Oh, Bolivia. You Are Beautiful. And Cheap.

Jess and Gab had to renew their visas, so the easiest way to do that down here is to jump the border and come back. We decided to make a bigger trip out of it by taking a 10-hour bus ride to Bolivia and spend a few days in Copacabana (the Bolivian one, not the Brazilian), which is right on Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world. Since we took a night bus, the ride was not as painfully long as I expected and when we awoke the next morning we were just an hour away from the border. We had to leave our nice cushy bus and crowd into a smaller one, but our entire group of 8 made friends quickly, passed through the border (after paying Bolivia $135!) and found ourselves in Copacabana together. We found a hotel for 30 Bolivianos/night (about $4), dropped our stuff and headed to a cafe on the waterfront for breakfast.

Breakfast with our new friends

Our mishmash group consisted of 2 Chileans (Javier and Francisco), 2 Brits (Greg and Scott), 1 Brazilian (Raphael) and us 3 chicas locas (as we were lovingly called a few times that day). After breakfast and an hour or so of fun conversation, Javier hooked us all up with a boat and driver/guide and we sailed Lake Titicaca for the day, stopping at Isla del Sol and a floating island made of reeds (it was like walking on a water bed) where our trout lunch was caught and served up within minutes. It was one of the freshest meals I have ever had and truly a perfect day.






The Chileans and Brazilian left later that day and so Jess and I went out to dinner with the Brits (Gab is not a great traveler and was a little sick/tired, so she stayed in) and had surprisingly good food for such a touristy town. I had a burger, but now regret not getting the nachos that Scott ordered, as the chips were REAL corn tortilla chips. I dont know why, but tortilla chips dont seem to exist in Cusco. Instead, they fry wonton dough in triangles and serve it with everything from guacamole to salads. Is it really that hard to get a tortilla chip in this South American country??

The Brits were planning to head to La Paz the next day and, after one full day in Copacabana, we realized there would not be much else to do and decided to follow along. La Paz is a big city and it was nice to feel the energy of the place. I wouldnt want to live there, but a few days with access to a variety of things I cant get in Cusco (like sushi!) is nice. The bus ride was only 3 hours and it was absolutely gorgeous. We climbed the mountains along the coast and took in the stunning views. Who knew Bolivia was so beautiful?





We stayed at a Loki hostel. Theyre all over South America and known for their rowdy party-going guests (the Brits chose it). We all shared a room (3 sets of bunk beds) and went out together that night, starting at a wine bar and ending at a nightclub (or so I assume -- I went back earlier than the rest because Im old and couldnt stop yawning).

The next day was spent recovering from the night before, a little shopping and some more good food. Since there are movie theaters in La Paz, Jess, Gab and I decided to go see a flick. Our options were limited so we settled on "Salt." Ugh. We were the only ones in the theater (that should've been a hint) and the movie sucked. But since we were the only ones in the theater we got to shout at the screen. Totally worth the $3.50.

We took the bus home on Friday. 11 hours. Luckily, I traded a 1/2 massage for some Xanax and Ambien with our dorm mate at Loki. Good stuff.

Back in Cusco now. It's good to be home.

Peruvian Funerals & Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (Peruvian Style)

Earlier this week, Humberto's aunt passed away. We had visited her in the hospital the previous week and when we went back last Monday, a nurse told us that she passed away 2 hours earlier. That meant that Humberto was one of the first to find out and so we spent the next 1/2 hour in the hospital calling family members. Later that evening we went to his cousin's house (one of the son's of his aunt) and hung out with the family. This was to be my first of many family visits that week and you can bet I was the only gringa in sight and the butt of many jokes (all out of love, of course).

The next night was the wake and we went to a community center-type place for the open-casket event. Families brought huge bouquets of flowers on easels with signs on them identifying who they're from and they covered the room. We spent the night talking with his entire family. My Spanish is improving, but when you're in a large room filled with nothing but fast-talking Spanish speakers, it's going to be a little overwhelming. Humberto did a good job of staying with me most of the night, but when he went off to talk to someone, it was reassuring to know that one of his family members would keep me company (and giggle at my grammatically incorrect Spanish).

The funeral the next day was something else. Fortunately, I haven't been to many funerals, let alone a Peruvian one, and this was quite a show. We started back at the same community center where the priest held a service (it was all in Spanish, so I stood when the rest of the crowd stood, said "Amen" when they said it and sat when they sat). Then, the closest members of the family carried the coffin to the hearse while a band played and we all hopped into buses or taxis and drove to the cemetery.

