Dec 17: Another day in Cuzco

This photo matched the view from the postcards I wrote on.

Today was about as eventful as yesterday but enjoyable none the less. After traveling to so many places in such a short time the last few weeks, it's good to have been in one place long enough to know where things are and to develop preferences to them.

We spent the morning getting our train tickets to Macho Picho. In the afternoon, I bought a number of postcards for my friends and families and spent a small fortune purchasing enough stamps for them. Most of the cards I purchased have a view of either the city or Macho Picho.

I climbed to the top of this hill overlooking the city with the idea of writing while overlooking the city. I was pleased to learn the view from the postcards matched the view in front of my eyes. I filled out the postcards that matched the view in front of my eyes and decided to save the Macho Picho ones to fill out once I'm there.

On my way back down the hill, I ran into the guy who made my watchband and asked him to do another custom job. I really like the handmade bracelets down here that are virtually sold everywhere. However, I wear a watch on my left wrist and a KIA bracelet on my right wrist and don't like the idea of wearing more than one thing on each wrist. As I was looking at my wrist and watchband, I began to wonder if the same thing could be done to my KIA bracelet, which would allow me to wear both the artwork here and keep with my one-item-per-wrist rule. As I thought about it, I realized it probably could be done since stones are part of the necklaces and bracelets made here.

The guy said it would be difficult, but it could be done. He made me leave half the cost to start the job. It's going to take a couple of days to finish, but until then, it's weird looking at my wrist and not seeing Carrie French's name there after seeing it on my wrist every day for the last two years.

I continued down the hill and started walking though a part of the town I hadn't seen yet. Which meant I came across stores I hadn't seen before, so I ended up with more things I don't really need. I decided tonight if I can't eat it or give it away, I'm not buying anything more down here.

After we got our train tickets, we decided to walk around the part of town around the train station. We noticed a huge statue of the most important Inca leader on top of a hill and headed towards it. We had a nice view of the city from the hill. Tara sat in front of the statue and wrote. I decided to climb to the base of the statue, where I found what was left of a spiral staircase. All that remanded was a pole and about six stairs spread out though what was once a staircase.

I could tell by looking at it that it was still possible to get to the top of them, but widely discouraged. I decided to give climbing the stairs a shot, a decision would call one of my stupidest on the trip about 20 minutes later. The pole still had the tips of the removed stairs on it and all I could think about was if I slipped, I'd surely get tetanus. Climbing up wasn't too bad, it was like a life-size logic puzzle but I managed to do it pretty quickly, even with a backpack on my back.

The man of the statue wears a huge medallion on his chest. The medallion has a hole in it, where the steps took me. Getting down was a little bit trickeryer. I needed all 5"11' of my fame to lower myself down to the next step and even then, that wasn't enough for the last step that I had to carefully negotiate the pole to reach.

As I was headed to find something for dinner, I saw this girl looking like she was trying to break into the laundry place next to the one I had taken mine to earlier. I snuck up behind her and whispered, "What are you doing?" and she jumped. She explained she had taken her laundry there and was flying out the next morning and needed it back. I suggested seeing if the laundry place next door could help, but they said just keep knocking on the door. We knocked for a few more minutes, then this guy came up behind us and rang the doorbell and people appeared. We hadn't seen the doorbell, but even if we had, I doubt we would have recognized it as a doorbell.

A lot of families live in, or behind, the shops they run and this was the case here. We were able to get her laundry, but they didn't have change for the bill she had. This is a common problem here. No one ever seems to have change, even for $10 or $20, and breaking $50 or $100 can be hard to do. This wouldn't be such a problem if the ATM shot out bills smaller than $50's or $100's.

She had a couple of smaller bills, but none that would allow her to pay in the exact change, as they were requesting her to do. At this point, we had been talking for about ten minutes, and she seemed pretty cool, so I grabbed the pocket of change in my pocket and gave her what she needed to make it work. Fortunately, I had just the right amount so she was able to get her laundry. As we were leaving, she invited me to join her for dinner so she could pay me back for the laundry money. Accepting her invitation wasn't a hard one as she was a beautiful girl from Holland with a flawless face, despite having played field hockey for 13 years, and I was enjoying our conversation.

Before we found something to eat, she wanted to go back to her hostel to check on her traveling partner, who had drank San Pedro earlier in the day. The New York City native ended up joining us, along with this lady from Austria and an old guy with completely gray dreadlocks, who I forgot his name or where he's from.

We went to this vegetarian place, I can't seem to get away from them, and had a really good meal for only four soles, or $1.33. Well, actually it didn't cost me anything since it was the name amount I had loaned my new Dutch friend at the laundry mat.

On the side of my journal, there is a note that says "alpaca meat." I'm sure I wanted to write about the meat on this day, but forgot. I tried alpaca meat in Cuzco and it was amazing, easily the best meat I've ever put in my mouth. These old ladies sell them on the street in skisabobs for one sole, or 33 cents.