Cusco.

hello again. this weekend was officially my first weekend to experience the night life in peru. interesting to say the least...

we began the weekend with a ¨casual¨ hike up to the pisaq ruins. when i say casual i mean i was so out of breath by the time i´d walked 10 minutes that i debated turing around. the altitude makes me feel like a slacking couch potato.

i woke at 5 45a.m. to meet a group of other volunteers, who i will write about later, in the Plaza de Armas a couple of blocks away from my house. we had an estimated meeting time of 6 30 and i wanted to get a quick shower before i began the day (which after the hike ended up being the dumbest idea i´ve had recently). after meeting in the plaza we began the hike. our reasoning behind getting up so early was that the ticket guard doesn´t usually arrive at the gate until later in the morning so we thought we´d try to beat him there.. why pay for nature, i say. i must comment that the trek up the gigantic mountain is not for the feint of heart. the altitude took a serious toll on everyone´s respiritory system so we stopped every 10 or so minutes to catch our breath.

the view from even the first lookout was incredible. we all sat on huge rocks and admired the view of the entire city, as well as 2 others that were visible from where we sat. the mountain range is even more impressive from up that high. i´m still in awe of the scenery so it was very hard for me to grasp what i was looking at. i kept saying that it was as if we were on a movie set and someone had placed a drop screen behind us.

the ruins were very impressive. i´m amazed that they still remain which is probably the main reason behind them being such a successful national park. there were many building-looking structures that i´m sure once housed little families that had pets and ate family dinners just like everyone else. i don´t think i would have made a very good Inca because those people built their houses off 1,000 foot cliffs that LI-TER-AL-Y go straight down off the edge. i became very familiar with what it must feel like to be deathly afraid of rollercoasters. you people have no idea. i have´t figured out how to post pictures yet but they won´t even do the drop off justice. i´m shuttering just thinking about it.

we stayed at the ruins for about 4 hours. Sebastian, another volunteer who lives in Pisaq, and I went as high as we possibly could which was tooooo high. i probably made a few dumb decisions that thankfully didn´t end up tragic. at some points we could see all around us at every neighboring village in the area. it was very freeing to know that there was nothing between you and the next mountain 2 miles away except air. it makes me want to go paragliding even more. sorry mom.

we were scheduled to go to Cusco that same afternoon so Sebastain and I met the others in our favorite little cafe in the plaza called Ulrike´s Cafe. Ulrike is from Germany and she has really amazing pizza that she only serves on Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sun. i usually get the vegge pizza but the hawaiian is really good too. after we had a little snack we took showers and got a cab to Cusco. the drive is very windy but totally worth it because of the view. it takes about 35-40 minutes via cab to cusco and only costs 25 soles which is about $8. we crammed 5 people in the cab so we´re looking at about a $1.60 a person. once we got to Cusco we headed to our hostel. i´m still not really sure what its name is but we fit 6 beds in a room and payed $5 a person for one night and a private bathroom. yeah, we´re defining the term ´traveling on a budget´ over here. it´s pretty sweet.

we had a couple of hours to burn before the other girl we were meeting at the hostel arrived, so we took that opportunity to visit the black market in cusco. everything there is ridiculously cheap. i purchased all 4 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm for about $12 as well as the movies Wall-E and Horton Hears a Who for $1 each. it´s all bootleg but it´s not illegal and everyone goes there for a lot of things. ***let me know if you want any movie or tv series and i´ll get it for you. it´s great quality and only $1 per disc. they had everything including Grey´s Anatomy, Friends, 24, Prison Break, movies that havent come out on dvd yet, The Office, etc.***

we headed to dinner after the other girl arrived at the hostel. we actually couldn´t find her for a long time until she wrote on someone´s facebook wall that she was lost and sitting in Jack´s Cafe. we found her an hour and a half later in tears because she thought she wouldn´t ever find us. it was funny because libby and i were looking for our hostel about an hour earlier and this sketchy guy asked us what we were looking and we told him our hostel. he said that our friend was looking for us and the hostel too and that she had gone down the street and he would show us. libby and i were like ´um no´ and walked the other direction. turns out she really had talked to him. small world.

we ate at a cute restaurant where some of the money we paid for food went towards the kids in the city. it was decorated a lot like what i would think hansel and grettel saw in the lady´s house they followed before they got eaten. i ate a yummy chicken, cheese and tomato sandwhich.

we then returned to the hostel to take a quick nap then went to a fun little bar named Indigo. they had hooka there and a cute little wood-burning stove to keep everyone warm. we played card games and chatted until everyone decided they were too tired to stay any longer. libby and i split off to meet with some other volunteers in a discoteca. THAT was an interesting experience. everyone there was incredibly sloshy and way too much in the music and dancing to make it a casual, conversational venue. duely noted.

we met some interesting people. i think that in a night club where you can´t really hear anyone it´s easier to practice your spanish. i ended up making good friends with one of the club owners and we had fun laughing at each other´s ability to speak our second languages. he kinda looked like fat joe. great guy. after that we went to a different place that wasn´t that fun and quickly determined that McDonalds would be better at that moment. i struggled out our orders and we proceeded to enjoy one of the best meals i´ve ever had at Micky D´s.

the next morning it was a little hard to wake up but we had a great breakfast at Jack´s Cafe. by great i mean i ate homemade french toast with fresh strawberries and bananas with an insanely delicious chocolate milk. am i on a diet? haha...no. we walked around for a little while, observed a festival in the plaza and hailed a cab for home...the most carsick i´ve ever been in my life by-the-way. by the first 5 minutes i had already sorted out in my head how to yell at the cab driver in spanish to pull over so i could yack. what seemed like forever later we arrived, and libby and i went home to recover from the drive home and our sleepless night. i took the best nap so far in my life.. we are going to machu picchu this weekend so we went to meet up with our friends to buy tickets online. they were at Ulrike´s watching Across the Universe so we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to the internet cafe i´m in right now.

wow. i type too much. thanks for reading this far.

how was your weekend?