Well….it´s officially my last night in the city of Cusco, the city that has been my home, my enemy and my comfort for the past two months. It is time to start the final leg of my journey and move on to Chiclayo to begin my research – the whole reason that I came here in the first place. I am nervous about it all of course, since I will be travelling to a city where I do not know a single person, do not speak the language fluently, and which only has four pages devoted to it in Lonely Planet. Having dealt with my fair share of frustrations in communications and finding restaurants that won´t kill me and figuring out the whole system for buying shampoo in a city crowded with tourists, I can only imagine what lay ahead for me in a city where tourists rarely step foot. Of course, the city is only my home base, since most of my research will be in rural communities. As you can likely tell, I´m a little nervous about things, but with any luck, things will work out and I will be home in four short weeks.
As well, I must vent…it would only make sense that in the city where absolutely nothing makes sense, that I would finally figure out how to get hot water to come out of the shower two days before leaving. Of course.
Yesterday was the last day of Spanish classes for both Kris and I. It was sad to say goodbye to my teachers and friends who have seen me going through it all in the past couple of months. Afterwards, Kris and I went for Japanese food with a Japanese guy that is taking Spanish lessons at our school. The food was incredible, although our conversations were quite comical given the mixture of English and Spanish, both of which are quite hard to understand when you add a Japanese accent into the mix.
We spent our last day in Cusco at the highest owned Irish Pub, eating philly cheese steaks and chicken pie. No worries though, we had our fill of Cusco favourites (alpaca steak and lomo saltado) the night before. Tomorrow morning we are up fairly early and heading to Lima for a couple of days. We´ll be there for Peru´s Independence Day which falls on Monday, so hopefully we´ll get to participate in some festivities.
As for now, it´s off to spend a final night listening to the rooster´s crow next door and the packs of street dogs battle it out on the streets…..
