September 27
Today is World Tourism Day, as announced by the UN in 1980. Admittedly neither Ernesto nor I knew such a day existed until today when we left the grocery store, walked down to the plaza, and stumbled into a quadra long parade. It featured two small bands, a dozen men in traditional costume, and Miss Tourismo! Who was an attractive young woman standing on a truck bed - waving, wearing a sash that had Miss Tourismo! embroidered on it, and throwing candy. There were also some chaotic neon lights. A young Peruvian man came up to us, handed us a pen and notepad and said (in perfect English) “This is for you!”. A young boy marching with a sign also picked us out of the crowd and made a fuss over us. Ernesto says he is going to be the mayor of this town one day. He was a booster. And he wasn’t the least bit cynical or anything about it; he focused in on the obvious tourists and he wanted to make sure we knew that this was for US. We hope he does become mayor, because then maybe he will develope a bigger picture of tourism and be careful of us… You do need to be careful with tourism; you don’t want to become the Galapagos. And for better or worse, Nasca is more touristy than it looks from the outskirts as we rode in. We saw more gringos today than we have seen in the past week(s?) combined. But this makes sense considering we are on the path to Machu Picchu. One set of gringos looked particularly goofy, and Ernesto and I both noted it. But then we immediately pointed the finger back at ourselves. Besides the Keene’s, we were both wearing our moto shirts (as it was hot and we didn’t want to get dusty and sweaty in our non-moto clothes). We tuck our moto shirts into our moto pants everyday, and our moto pants have rather high waists (hey, it's a safety feature, not a fashion show). After the two months we had of dirt and truck exhaust in our mesh jackets, our moto shirts are a different shade from the waist up than from the waist down. We look like total goofballs.
This morning we took an intentional detour and took the long way around Pisco to the PanAmericana to see some coastline (including our best gas stop ever). We watched the gigantic pelicans for a while. We did some Googling; the Peruvian pelican is 5 feet long and has a 7-8 foot wingspan. No wonder we are impressed.
September 28
Up and down we are committed to the ride.
I may or may not have cried several times last night and today. I am strong enough to do this trip, I am just not strong enough every minute of every day. I have to work at being strong and patient. This trip is hard. A good hard, but hard. Back home I have my own ways of keeping up my mental and emotional strength for the challenging parts of life, like time with my friends or my daily run. On this trip the things that require I be strong and patient are quite different. The wind, the fog, the rain, the heat, and the cold. The vulnerability and the not knowing. My own stench and filth. Getting lost. Eating crappy food. Body pains. I am not inherently peachy keen or okey dokey with these things; I have to work at accepting these things. Yes I am adventurous and energetic, but I am also a worrier and a planner. I enjoy motorcycling very much. I also enjoy massages and Netflix. Today marks the three month mark, and I guess these long and tough days in Peru (after those three months) just broke me a bit. (And upon reflection I see how I was suppressing it). The stink, the chickens, the insane amount of dead perros, and mostly the garbage... the long stretches of no hope that led me to dark and sad places. It's a bad head space to be in, and it affected our morale. Northern Peru is so fucking sad. It has left a little crack in me. Very few will ever notice it, but I’ll know it's there. And then this morning was really tough. Between the construction and the hairpin turns in first gear it took us five hours to go 150 km. The worst was the stretch of gravel - a foot deep of freshly poured gravel. So fresh we could see it being poured out of the truck and onto the road (in hindsight we should have waited for the line of trucks to go and pack it down for us). It was by far the worst road conditions we have been in yet. We both got stuck, and when Ernie said he was stuck and he absolutely could not get out on his own I wasn’t sure I was going to keep it together. We both had to just wait until some construction workers come and push us out. I am so very thankful neither of us went down or got hurt. I was not at my best for him. By 2 pm today (with no stops other than waiting for road construction) we still had 200 km of windy roads to go before the next town. The sun goes down at 6 here, so the race against the clock began.
