When Allan and I made our list of where we wanted to go in the world, near the top of my list was Peru. Why, you ask? Well, this may sound hokey, but in the early 1980's, I read Shirley MacLaine's book, Out on a Limb, and it changed the way I thought about God and religion. Her book expanded my view of spirituality beyond my Mormon upbringing, and started me on my path to spiritual awakening. Her "channeling" sessions with spirits from the psychic realm was intriguing, but what interested me the most was her out of body experience in Peru. Back then, I naively thought that if I could only go to Peru, I too would have such an experience, and then I would know for sure that I was a spirit, not just a limited human being! Oh, if only it were that easy... I eventually met Judith and learned how to meditate--which brought me the knowledge I had been seeking--but still, thoughts of Peru and Machupicchu remained in my head and I was so thrilled when Allan and I added it to our schedule. And who knew? Maybe an out of body experience would be waiting for me, or perhaps just Shirley MacLaine--that old gal gets around: past, present, and future!
HIGH ALTITUDE
Everyone we talked to told us to skip Lima and head straight to Cusco, so that's exactly what we did. Flying into Cusco was an experience in itself--to see this small town nestled within a spectacular mountain range, and then to land right in the middle of it....simply thrilling, to say the least! Soon we were sitting in our hotel, Terra Andina, located on a quiet street not far from the center of town.
We immediately started sipping coca tea, and began waiting for the effects of altitude sickness to appear...or not, we hoped. Friends advised us to drink coca tea several times per day to help with the 11,000 ft altitude, and this may be why neither of us had any problems with the lack of oxygen. Well, almost no problems. We did get out of breath just by walking up a few flights of stairs or up the steep hill to Plaza San Blas, pictured below. (Well, I can get out of breath doing such climbs in Portland, but for avid-runner-Allan, it was a new experience!)
I would also wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air....for some reason I noticed the lack of oxygen most while sleeping. But for the most part, we handled it all just fine. And in case you're wondering, coca tea tastes a lot like green tea, and no, we did not smuggle any of it out of the country! (And good thing we didn't try to--all of our luggage was thoroughly searched when we left Peru, though I'm not certain it was coca tea they were looking for...)
THE FOOD
After searching happycow.com for veggie restaurants in Cusco, our first dinner was at a small place called El Encuentro. Everything on the extensive menu sounded so good and interesting--somewhat like Mexican food, only different--and prices were ridiculously cheap. Subsequently, we ordered too much food, and nearly had to crawl back to our hotel, we were so full. "Ridiculously cheap" meant $11 to over-feed the two of us.
Little did we know that by the next afternoon, we would discover that $11 was a fortune to pay for two meals! Most places (off the tourist map, of course) had a "Menu Set of the Day" which included soup, salad, entree, and beverage for a whopping $1.25 each. Can you believe it? $1.25! How do they do it?! The cheap food (and cheap hostels) explains why the streets of Cusco are crawling with young people from all over the world. One can come to Cusco and stay for quite a long time on very little money. All that is required is a tolerance for the high altitude and a love for corn, which is quite plentiful in Cusco. Allan LOVES corn (probably more than he loves me and my iPhone) and he was so excited to see corn prepared in such a variety of ways. When he saw "Corn Toast" on the menu, he thought it would be toasted cornbread, and eagerly ordered it. But it turned out to be this:
Toasted corn topped with cheese. It was a lot like "Corn Nuts" only better, saltier. We liked it so much, we went back and ordered it again! Cusco also sells corn beer, which is called Chicha. We tried the non-alcoholic version, which just means it hadn't fermented yet, sort of like apple juice before it becomes apple cider. I thought that Chicha tasted a lot like grape juice with lemon, and it even looked like grape juice since it is made with purple corn. (Purple corn? How gorgeous is that?)
On our last night in Cusco, we ate at a wonderful organic cafe called Greens, which specialized in creative gourmet food, and was located in the middle of the tourist center.
