Picture Post: The Hostel- Part III

Since I´m moving out of here soon, I just wanted to show off the last two parts of the hostel, my favorite parts.  If you don´t know why I´m moving out, read the post I wrote just before this one. 

First, Yanapay, the hostel dog.

Por Favor, quiero algo de su pan con miel, Guillermito. Por favor.

 

Autumn is that you?

 

As an interlude, one of the millions of Tiendas in Cusco that have no names.  You can buy almost anything, but nothing can be sold cold.  Not even milk.  This is the one closest to the hostel, and the one I most frequent:

Tienda

 

And now the best part.

The view directly outside my room.

Montañas from the balcony

The cusqueñan flag is a rainbow...

You can´t get used to the mountains.

One last time outside my room.

 

Up next, my insane weekend of Carnival.

Blurble Updates

Turns out it´s a lot harder to keep up with this blog on weeks when I´m volunteering.  Not to mention an onslaught of goodbye and birthday parties.  So here is some easy to consume updatage:

• Life continues to be tranquilo y divertido.
• During one of aforementioned goodbye parties, I dropped my memory card to my camera, containing 200 picutres of my trip to Puno and Lake Titicaca, in the street.
• Walking home one morning, I found the memory card wedged between two cobblestones in the street.  Before I could bend to pick it up, a taxi drove over it.
• I retrieved the memory card, which appeared unharmed, but apprently suffered some internal injury that can only be cured in the US.
• Hence, I´ve decided to keep both the pictures and the post about my trip to Puno on hold, which will also facilitate in making this bloggy more up to date.
• I have made a Peruvian friend at a bar called The Muse, mostly a gringo joint, and he has asked me to help him work behind the bar on nights when he´s the only one working.  I did it once already, and I´m doing it tonight.  It´s fun, because when someone orders a vodka-mango, I get to slice up an entire mango and blend it in a blender.  The mangos here are like none others I have ever tried.
• I am moving, once again, out of the hostel and into an apartment with Kyle and Diana, the couple I traveled with the Puno who are getting married, and a girl named Laura, who will be going to Buenos Aires with me in April.  The apartment is private, has hot showers all the time, is closer to the center of downtown, and half the price of what I´m paying now.
• On the first day of April, when my apartment lease runs out, I will be traveling (on what medium is yet to be decided) to Buenos Aires with a few other people, some of whom are also yet to be decided. 
• I will staying Buenos Aires for one and a half weeks, and then will be taking an 18 hour bus ride down to Patagonia to see Penguins, Glaciers and the end of the earth. 
• After that, I will return to Lima where I will board a plane on April 22nd, and return back to the land of the freeish, The United States. 
• Los Angeles to be specific.  Perhaps another trip to Disney Land.  Then eventually, somehow, back to Portland, Maine where I will rejoin the working force and attempt to figure out yet another way to avoid paying off my loans in full and staying in the same place.

Bank Of America, You are THE WORST

If you have money in a Bank of America account, like I do (for now), then I advise you to take out all of your money and run far away from them if you plan on doing any traveling. 

Bank of America is single handedly trying to assure that I starve to death while I´m here in Peru.  This might be somewhat of a ranting post, but I need to get this off my chest and also hope that this can be some sort of miniscule stab at revenge.

 

The saga begins with a mistake I made.  I´ll be the first to admit it, I made a stupid mistake.  On February 4th, my third day in Cusco, I went to an ATM and, upon receiving my money, decided to count how much I had received.  I neglected, however, to notice that I left my card in the machine while counting, and it was promptly eaten by the greedy money shooter. 

That´s where my mistakes ended.  The ATM was not connected to any bank where I could go in to retrieve my card, so  I quickly called Bank of America to have them cancel it.  Which they did.  The first Bank of America representative I spoke with, who later turned out to be one of the most either wicked or incompetant (most likely both) people I´ve encountered, passed me on to a weird little group called Visa 911, who could help me figure out if I could use my credit card, which I still had, as a debit card.