Ernesto provides me with so much strength and joy… heck he is the reason I am here both literally and figuratively. And as I think is the case with all healthy relationships, we both need to bring our halves to the table. Without things like my chicas and my daily run to keep my shit in check, I guess I realized that it has been all the amazing sights and genuine interactions with the local people that have given me the strength to support my share of the ride - to be patient and (eventually) excited about the rain, roads, food, and pain. It will be a work in progress, as I think things will only get more desolate the farther south we go… Saying I’m committed to the ride means nothing if I’m a mess.
But then the up. We are finally away from the wretched coast of Peru and are seeing color again. Red and orange flowers, yellow bunch grasses, pink rocks, lots of green (lime, forest, kelly), light blue sky, dark blue water, blue-grey rocks, white clouds... As Ernesto said, the landscape got friendly again. No stench, no chickens, and most importantly there isn’t a layer of plastic covering this part of the Earth. The stretch between Puquio and Chalhuanca must be one of the most best and beautiful motorcycle roads in the world. Great road conditions, big sweepers, boulders bigger than houses, and Peruvian stone walls that stretched for kilometers. The only challenge was keeping our wits about us for the big trucks that swing wide around the turns. We also had five (?) massive elevational changes to eventually get us to about 12,000 feet. Our ears and lungs and engines felt them the most (time for 97 octane gas). And what great animals today. Both llamas and alpacas (and boy do I like llamas and alpacas!). One of the two ‘species’ of alpaca here is the huacaya, which is sooo hairy it is silly fun. At our first sighting, Ernesto pulls up alongside them and says “well there is a wooly mammoth”. I laughed and laughed. Domesticated everythings are free range up here; cow, horse, donkey, goat, sheep, duck, chicken, cat, and dog were all in the road at one point or another. And half of those species had human imposed decorations such as earrings or necklaces or face paintings. We also got to see southern caracaras, lots of vicunas, some birds of prey we have yet to ID, and in the half dozen high altitude lakes, flamingos! They were just there… foraging in the lake. When we saw the largest flock I let out a WOW on par with Ernesto’s Humboldt toucan sighting in Panama. And the icing on the cake was the lighting; normally we finish riding for the day by 4 or 5, but today we didn’t pull into town until 6 when the sun sets. So the last two hours of our day we were riding east, with the low sun shining from the west. Exquisite.
Point 95 on our Google maps is a picture of Ernesto. The landscape in Peru is so huge the scale is hard to wrap our heads around. At one of the descents I saw our road on the other side of the valley and E and I agreed that him riding ahead would be a cool picture. I posted three pictures: the original, zoomed, and double zoomed. He is a pinpoint on that hillside… I took a video too and if you zoom in and watch real close (especially during the second half of the ten second video), you can see him ride by.
The truth to this stretch being a great moto area is evident by the number of adventure riders we have seen in one day: four groups in total. All of the other groups are South American (Chilean or Argentine). There is one group of riders staying at the same hotel as us, and one man in particular was very interested in us and came and talked to us through dinner. Despite being low energy from the day we are very grateful for the chat as he gave us some good suggestions for further south. There seems to be a sort of a funnelling of routes that happens by Southern Peru… Ernesto and I have some research to do about our future plans.
We just read what Darwin wrote about luxury… “The greatest luxury was to find for our bed a sack of pebbles for they were dry and yielded to the body. Peaty soil is damp, rock is uneven, and sand gets into ones meat. But when lying in our blanket bags on a good bed of smooth pebbles we passed most comfortable nights.” As Tara facepalms a bit over crying over what is “hard’ in her helmet, Ernesto asks, “I wonder what would Darwin have thought of meter long pizza?”
