Thursday, August 7
Location: Cuzco, Peru
Today's weather: 16░C.
Today was cold and a little rainy. I slept in until
8:30am – recovering from yesterday's nightmare train
trip. I popped out to a small laundry close by. There are
lots of laundries in Cuzco, probably because of the large
number of hikers who pass through here. The laundries are
very cheap – they will wash and iron your clothes
for about $NZ 2 per kilo. Its much easier (and better)
than washing my clothes by hand in sinks like I had been
doing in Brazil. I had a huge pile of dirty clothes which
I left behind to be picked up later in the afternoon.
Breakfast was at a small restaurant around the corner
from my hostel. The restaurant was called La Bella
Italia. It looks very nice, and there is always the
same young woman standing by the doorway giving out
notices for the restaurant. I pass by there so often that
she now knows me by sight, and always says
"Hola!" (Hello). I felt sorry for her because
it is her restaurant and I've never actually seen anyone
eat there in all the times that I've walked past. So this
morning I decided to give her at least one customer.
The inside of the restaurant was very tastefully done.
It looked very good – unlike the usual "hodge
podge" decor of most other cafes in Cuzco. I ordered
a simple American-style breakfast – toast, orange
juice, and black coffee. Total cost was 7 soles (about
$NZ 4). Not bad. I hope more people go to her restaurant
because it is quite cheap, and very nicely set out.
Unfortunately its difficult for me to give a gourmet
description of toast, so perhaps I will go there one
evening to find out what the rest of the menu is like. It
looks like the owner has worked very hard to set things
up, so I hope she does well from it.
Most of the day was spent typing at my computer
(again) updating the diary notes that I've been
neglecting. Unfortunately they do take a while to write
up. Seeming as my room is quite a boring and depressing
place to work I did most of the morning's work in the
hostel reception area. This earned me the attention of
Veronica, the morning receptionist. She spoke good
English and was curious to learn what I was doing. I
showed her some of the work I'd done. She was very
impressed, but then left me in peace to continue. She
answered the occasional queries of guests passing
through, and spent the rest of her time singing along to
the radio (mostly American songs, in English).
At midday I went outside briefly to grab some food. I
passed by a shop that was selling alpaca jerseys. Alpaca
wool is much finer and lighter than sheep's wool –
and supposedly warmer. Since I was feeling a little cold,
and because alpaca jerseys are so cheap here, I bought
one for about $NZ 25. It is very warm, and has been
keeping me comfortable ever since.
In the afternoon, I finally figured out a way to
upload my work to the Amazon Adventure website. This has
been a problem while I've been in Cuzco because I can't
get dial-up access through my own computer (although I
can transfer messages and files from my computer onto the
Internet PC that I'm using). To upload files to the
website needs a special program installed to handle
transfers through a process called FTP. I downloaded an
FTP client onto the Internet PC so that it would work for
transferring my files. It seems to have done the trick.
The rest of the afternoon, I continued to tidy up and
add to my diary notes. I want to get them all updated
before beginning my trek through Manu Reserve on Sunday.
I picked up my clothes from the laundry at about
6:30pm. I chatted for a while with the owner who was from
Uruguay. He spoke very good English, with a slight
British accent. He told me that he had won a scholarship
to learn English from the British Council, had lived in
Canada for a while, then had worked on cruise ships with
lots of English and Scots. He said that he'd heard lots
about New Zealand (and even know what a kiwi was) because
Uruguay's landscape is very similar to ours. It has lots
of green fields, where they farm sheep and cattle. The
laundry owner had said that he collected coins, but
didn't have any yet from NZ. So I popped back into the
laundry with a small collection of New Zealand coins that
I had with me.
   
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