marionettas, camote y gorros
Today Laura and I arrived in Cuzco after only being delayed for an hour or so for the weather. Our taxi ride back to the Lima airport was much less eventful and a cost about half as much. We also discovered that the ride should be 45 minutes and not two and a half hours. We booked a tour to take the train to macchu picchu in the airport. This might have been a bad idea for gringas like us but the price seemed about what the guidebook said it would be. Immediately upon leaving the airport we were accosted by taxi driver who insisted that he could provide a hostel and a train to macchu picchu for less. Laura returned to inside to barter a little more with Jessica the girl who had sold us the train tickets and lowered the price a little. I had a fun time laying on the bench outside listening to the man talk in Spanish. He returned to our hotel with us and was desparetly trying to plan our entire stay in Cuzco. He gave Laura and I coco tea and after a small argument about whether or not the tea would show up in a drug test that Laura has to take for skiing we drank some of it. Although it was supposed to help the altitude it wasn´t really working for me and I started feeling really tired and lost my ability to speak in Spanish and make decisions. I retired to my room and Laura went for a run. I barely had the energy to make it upstairs and I couldn´t believe it that Laura was running around Cuzco. I guess that is what happens to people who train to race at high altitudes. Oh I forgot to mention she was doing situps and pushups in the airport while we waited. I felt guilty and decided to join her for a little bit.
After I slept for awhile we went to eat lunch at a small restaurante close to our hostel. For 1.25 dollars we got soup, an appetizer, chicken, rice and rice pudding and a drink made out of a fruit that we hadn´t heard of. After that we started to wander and were immediately accosted by little kids, teenagers and adults trying to sell us things. They tried to sell us postcards, bracelets, paintings, assorted musical instruments and my favorita, marionettas. Marrionettas are small animals that mother knit and give their children to sell. They are either 33 cents each or 66 cents depending on how cute I think the kid selling them is. I now have a alpaca, a turtle, a parrot, an aligator, a tiger, and one or two others. My neice is going to have a lot of these things is all I have to say. Then I tried to find a gorro, a hat made out of llama or alpaca wool. Those made out of llamas are mas rústicos(corse) and those made out of alpacas are mas suave(soft). I havn´t found the perfect one yet but I will because it is really cold here. I´m wearing almost all of my clothes.
Laura and I found a man who painted pictures of Cuzco. Laura wanted a self´portrait and the man told us he was an artist and told us he woudl do a painting for her. He had to do it from a photograph however and not from real life. So we started to try to find a place to print a picture off of her digital camera with him acting as a tour guide and showing us things from the time of the Incas. Eventually after we had seen many paintings just like the ones he was selling we decided that he probably wasn´t an artist and Laura decided not to get a painting done. He seemed kind of upset for wasting so much time following us around but it was great Spanish practice for me.
After I´d already bought marionettas from a cute girl a really cute boy was trying to sell me more. I told him no but somehow he found me later. He very logically told me that I had ten fingers so I needed more than five marionettas. I told him that I really didn´t think so. Then two of his amigos showed up trying to sell us more things. One of them wanted to shine my hiking books which I thought was a little bit funny. He told me that he was really hungry. Laura and I were looking for a place to eat so we invited them along on the condition that they would practice Spanish with us. One of them was 7, one 15 and one 16. The fifteen year old actually liked math which I thought was cool. We asked them about their schools. They go five days a week and study languages and history and math. One studies English and Italian. I asked him to tell me his life story in Spanish but he said it was more expensive than the chicken I was buying him for dinner. We found out that they were all born in Cuzco and had not been to other parts of Peru. The 15 year old knew who George Bush was(when we say that we are from Washington everyone assumes that Bush is my neighbor). I asked him what he though of Bush and he said he was like the current Peruvian president who he didn´t like. He said that Bush was killing lots of people in Iraq. All in all we paid 28 soles for dinner or about 9 dollars for the five of us. There was chicken left over that they put in their pockets to take to their mothers. I guess feeding them was better than buying something because I won´t have to carry it in my backpack for the next three weeks. I did end up buying two more marionettas with the change from dinner though. One word that the boys taught us in exchange for dinner was camote, which was a vegetable which seemed a lot like yams. Its really hard to eat fruits and vegetables here becuase if they are washed in water we can get sick from the water. I hate having to tell people that I can´t eat their food because it will make me sick. I also hate having people accost me constantly trying to sell me things. I hate ignoring people but at times it seems necessary. A man followed me for a block trying to sell me cigarrets. I said No fumo so many times but I don´t think that he cared that I didn´t smoke. He told another girl that it was a special day and that the cigarettes were free. We decided that he would have to pay us a lot of money to get us to smoke them.