September 29
We slowed down today, and only did an easy 125 km ride to the next town. It followed the Abancay River the entire time, through a windy canyon. Neither one of us slept very well last night and were sleepy, so it was probably best it was a untechnical, short, and fairly unadventurous ride. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we did get some vibrant purple trees to add to our list of “colorful stuff we like seeing”. The mild excitement of the ride was getting mostly naked on the side of the road. Given how cold I was yesterday, I thought it was time for the long johns, as Cusco (the town we are headed to tomorrow) is even higher than where we were yesterday. Opps. Riding through that canyon today it was 80-85 degrees. On a flat and straight stretch of road I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, so after quickly getting out of my moto gear, I pulled my bottoms off and just stood behind my bike for a moment saying “ahh” in my head.
After bumbling around town and getting honked at by takis, we found a restaurant that we thought would have decent food, so we patiently waited until 6:30 when they opened for dinner. 6:30 pm! Grandma & Grandpa like to eat their one meal of the day at 4 and be in bed and showered by 7… Maybe we figured if we tried something different it would pay off? Nope. Gross. It turned our stomachs we couldn’t even eat it. Almost impossibly, it was worse than the meter pizza. It was sweet, vinegary, excessively cheesy, sour like barf, and had canned mushrooms and hotdogs on it. And what kind of pizza falls apart dorso-ventrally? We had them box it up and we are going to find a perro tomorrow.
September 30
And only 12 km outside out of Abancay, there they were! Three perros lying on the right hand side of the road around a flat, even, safe place to park. Perfect. They didn’t come up and bark or growl when we stopped, so we proceeded. We had five pieces, and I tossed the first to get their attention. When it was airborne it (perhaps not surprisingly) fell apart (dorso-ventrally of course), and the perros passed right by it and came right up to us. They stood patiently, staring at the styrofoam box of pizza in my hand. From left to right, toss #1 went directly into perro’s mouth (yes!). Toss #2 went directly into perro’s mouth (yes!) and a fourth perro appears. Toss #3 was a total fail as it missed the perro by two feet and fell into the street with a gross, wet splat. Toss #4 went directly into perro’s mouth, but fell apart (again dorso-ventrally) so perro #2 got an extra snack.
We had an easy and scenic ~200 km ride. No wildlife, but lots of free range domesticated critters. With big lingering clouds in the mountains before we left Abancay, I decided to try and dress for both 50 degrees and wind/fog and 80 canyon heat. Fail. Ugh sweat in the spandex. I may or may not have had my pants around my knees for our snack break today.
Cusco is the largest city outside of Lima we have encountered. Its outskirts are rough and ugly and messy, but the historic center is stunning. And huge. We didn’t know about Cusco or its history so we were both taken aback and inspired. Unlike ANY city we have been in so far however, we totally blended in. Gringo’s everywhere. There could have been both a hipster convention and a Keene convention going on in town. So many gringos… we even got offered weed and blow. As Ernesto pointed out, there was a degree of comfort in the number of gringos and the cleanliness that goes with them. Outside of the lack of trash, the buildings and infrastructure seem well-maintained (because, gringos like that stuff). On the walk back to our hotel, the lights both in the plaza as well as in the buildings on the hillside in the background were so gorgeous and the scene so tranquilo. Ernesto and I were talking again about how stunning the buildings and sights were, but also how sad that in the same quadra/plaza as this 500 year old church there was a McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, North Face, and Patagonia store (along with four dozen other high end retail stores). I said something stupid like “gringos ruin everything”, and (of course) he said something much more brilliant,
“Well that's how it goes right? The Spanish built on top of the Incans, the Peruvians built on top of the Spanish, and now corporate America is building on top of Peru”
FOOD. Real food. We ate real, good food! Oh my goodness! Thank you previous gringos! We had two starters. The first was a salad, and was my favorite part of the meal. In the center was a large mound (bigger than a tennis ball) of cubed avocado and mango mixed together. Surround it was a bed of greens - and real greens, no iceberg lettuce. On top of that was black quinoa crusted chicken, and all was topped with a mint-lemon vinaigrette. The second was a fried potato of sorts, filled with slow cooked pork and served with a pickled salad and more slow cooked pork. We split a kebab main, served with four delicious sauces and chile-peanut mashed potatoes. And another side salad of candied walnuts, more fresh greens, and grilled onions and peppers. It was very expensive but worth every credit card inflated penny. Even though tipping isn’t standard in Peru, we did leave a nice tip to help with the faux paus I made before we ordered. The menu was saying things like “traditional Peruvian dish made with lime, mint and fresh herbs”, and well… after the chicken farms and towns with nothing but crappy pizza and salchipapa stands (which is hotdogs and french fries, and no we haven’t done it), I said “traditional Peruvian food my ass”. And the waiter heard. Opps.