It was a splurge in comparison to the typical places we ate at--dinner for the two of us cost about $25. We ended up being the only customers that night (it was pouring rain), and so afterward, we took a moment to ask our waiter about the cost of living in Cusco. He said that the average person makes $200 US dollars per month. Rent in town is about $150 per month, so most of the working class live 20-30 minutes from town where it's only $50 per month. He dreams of going to America some day, but the lines for VISA's are incredibly long, and even if he got one, raising the $800 for airfare would be difficult...and where would he stay or eat that would be affordable for him?
LIVING IN CUSCO
Hearing about their cost of living helped me have a better understanding of what I saw on the streets of Cusco....When we walked in the tourist areas, like the main plaza pictured below, we were inundated with offers for massages and shoe shines, or were hounded to buy paintings and woven belts.
It is evident that everyone needs money; Peru is a poor country. So some people simply asked us for money. Even restaurants had employees on the streets practically begging you to eat in their cafe. Allan and I have become skilled at being polite and present when we are approached, but also firm with "no thank you". But still, after being approached 10 times in three minutes, it can wear on you. They see us as being rich--which even in my unemployed state is true by comparison--so I don't blame them for trying to make a sale or obtain my pocket change. I'm sure that I would be doing the same thing if our lives were switched, so I always tried to keep that in mind if a person got too pushy. One day we left the tourist areas and ventured into the nearby neighborhood where the locals live and shop, and it was quite a change from the manicured gardens and beautifully restored buildings of the center square. We were pretty much the only tourists walking around, and most people completely ignored us. Gone were the fancy restaurants and beautiful crafts for sale, and many of the buildings looked run down and dirty. People were on the streets selling everything--from sponges to shoe polish to toilet paper. Some had wheelbarrows of fruit they were selling, or a small array of vegetables on the ground that looked like they were grown in their backyard. When we reached the street where all the dead animals were being sold for meat, I turned to Allan with a depressed look on my face and said, "I want to go back to where everything is pretty." I would like to think that I have gotten better at "accepting" poverty or meat markets, and not be emotionally affected by them...but I have not. Several times on this trip I start comparing what I have and what I am currently experiencing, to what others do not have and what they will probably never experience. It becomes hard to reconcile it in my brain, and I feel guilty or sad. Sure, I can give my pocket change to the poor locals I see...donating money is easy...figuring out what one can personally do to change the ongoing situation is hard.
TEXTILES
On to happier subjects....It rained nearly every day we were in Cusco** and all of that rain made the colors on the mountains so green, vivid and crisp. Oh.....the colors of Cusco! Not only are they exquisite in nature, but the Peruvian people have brought that beauty into their textile work. Such beautiful textiles! Wool is cleaned with natural products, hand spun, and then hand dyed with natural pigments derived from such things as flowers, wood bark, and salt.
The wool is then woven into belts, purses, scarves, table runners, and blankets...Gorgeous! At one shop, we were given a demonstration on how the wool was washed and dyed:
We oooh'd and aaaaaah'd every time we walked into a shop, and for the first time on this trip, Allan actually spent money on souvenirs nearly every day that we were out and about. (Allan has to really, really, REALLY love something before he'll buy it--a discipline I have tried and failed to emulate.)
Prices were quite reasonable to begin with, but we were advised by our tour guide to bargain...One day on a tour outside of Cusco, we stopped to see some ruins. Local people were selling things near the site, and I was admiring a handmade wool blanket of deep browns, reds, and rust colors. The old man selling it said it was an antique, and that the price was 180 pesos, which is about $50. But I was watching my spending, and figured I didn't really need to haul a blanket home anyway, so I said no thanks and we walked away, heading down the hill toward our bus. But the man followed us with the blanket in hand and started lowering the price...170 pesos, 150 pesos, 130 pesos....going lower each time I said "No gracias" and kept walking. Finally, he said 100 pesos, wrote the number on his hand, and held it to my face. He looked so desperate and I was starting to feel...well, obligated to buy it. I kept looking at Allan for him to help me decide what to do, but he had his poker face on....I was on my own with this one! So I took out 100 pesos and paid him for the blanket. As we walked to the bus, I held the beautiful blanket in my arms. Allan and I concluded that $28 for such a blanket was a screamin' deal. But for the rest of the night it nagged at me...was it a screamin' deal for the old man as well? How does one find the balance between getting a good deal, and also providing a decent income for the local people? I mean, sure, I love saving $22 when I'm shopping at Banana Republic. Who doesn't? But to save $22 when buying from an old Peruvian man? It's not as thrilling as you might think...On the other hand, the old man now has 100 pesos, and perhaps he's happy about that. Maybe it was his only sale all day? Perhaps I think too much.....
