Sunday in Pisac is produce day at the tourist market. After a luxuriously sunny breakfast Maggie and I shopped for the week`s fresh and excellent fruit and vegetables for about $6 or $7AU and i picked up half a kilo of prime beef chops for $2.50AU. It´s a hard life! We also hunted down yummy local unhomogenised milk and yoghurt which is much better than powdered or canned UHT, the other milk options.
This then led to a wonderful culmination for me. I had bought a bag of organic Colombian coffee when in Salento from Jesus back in mid-March and carried it all the way from there. In Cusco I was finally got it ground and with the awesome milk made lush cafe con leche using my patented low-heat method. Riiiico!! Take note people - hot water above 60 degrees will burn coffee. I hung out with Michal from Israel while she arranged an entire room of flowers then we listened to some American guru yarn about the ins and outs of masculinity and feminity as he saw it. Afterwards we shared an amazing vege feast with some neighbours from our 6-house community. Senor de Huanca is the name of a town here in the Sacred Valley that could literally be translated and pronounced as 'Wanker Lord'.
I realised once and for all that all of the internet options in Pisac were in some way or another bogus - for checking email they`re fine but Facebook and blog stuff don`t go well. Maggie had connected me with her old boss from an English language school in nearby Urubamba and I took a bus into the evocative landscape of a steep & stark mountain-valley dramatically altered by millenia of agriculture, most of it still occurring by manual labour from humans and animals. Bathed in the afternoon sun it was gorgeous.
Urubamba itself is bigger but not as touristy as Pisac but still boasts gringo restaurants, cafes and accomodation thanks to its proximity to Incan ruins and being on the way to Macchu Picchu. There I met with Elise, the young manager of a small and funky English school and we discussed the possibility of me working there - we turned out to have different needs for the job and so it didn`t go any further than that. But we chatted amicably about travel, English and Peru before I returned home.
The next day I sampled Laura and Jarrah `s Super Smoothie jammed packed with a tonne of health foods like super greens, maca powder, banana, cocoa, some South American desert plant and a load more I can`t remember. Yeah! I also officially kicked off the Pisac Hackey-sack Season 2010 complete with St. Andrew`s market-style shirts off action (although I`m yet to enforce the 20 push-ups for through the legs rule). 2-year old (La)Maya was a little concerned at my lack of shirt, gesturing at me and saying `Oh ohh!` several times before returning inside. She soon re-emerged, offering me a shirt. Being bright pink I thought it was definitely not my colour so I graciously refused. Nathan also pointed out it being Size 2 was a bit of an issue.
I realised once and for all that all of the internet options in Pisac were in some way or another bogus - for checking email they`re fine but Facebook and blog stuff don`t go well. Maggie had connected me with her old boss from an English language school in nearby Urubamba and I took a bus into the evocative landscape of a steep & stark mountain-valley dramatically altered by millenia of agriculture, most of it still occurring by manual labour from humans and animals. Bathed in the afternoon sun it was gorgeous.
Urubamba itself is bigger but not as touristy as Pisac but still boasts gringo restaurants, cafes and accomodation thanks to its proximity to Incan ruins and being on the way to Macchu Picchu. There I met with Elise, the young manager of a small and funky English school and we discussed the possibility of me working there - we turned out to have different needs for the job and so it didn`t go any further than that. But we chatted amicably about travel, English and Peru before I returned home.
The next day I sampled Laura and Jarrah `s Super Smoothie jammed packed with a tonne of health foods like super greens, maca powder, banana, cocoa, some South American desert plant and a load more I can`t remember. Yeah! I also officially kicked off the Pisac Hackey-sack Season 2010 complete with St. Andrew`s market-style shirts off action (although I`m yet to enforce the 20 push-ups for through the legs rule). 2-year old (La)Maya was a little concerned at my lack of shirt, gesturing at me and saying `Oh ohh!` several times before returning inside. She soon re-emerged, offering me a shirt. Being bright pink I thought it was definitely not my colour so I graciously refused. Nathan also pointed out it being Size 2 was a bit of an issue.
In Cusco I met Laura's friends from northern New South Wales, Will and Bobby, both of whom had a keen interest in electronic music, native Australian plants and alternative hairstyles. Both very cool dudes and it was great to connect with some like-minded Aussie boys this far from home. We also hit Jack's twice and experienced one of the regular street parades celebrating something religious - heavy idols carried by up to 20 men's shoulders. I was very attracted to eat at this pizza store where you could simultaneously help a Cusco street child and damn a guinea pig to the fiery pits of hell.
On the Thursday I attempted to climb the local towering mountain, Apu Linli. The trail was fairly easy at first, traversing up to the base of the peaks. At one point an avalanche had erased the path and I of course decided to take the direct route straight up the ravine, despite there not being a clear path. I climbed and acrambled until unasailable cliffs blocked my path. Besides the unthinkable option of turning back, my only option was to bushbash along the cliff line. At least 5 dominant species in this dusty scrub were endowed with nasty thorns of various modes, which made for ultra-slow going and minor but painful blood-letting. I was aiming for high ground or an easy ridge to ascend by but upon arriving at each high point I found nothing but more cliffs and thick scrub on steep, crumbling soil and rock.
This agonising process continued for about 3hrs and my luck had not changed - it was also at times precarious and dangerous so I bit the bullet and headed back down the hill. The pathless return was just as challenging and frightening - at one point I was on a pure dirt 50 degree avalanche with nothing to hand to slow myself down. Another harrowing experience - when will I learn? When I finally got back to Pisac after almost avalanching the creek, I was greeted by Kim whom I'd met in Salento in Colombia in mid-March! Coincidink! She and her friend Jess from Northcote joined us at Ulrike's to farewell Michal who was off to Panama after 3 and a half months in Pisac. Michal explained I was the fourth of her male friends to have attempted to summit Apu Linli 'off-track' and been seriously thwarted - she explained it as a clash of male ego and the power of the mountain. Jess turned out to have been one of the principal players in the Melbourne Sustainable Living Festival for this year and on the Saturday we hung out, drank chai and discussed the pros and cons of the festival.
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