Operation: Dominate the weekend. =] Part one...

DISCLAIMER: I AM A SLACKER. There, it's out there for all to see. I am a horrible excuse for a blogger and eternally sorry for disappointment I've caused...which will still continue...

My tandem is about to be here soon, so I'll only be able to post a part of what I had wanted to get up here. Bottom line, I procrastinated over the weekend by not writing each night, and letting laziness and tiredness after walking Machu Picchu rule my life. Instead of managing my time wisely, I let all of my blogging build up. And three days of a VERY PRODUCTIVE and long weekend requires a lot of time to write out the details. Time which I haven't set aside properly. So I'm sorry, but hopefully this is enough to tie you all over. =[

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Operation: Dominate the weekend. =]

Friday – 26th of Sept
My day started off even later than all of yours did back at home. Because I have no work on Fridays (the center is closed I suppose), I made sure to NOT set my alarm, and maximized my sleep time by waking up around 11 o’clock, 9 am back home. I was ready to head out of the house around 11:30, figuring I could go pick up something for a brunch, as I had missed the cutoff for breakfast at the house.

When I was getting ready to leave, Rae was also leaving, and after finding out that she was heading over to Máximo to pick up her tickets for Machu Picchu, I decided to go along with her. Unfortunately, when we got there, a meeting had just begun and we found out that it most likely would be done in no less than an hour.

Knowing that there would still be time to pick up the tickets later in the day, we decided to grab lunch together at the favorite I’m-craving-food-from-home joint Jack’s. We had quite a bit of a wait though, as it was lunch time and Jack’s is a staple for all tourists. But I can assure you that the wait was quite worth it when my Huevos Rancheros was brought out, along with my side of pesto and cheese bread. I always forget how huge the portions are at Jack’s (geared towards obese Americans I’m positive), and ended up boxing up the pesto and cheese bread for an afternoon snack. Still, we quite enjoyed ourselves at Jack’s, not leaving until 2:30. While we spent only about half of the time eating, we had a lot of fun gossiping and talking about anything and everything going on around Cusco and our respective homes.

When we left, we took a side street and ended up finding this awesome little book store, in which I found the Shangri-la of postcards. They also had tons and tons of books in both Spanish and English, and I decided then and there that I was motivated enough to pick up a couple of Spanish books. After all, I had already finished Wednesday Letters and Atonement, so I was at a lack of reading material. I figure if I can finish one complete Spanish book by the time I leave, I’ll be at an okay point in my Spanish level. After a careful mini browsing session, and choosing my favorite fifteen postcards, I picked up two books. The first is Veronica decide a morir by Paulo Coehlo, mostly because I had heard plenty of good things about it, and had enjoyed reading The Alchemist. The second I picked out was Los Miserables, or Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. The story of Les Mis is one of my most favorite, and from the movie to the book to the musical, I know it like the back of my hand. Because of this, I feel a little more confident in my ability to knock this one out by the time I leave, since I’m diving into it with previous knowledge.

After the mini shopping break, it was time to get to Máximo for my class with Jorge. Somehow, we made it there with enough time for me to pick up my tickets from the PATAS office, and check my email quickly on the computer there. Class was fun as usual, and Jorge was surprised to see me, as he thought I had headed out on the trek with the rest of my house. I told them that while I had planned on wanting to do either the Lares or Salkantay trek, my timing had been off, and I had booked the Machu Picchu trip by train exactly one day before my house dad announced that he was planning a trek for anyone in our house. Class went by pretty swiftly, and Jorge reminded me to be safe up in Machu Picchu.

When class ended, I stayed around and used my computer on the top floor, attempting to upload a couple of pictures from the talent show the night before. It’s amazing how much slower the wifi is up on the main floor compared to the little office I normally sit in downstairs. The slow connection made uploading photos and editing my blog just that much more difficult, thus more frustrating for me. When the time rolled around for my tandem meeting, I went downstairs to meet my partner, and found out that he wouldn’t be able to make it because of some work thing. I’m a little bummed that this keeps getting shot down by one way or another, but I decided that it was for the best, because now I had free time to head over to the phone booth and call some family and friends back home.

I hogged the phone booth until just about 7 o’clock, and got home right as dinner was being placed on the table. Boy am I glad I made it home for dinner though, because we always seem to have the most amazing dinners on the days when Marco and Christian go on treks, possibly because there are fewer mouths to feed, and therefore more attention can be paid to each meal. For our soup, we had some elbow pasta in a broth, followed by broccoli and roasted tomatoes, along with a breaded porkchop for our main course. It was all topped off by the biggest alfajor I’ve had so far.

