Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas and Kayaking
Never thought both those words would go together when you live in the Northern Hemisphere – but they did this season. Besides The Wilson’s Oyster roast on Sunday night, Jay’s Christmas Eve Cocktail party, and my neighborhood Christmas afternoon meal, we were lucky enough for a sunny day with mild temperatures to fit in a bird-filled kayak trip in the marshes on Thursday.
I had planned on doing everything myself for the Christmas dinner but I just had too many casseroles and not enough oven space. So I had to divvy out my dishes to my neighbors ovens and they helped me heat up our Christmas feast. (How do the Chinese live without ovens- I never saw one the whole time I was there) With a Honeybaked Ham and Larry’s delicious, deep-fried turkey I think all 21 of us were stuffed by the end of the afternoon. My only disappointment was that I couldn’t find my “Go To Bed” cookie recipe. Dory and I had planned on making them Christmas Eve. So if Maryanna is reading this – I need another copy of the yummy peppermint, chocolate chip, and meringue cookie recipe.
PS Hope you notice Nicole's feet up and she is NOT paddling -- Zac is doing it for her...... while nearly 60 yr old Mom had to paddle all by herself........
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Is a Blog (or Facebook) Just a Modern Version Of the Christmas Newsletter?
I got a couple of them this Christmas – the “catch-everybody-up” Christmas Newsletter. I have mixed feelings about them – some of them I look forward to reading because they are family or really interesting but some others can be rather tedious. Now I am questioning my blog. Don’t blogs fall into the Christmas Newsletter category – a really long, unending, irrelevant, pseudo Christmas Newsletter? Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your opinion, I don’t plan on stopping my blog. For me my blog is a nice way to journal my journey thru retirement. It helps me remember (you know…. that age thing) what I done and felt while traveling and it is way easier than a diary. I really dread having to write anything by hand, it just doesn’t feel natural to me anymore plus the paper doesn’t have a spell checker and editing a paper diary is a much harder.
Side Note: Zac (who is visiting for the holidays) just announced that my blog was worse than the Christmas letter cause the Christmas Newsletter only comes once a year. I guess that means my own son doesn’t read my blog…. Nicole says that reading them is like homework. That’s OK, remember I do it for myself. Don’t forget..you can always dump my blog into your spam box if I fall into the tedious reading category. I think I would rather be ignored than thought as tedious – No hard feelings though …. honest!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Holiday Costumes
During my 10 months in China I never saw the Chinese dress in “costume” for their holidays, I think it might be an American thing or maybe a teacher thing but we definitely like our costumes. When I retired I also retired all my Halloween and Christmas t-shirts, vests and sweaters. Now that I am teaching youngsters again, I had to buy a new batch of holiday costumes. I did so that last night I was appropriately dressed for the Frederica Academy’s tree lighting ceremony with my new Wal-Mart Christmas vest (which was Made in China).
Oh and as you can see, my Christmas lights are up. I know it is early – but I am one of those people that like to put them up right after Thanksgiving and take them down a couple of days after Christmas. Yep my house is also in costume and probably all the decorations were made in China too….. I am almost all ready for my favorite holiday of the year, just a lot of cooking and a little more online shopping to do.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Thanksgiving 2007
The day started out rainy so we moved our planned outside Thanksgiving meal to Reed and Sara's home. By meal time the sun had come out and it ended up being a beautiful day for the 20 of the Wilsons and friends.
The rest of this blog is basically just for my Chinese students and friends – because if you still feel bloated and stuffed like me –the last thing that we want to look at is a picture and description of all the food we ate. The NBC Today Show estimated that the average Thanksgiving meal was 5000 calories. They either UNDERestimated or they were calculating the calories of a Non-Southern Thanksgiving dinner. Above is pictured a typical plate piled high with some of the dishes listed below and was consumed by one of the 20 Wilson family and friends. (And some of us went back for seconds)
Deep Fried Turkey
Smoked Ham
Sausage stuffing
Oyster Stuffing
Creamed corn
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Deviled eggs
Artichoke, Broccoli, Tomato salad
Sweet Potato Casserole
Green Bean Casserole
Oatmeal Rolls
Cranberry/apple/nut jello salad
Asparagus Casserole
Macaroni and Cheese
Beer, wine, sodas or sweet tea
And of course cupcakes and a pumpkin pie and pecan pie for dessert.
