Friday, June 17, 2011

I just can´t seem to leave Peru...

Hello to my small yet loyal readership!

I´m still in Peru. I´ve got half an hour or so to kill before I meet some friends for funtimes here in Cusco, so I guess that´s a good an excuse as any to blag blag blag my little heart out to you all.

I tell you what though, these South American keyboards will be the death of me. Granted, it´s a little easier (certainly faster) than typing on my iPhone, so I shouldn´t really complain.

So. Update. Last time I wrote we were in the Sacred Valley. We headed back to Cusco, oh city where I will leave my heart, for some fun and frivolity and friends and farewells. As well as obnoxious amounts of alliteration. Then Linc and I set off to Machu Picchu, by way of a four day trek through the Lares Valley. Those of you who know me well, your minds should be boggling at the fact that I was wearing grubby clothes, not showering, not brushing my teeth and walking for quite obscene amounts of kilometers up mountains. It was ridiculous. If it weren´t so disgusting, I´d post up pictures of the myriad bruises that are on my ass. I already posted a picture of my disgusting big toe on Facebook (sorry, Fish) so I think that one will have to be given a miss.

So the trek had its amazing points and dudd points and I did have some small child steal the case that contained my sewing kit, battery for my camera, toothbrush, toothpaste and hand sanitiser. So that was irritating. But something certainly has to be said for the feeling one gets (especially if one is incredibly unfit, like yours truly) when one reaches the top of a huge mountain and you can look down and think, ¨I FUCKING DID THAT, BITCHES.¨ We actually did the trek with two AWESOME Austrians, who happened to hire horses for the duration of the trek. I was jealous at first, but I think the feeling of accomplishment may have been worth it.

Machu Picchu? It was great. All those things that people say about it? Tick all those boxes. Yes, it´s touristy. Yes, it´s spectacular. Yes, it´s amazing. Definitely glad we went. It would have been a crime had we not gone.

Post Machu Picchu, Linc and I headed to Arequipa, which is a gorgeous city. More European than Cusco. Prettymax. Not really much worth noting though, given that we didn´t go to the Colca Canyon, nor did we go out on the town. Mostly, I just went to various cafes and wrote. Wrote and wrote. A lot of drivel, some shit worth keeping.

After Arequipa I was meant to go to Buenos Aires, and Linc was meant to go to Columbia. Linc did go to Columbia, I didn´t go to Argentina. Thanks to the Chilean volcano, my flight was cancelled. Awesome. Then it became actually slightly awesome, because that meant that I was put in a five star hotel for my trouble, with obscene amounts of free food, as well as running hot water and a working shitter (with toilet paper provided, unlike much of Peru). YES. I had the longest shower I´ve had in a month, I ate way too much, and I had a glorious nap with the TV on in the background. Cheap thrills, y´all.

Anyway, I didn´t end up getting on my flight to Buenos Aires. I´ll be doing Argentina in about a month. For now, I´m back in Cusco, then heading to Puno tomorrow. Then I´ll be back here for the Inti Rami festival which will be all manner of radfun, then I´ll head to Bolivia properly. I know it´s a hell of a long time in Peru, but I´ve grown rather attached to this place. I´ll be glad to get to the next country, but there´s plenty here that I´m fond of.

Okay, I´ve successfully killed about twenty minutes. Ugh.

I´ll tell you a little about Cusco. Today I went to a market, and across from the beanies and jumpers and a little internet corner, there was a TYPEWRITER CORNER. A bunch of typewriters. Ready to be typed with. I thought, ¨Fuck me, I want to type something on a typwriter.¨ ... so I did. I typed it good, I´ll tell you that for free. The man asked me if I wanted him to type something for me, and I was all like, ¨BITCHNAH.¨ ... to be honest that might have been the highlight of my day. Cheap thrills, y´all.

Cusco is full of stray dogs. But believe it or not, maybe one in fifty could be described as ¨manky¨. They´re all pretty cute to be honest. Some of them hang out in posses of three or four. They´re mostly really friendly. I´ve seen maybe three get mad at people. Well, apart from this one night. I was wandering the streets with a pal of mine, and suddenly we hear barking and running footsteps. Look up at the plaza, there´s a gang of about five dogs cracking the shits at this man, who´s running backwards as fast as his legs will take him, pulling off his jacket and whipping it at the dogs, trying to keep them at bay.
Needless to say, we bailed.

Also, the dogs are tough as fuck. Same night, same pal, different plaza, we laughed at this one badass boss dog running alongside, sprinting alongside this taxi. It wasn´t happy. Then oh god the taxi rounded the corner and the dog was under the car. I screamed and was ready to burst into tears. But lo and behold, the dog was fine. It gave a little whimper, then got up and trotted off. Barely limping. I kid you not, this dog hit the bumper and went under at least one of the tyres. Granted, the cars here are pretty tiny, but it was INSANE, the toughness of this dog. We saw it later, and it was fine. Honestly, what the poo.

On that note, I´ll sign off.

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