Of course, the person at Visa 911, a dirty liar as it turns out, told me that it was not an option.  So that same day I called Bank of America back, asking if I could somehow have them send me an ATM card in Peru.  Of course, they said.  They´d be happy to help me.  But when they looked up my account history, they found that the first woman I talked to had already had a new card sent to the address on file without asking me, to my parent´s house in Portland, Maine.  Which wasn´t so helpful.

So the witch on the phone grumpily canceled that card, advised me to change my address to Peru, one of the worst pieces of advice I´ve ever gotten, right up there with my father´s advice to watch Night of the Living Dead at age eight.

So I changed my address to here in Peru, and the lady assures me that my card will be there in 4 to 16 days.  In the meanwhile, I can use my credit card to get cash out of a bank to the tune of 3% of the amount I withdraw, wich turned out to be about $70.  Worth it in order to have money for 16 days while I wait.

Fast forward to yesterday, February 20th, 16 days after my mistake.  Of course, the card has not arrived.  So I get on the phone and call up Bank of America again (which is not cheap to do, especially when you can actually watch your money tick away while listening to muzak on hold).  After getting cut off twice, a nice man named Arthur tells me that the wonderful associates I had talked to 2 weeks ago had entered the address incorrectly, leaving Portland, ME 04103 in the address below Cusco, Peru.  So not only did the card never get sent, but Bank of America neglected to tell me that it never got sent.

Not to worry, however.  Visa 911, my old friend, can apparently send me an emergency card in 2 days flat.  Why the psychopaths at Bank of America neglected to tell me this 16 days ago still keeps me awake at night.  No point in getting mad (yet), I just have them transfer me over to Visa 911 to get my emergency card.

Yes, of course they can help me.  They just have to verifty with Bank of America that I´m eligible for an emergency card.

Since I had talked to over 5 different employees at Bank of America about my issue, of course my request would be verified and approved.

Except it wasnt.  Why?  Because I changed my address.  Thanks to the advice from none other than Bank of America itself, my request was denied by Bank of America.  No emergency card for me, at least not for another 90 days.  At this point, I had 2 representatives from Bank of America and one from Visa 911 on the same line, not to mention at least 10 other hostelers in the courtyard listening to me screaming, then crying, them screaming and crying. 

“There are three people on this phone with me,” I said, “Which one of you is going to help me get money while I´m living in a foreign country?”  Dead silence.  No one wanted to help me.  Finally it came down to just one representative, my dear Aruther, whose voice had become so soft and apologetic it was melting through the phone receiver.

Arthur read me the address to which the card was being sent 5 times, and read me his computer screen that declared the card was on its way.  Another 16 days of waiting.  Let´s hope Arthur doesn´t let me down.  I have my worries…

 

Anyway, happier posts are coming up soon.

Picture Post: The Hostel, Part II

Let´s continue the tour of the strange place in which I live.  Now we go on to the courtyard, the central hang out for residents during the day.

My two favorite hammocks slumbering in the background.

The Courtyard from above.

Four rarely empty chairs.

The kitchen sink is outside! Sometimes the rain does the dishes.

A popular game in Peru called Sapo. Throw the gold coins into the frog´s mouth.

If I call you, it´s from this box. The top half of the door is shut, so you have to almost crawl into it.

The bathroom off the courtyard that I hardly use.

The patron clown that watches over all of us in the courtyard.

Now we go into the communal kitchen.  Lots of cooking happens here after volunteering, and most of it involves combined efforts, combined foods, and combining meals.

Part of the reason communal cooking is so popular is because this is the only cooking device. The flames can go up to a foot high, and 3 people have singed their hair.

The dining area.

The stickers don´t lie.

For the end of the second part of this picture dump, a little surprise when I first came into the computer room.

Ah!

 

That´s all for now.  The last installment coming up very soon.

Picture Post: The Hostel, Part I

The day after my first lonely night in Cusco, I walked up to the hostel and met some of the other volunteers.  Immediately I decided that I needed to move there, due to the extreme, and this is a bit hippie-ish to say, but I´m a little bit hippie-ish, good vibrations I felt there.

Moving out of Señora Aldé´s home was easy as pie.  She made no fuss about it, and I got the feeling this kind of thing happens a lot.  In fact, the girl that moved into my room after I moved out already lives in the Hostel.