After dinner, Luke, Ben, Ciara and I made a mini trip over to CCC on a quest to buy heaps and heaps of whatever snacks we wanted. We even sat down for a bit at one of the juice places and had her make us a pitcher of banana pineapple juice. Just how amazing fresh squeezed juice can be here never ceases to amaze me, though my favorite still is the strawberry juice from Real McCoy’s, where we do our pub quizzes.

Once back at home, we cracked open our various chips and candies and cookies, and popped in Psych, the show from USA channel. I must say, I love that show more and more every time I watch it, because the dynamic between Gus and Sean (the two main characters) is always pretty funny and I can’t help but miss all the jokes of my friends back home. How many chips, chocolate cookies, and banana-pineapple drinks later, we all started heading up, and I quickly flushed out the idea of whether to try and pull an all nighter to make my 5:20 pick up the next day, but was ultimately dissuaded my parents who said that any sleep is still sleep. My only thing was that I know that I once I’m in deep sleep, I often get too comfortable in bed and can’t get out, which is why I was scared to sleep. But 2 am rolled in, and all of my clothes had been Permethrin sprayed (bug repellent), all of my toiletries had been packed, and I had nothing left to do, so I gave into sleep.

Saturday – 27th September

- rainstorm like whoa
- cool market
- oil painting, bag, album, earrings
- Spanish guide, not expected
- visit to thermal baths
- chez maggy
- local music
- front desk only let me use phone for five minutes, so I just walked out onto the street and used a pay phone
- about to buy sweet potato chips and chocolate covered cereal puffs but didn’t have money, so said I would come back but I didn’t
- didn’t shower because our room’s shower was not warm, and terrible water pressure
At 4:45 am, my alarm clock went off, and began the process known as “Morgan’s extremely long wake up process.” The alarm woke me out of my deep sleep, but that’s the first of two stages. I didn’t wake up until stage two, around 5 am, when Ebony said, “Hey, are you up?” Human contact is the usual stage two action, though a second alarm clock will do as well. After running to get my clothes that were hanging in the bathroom, and quickly stuffing them into my backpack, I ran downstairs to wait for Rae and Ebony. Todd was up for some strange reason, on MSN messenger talking to someone at home I suppose. He wished us a good trip, and we headed out for the beginning of our mini adventure.

Jonathan was there, enthusiastic as always, and had a taxi waiting to take us to the train station. The train station was only about a ten minute ride away from our house, but I saw all of these streets that I had never seen before. There was one street that was completely made up of Vegetarian stores. It always boggles me here how anyone can make money when all of the car part stores are on one street, the glass stores on another, bakeries on one more, and so on. What makes you so confident that out of the ten bakeries on the street, yours will be the one that the heavily-loaded tourist will choose? Still, the businesses seem to stay open, so I suppose they must have some sort of secretive insight.

Back to the train station, Jonathan pointed us to the station, and pushed us on our ways. Getting through security at the station wasn’t as difficult a process as I thought it would be. All that was needed was to show your ticket and your passport, and then you were clear to board.

The train itself was quite nice looking, painted in a bright royal blue with yellow detailing and lettering. This was my first train ride (because BART does not count), so I was excited for what was to come. We found our seats and hoped that the train would be somewhat empty so we could move around to a spot where we could all talk. No such luck, so though Ebony and I were seated together, Rae was placed with a group of elderly women from Birmingham, Alabama. Our joke the rest of the trip was wondering how the women fared at Machu Picchu, as they all needed assistance getting out of their chair on the train.

The train ride itself was quite long, and extremely hot. We had apparently been booked the “first class” of trains, which had glass windows everywhere so you could have a view of outside through the sides AND the roof. When we first boarded, I felt so glamorous and excited for this, but by the time we got there, I had wished we had been booked on the “lesser” of the two trains. Why? Because when you mix sun plus glass but passengers inside of glass, you can imagine a scene similar to ants being baked under a magnifying glass in your backyard. Still, I couldn’t complain, as we had breakfast served to us (bread, jam, a drink, and a meat and cheese plate), and supposedly got their faster than the other train. Of course, I don’t even want to think of how long it took the other train, as it took us from 6:05 in the morning to 12:30 for the ride of 50 miles or just a little more. No…not quite fast at all. Also, it was strange that as we were leaving Cusco, the train would move one direction, then stop, and head back the other direction. At first, it seemed to me that we were moving along the same track, and I was thinking that our “conductor/engineer” (?) was a little loco. However, my daddy explained later on that it was to transfer and switch the tracks each time, as there’s not enough space for all of the turns. It makes sense, and I accepted it, since obviously we had reached Aguas Calientes alright.

