-11am. I decided to take a little time off from work this morning to pick up my package, only to end up waiting until 9am before they even called my number (4). Once in the package office, the package people tell me I need to open my package and also need to pay tax. I open the package, which contained some previously frozen ice packs, which, as one might guess, after a month in the post, had melted. But miraculously none of this water leaked out until I opened my package on top of the post office desk. Divine justice, I think. The desk probably really needed a cleaning like everything else around here. Apparently their machine had registered I had CD's (oh god, no, CD's!!) in my package and that had to be verified. To my surprise they told me that I had to pay $37 US in taxes, but do you think you can pay this AT the post office?? Nope. So they sent me about a half-mile up the street to a bank, wherein the bank lady told me the number on my certificate did no exist and I had to return to the post office. Which I did. The post office man told me to go to a different, farther bank. Which I did. But they don't take cards, so then I have to find an ATM, return to the bank, get personally escorted to a special desk where I paid my $107 soles, returned to the post office and had to pay ANOTHER $7 soles to re-pick up my package. Three hours later I officially receive my 5-day Special Post package one month later.

Another thing that makes me question the intelligence here.... electricity is very expensive here, thus most people have propane to heat their water and warm their stoves. The Propane Delivery Boy? Yeah. That is a guy about 15 years-old on a 1970's honda motorcycle with three propane tanks strapped to the back of his bike, and to conserve gas, he turns his engine off while going downhill. I will also mention the police here have the same kind of motorcycles, and they too coast downhill.

Much to my delight, I recently discovered there is a Pentacostal Church on my block, with full-on dancing, singing, and tambourines.

I am sad to say this might be my last day in this particular internet cafe. All the desks are slightly tilted toward the left, so I am definitely leaning as I type this. When the 12 year-old girls running the place aren't watching Telenovelas (Soap Operas) on You-Tube, they are blasting old school hard rock on the stereo. The spacebars all stick, and if you type anything remotely 'racy' on a search engine (relationship, kiss) or if you try to look at photos that 'may' contain adult contect (e.g., Dad's Harley website photos), the computer instantly locks down into ANTI-PORN mode and you can no longer use that computer.

My first Art Studio session with my teenage girls went great last Friday. It was the first time I have seen all the girls actively, happily engaged in an activity, and for two hours no less. They were enthralled with all the new art materials (particularly the chalk and oil pastels), they are cherishing their very own art notebooks, and after much giggling, they patiently sat through a short lecture about being non-judgmental about other's art in this particular studio. My favorite moment with this particularly rowdy bunch was when their two directors came in during discussion time and saw all their girls sitting quietly and listening to one another. Completely different young women. Thank you again to everyone who has donated to this project! I am going to try to find another volunteer to continue with the project once I return to the US.

Cusqueña New Year!

Nothing like bringing in the New Year with a big bowl of raw fish in an inland town in a foreign country.

With that being said, the ceviche here is amazing, and is a national delicacy (although generally in seaside cities like Lima). For those not in the know, ceviche is raw fish marinated in citrus for about 5 minutes before it is served, and while still being raw, it has the texture and taste of cooked fish, mixed with chilis, vinegar, salt, and herbs. I have the fortune of having a friend who is a chef at one of the most well known cevicherias in town, Olas Bravas (Brave Waves), and yes, it was delicious - spicy, salty, succulent - and no, I didn't get sick! WOooHooo!

I passed my New Year like the old lady that I am - asleep in my bed, but as one might expect I woke up at midnight to the sound of millions of fireworks. I ran to all the various windows and saw shooting starts surrounding all the hills and the sound of thousands of clapping hands (actually, that is what it sounded like, but it was just the sound of people lighting firecrackers for about 30 minutes echoeing in all the hills). Within about 15 minutes, I thought clouds were rolling in on this exceptionally clear night, only to discover that it was the smoke from so many fireworks for such a long period of time! My roommates reported that the main plaza was insane, even the police were shooting off hand-held fireworks, kids were aiming aimlessly, and everyone was calling relatives on their phones wishing a Happy New Year!! Unfortunately their relatives probably didn't realize that because of that phone call, lines were tied up for, what I imagine, the many people who got shot in the eyeball with a firecracker held by 2 year-olds and tried to call an ambulance. This morning, I dutifully got up at 7am to go to my project and spend my day with 37 little kids who don't understand what day it is, and I got to feed them an amazing lunch of smoked roasted turkey (I snuck a piece from a 4 year-old, shhh, don't tell), baked potatoes, apple pudding, and veggies. Yum. I wish I had an oven. All storekeepers, taxistas, and security guards were in an especially jovial mood this morning, and I expect they were all still very drunk. Within an hour, with barely a hello, I had four grown men ask me my stats: where are you from, how old are you, what is your name, are you single?

Mom, I am losing weight. I am sorry but it is happening. But honestly, I am eating all the time here! The food is amazing, how could I not? Besides normal healthy stuff, I even eat things like Panetone and butter and real hot chocolate, I even have a very mom-like lady at the farmer's market make me extra rich, thick milk and bread with a cream spread. I eat 3-course lunches, sandwiches with 5 different kinds of meat on them. I am trying here, if for nothing else, for the fact that I can't buy pants here in my length or size! Honestly though, I think it is the pilates three times a week. My abs burn, my legs cramp, and dang, it is a good feeling, plus I walk everywhere at 11,000 ft altitude, maybe that has something to do with it too.

I am happy to report to my Divas that, during my island trip the other week, I spent time with 6 New Zealanders, and three of them were wearing Icebreaker! I was wearing my Icebreaker at the time too, so we really bonded. It was beautiful.