This city is not on a grid system (or any kind of organized road system), so we had lots of trouble trying to find our hotel. We kind of expected and prepared to fail a few times, so E and I had already talked about maybe-probably just finding a cab to lead us there once we got lost. So try number one the cabbie said he knew where our hotel was but he wouldn’t take us. No motos. We could go in his car, but he wouldn’t lead us there with us following in motos. What the heck? We are willing to pay, what's the difference? We drove around some more thinking maybe we were too far away??? We ask another cabby. He isn’t quite sure and then another man, who spoke good English and could see that we were fumbling, came over to help (Peruvians are always so helpful). They chat in some wicked fast Spanish and after everyone nods, we siga. And were happy about our investment as finding our hotel would have taken us hours. In this part of town some of the streets change names every block. We park the motos and are talking it up with the friendly but dopey hotel guy (he is clearly not the manager and just filling in for a bit). Ernesto and I both noticed the lack of motos coming into town and ask him about it. He tells us motos are prohibited in centro; you can only ride motos on the outskirts of town. I am still a bit speechless about this little fact… One of the most fundamental aspects of South and Central American culture is the moto. The moto may even be more of a common thread than corn at this point. And Cusco is one of the most visited places in South America (2 million a year) and without a contest the most visited place Ernie and I will see during our travels. And no motos allowed...
Today is World Tourism Day, as announced by the UN in 1980. Admittedly neither Ernesto nor I knew such a day existed until today when we left the grocery store, walked down to the plaza, and stumbled into a quadra long parade. It featured two small bands, a dozen men in traditional costume, and Miss Tourismo! Who was an attractive young woman standing on a truck bed - waving, wearing a sash that had Miss Tourismo! embroidered on it, and throwing candy. There were also some chaotic neon lights. A young Peruvian man came up to us, handed us a pen and notepad and said (in perfect English) “This is for you!”. A young boy marching with a sign also picked us out of the crowd and made a fuss over us. Ernesto says he is going to be the mayor of this town one day. He was a booster. And he wasn’t the least bit cynical or anything about it; he focused in on the obvious tourists and he wanted to make sure we knew that this was for US. We hope he does become mayor, because then maybe he will develope a bigger picture of tourism and be careful of us… You do need to be careful with tourism; you don’t want to become the Galapagos. And for better or worse, Nasca is more touristy than it looks from the outskirts as we rode in. We saw more gringos today than we have seen in the past week(s?) combined. But this makes sense considering we are on the path to Machu Picchu. One set of gringos looked particularly goofy, and Ernesto and I both noted it. But then we immediately pointed the finger back at ourselves. Besides the Keene’s, we were both wearing our moto shirts (as it was hot and we didn’t want to get dusty and sweaty in our non-moto clothes). We tuck our moto shirts into our moto pants everyday, and our moto pants have rather high waists (hey, it's a safety feature, not a fashion show). After the two months we had of dirt and truck exhaust in our mesh jackets, our moto shirts are a different shade from the waist up than from the waist down. We look like total goofballs.
This morning we took an intentional detour and took the long way around Pisco to the PanAmericana to see some coastline (including our best gas stop ever). We watched the gigantic pelicans for a while. We did some Googling; the Peruvian pelican is 5 feet long and has a 7-8 foot wingspan. No wonder we are impressed.