The cemetery. Most unusual. Walls 2 stories high filled with coffins, and in front of each coffin was a little window with a shadow-box-like themed displays on the inside. I wish I had better pictures, but I was trying to take them discretely, so only one came out well. Some of the displays had mini bottles of beer, others had ceramic animals or pictures. It was very interesting.

When we got to the location where the coffin was to be placed, the priest said more prayers, some family members spoke (and cried) and then a forklift raised the coffin to its final resting place on the top level. Two men cemented it in and we all shared our sympathies with the immediate family.

The most interesting cemetery I've ever seen

We went to his cousin's house again for the reception, where cases of Cusquena beer and plates of food were awaiting us. His family welcomed me without judgment or apprehension and if I hadn't been exhausted out of my mind, I would have stayed longer.

Let the Makeover Begin...
With Jessica in the house, I now have a fellow anal-retentive nester. And so we've started taking a little more pride in (which we already have a lot of) and spending a little more money on making our part of the house feel like home. We bought another storage unit for the kitchen, additional towels (and pot holders!!), a hot water maker and various other items to get the kitchen up to snuff. Next week we're going to buy a new stove with an oven (!!!) for about 250 soles (about $80). Fabulous.

Jessica cleaning the kitchen (it hadn't been swept in years -- so we assume)

Our new shelving unit -- we now have so much space!!

Gabby supervising (and our new mattresses)

We also bought new mattresses. Mine was so bad I could feel the boards through it. I put the new one on top of the old one and now feel less like an old lady when I get out of bed in the morning.

And...my studio is ready. My table came on Thursday and I moved it into the extra room in our house. It was handmade in Lima and shipped here, thanks to Alvaro, Niki's boyfriend and fellow housemate (whose family is in Lima). The space is awesome and I can't wait to start taking clients. I've spread the word around the neighborhood and am putting my business cards in as many business as will take them (Humberto has them prominently displayed in his hotel right on the main square -- woo hoo!).

My business card

I'm trying to eat a new food a week here. Last week was ceviche (I've eaten ceviche before, but not here) and this week was submarino. It's Humberto's favorite dessert/drink and it's made with chicha morada (sweet purple corn juice) with a scoop of ice cream. Very tasty, but unless there's a slice of chocolate cake in there, it's not going to be in my top five.

Submarino

With Susie in town, I had an excuse to visit more of the Sacred Valley, a tremendously important and spiritual region just outside of Cusco. We took a day trip to Pisac, Urubamaba (just for lunch), Ollantaytambo and Chinchero. The ruins in Pisac and Ollantaytambo were gorgeous and full of energy. All I had to do was put one hand on the stones and I could feel it surge out the other.

Pisac ruins



Ollantaytambo

A Full House in San Blas

This week, one of my best friends, Susie, arrived and so did Niki´s best friend, Megan. That means at any given time there are at least 7-8 people living in our house and it´s been awesome. Megan is fantastic (she spent some significant time here in Cusco last year so she knows a lot of people) and Susie fits right in, too. She´s suffering some major altitude sickness, though, and I got her on a bus to Machu Picchu this morning with a little hesitation. Fortunately, she´s not hiking the Inca Trail (and the altitude is lower there), so I think she´ll be OK.

This week and next is a big period of transition in the house. Celia, one of our beloved housemates is finished with her 6-month internship and is heading home tomorrow. Jessica, a new friend and fellow Reiki practioner/traveler is taking her space. So last Wednesday all of us in the house made a beautiful veggie lunch of chickpea tacos (you can´t find a single damn canned bean here that doesn´t have carne in it other than chickpeas or lima beans), homemade guacamole, mango salsa and bread pudding. The spread was gorgeous and delicious. We stuffed ourselves stupid (something we do often here).




Celia


The gang

On Thursday mornings, Niki offers a ¨Yoga Hike¨up to the Temple of the Moon and then an hour of amazing yoga in a truly magical place. The hike is about 1/2 hour from our house and quite steep -- especially if you haven´t been exercising much since you got here (ahem, that would be me). I finally went with them on the hike and while it wasn´t easy, the rewarding views and connection with the earth were worth it. We hung out there for a while after yoga and then made our way down to Mercado San Blas (our local market) for fresh juice from our juice lady (I have juice ladies at Mercado San Blas and Mercado San Pedro -- depends on where I am that day).





