So, it has now been 1 month since I arrived in Peru and I thought I’d blog a bit about life in Cusco. So, here are the highlights of my life in Cusco:
1. Pure bred dogs that cohabit the streets with Cusquenians. I have to walk past several dirt paths to get to the main street that then leads me to school. Along these dirt paths are the most adorable breeds of dogs every morning and every evening, putting on a bit of a show for me. A few of them will run towards me, especially if I’m carrying a plastic bag, and wag their tails around my feet in the cutest way that I often forget they are street dogs. If I wasn’t so prone to getting sick all the time here, I would pet them in a heartbeat. They usually take over at night, after dark, I fall asleep to the sounds of the dogs barking the night away.
2. My morning walk to school also consists of the sounds of fruit vendors selling fruit. Women and men, usually push carts full of fruit uphill towards the touristy parts of town, and so I’m usually walking side by side with them for a while, because that’s where I’m heading too. And into their megaphones they yell, “sandia sandia manzanaaaaaa,” indicating watermelons and apples for sale. It’s a tune that I’ve heard now every day for a month, and I’ll probably always remember it.
3. Taxis, whether you’re in one or outside one, have the potential to kill you. Breaks are hardly ever used until the very last minute, there is absolutely no personal space between vehicles, and I keep having to remind myself that pedestrians mean nothing here. Having lived in India you’d think I’d be used to that, but it’s still such a shock that a car has no qualms about driving over your toes. Actually, I saw that happen a few weeks ago, a taxi drove right over the toes of this guy in a business suit and dress shoes. He didn’t even flinch.
4. I was walking home behind the smell of incense one day when I noticed the guy in front of me wearing a dhoti and a shirt that had om prints. He had an entire stack full of incense, including one that was lit, and kept waving the ash of the incense at stores that, I’m guessing, he thought needed some sort of purification.
5. Continuing along the weird experiences with Indian culture I’m weirdly having in Peru, I was on the main street the other day and I had a flyer shoved into my face. It was a flyer for an Indian buffet. So, feeling a bit homesick at the moment, I felt like it was a sign, and I had to visit this restaurant for some good food and homely treatment that reminded me of family. When I entered the restaurant however, I encountered a really mean Indian woman, wearing a Punjabi suit nonetheless, but basically yelling at me to sit down and wait. “Could I have cutlery please?” “Wait wait wait.” The food was not at all good. And I didn’t get over the homesickness that I was expecting this experience would cure for a bit!
6. Walking down the main street on any day means you’ll have tons of vendors shoving tons of products in your face, if you look at all like a tourist. Looking like a tourist really just means, carrying a bag of any sort (with a backpack you’re screaming tourist), or if you’re one of those sensible people not wearing ridiculously high heels on cobblestone streets. I usually get anything from superglue, sunglasses, bandaids, and knives shoved in my face because “it is the thing you need lady” a dozen times a day. I also get flyers for massages, which, from the tone of their voices (massssaaaaaage? With the end of the word going up an octave) makes me fear there is more to that massage than meets the eye. A friend of mine actually had a woman try to sell her a massage on the street, and when my friend walked away, the woman’s chants turned from ‘masssssaaage?’ to ‘seeexxx?”
No pictures to this post, but I'm hoping to get some more this weekend.
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