Over time, we gravitated to the "Ecological Co-Op" shops where the artisans are paid a fair price for their work, and all products are ecologically produced. Those shops had a refinement and a color palette that we could not get enough of, and if I could have, I would have spent hundreds of dollars on stuff. (Oh, if only I were employed!) I thought it was hard to resist the arts and crafts of Fez, Morocco, but Cusco was really, really hard. It was all just TOO GORGEOUS, and amazingly affordable at that. Beautiful crafts made by beautiful people in a beautiful setting that was beautifully affordable. How could we not fall in love with this place? I would definitely want to return to Cusco. Two weeks just wasn't long enough.
As one could guess, I did not have any out of body experiences while in Cusco, and Shirley MacLaine was no where to be found. And I was disappointed to discover that quieting my mind to meditate was more difficult than I had expected, so there went my fantasy of easy enlightenment in Peru! Often times I had to rely on Mother Nature to bring me to stillness--thank God for Mother Nature! The spectacular mountains surrounding Cusco were so amazing, so unreal, that they were more than enough to give me a break from my mind just by looking at them....
But this beautiful place, like so many places we have visited on this trip, is slowly showing the signs of global warming. We were told that 30% of the glacier has melted in the last 4 years....
In addition to exploring the town of Cusco, we took a few tours; the Sacred Valley tour, the City Tour, a trip to Moray and Ollantaytambo, and of course, Machupicchu. Allan will be covering those areas in a future blog post.
**January is the height of rainy season, and you may have heard about the mudslides at Machupicchu which occurred just days after we left...Here is a picture I took of the street and raging river in front of the hotel we stayed at. Even before the mudslides, the river made Allan and I nervous. It was so loud and strong, and uncomfortably close to the road. Note the park benches on the strip of lawn...
The following picture I found on the Internet shows the same street, and while I can't be certain, that may be what is left of those benches after the mudslide...
It appears that half of the road in front of our hotel got washed away, which is the one and only road that takes tourists to Machupicchu. Reports estimate that it may be 5 months before tourists will be able to visit Machupicchu again. While I am grateful that we were lucky enough to experience Machupicchu before the mudslide, my heart goes out to the lives that were lost in the slides, and to the many businesses that will suffer great economic loss without tourists...Our hotel is the yellow building on the left.
HIGH ALTITUDE
Everyone we talked to told us to skip Lima and head straight to Cusco, so that's exactly what we did. Flying into Cusco was an experience in itself--to see this small town nestled within a spectacular mountain range, and then to land right in the middle of it....simply thrilling, to say the least! Soon we were sitting in our hotel, Terra Andina, located on a quiet street not far from the center of town.
We immediately started sipping coca tea, and began waiting for the effects of altitude sickness to appear...or not, we hoped. Friends advised us to drink coca tea several times per day to help with the 11,000 ft altitude, and this may be why neither of us had any problems with the lack of oxygen. Well, almost no problems. We did get out of breath just by walking up a few flights of stairs or up the steep hill to Plaza San Blas, pictured below. (Well, I can get out of breath doing such climbs in Portland, but for avid-runner-Allan, it was a new experience!)I would also wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air....for some reason I noticed the lack of oxygen most while sleeping. But for the most part, we handled it all just fine. And in case you're wondering, coca tea tastes a lot like green tea, and no, we did not smuggle any of it out of the country! (And good thing we didn't try to--all of our luggage was thoroughly searched when we left Peru, though I'm not certain it was coca tea they were looking for...)THE FOOD
After searching happycow.com for veggie restaurants in Cusco, our first dinner was at a small place called El Encuentro. Everything on the extensive menu sounded so good and interesting--somewhat like Mexican food, only different--and prices were ridiculously cheap. Subsequently, we ordered too much food, and nearly had to crawl back to our hotel, we were so full. "Ridiculously cheap" meant $11 to over-feed the two of us.