The dishes that lured me back for seconds were the fried turkey, mashed potatoes, sausage stuffing, oatmeal rolls and cranberry salad. As I wrote this I was still stuffed and hurting, but boy will I miss the food and friendship next November when I am in China. Thanks again to the Wilsons for including me in your family dinner. I live in a great neighborhood!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Deep Fried Turkey
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Ocean Front Massage
We had a nice massage in the tents right by the ocean. Strange with a very exposed feeling but still very relaxing.
I fed a wild iguana today – I fed it a couple of the green leafs from under the bridge and some hibiscus flowers. It even jumped into the pool water to get to the other side. Besides the Iguanas at this hotel/timeshare compound there are lots of cats, 2 peacocks and at least 1 peahen roaming around. And boy are the birds noisy in the morning!
Click Here for my Puerto Vallarta Photos
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Dolphin Swim
So Cool! I am not sure if I can describe it but was not scary at all, even though you are in the water with two very powerful and large mammals. First interesting thing happened was when I dropped my sunglasses as I was jumping in. I had sort of given them up as being lost forever but Cathy told the trainer what I had done and the trainer had the dolphins go to the bottom and return them to her. After the sunglasses rescue we engaged in some heavy petting. Get your minds out of the gutter… We got to spend a lot of time petting, kissing, feeding and riding the dolphins. At the end of the hour, we even got kissed by a whiskery seal. The cost was reasonable but we decided that the company made their real money in photos and I contributed to their coffers and bought a CD & DVD.
We went to town that evening to pick up a couple of shirts and necklaces that had caught our eye a couple of days before. Night IS when Puerto Vallarta comes alive. There was much more activity, music, food and handicrafts set up.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Weird Sculptures on the Malecon
It sort of looked like the artist got his ideas from the Star Wars bar scene, but most of the sculptures on the boardwalk (really cement) were very strange and alien-like. We were told to go in to Puerto Vallarta in the evening to see the activity but we were too tired the first day so we hit the town in the late afternoon. Tables were just being put up so I am sure we missed a lot of artists so we will have to go back another time. Our hotel is about 30 minutes from downtown, so we chose the bus as our transportation into town. It was very rough, hot, and had really small, hard seats, but it was cheap. On the way to town and in town, we noticed how much US commerce has extended into this area. We saw WalMart, Sams, Home Depot, Outback, Carl Jrs, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Office Depot, Hard Rock Cafe, and of course the always pervasive KFC and McDonalds.
Snorkeling & Boat Trip
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Puerto Vallarta & the Hard Sell
I feel like I am back in Shanghai’s Knock off Market- with everybody scurrying to get your money before anyone else does. Maybe it was the time change or the jet lag or the 6 hours waiting at DFW or 6 hours in planes – but it seems like a real hard sell here. We are doing a little tour this morning so we can get something “free”. I guess I will figure out what the free thing is later – probably too tired last night. This morning, I am boiling my water for my tea. I am sitting on our 3rd floor small room’s terrace and it seems weird that the sun is NOT coming up over the ocean – not used to that.
The Really Hard Sell
Sunday morning we tried to sneak out of our Velas Vallarta hotel before one of our hotels sales lady stopped us. She was desperately (and rudely) trying to make us not go on our timeshare presentation appointment at Paradise Village. She threatened us with the possibility of the tour taking 5 hours and being stranded over there with no way to get back. (it only took 3 hours and they did pay for our taxi back) After seeing Paradise Village we know why she tried to stop us. It was way better than this place. Anyway, this was my first time attending a timeshare sales pitch. Martine was our first salesman, free breakfast, tours of the condos, a lot of talking about “points” and a lot of numbers being thrown around. He even sic’d the manager, Clay, on us. After not seeing a “sale” in his future - he handed us off to Mike to give us some more numbers and different options. When the second guy didn’t close the deal – another guy came over with enticing discounts to offer. They worked really hard and wrote a lot of numbers but alas they didn’t get anywhere with us….. Three salesmen! What a pain and a waste of good pool time. We are expected to do another Monday morning. I may try to play sick and see if I can get out of it but I probably won’t cause Cathy would kill me and we are supposed to get a free massage for attending.