September 28
Up and down we are committed to the ride.
I may or may not have cried several times last night and today. I am strong enough to do this trip, I am just not strong enough every minute of every day. I have to work at being strong and patient. This trip is hard. A good hard, but hard. Back home I have my own ways of keeping up my mental and emotional strength for the challenging parts of life, like time with my friends or my daily run. On this trip the things that require I be strong and patient are quite different. The wind, the fog, the rain, the heat, and the cold. The vulnerability and the not knowing. My own stench and filth. Getting lost. Eating crappy food. Body pains. I am not inherently peachy keen or okey dokey with these things; I have to work at accepting these things. Yes I am adventurous and energetic, but I am also a worrier and a planner. I enjoy motorcycling very much. I also enjoy massages and Netflix. Today marks the three month mark, and I guess these long and tough days in Peru (after those three months) just broke me a bit. (And upon reflection I see how I was suppressing it). The stink, the chickens, the insane amount of dead perros, and mostly the garbage... the long stretches of no hope that led me to dark and sad places. It's a bad head space to be in, and it affected our morale. Northern Peru is so fucking sad. It has left a little crack in me. Very few will ever notice it, but I’ll know it's there. And then this morning was really tough. Between the construction and the hairpin turns in first gear it took us five hours to go 150 km. The worst was the stretch of gravel - a foot deep of freshly poured gravel. So fresh we could see it being poured out of the truck and onto the road (in hindsight we should have waited for the line of trucks to go and pack it down for us). It was by far the worst road conditions we have been in yet. We both got stuck, and when Ernie said he was stuck and he absolutely could not get out on his own I wasn’t sure I was going to keep it together. We both had to just wait until some construction workers come and push us out. I am so very thankful neither of us went down or got hurt. I was not at my best for him. By 2 pm today (with no stops other than waiting for road construction) we still had 200 km of windy roads to go before the next town. The sun goes down at 6 here, so the race against the clock began.
Ernesto provides me with so much strength and joy… heck he is the reason I am here both literally and figuratively. And as I think is the case with all healthy relationships, we both need to bring our halves to the table. Without things like my chicas and my daily run to keep my shit in check, I guess I realized that it has been all the amazing sights and genuine interactions with the local people that have given me the strength to support my share of the ride - to be patient and (eventually) excited about the rain, roads, food, and pain. It will be a work in progress, as I think things will only get more desolate the farther south we go… Saying I’m committed to the ride means nothing if I’m a mess.
But then the up. We are finally away from the wretched coast of Peru and are seeing color again. Red and orange flowers, yellow bunch grasses, pink rocks, lots of green (lime, forest, kelly), light blue sky, dark blue water, blue-grey rocks, white clouds... As Ernesto said, the landscape got friendly again. No stench, no chickens, and most importantly there isn’t a layer of plastic covering this part of the Earth. The stretch between Puquio and Chalhuanca must be one of the most best and beautiful motorcycle roads in the world. Great road conditions, big sweepers, boulders bigger than houses, and Peruvian stone walls that stretched for kilometers. The only challenge was keeping our wits about us for the big trucks that swing wide around the turns. We also had five (?) massive elevational changes to eventually get us to about 12,000 feet. Our ears and lungs and engines felt them the most (time for 97 octane gas). And what great animals today. Both llamas and alpacas (and boy do I like llamas and alpacas!). One of the two ‘species’ of alpaca here is the huacaya, which is sooo hairy it is silly fun. At our first sighting, Ernesto pulls up alongside them and says “well there is a wooly mammoth”. I laughed and laughed. Domesticated everythings are free range up here; cow, horse, donkey, goat, sheep, duck, chicken, cat, and dog were all in the road at one point or another. And half of those species had human imposed decorations such as earrings or necklaces or face paintings. We also got to see southern caracaras, lots of vicunas, some birds of prey we have yet to ID, and in the half dozen high altitude lakes, flamingos! They were just there… foraging in the lake. When we saw the largest flock I let out a WOW on par with Ernesto’s Humboldt toucan sighting in Panama. And the icing on the cake was the lighting; normally we finish riding for the day by 4 or 5, but today we didn’t pull into town until 6 when the sun sets. So the last two hours of our day we were riding east, with the low sun shining from the west. Exquisite.