Little did we know that by the next afternoon, we would discover that $11 was a fortune to pay for two meals! Most places (off the tourist map, of course) had a "Menu Set of the Day" which included soup, salad, entree, and beverage for a whopping $1.25 each. Can you believe it? $1.25! How do they do it?! The cheap food (and cheap hostels) explains why the streets of Cusco are crawling with young people from all over the world. One can come to Cusco and stay for quite a long time on very little money. All that is required is a tolerance for the high altitude and a love for corn, which is quite plentiful in Cusco. Allan LOVES corn (probably more than he loves me and my iPhone) and he was so excited to see corn prepared in such a variety of ways. When he saw "Corn Toast" on the menu, he thought it would be toasted cornbread, and eagerly ordered it. But it turned out to be this:Toasted corn topped with cheese. It was a lot like "Corn Nuts" only better, saltier. We liked it so much, we went back and ordered it again! Cusco also sells corn beer, which is called Chicha. We tried the non-alcoholic version, which just means it hadn't fermented yet, sort of like apple juice before it becomes apple cider. I thought that Chicha tasted a lot like grape juice with lemon, and it even looked like grape juice since it is made with purple corn. (Purple corn? How gorgeous is that?)On our last night in Cusco, we ate at a wonderful organic cafe called Greens, which specialized in creative gourmet food, and was located in the middle of the tourist center.It was a splurge in comparison to the typical places we ate at--dinner for the two of us cost about $25. We ended up being the only customers that night (it was pouring rain), and so afterward, we took a moment to ask our waiter about the cost of living in Cusco. He said that the average person makes $200 US dollars per month. Rent in town is about $150 per month, so most of the working class live 20-30 minutes from town where it's only $50 per month. He dreams of going to America some day, but the lines for VISA's are incredibly long, and even if he got one, raising the $800 for airfare would be difficult...and where would he stay or eat that would be affordable for him?LIVING IN CUSCO
Hearing about their cost of living helped me have a better understanding of what I saw on the streets of Cusco....When we walked in the tourist areas, like the main plaza pictured below, we were inundated with offers for massages and shoe shines, or were hounded to buy paintings and woven belts.
It is evident that everyone needs money; Peru is a poor country. So some people simply asked us for money. Even restaurants had employees on the streets practically begging you to eat in their cafe. Allan and I have become skilled at being polite and present when we are approached, but also firm with "no thank you". But still, after being approached 10 times in three minutes, it can wear on you. They see us as being rich--which even in my unemployed state is true by comparison--so I don't blame them for trying to make a sale or obtain my pocket change. I'm sure that I would be doing the same thing if our lives were switched, so I always tried to keep that in mind if a person got too pushy. One day we left the tourist areas and ventured into the nearby neighborhood where the locals live and shop, and it was quite a change from the manicured gardens and beautifully restored buildings of the center square. We were pretty much the only tourists walking around, and most people completely ignored us. Gone were the fancy restaurants and beautiful crafts for sale, and many of the buildings looked run down and dirty. People were on the streets selling everything--from sponges to shoe polish to toilet paper. Some had wheelbarrows of fruit they were selling, or a small array of vegetables on the ground that looked like they were grown in their backyard. When we reached the street where all the dead animals were being sold for meat, I turned to Allan with a depressed look on my face and said, "I want to go back to where everything is pretty." I would like to think that I have gotten better at "accepting" poverty or meat markets, and not be emotionally affected by them...but I have not. Several times on this trip I start comparing what I have and what I am currently experiencing, to what others do not have and what they will probably never experience. It becomes hard to reconcile it in my brain, and I feel guilty or sad. Sure, I can give my pocket change to the poor locals I see...donating money is easy...figuring out what one can personally do to change the ongoing situation is hard.TEXTILES
On to happier subjects....It rained nearly every day we were in Cusco** and all of that rain made the colors on the mountains so green, vivid and crisp. Oh.....the colors of Cusco! Not only are they exquisite in nature, but the Peruvian people have brought that beauty into their textile work. Such beautiful textiles! Wool is cleaned with natural products, hand spun, and then hand dyed with natural pigments derived from such things as flowers, wood bark, and salt.
