First Day in Peru

Here is my entry our first full day in Peru! But first, a bit of background information.

We went to Peru because Travis' best friend's mom, Marla, recently moved to Cuzco and wanted us to come visit. His best friend is Derek, who just exited the military, and he and Travis' sister Katie joined us. Marla also just adopted a five-year-old girl, Anna. And got married to Ismael.

Wednesday, May 23 2012 8:45 am PT

"Great start to our trip: I woke up with a fever, headache, sinus pressure, and chest pain!

Yesterday went fairly well, we were told to drink lots of water to combat the altitude sickness, so I had about 300 ml (maybe more) over the day. Time seemed to drag, since we were tired and got in so early in the day. We went to bed around 9 pm, but it felt like after midnight.

A few hours after getting to Marla's, we walked to pick up Anna from school. The streets of Cuzco are nothing like anywhere I've been, but similar to places and people I have studied. The streets are narrow and cobblestoned, many of them one-way. That aspect reminds me of some streets I've seen in Florence and London, where the buildings are squashed together along a narrow road with thin sidewalks. The biggest difference is the appearance of most of the buildings and the people walking along. Many buildings have simple fronts, and often look old and abandoned. Inside the shops along the way to Anna's school, however, the stores inside gleam as if they were in a regular shopping mall. The stark contrast between the interior and exterior leads me to believe this city hold many more secrets for us to discover.

A typical street in Cuzco, with mountains in the background.

The city does not appear to be in a grid form, but I have not seen any maps. (It is actually laid out almost like an asterisk, with lots of streets leading to one place and intersecting or ending there. It turns out that this was planned out by the Incas, who used the lines as a sort of calendar and a way to follow celestial movements. At the center is a historical site known as Coricancha, and ancient observatory and holy place taken over by the Spanish, which we visited and I will discuss later). The shops and houses are mixed, so there is no real distinct shopping or housing district. There are hundreds of people out during the day, which reminded me of India and the example my professor Erica Bornstein once gave; there are always so many people out that once you get back to Milwaukee it seems eerily vacant and quiet. It is interesting to think how private and unfriendly our lives have been become, which I imagine has to do with the bountiful amount of in-home entertainment, something people didn't used to have and still don't in various parts of the world.

The streets are not just full of people, but vendors and dogs. That is not to say that vendors are not people, but dogs are not, in fact, people. Apparently there is a huge stray dog population, but they seem to mostly keep to themselves. (I later learned that many people get dogs as pets, then let them out and don't feed them, and often they don't come home. Along with this, the dogs are all mutts, and we saw some of the strangest mixes you can imagine.) There are street vendors EVERYWHERE, selling anything from food products (grains, vegetables, meat, etc.) to clothing and home items, and lots of "junk". Yesterday I saw a toilet paper vendor, he seemed to be going well. We have yet to go to the market, but drove through a sort of street-market where people had small doorway shops filled with various items. The things that struck me most were the meat products: full featherless chickens (with feet and head), big slabs of meat and buckets of fish all out in the open. The germophobe in me shrank from seeing these items not being kept cold. The meat must have been out all day, but if you leave meat out at home for more than two hours you are supposed to throw it away.

The streets are similar to Milwaukee in that there are always roads closed down for repairs. The cab taking us from the airport got into an argument with Marla about how to get to her house, and he turned out to be right in saying the road she wanted to take would be closed, although it had been open for her earlier in the morning! One intersection was completely torn up and muddy (it rained a lot a few days prior) and we saw a man using a pick ax, manually working on it. (This intersection was under construction for the three weeks we were there, and one of the streets it crossed. It looked like they were pretty close to maybe starting to lay some bricks/stones sometime soon. Haha.) 

There are great stone churches and buildings from the Spanish era, which I was told were built with the bricks of Incan temples. On the walk to Anna's school, we passed by a big park in the middle of town full of people. It was built with ledges along a hill, and there are stone shapes along the edge (decorative?) People were walking through and kids were playing. It is not what I picture when I think "park" but that is exactly what it is.

Marla's apartment is located through a courtyard of a school, and it is part of a set of three apartments. Once down the narrow alley, there is a huge wooden door. This opens into a small courtyard with and empty stone fountain. Marla rents two of them. They both have and upstairs with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bath and a living area. We are sleeping in the "extra" with Katie and Derek.

Katie in Marla's courtyard

Showering is a bit of a hassle, because if you want it hot it has to come out at a trickle, but if you want more pressure you lose the heat. Since it is cool here (60F) taking cold showers is out of the question, especially since the tile in the shower is like ice.

Using the toilet is also different, because you can't flush paper down it! We have to throw it in a small trash can. It's not so bad, just something to get used to. The amount of water we are drinking makes me pee every hour, which leads to more TP use. No wonder the toilet paper street vendor is doing well!"