Monday - I didn’t play sick, we both went and this time we got 6 different salesmen/women at this presentation but we never got to see the rooms – just a lot of table switching. Hopefully all the rooms don’t look like what we are staying in - small and with a really uncomfortable couch. Definitely not a selling point. We made it out of there with our almost free 2 massage certificates just in time for the water aerobics. The Water aerobics were Fun but the workout was sort of defeated by an in-pool bar being just 5 feet away with great tasting strawberry marguerites.
Went to the outside restaurant for lunch and I had another great bowl of black bean soup. Unfortunately, I don’t think Cathy will let me have another…… remember our room is very small.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
It's for Sure
This time I will take fewer clothes and a few more American luxuries such as a 4 inch mattress pad (to counter-act the board-hard Chinese mattress), a fitted bed sheet, a few spices and a big box of peppermint patties. I am trying to be better and learn a little more Chinese before I go but it sure is frustrating and humbling. Learning a language has always been hard for me. One, because I am a visual learner and two, I am dyslexic. I am getting Dottie, the media specialist at Frederica, to call out Chinese flash cards during lunch. I listen to 30 minutes of Chinese language podcasts before I fall to sleep and I try to get in at least 5 hours a week on the Rosetta Stone Chinese CD. I still don’t think I will be able to speak more fluently than before but I should be able to understand a lot more.
People have asked me why I am going back - mostly it's because I feel that I am not done with seeing and experiencing China. I was very timid the first 4 or 5 months in that I didn't make good use of my free time in seeing more and going to more places. There is just so much to see in China. I hope I will be braver this time.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Saturday Morning Balloons
Saturday morning, I am sitting on my sisters back porch in my braggarts’ “I flew in a hot air balloon” sweatshirt, sipping the last of my Chinese tea and watching the 700 plus balloons in the air in front of the Sandia Mountains – I am lucky again the winds are favorable and they are floating west of the balloon field right past Barb’s neighborhood. Wow!
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Corn Maze
59 years old and I had never seen or done a corn maze. Well I got to see one from the air and do one on the ground. I photographed the Albuquerque/Corrales corn maze while in my hot air balloon ride and was pleased to learn that it was located only a couple of miles from Barb's house. The field was sort of past its prime with it dried, tan stalks and with the wind blowing it made it quite noisy. Fun, but hard to get lost cause you could always see the mountains for reference.
Special Shapes
hey started as advertising but they sure are interesting. There was a balloon shaped like a truck, Darth Vader, a pepsi can, a cow, a monkey, a witch, a haunted house, a pitcher, and many, many more…..
See the rest of the photos of the Balloon Fiesta here
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Appropriate...
There was a red balloon with a gold star on it that of course reminded me of China. The wind pushed it over into our balloon so far that we had to deflate ours balloon and start again -- we got up a little later than the other balloons but we got to see all of the special shapes get inflated and start on their way so it was well worth the wait. Thanks China!
Hot Air Balloon Ride
It wasn’t an exciting-scary ride it was exciting-awe inspiring ride. Surprisingly there was not much feeling of height. The ride had couple of thrilling moments when our balloon went really, really close to the Rio Grande’s water and then really close to the trees as we climbed out of the river bank. They call it “splash and dash”. It is amazing these guys can predict where they are going and where they going to end up. It seemed that the minute our pilot got us up he was looking for places he could put us down. He ended up putting us down (with 3 good bounces) in the backyard of Mrs. Anderson whose husband was very famous in the ballooning world. Max Anderson and two of his friends made the first successful crossing of the Atlantic in a gas balloon in 1978.
Our ride was also successful but only 90 minutes. The rest of time was spent watching the balloons get filled and then at the end get emptied and packed up. The ‘chase’ crew and pilot were kept in real good shape from all the tugging, lugging and lifting. Speaking of tugging, lugging, and lifting, Rosie my neighbor requested a picture of me climbing into the basket so make sure you see the embarrassing photo of my big butt climbing over the side. I kept my promise…..It is in this photo album
Monday, October 1, 2007
Christmas Stomach - in October..
