Late night wackiness and general bathroom destruction ...

Okay, so, while I have 20 minutes to spare, I need to get this down. PJ and I leave Monday for our 5 day trek to Machu Pichu, and while we´ve been waiting, we´ve been walking all over Cusco and testing out every resturant that the guidebook said was supposed to be good (and ducking into a couple random ones full of locals too, of course). So far, I have tried desserts and tea made of coca leaf (you know, like the cocaine plant), passion fruit cheesecake ... and alpaca and guinea pig ... guinea pig tastes like chicken.

We´re staying at a funky inn-hostel place that´s doing a lot of renovations, so we got a sweet price (20 soles a night/person ... which comes out to something like $7 dollars). The charming side effect is banging and loud radio from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. But, hey, beggars can´t be choosers. And we got our own room with a bathroom and two beds ... one featuring a Winnie the Pooh bedspread (much to PJ´s dismay, I left this one to him and took the horse spread-- but, as he said, there was really no winning there for manliness, anyway).

Our first night in town, we were wandering through the main square thinking of going to an internet café when we noticed a line of people coming out of a building and a cluster of unusually-dressed kids. I asked what was going on, and they said that there was a music show for 1 sole. Of course we went in (of course!), stopping at the bake sale table to pick up cookies and cakes made with coca.

The show, it turned out, was an informal (but very entertaining) affair. The first group was a bunch of students performing an ancient 3000 year old altiplano musical style with wind flutes, drums and dancers. This seems to be what kids learn in school here, if they learn music-- not violin or saxaphone or anything like that. I saw a group of uniformed school boys in the plaza dancing something similar the other day too. The highlight of the performance was an 8 year old boy dressed in a complicated black, white, and gold outfit with an enormous feather hat (almost as tall as he was) playing his wind flute, tapping his feet, and shaking his little body like there was no tomorrow.

Yesterday we woke up at 9:00 (or, I woke up at 9:00 and finally hit PJ around 9:30) and went on a wild goose chase looking for a tour company that had moved. We were hoping to skip town and stay with a Quechua family for a night, but by the time we found out where the tour company had moved to, it was all the way across town and we didn´t have time to look into it before check out.

Disconcerted, we walked through town-- up and down the narrow cobbled streets with our little map. The city is REALLY hilly and sometimes the only way up is a narrow flight of stone steps almost straight up. The buildings are cobblestone and plaster, and all of the doors are painted bright colors (usually an intense blue or green). We came across a live concert with local college singers and little girls reading poetry in Quechua.

Finally, we walked back to our hotel to take a pee break and plan our next attack. I crashed on the bed to wait for PJ when all of a sudden an immense CRASH comes from the bathroom. I sit up.

"PJ are you okay?"

-Silence-

Then, without warning, water starts shooting out of every crack in the bathroom door with pressure like a hose with a thumb over it. PJ starts yelling, "GET HELP!!!!!!! GET HELP!!!!!!"

"PJ ARE YOU OKAY???????"

"GET HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The entire sink came OFF OF THE WALL and flooded our entire room.

Welcome to Cusco, Perú.

Love,
Me

PS:
Some pictures ...


Cusco ... view of the hills and the buildings around the Plaza de Armas ...



Me at Qorikancha -- originally a huge Inca mecca, but, when the Spanish came, they converted it into a church (Convento de Santo Domingo del Cusco). Now the structure is a museum with a bunch of Inca ruins mixed with 15 and 16th century Spanish architecture and artwork.


PJ five seconds after complaining about how much he hates tourists ... Also check out the shapes in the grass ...!!!