The Hostal is a very strange and wonderful place, which are my only two requirements for living situations.  Rather than try to explain it with words, I thought I´d do a little photo essay on why I love it here.  Enjoy.

Bienvenido

Looking back at the entrance from the courtyard.

My New Bed

These next few pictures are chosen to give you a feel to what it´s like to live in my room, one of the only singles in the hostel.  Each room at this place has a weird theme, such as Tienda De Magica (Magic Store) or Escuela (School).  My room is Pintor (Painter), the theme of which is reflected in the strange and unsettling art on the walls.

Jub the Cat

That´s actually 4 questions.

This is right above my bed.

Es verdad.

When I sit up in bed we make eye contact.

Me washing my clothes in my room.

My room is the one all the way down with the brown sign.

Now let´s go to the bathroom.

There are 2.5 bathrooms in the hostal. A total of 4 toilets and 4 showers. This is the one closest to my room.

Come shower with me...

All three knobs and the red lever at the top are used in a mind boggling combination that takes an average of 5 minutes to complete, if there is hot water.

Please poop here. No toilet paper can be flushed.

 

Coming later:  the courtyard, the kitchen, the dog.

A List of Things I Heard While Waiting For A Computer to Free Up, Standing On The Balcony of the Hostel in Cusco On Valentine´s Day, One Day After Friday The 13th

1. Maria, Roxanna y Diana, trying to figure out how their new MP3 player works.
2. A man´s voice on the radio singing in Spanish.
3. Yanapay, the lowly hostel dog, tic-tacing across the cement below.
4. Fernando´s footsteps, creaking on the floorboards, and gate he is opening creaking as well.
5. A dog barking somehwere.
6. Thunder coming from the left and far off.
7. Some sort of rhytmic cooing.  (A mechanical pigeon?  A porno?)
8. 3 dogs now, all fighting.
9. A bee buzzing.
10. A pigeon warbling, and another one flapping.
11. A cat jumping from one roof to another.
12. Taxis honking, like sonar around me.
13. 4 different birds singing, like sonar around me.

Dia De San Valentin

Much to my disappointment, St. Valentine´s day is celebrated with gusto down here.  I was hoping that by being off the grid I would be outside the tentacles of the depressing day, but that´s not true.

However, Diana, the daughter of the woman that works at the hostal, has decided to put her arm around me while I write.  She typed her own name.  She doesn´t read English, she just wants to watch.  So my day isn´t empty of love, of course.

Even with the friends I have here, today is going to drag by with the unique class of lonliness that I always feel, derived from the combination of being both single and gay, and this year intensified by being one of the only solo travelers at the hostel. 

Last night a few of the ladies of the hostel and I tried to go out to the only gay bar in Cusco, only to find out that the bar was both not gay and closed.  I did find out that there was another bar, but this one has no sign, no name, and is only known through word of mouth.

Perhaps it was the rum, but I was suddenly overcome with a tidal wave of sadness for my gay brothers and sisters here in Cusco.  Certainly Cusco has no less of a gay population than any other city of its size.  But those unfortunate enough to be born gay in this city have to traipse around in the dark, nameless, whispering. 

What really struck me was that Cusco is only one of many cities around the world where gay people have to stay in the shadows.

I began to wonder what it would be like if gay people had a different color skin; if the genes that made us like the same sex also turned our skin purple.  Would we be chugging along so slowly and haltingly in our movement?

Perhaps when I return to the US it will be time for me to become a noise maker.  Cast away my pride, stop separating myself from the gay movement, and work with organizations to facilitate not just gay rights in the US, but globally.  Fix places like Cusco for my people.

It sounds strange, feels funny in my mouth to refer to homosexuals as “my people”, but when it comes down to it, that´s what we are.  A race and a group that is unified by our ability to love differently, and our inability to go through life without love, like so many close minded people around the world would prefer.

Feliz dia de amor.

PICTURE POST: A morning walk around downtown Cusco

What you see walking down the streets where I live.

Shoe Shining is Big in Cusco

San Pedro, the big open air market, where most things cost only a few cents.