I´m really excited to ride bikes tomorrow with Laura and go to Macchu Pichu Monday and Tuesday. It will be nice to escape the crowds of tourists and the even bigger crowds of people trying to sell them things in the North of Peru later this trip. If anyone wants anything made of alpaca I´m in the right place. For only three or four dollars you can buy really nice hats that are very soft and wonderful.
After I slept for awhile we went to eat lunch at a small restaurante close to our hostel. For 1.25 dollars we got soup, an appetizer, chicken, rice and rice pudding and a drink made out of a fruit that we hadn´t heard of. After that we started to wander and were immediately accosted by little kids, teenagers and adults trying to sell us things. They tried to sell us postcards, bracelets, paintings, assorted musical instruments and my favorita, marionettas. Marrionettas are small animals that mother knit and give their children to sell. They are either 33 cents each or 66 cents depending on how cute I think the kid selling them is. I now have a alpaca, a turtle, a parrot, an aligator, a tiger, and one or two others. My neice is going to have a lot of these things is all I have to say. Then I tried to find a gorro, a hat made out of llama or alpaca wool. Those made out of llamas are mas rústicos(corse) and those made out of alpacas are mas suave(soft). I havn´t found the perfect one yet but I will because it is really cold here. I´m wearing almost all of my clothes.
Laura and I found a man who painted pictures of Cuzco. Laura wanted a self´portrait and the man told us he was an artist and told us he woudl do a painting for her. He had to do it from a photograph however and not from real life. So we started to try to find a place to print a picture off of her digital camera with him acting as a tour guide and showing us things from the time of the Incas. Eventually after we had seen many paintings just like the ones he was selling we decided that he probably wasn´t an artist and Laura decided not to get a painting done. He seemed kind of upset for wasting so much time following us around but it was great Spanish practice for me.
After I´d already bought marionettas from a cute girl a really cute boy was trying to sell me more. I told him no but somehow he found me later. He very logically told me that I had ten fingers so I needed more than five marionettas. I told him that I really didn´t think so. Then two of his amigos showed up trying to sell us more things. One of them wanted to shine my hiking books which I thought was a little bit funny. He told me that he was really hungry. Laura and I were looking for a place to eat so we invited them along on the condition that they would practice Spanish with us. One of them was 7, one 15 and one 16. The fifteen year old actually liked math which I thought was cool. We asked them about their schools. They go five days a week and study languages and history and math. One studies English and Italian. I asked him to tell me his life story in Spanish but he said it was more expensive than the chicken I was buying him for dinner. We found out that they were all born in Cuzco and had not been to other parts of Peru. The 15 year old knew who George Bush was(when we say that we are from Washington everyone assumes that Bush is my neighbor). I asked him what he though of Bush and he said he was like the current Peruvian president who he didn´t like. He said that Bush was killing lots of people in Iraq. All in all we paid 28 soles for dinner or about 9 dollars for the five of us. There was chicken left over that they put in their pockets to take to their mothers. I guess feeding them was better than buying something because I won´t have to carry it in my backpack for the next three weeks. I did end up buying two more marionettas with the change from dinner though. One word that the boys taught us in exchange for dinner was camote, which was a vegetable which seemed a lot like yams. Its really hard to eat fruits and vegetables here becuase if they are washed in water we can get sick from the water. I hate having to tell people that I can´t eat their food because it will make me sick. I also hate having people accost me constantly trying to sell me things. I hate ignoring people but at times it seems necessary. A man followed me for a block trying to sell me cigarrets. I said No fumo so many times but I don´t think that he cared that I didn´t smoke. He told another girl that it was a special day and that the cigarettes were free. We decided that he would have to pay us a lot of money to get us to smoke them.
I´m really excited to ride bikes tomorrow with Laura and go to Macchu Pichu Monday and Tuesday. It will be nice to escape the crowds of tourists and the even bigger crowds of people trying to sell them things in the North of Peru later this trip. If anyone wants anything made of alpaca I´m in the right place. For only three or four dollars you can buy really nice hats that are very soft and wonderful.
posted by Cammie at 7:33 PM
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