Yes, that´s not a typo, the twelfth course. Why would anyone need to eat twelve courses of food? Where am I going to put it? Does my travel insurance cover medical bills caused by excessive eating? These are some of the questions swimming around in my head as I try not to keel over. After the 4th course I was full. After the 9th course I was stuffed. But by this time, as I politely tuck into plate number twelve, I think I am going to explode.
I should probably explain. I´m doing Spanish lessons and staying with a great Peruvian family who I first met last Thursday, the day before Good Friday. As you can imagine for a country that is 85% Catholic, Easter is a big deal. One steadfast tradition is that, the day before Good Friday (on which people generally fast during daylight hours), the whole (extended) family meets up and everyone eats lots and lots of food. After my first Spanish lesson I was picked up by Herman and Isabel, my hosts for the week.
We popped into the house so I could drop off my stuff and went straight over to a hotel that Herman`s side of the family own. There were 20 members of the family around the table so I got to practice my Spanish a lot! I had actually been told on the way over that we`d be having twelve plates of food but thought I`d misunderstood. I later assumed that they would be twelve big plates which everyone would share - I was wrong on both counts. I didn`t want to be rude, so I endeavored to finish each course - it was probably the most difficult challenge I`ve ever attempted. I wasn`t hungry for the next 36 hours....
The Spanish lessons have gone quite well. It`s my last lesson today and I am just about getting the hang of one of the 250 past tenses they have. I can now say "I went to the shop" instead of "before now, I go to the shop", thus increasing my Spanish level to that of a 4-year-old. My teacher Beni is awesome, if a bit unorthodox. If it`s sunny we have a bit of the lesson while walking around Cusco - I have learnt food words in the middle of San Pedro market and furniture words in the Peruvian version of Ikea.
Rewinding slightly, I had two days in Cusco before my lessons started. Naturally I checked into the cheapest guesthouse I could find. The winner was the "ChavInn" set over three floors around a central courtyard. The rooms on the second and third floors were reached via a wooden walkway. I was shown a room on the second floor and spent most of the time getting stuck in planks that fell away when I stepped on them (like a rickety swing-bridge that Indiana Jones would cross). I therefore requested a room on the ground floor. The shared toilet was flushed with a bucket of water and the shower didn´t work. It was perfect.
I forgot to mention that I was ridiculously hungover when I made this decision. Not only had I just been hiking for 4 days, and been up for 26 hours the previous day(s), but the post-Machu Picchu celebrations had involved muchas cervezas! I didn`t really mention the night out in my last post, which started with a meal at a great restaurant. We ordered drinks, then were given a practical lesson on how to make a Pisco Sour. In case you haven`t heard of Pisco - it is the local spirit of Chile or Peru, depending on who you speak to. Both countries have a town called Pisco and each claim to have invented the drink. The easiest way to cause an argument between a Chilean and a Peruvian is to ask where it comes from! We also celebrated the great news that a couple in our group had gotten engaged that day at Machu Picchu - this involved campaign. By the time the food arrived most people couldn`t remember what they had ordered! The only other thing worth mentioning is that our relatively straight-laced guide proceeded to get totally wasted and spent the rest of the night hitting on all the girls in the group. This was highly amusing for the men.
I spent the following two days wandering around Cusco. Myself and Noreen (from the Machu Picchu trek) attempted to have a ´museum and churches´ day. We first visited Qoricancha, the Temple of the Sun. I didn`t have high hopes but it turned out to be an extremely interesting place. The Incas believed that the sun was a god, one of their most important, and built a grand temple dedicated to its worship. Then the Spaniards turned up, bulldozed half of it, and plonked a church on top. What is left is this strange complex where huge blocked Inca walls meet magnificent colonial arches and a grand domed church.
We also walked up a massive hill behind the town to a large Christ statue that overlooks Cusco (it seems that about 50% of towns in South America have one of these). We could see all across Cusco and also the ruins of Sacsayhuaman (sounds like `sexy woman`) - huge terraces that zig-zag into the side of the hills. In Inca times, Cusco was supposed to be the shape of a Puma (the snake, puma and condor are sacred animals in Inca culture) - and Sacsayhuaman was the puma`s teeth!
There are lots of Inca walls in the town that have now become part of the modern buildings. One of them contains a 12-sided stone. I`m not sure why but Peruvians seem to get very excited about this kind of thing (we were also shown a stone with 14 angles in the Sun Temple). It was quite a good stone, probably in the top 50 of all stones I`ve seen in my life, but nothing worth flying to Cusco for...
We also attempted to go into some of the churches in Cusco but, no matter what time we turned up, they always seemed to be shut!! In the end I visited the two main churches, which are both huge, on Good Friday while mass was going on. This also meant that I didn`t have to pay, hurrah!
I`m going to spend a couple more days in Cusco then will either hit the rainforest or the beach. Maybe I`ll flip a coin. Here are some other things I have seen in Cusco.
A groovy painting. Probably illustrating the difficulties of crossing any road in Cusco.
This is how I learnt the Spanish word for fountain (it`s `fuente`, by the way).
The condor, snake and puma, all mown into the grass. Why not!
This is the flag of Cusco. It looks a lot like the gay pride flag. People here don`t like it when you point that out.
I walked past this statue every day on my way to school. It brightened up my day as by this point I had crossed all the main roads, meaning I`d probably live for at least another 5 hours.
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