 

The man drag inside San Pedro

A sack of fresh squeezed orange-carrot juice. To-go in Peru means in a bag, no matter what.

Some sort of rat-dog living a happy life in the San Pedro market.

Avenida Del Sol, the busiest street in downtown Cusco.

Plaza De Armas, the center of downtown Cusco

Plaza de Armas

One of the ornate cathedrals in Plaza de Armas

A college of science.

One of the many old walls of the city.

Yo tambien.

Back home for a warm cup of Mate de Coca.

Nervioso Nuevo

To be honest, the flight to Cusco from Lima, though gorgeous, was not as pleasurable for me as it might have been.  Worn down from lack of sleep, massive amounts of travel in miniscule amounts of time, and the inherent second guessing that comes with spending a lot of time alone and quiet, I was nervous as we landed at the airport.  I began to wonder why I was doing what I was doing with my life, and suspecting that I had made a horrible mistake.

Much of my concern was centered around this problematic thought:  “I will not be able to make friends here.” My own mind took me down lonely alleyways, where the only living creatures I would be able to associate with would be the dogs that run in packs all over this city.  I would like to say that this feeling vanished once I hit the ground and ventured out into the narrow streets of the place where I had been trying to return for so many yeras.  However, it persisted.  

When I got off the plane I was picked up by the secretary of the volunteer organization, a kind woman who always is wearing a coat named Rocio.  Rocio took me directly to the house where I would be staying. 

Aldea Yanapay, the organization, runs a hostel where most of the volunteers stay.  However, on their webiste they present the option of  living in the home with the mother of Yuri, the man who runs the organzation.  The site touts this as a more authentic option, because the volunteers would live with a Peruvian family and also have the opportunity to eat three typical Peruvian meals a day.  Of course this option interested me, as one of my goals coming down here was to better understand and submerge myself in Cusqueñan culture. 

 

The blue door on the left is the entrance to the house.

The door opens into a courtyard where these three silly dogs live.

más perritos

The courtyard leads into this garden, all of the flowers planted by Señora Aldé

The same view at night, with the moutain lit up.

When I arrived at the house, bedraggled, starving and sleep deprived, I was greeted warmly by Aldé, the mother of Yuri and the matron of the house.  She was a short, kindly woman who didn´t speak a lick of English.  I also was introduced to Lydia, the housekeeper, who cooked all the meals and cleaned the house, while pregnant.  And I met her daughter, Maria, who is one of the students at the school where I volunteer.  I ate a meal with Rocio and Aldé, (Lydia and Maria ate in the kitchen), the whole time my over-tired brain working double time to recall Spanish words I hadn´t thought of since 8th grade.   

Though I could have begun volunteering that day, Señora Aldé, having found out that I slept in the Lima airport, demanded that I take a long nap.  I didn´t argue.  I slept that day until 1pm, and then returned downstairs for another meal. 

My bed is the messy one.

The view out my bedroom window. All mountains are bigger than they appear.

Choclo, the big kerneled corn that is typical to Peru, as served by Señora Aldé

After my meal, Senora Aldé showed me to the showers upstairs, where I was introduced to the puzzlework that is Peruvian shower systems.  I also discovered this:

The last ingredient is Placenta Extract!

I was still depressed tired in the evening, so I only ventured out into the city to call my parents and let them know I was safe, and then returned home to sleep some more.

Over supper, I was surprised to find out that there were no other volunteers in the house.  My first night in Cusco, laying in my bed, I was overcome with despair.  Señora Aldé was a lovely woman, and the food that Lydia cooked me was delicious.  But how would I surive socially alongside a middle aged woman who didn´t speak English and an otherwise empty house?  As I´ve said, this was problematic thinking that often overtakes me when I´m in a new situation.  It is ludicrous to panic before the wheels start turning, and yet that´s what I did.

This was all over a week ago, and now I am happier than I ever have been in my life.  I´ll talk about the changes I made to get this way soon, but for now, I´m going to go watch the thunderstorm pass over the mountains from my balcony.  Chao!

Liam as a Ted Kazcynski Look-Alike in Lima

DISCLAIMER:  If you are a member of the FBI, CIA, any other like minded organization, or Dick Chaney, I am not in any way a terrorist, and the title of this entry is a joke.  You all could use a laugh.