My friend Alfredo was home last week so we were able to see each other a few times while he was here. Hanging out with him brings back a lot of memories from February when he was my Spanish teacher and we spent most days walking around the city. This time we hung out at my house with my housemates, Inkaria (our favorite little bar that his friend, Lucho, owns) and my new favorite restaurant, thanks to him. He took me there for ceviche on Friday and it was amazing. You can order full plates or half plates (the half plate was HUGE) and it comes with fresh fish, octopus and squid in a lemon juice/onion mixture. You also get a slice of cold sweet potato and a small bowl of dry roasted corn (the kernels are as big as my finger) that you mix with the ceviche. It rocked my world. I can´t wait to go back.

I picked up a bunch of bootleg movies at El Molino last week and started watching them. Humberto bought August Rush, a movie he claims as one of his favorites. I´m now a little skeptical of his taste in movies but I´ll let it slide for now. I also got the first 2 seasons of True Blood and am enthralled. I don´t have a TV (or a fridge, oven and sometimes hot water), but I do have my laptop, so as long as Molino keeps selling movies and TV series for 4 soles each (about $1.25), then I´m good to go.

Speaking of Humberto, he and his friend Wauldir have a small travel agency business (Humberto also works reception at a hotel on the main square) and they are building their Website. It needs work. A lot of it. Especially the English. So, I´m stepping in to make it look good. We´ll see how it goes. We spent 4 hours analyzing it yesterday and I think we made some good progress. I´ll spread the word when it´s ready.


Working hard (on my laptop, of course)

My first (and last) Peruvian pedicure and lots of good food

It’s been almost 2 months since I’ve had a pedicure (and an eyebrow wax) and I was jonesing for one. I should’ve known better and now I do. I followed one of the “massage girls” into a small shop for this pedi and she sat me on a bench, put my feet up on her lap and proceeded to cut my nails down to nubs. The color I thought I chose turned out to be hot pink (it looked much darker in the bottle) and now my toes glow in the dark. Well, almost. That’s it. No more pedicures for me. I’m going o-natural. But the eyebrow wax wasn’t too shabby.


Painting my toes...


Drying my nails with a notebook.

I finished my Reiki 2 training and now feel energy surging through me every second of every day. Gabriela and I are connected in a way that I’ve never been connected to anyone. We were sitting in our little kitchen the other night and she put her hand out in front of her as if she were pushing me (I was sitting at least 3 feet away) and I could feel the push against my stomach. It was insane. And then she started making faces (I think she was trying to get me to levitate) and I could feel that, too. Crazy shit.

Our friend, Jesus, came over last night to cook us dinner. His specialty: Chinese soup. Basically, it was snow peas, bean sprouts, 2 chicken drumsticks and 3 packages of Ramen. It wasn’t bad, but because he didn’t boil the water first (just filled the pot with the veggies and added water and brought it to a boil) I think today’s stomach issues were the result of his cooking methods. Thank goodness for my oils. I put a few drops of Di-Gize under my tongue and rubbed some grapefruit oil on my stomach and felt much better after my afternoon nap. Whew.

Stomach issues are rampant here. You have to boil your water. We usually boil a pot before bed and let it cool overnight and then fill our water bottles in the morning. It’s a good system and I should’ve told Jesus to use the boiled water last night when cooking. Disculpame (my fault).

On Sunday I met up with Alfredo, my former Spanish teacher from February, for a few hours. He’s in town for the week and then goes back to work in the mountains. We walked around and talked, eventually ending up at a café near my house and then back to my place so he could meet Gab. We hung out for about 4 hours and it was great. Lots of reminiscing and a bunch of new stories. We’ll probably see each other once or twice before he leaves again, but I don’t bank on anything with a Peruvian until it happens. That’s part of living in Peru. You just fly by the seat of your pants.

For example, if I set up a time to meet with a Peruvian friend, there’s a 75% chance that they won’t show. And if they do, they’ll be at least ½ hour late. Usually, it’s an hour. This is a difficult concept for a punctual American like me. It’s one of my tests, I just know it. I’m getting used to it, but if we’re supposed to meet at 4 pm, you can bet I’m still gonna be there at 4 – even if I have to wait until 5 before they show. I’ve been getting better though. Now I arrive around 4:15.

Saturday night, my friend Humberto cooked us Lomo Saltado, a typical Peruvian dish, in our little kitchen. We shopped at my new favorite market (basically a street full of vendors with all of their produce for sale on tarps on the ground – ridiculously cheap but still good stuff), got some carne (meat) at Mega (the supermercado – I won’t buy my meat from the street vendors – at least, not yet), and walked back to my place to start cooking. On the way home, I ran into Karem, the director of the program I came here with back in February. I hadn’t told anyone from that program (other than Alfredo, who doesn’t work with them anymore) that I was back in Cusco (not sure why, just didn’t feel compelled), so she was pretty shocked to see me, let alone find out that I was living here now. We exchanged phone numbers and she told me she’d call me the next day, which means sometime next week in Peruvian time. No worries.