When we got off at Aguas Calientes, we found the representative from our hotel, Hotel La Cabaña almost immediately, but had to wait for an additional fifteen minutes as he attempted to find someone else who was to stay at our hotel, but ultimately didn’t show. He led us on a five minute walk to our hotel, which we definitely wouldn’t have found on our own. The lobby has a restaurant in it (which we never saw anyone eat in…), so even if you were looking carefully, you wouldn’t have pegged the place as a hotel.

The hotel was nice, with a rustic sort of feel. It’s the kind of place that you can bet people would pay hundreds of dollars per night for if it were in some resort type of location. However, here, the fact that the windows didn’t close was more of a cause for fright than reassurance that the place was so high class locks weren’t necessary. Still, it was a roof over our heads, a bed to sleep in, and a door that locked. Beggars can’t be choosers, and it was obvious that there were much worse places in town to stay.

We didn’t stay long after checking in because we were quite hungry, and wanted to head over to find a restaurant that Ciara had recommended to us. Karen, one of the other volunteers that lives in another house had come up to Machu Picchu as well, but was staying at a hostal close to our place. So we met up with her, and then went on our search for Indio Feliz. I feel bad for the poor kid who was trying to convince us to eat at hour hotel, until we asked him how to get to Indio Feliz, and he said,”Oh yeah, that is the best restaurant in town. Here’s how to get there.”

And even for the best restaurant in town, I only had to pay about fifty soles for a complete appetizer-main course-dessert meal plus my drink. So for a quick rundown of what I ate, since I know you all never get tired of hearing what I’m eating ;]:
- Appetizer: Quiche Lorraine (not as good as some I’ve had back home, but definitely still satisfying)
- Main Course: Mango Chicken (MMM!!! This place had small portions, but somehow it filled you right up.)
- Dessert: Pretty much the MAIN reason I knew I would love this place. Wait for it…APPLE PIE A LA MODE!!! Woo! It was the first time I had had ice cream since coming to Perú, and boy was it satisfying. I would’ve preferred Dutch Apple….but I’m not picky. =]

After Indio Feliz, we figured we’d roam Aguas Calientes, have a look at the shops and all of that. I saw a sign pointing towards their “market” and knew I had to go. So we all went up and had a good time roaming around the stands, checking out things that were different than what we could get back home in Cusco. My first purchase that sparked the mini spree was a leather bound photo album with some little Incan dude on the front. I know, my choice of words aren’t the most eloquent, but I can promise you it’s nice. I figure if I actually have a photo album designated for this trip, it’ll prompt me to print out my pictures and not just let them lay around in my documents folder. And all of you that know me know that once the first item is bought, there’s a high chance more money is to be spent in a very short time soon after. So as I roamed more stalls, one of the watercolor painting men stops me, and I actually stop to browse this time. He shows me a couple watercolors of Machu Picchu, and the scenes I like are in colors I don’t, and I’m ready to leave. But he tells me he has oil paintings as well, and I’m suckered in from there. The oil paintings are amazingly detailed, and he has a whole collection depicting Peruvian kids. It’s game over at this point, and I buy an oil painting of a little Peruvian girl with big ol saucer eyes for 90 soles. I reassure myself that it’ll amplify the artsiness of my dorm, and get over my somewhat large purchase. The final purchase of our market browsing was a set of silver condor earrings. For a quick second, I thought I had outgrown my earring obsession, but being here in Peru has only resparked it unfortunately. SIGH, there goes all my hard-earned money. ;]

Now we’ve all bought our respective items, and are ready to head out when we hear the rolling of thunder, and rain begins to POUR THE FREAK DOWN. Poor Rae only has on a tank top, and had left her jacket in the hotel room. So we try to wait it out in the market as El Niño or something quite close is going on, but there are no signs that the rain is about to let up. So we get suckered in by a lady from some cafe rightfully named "Cafe Turistica" and sit down for some small snacks as the rain goes on. I order a cup of "fresh orange juice NOT from the box" and somehow end up with a lemon pound cake. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the pound cake, but was kind of looking forward to the juice as well. By the time we're done with our snacks, the rain has let out, and we're able to make it back to our hotels dry, as if the storm had never happened.

By the time we get back to our hotel, it's close to when our guide is supposed to meet us, so we hang around in the lobby, watching a Spanish television series I had never heard of before, and never care to watch again. No Emmy nominations for this series... We're all excited to speak with our guide though, to know the details of the next day. PATAS had assured us that our guide would be better than that of any other agency, because they would be professionally trained, not a student, and fluent in English. I think I may need to help PATAS with their marketing...

TO BE CONTINUED. =]

P.S. Sorry I'm a horrible blogger and have to end it here. I hate disappointing people...=[