Krystyna, my love, dropped me off at LAX around 10pm.  The line for check in at Taca, the Peruvian airline I flew with all the way, was out the door.  I felt like shit waiting there in line, probably because I hadn´t slept in a real bed for a few days, and simply had not been taking care of my body. 

I had about an hour to kill after I made it through security.  They pulled my bag aside when they saw my flask, but the ornery little TSA man gave up trying to pull it out from underneath all of my tightly packed things and let me go through.  Good thing I´m not a terrorist.  I fell asleep quickly at my gate, and even quicker once I was on the plane.  I woke up only for food, a nasty mess of alfredo pasta and a roll so hard you could bounce marbels off it.  When I woke up the next time we were landing in El Salvador.

I had 5 hours in the tiny airport, and wasn´t confident enough to leave.  The El Salvador airport is situated in the middle of a wide field ringed with short-stumped, long-branched trees that resembles, oddly, pictures I have seen of the Sahara.  There wasn´t much to do besides sleep and read, so thats what I did.  Here´s a picture of the place.

The El Salvador Airport

I reboarded my flight, and was surprised to find that Taca airlines serves unlimited free alcohol, even to the pleebs sitting in coach. 

TRAVEL NOTE:  When flying to Peru, book your tickets through Taca.  It is an excellent airline, the staff is friendly, and the prices are cheaper through their website than on expedia, travelocity, etc.

It was a managable 7 hour flight, nothing particularly special to comment on.  The real fun began when I arrived at Lima at 7:10pm. 

The Lima airport is a bustling, hyper-modern airport.  It is a hub in South America, and therefore very crowded and chaotic.  Unfortunately, flights to Cusco during the rainy season only take place in the early morning hours because that is when it is clear enough to fly a plane through the valleys of the Andes.  I was booked for Taca´s first flight, but that was still a good 10 hours away from when I landed.

Fortunately, you can sleep in the Lima airport.  However, it is a terrible experience.  First, a picture of my lodging that night.

Home Sweet Home

Note the brightness of the place.  That never ceases.  Most airports and train stations have a personalized jingle that plays before an announcement is made over the loud speaker.  The jingles in France are particularly frightening.  The jingle in Lima is only three notes, the first three notes of the song “Happy” by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins.  Not too bad, except that those three notes, and subsequent ear-shattering announcements made first in Spanish and then in English, occur at a frequency of about 1 every three hundred miliseconds ALL NIGHT. 

Lastly, Lima is a very warm, very humid city.  It makes sleeping akin to lying in a shallow puddle.  And yet, somehow, the airport in the middle of the night was very cold.  So I had to keep my sweatshirt on.

And this is how I came to resemble the sketched image of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, while sleeping on a row of chairs at the Lima Airport.  Sunglasses on to protect myself from the lights, headphones in and playing Sovay by Andrew Bird on repeat to drown out (unsuccessfully) the announcements, and hood up to protect my sweaty head from the cold. 

Three times during the night a man riding a miniature zamboni around the airport would wake me up and tell me to stand up.  Then he would drag the row of chairs, surprisingly unbolted from the floor, to a random location in the airport, so that he could Zamboni where they once were.  I felt like a stray dog.

Finally 3:15am arrived and I was able to join the long line to get my boarding pass.  Sleeping by the gate to my flight was a similar experience, so I resolved to stay awake since I was anxious about flying anyway.  When I did get on the plane, the pilot announced that there was a delay because the clouds had settled.  It only lasted a few minutes, and I got into a pleasant conversation with the older Canadian woman seated next to me. 

The flight from Lima to Cusco only lasts about 1 hour and 15 minutes, but it is one of the most breathtaking flights I´ve ever been on.  Outside the windows, the peaks of

Snowcapped mountains reach up through the clouds.  As you approach Cusco, little villages with red roofed houses come into view, growing in size until the low, bowl-like city of Cusco comes into view.

Examples below.

The Mountains Through The Clouds

 

My New Home

 

Coming up next, my first exhausting and strange few days in Cusco.  Should be up the next few days.