Point 95 on our Google maps is a picture of Ernesto. The landscape in Peru is so huge the scale is hard to wrap our heads around. At one of the descents I saw our road on the other side of the valley and E and I agreed that him riding ahead would be a cool picture. I posted three pictures: the original, zoomed, and double zoomed. He is a pinpoint on that hillside… I took a video too and if you zoom in and watch real close (especially during the second half of the ten second video), you can see him ride by.
The truth to this stretch being a great moto area is evident by the number of adventure riders we have seen in one day: four groups in total. All of the other groups are South American (Chilean or Argentine). There is one group of riders staying at the same hotel as us, and one man in particular was very interested in us and came and talked to us through dinner. Despite being low energy from the day we are very grateful for the chat as he gave us some good suggestions for further south. There seems to be a sort of a funnelling of routes that happens by Southern Peru… Ernesto and I have some research to do about our future plans.
We just read what Darwin wrote about luxury… “The greatest luxury was to find for our bed a sack of pebbles for they were dry and yielded to the body. Peaty soil is damp, rock is uneven, and sand gets into ones meat. But when lying in our blanket bags on a good bed of smooth pebbles we passed most comfortable nights.” As Tara facepalms a bit over crying over what is “hard’ in her helmet, Ernesto asks, “I wonder what would Darwin have thought of meter long pizza?”
September 29
We slowed down today, and only did an easy 125 km ride to the next town. It followed the Abancay River the entire time, through a windy canyon. Neither one of us slept very well last night and were sleepy, so it was probably best it was a untechnical, short, and fairly unadventurous ride. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we did get some vibrant purple trees to add to our list of “colorful stuff we like seeing”. The mild excitement of the ride was getting mostly naked on the side of the road. Given how cold I was yesterday, I thought it was time for the long johns, as Cusco (the town we are headed to tomorrow) is even higher than where we were yesterday. Opps. Riding through that canyon today it was 80-85 degrees. On a flat and straight stretch of road I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, so after quickly getting out of my moto gear, I pulled my bottoms off and just stood behind my bike for a moment saying “ahh” in my head.
After bumbling around town and getting honked at by takis, we found a restaurant that we thought would have decent food, so we patiently waited until 6:30 when they opened for dinner. 6:30 pm! Grandma & Grandpa like to eat their one meal of the day at 4 and be in bed and showered by 7… Maybe we figured if we tried something different it would pay off? Nope. Gross. It turned our stomachs we couldn’t even eat it. Almost impossibly, it was worse than the meter pizza. It was sweet, vinegary, excessively cheesy, sour like barf, and had canned mushrooms and hotdogs on it. And what kind of pizza falls apart dorso-ventrally? We had them box it up and we are going to find a perro tomorrow.
September 30
And only 12 km outside out of Abancay, there they were! Three perros lying on the right hand side of the road around a flat, even, safe place to park. Perfect. They didn’t come up and bark or growl when we stopped, so we proceeded. We had five pieces, and I tossed the first to get their attention. When it was airborne it (perhaps not surprisingly) fell apart (dorso-ventrally of course), and the perros passed right by it and came right up to us. They stood patiently, staring at the styrofoam box of pizza in my hand. From left to right, toss #1 went directly into perro’s mouth (yes!). Toss #2 went directly into perro’s mouth (yes!) and a fourth perro appears. Toss #3 was a total fail as it missed the perro by two feet and fell into the street with a gross, wet splat. Toss #4 went directly into perro’s mouth, but fell apart (again dorso-ventrally) so perro #2 got an extra snack.