The wool is then woven into belts, purses, scarves, table runners, and blankets...Gorgeous! At one shop, we were given a demonstration on how the wool was washed and dyed:We oooh'd and aaaaaah'd every time we walked into a shop, and for the first time on this trip, Allan actually spent money on souvenirs nearly every day that we were out and about. (Allan has to really, really, REALLY love something before he'll buy it--a discipline I have tried and failed to emulate.)Prices were quite reasonable to begin with, but we were advised by our tour guide to bargain...One day on a tour outside of Cusco, we stopped to see some ruins. Local people were selling things near the site, and I was admiring a handmade wool blanket of deep browns, reds, and rust colors. The old man selling it said it was an antique, and that the price was 180 pesos, which is about $50. But I was watching my spending, and figured I didn't really need to haul a blanket home anyway, so I said no thanks and we walked away, heading down the hill toward our bus. But the man followed us with the blanket in hand and started lowering the price...170 pesos, 150 pesos, 130 pesos....going lower each time I said "No gracias" and kept walking. Finally, he said 100 pesos, wrote the number on his hand, and held it to my face. He looked so desperate and I was starting to feel...well, obligated to buy it. I kept looking at Allan for him to help me decide what to do, but he had his poker face on....I was on my own with this one! So I took out 100 pesos and paid him for the blanket. As we walked to the bus, I held the beautiful blanket in my arms. Allan and I concluded that $28 for such a blanket was a screamin' deal. But for the rest of the night it nagged at me...was it a screamin' deal for the old man as well? How does one find the balance between getting a good deal, and also providing a decent income for the local people? I mean, sure, I love saving $22 when I'm shopping at Banana Republic. Who doesn't? But to save $22 when buying from an old Peruvian man? It's not as thrilling as you might think...On the other hand, the old man now has 100 pesos, and perhaps he's happy about that. Maybe it was his only sale all day? Perhaps I think too much.....Over time, we gravitated to the "Ecological Co-Op" shops where the artisans are paid a fair price for their work, and all products are ecologically produced. Those shops had a refinement and a color palette that we could not get enough of, and if I could have, I would have spent hundreds of dollars on stuff. (Oh, if only I were employed!) I thought it was hard to resist the arts and crafts of Fez, Morocco, but Cusco was really, really hard. It was all just TOO GORGEOUS, and amazingly affordable at that. Beautiful crafts made by beautiful people in a beautiful setting that was beautifully affordable. How could we not fall in love with this place? I would definitely want to return to Cusco. Two weeks just wasn't long enough.
As one could guess, I did not have any out of body experiences while in Cusco, and Shirley MacLaine was no where to be found. And I was disappointed to discover that quieting my mind to meditate was more difficult than I had expected, so there went my fantasy of easy enlightenment in Peru! Often times I had to rely on Mother Nature to bring me to stillness--thank God for Mother Nature! The spectacular mountains surrounding Cusco were so amazing, so unreal, that they were more than enough to give me a break from my mind just by looking at them....But this beautiful place, like so many places we have visited on this trip, is slowly showing the signs of global warming. We were told that 30% of the glacier has melted in the last 4 years....In addition to exploring the town of Cusco, we took a few tours; the Sacred Valley tour, the City Tour, a trip to Moray and Ollantaytambo, and of course, Machupicchu. Allan will be covering those areas in a future blog post.
**January is the height of rainy season, and you may have heard about the mudslides at Machupicchu which occurred just days after we left...Here is a picture I took of the street and raging river in front of the hotel we stayed at. Even before the mudslides, the river made Allan and I nervous. It was so loud and strong, and uncomfortably close to the road. Note the park benches on the strip of lawn...
The following picture I found on the Internet shows the same street, and while I can't be certain, that may be what is left of those benches after the mudslide...It appears that half of the road in front of our hotel got washed away, which is the one and only road that takes tourists to Machupicchu. Reports estimate that it may be 5 months before tourists will be able to visit Machupicchu again. While I am grateful that we were lucky enough to experience Machupicchu before the mudslide, my heart goes out to the lives that were lost in the slides, and to the many businesses that will suffer great economic loss without tourists...Our hotel is the yellow building on the left.
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