Back to the lomo. It was sooooo good. Humberto spent some time in culinary school and his precision with the knife was impressive. I’m not so precise, so the two of us working in a kitchen together is kind of comical. Let’s just say he was less than impressed with my skills. So I stepped back and let him take over, since he offered to cook, and I’m glad that I did. Letting go in the kitchen is a challenge for me – letting go of control in general is difficult (I’m working on it), but doing so in the kitchen is especially hard. I think I did OK. The dish was absolutely amazing. It’s composed of rice, strips of beef sautéed with onions, tomatoes, red pepper, a little garlic and ginger with papas fritas (fried potatoes) on the side. Gab and I stuffed ourselves stupid.

The food coming out of our little kitchen has been awesome. We make popcorn on a regular basis, cook oatmeal, French toast and grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast; stir fries, soups and veggie burgers for dinner (and then reheated for lunch the next couple of days). Celia (another housemate) even made delicious chocolate chip oatmeal cookies in our frying pan the other day. Humberto thinks the way we cook is a little crazy, but he’s liked everything that’s come out of our kitchen so far though (and I’m the primary cook), but I have to admit that I was a little annoyed when he told me that he’s constantly surprised by how good our food is. Fucker.

My last day of Spanish class is tomorrow (Wednesday). I’ve been taking them for the past two weeks (you get them free when you do TEFL) and since there have been no other students except for the first day and today (today’s addition was a French girl and a much better speaker than the first one), it’s basically been one-on-one with Anna Maria, my beloved teacher. We’ve talked about EVERYTHING (and mostly in Spanish) and it’s been great. Since Susie is coming on Saturday and Anna Maria is going on vacation for 2 weeks after Susie leaves, I think I’m going to take a month off from these classes and return mid September for one more month, as the classes have been super helpful with my grammar. Humberto, Jesus and every other native Spanish speaker is still correcting every word that comes out of my mouth, but my goal by next month is to have them correct every other word.

Where did last week go?

Chilling in our "garden" after yoga on Sunday.

I swear I have no idea where it went. I've been busy, but not overwhelmed. A lot has happened and I'm still taking it all in.

I started my Spanish lessons last week, and fortunately I placed into a Pre-Intermediate class -- not too shabby. My Spanish is getting better and better, and the more opportunities I have to speak it the better I get (duh). My first day of class was just me, some other girl with horrible pronunciation and our teacher. Seriously, her pronunciation made my head hurt ("Buenaaasss diaaaasss"). Fortunately, it was her last day, so the next few classes have pretty much been just a conversation between me and my teacher (with her correcting me every few words -- my tenses suck). Kind of nice.

I also started (and completed) my Level 1 Reiki training. Gabriela and I are studying under Niki, our housemate and Reiki Master and the attunements (a process that permanently opens and connects me to Universal Energy on all levels -- emotional, physical, mental and psychic) have been unlocking some pretty deep stuff. Last night, after our final attunement for Level 1, I finally started the grieving process for my father (who passed away in March -- and our relationship was anything but smooth sailing). Can't wait to see what Level 2 brings up...

We've also been cooking a lot in the house. It started last weekend -- we have yoga in the courtyard of our house every Sunday morning and Gabriela and I decided we'd make a big pot of soup to share with the guests. It turned out awesome (a vegetable/quinoa concoction with no real recipe) and so we did it again this weekend (this time a lentils-based soup). And throughout the week we made at least 4 dinners. Now, I should have prefaced all this with a description of our kitchen. We have no fridge, no oven, no microwave. All we have is a two-burner, match-light propane stove. I honestly couldn't ask for anything more -- it's amazing what we've created on that stove top (apple bread pudding, stir fry, eggplant/tomato/quinoa stew, and last night we made crepes!). Ok, so maybe it would be nice to have an oven for a little less-complicated baking, but I think we'll make do.


Crepes cooking in our little kitchen


The various toppings...

Yesterday was the Incan New Year and El Dia de Pachamama (Mother Earth Day). There were festivities all over town (and the booming fireworks haven't let up all week) but they get a little crazy, so I avoided the crowds and thanked Mother Earth privately. Just lying on the ground connects you to this land like nothing else and giving thanks becomes easy.