Travel
Our flight arrived in Lima in the early morning, as we had no flight to Cusco booked we had to wait till the early morning. At last we were leaving Lima - as the sunrose small fishing boats dotted the pacific way below us, i would see this scene again from the ground, but much later in my travels.
We eventually arrived in Cusco, which has a small rather charming airport, feeling jet lagged and over air conditioned. We were shown to our houses. Over the next months and weeks i worked as volounteer restoring terraces and as a teacher. If i told you about this day by day you would die of boredom, so i will talk a bit about peruvian life, and some of the highlights of my time.
Living in a town like Zurite is very different from living in a place like Greenwich. Zurite is a very small town, basic buildings of mud brick, small dirt streets and animals everywhere (pigs, sheep, cows, chickens and stray dogs in their dozens!). Furthermore when you arrive the whole town knows about it. Being much taller than most peruvians and having blond hair word got around quite quickly that i had arrived!
Living in Zurite is very different too, things happen at peruvian pace, and people live with a different sense of time. People get up incredibly early - these are campesenos so they have to get to the fields to work so they get up at about 4am. Then at 5am, well after they are awake the huayno music starts, suddenly strange things start to happen. You wake immediately, the music is terrible like a cats gut being played while the cat is still alive the vocals are simply the vocals of said cat in said situation. The world twists around you as you reel at the sound of the music, and then suddenly you become aware of the fact you really need the toilet. You struggle to get your spider infested shoes on and hop to the toilet which you find is occupied. Terror takes hold, until you realise there is another toilet on the other side of the house, to get through to this toilet you have to walk through the kitchen where the resident peruvian family are inevitably having breakfast. They make some choice comments about your appearance, your last nights drinking, or any girlfriend you may have (and whether you kissed/beat/screwed (peruvian romantics!!) last night) before eventually letting you pass. Finally you make it to the loo.
So thats the first twenty minutes of your average day, things i think you'll agree are looking oh so rosey. But they get better, breakfast is just around the corner. The problem with breakfast is that at six oclock in the morning it doesn't yet exist, well thats not true, it did exist but Milagros and Denise having carefully cooked eggs and bought bread have eaten everything themselves. By the time you get down stairs they're innocently eating oranges, no sign of the fabled breakfast in sight. At this point Anselmo wakes up and wonders in sleepy eyed, 'you have breakfast, nick?' - Not exactly. The task of buying the various things that make up a good peruvian breakfast is then undertaken. First a large bag of stale bread, then another, and maybe a third depending on how hungry people are.