We had an easy and scenic ~200 km ride. No wildlife, but lots of free range domesticated critters. With big lingering clouds in the mountains before we left Abancay, I decided to try and dress for both 50 degrees and wind/fog and 80 canyon heat. Fail. Ugh sweat in the spandex. I may or may not have had my pants around my knees for our snack break today.
Cusco is the largest city outside of Lima we have encountered. Its outskirts are rough and ugly and messy, but the historic center is stunning. And huge. We didn’t know about Cusco or its history so we were both taken aback and inspired. Unlike ANY city we have been in so far however, we totally blended in. Gringo’s everywhere. There could have been both a hipster convention and a Keene convention going on in town. So many gringos… we even got offered weed and blow. As Ernesto pointed out, there was a degree of comfort in the number of gringos and the cleanliness that goes with them. Outside of the lack of trash, the buildings and infrastructure seem well-maintained (because, gringos like that stuff). On the walk back to our hotel, the lights both in the plaza as well as in the buildings on the hillside in the background were so gorgeous and the scene so tranquilo. Ernesto and I were talking again about how stunning the buildings and sights were, but also how sad that in the same quadra/plaza as this 500 year old church there was a McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, North Face, and Patagonia store (along with four dozen other high end retail stores). I said something stupid like “gringos ruin everything”, and (of course) he said something much more brilliant,
“Well that's how it goes right? The Spanish built on top of the Incans, the Peruvians built on top of the Spanish, and now corporate America is building on top of Peru”
FOOD. Real food. We ate real, good food! Oh my goodness! Thank you previous gringos! We had two starters. The first was a salad, and was my favorite part of the meal. In the center was a large mound (bigger than a tennis ball) of cubed avocado and mango mixed together. Surround it was a bed of greens - and real greens, no iceberg lettuce. On top of that was black quinoa crusted chicken, and all was topped with a mint-lemon vinaigrette. The second was a fried potato of sorts, filled with slow cooked pork and served with a pickled salad and more slow cooked pork. We split a kebab main, served with four delicious sauces and chile-peanut mashed potatoes. And another side salad of candied walnuts, more fresh greens, and grilled onions and peppers. It was very expensive but worth every credit card inflated penny. Even though tipping isn’t standard in Peru, we did leave a nice tip to help with the faux paus I made before we ordered. The menu was saying things like “traditional Peruvian dish made with lime, mint and fresh herbs”, and well… after the chicken farms and towns with nothing but crappy pizza and salchipapa stands (which is hotdogs and french fries, and no we haven’t done it), I said “traditional Peruvian food my ass”. And the waiter heard. Opps.
This city is not on a grid system (or any kind of organized road system), so we had lots of trouble trying to find our hotel. We kind of expected and prepared to fail a few times, so E and I had already talked about maybe-probably just finding a cab to lead us there once we got lost. So try number one the cabbie said he knew where our hotel was but he wouldn’t take us. No motos. We could go in his car, but he wouldn’t lead us there with us following in motos. What the heck? We are willing to pay, what's the difference? We drove around some more thinking maybe we were too far away??? We ask another cabby. He isn’t quite sure and then another man, who spoke good English and could see that we were fumbling, came over to help (Peruvians are always so helpful). They chat in some wicked fast Spanish and after everyone nods, we siga. And were happy about our investment as finding our hotel would have taken us hours. In this part of town some of the streets change names every block. We park the motos and are talking it up with the friendly but dopey hotel guy (he is clearly not the manager and just filling in for a bit). Ernesto and I both noticed the lack of motos coming into town and ask him about it. He tells us motos are prohibited in centro; you can only ride motos on the outskirts of town. I am still a bit speechless about this little fact… One of the most fundamental aspects of South and Central American culture is the moto. The moto may even be more of a common thread than corn at this point. And Cusco is one of the most visited places in South America (2 million a year) and without a contest the most visited place Ernie and I will see during our travels. And no motos allowed...