When I got up at 4 am Friday morning to go on my hot air balloon ride, I felt something I hadn’t felt in about 50 odd years. – a Christmas stomach. Early Christmas mornings when my sister and I were young enough to “believe” or wanted to “believe” my stomach always felt horrible. Of course our mom wanted us to eat a good breakfast before opening presents but food was not something I could get past all that curdling excitement. So this morning, even though they had my favorite funnel cakes at the fair I couldn’t get one past my Christmas stomach. But I did manage a couple of bites of mini cinnamon rolls in a cone.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Nathan's Blog
His comment on driving in China is right on the mark. The Chinese are the best defensive drivers I have ever seen. Once I got used to it, I actually felt very safe RIDING (not driving) around in the speeding, weaving and lurching cars. Even though I probably have more than a million USA driving miles experience I would never voluntarily drive in China, I don't have their skills.
His You Know you Have Been in China Too Long list is a scream! Make sure you take the time to read them! He forgot a couple though --
89. When you think its perfectly normal to wear the same set of clothes for a week straight
90. You get so used to warm drinks you don't even bother putting your sodas in the fridge
91. You NEVER turn on the faucet when brushing your teeth
92. You start thinking the English don't have such bad teeth
93. You open your umbrella on sunny days
94. You don't think it is strange to walk by underwear hanging on trees to dry
http://www.whereisnathan.com
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Remodeling…. Or Messing Up My Nest
Kudos, to the people that can survive remodeling. Especially, if you are living in it at the same time. I am fairly patient but I guess my strong nesting instinct is finally overriding my patience. I can nest almost anywhere and it doesn’t have to be here in my tiny red tin roofed cottage. I nested just fine in the late 60’s when I was moving around from base to base with my Marine Corp husband and I nested fairly well in China. I just need a space that I can call my own with some of my stuff in it. And the stuff needs to be fairly organized.
Obviously, I am remodeling. It was past time to make a couple of repairs on my 1940’s cottage so that it would be a little more safe and livable. I had the outside painted, some rotten decking and siding replaced, the 16 wooded windows in the living room replaced, some rewiring and had my bathroom updated. It doesn’t sound like a whole lot but as Bob (my great contractor) warned me– it is always more than you imagined - not in money but in disruption.
Updating my bathroom meant moving the bathroom door, which meant rearranging the bedroom furniture, which meant getting a new dresser, which meant painting and re-carpeting the bedroom, which lead me to the decision to re-carpet the other two bedrooms also. That decision led to the job of ME actually having to clean out the bottom of my closets so they could install the carpet – not one of my favorite jobs as proven by the number of moldy shoes I tossed out. And then there is the construction DUST to deal with, it can get onto the tiniest places. Can’t they make dustless drywall mud?
They ARE getting close to finishing. Basically, just a little of the bathroom and bedroom to finish. The carpet is being laid today. I am hoping I will have a bedroom to sleep in tonight because all the furniture of the 3 bedrooms is spread all over the house and porch and it is already 2:30pm. I may be sleeping at Rosie’s tonight. With all the furniture shuffling my Internet is disconnected which is adding to my distress. They are messing up my NEST.
Side Note –the guys were done by 6pm that night & I slept in my own house - but not in my bedroom yet (still under construction). Couple of good things that I keep reminding myself - is that most of the dust producing jobs are done and I can now get to my underwear drawers. This means I can start putting all my laundry and other stuff away. I still have lots of pictures to re-hang which is a drag because I am “tool challenged” . I can use a shoe to pound a nail like any other female – but some of the shelves and bigger pictures will need a little more than a shoe. Guess I will have to dig out the hated toolbox. Just 2 or 3 more weeks- maybe. Then my nest will be finished. (for a while)
Friday, July 20, 2007
Lima Tours
Lima was our last stop. Saturday morning we went to two museums. The first and best one was The Rafael Larco Herrera Archaeological Museum which is the world's largest private collection of pre-Colombian art. Rafael had collected 45,000 pieces of pottery with some of gold, silver, semi-precious stones and textiles thrown in for good measure. Not sure if this guy is classified as a collector or a grave robber. But at least his stuff is still in Lima - whereas the 5,000 items excavated from Macchu Picchu in 1912 by the American Hiram Bingham are NOT in Peru. It still is housed in Yale University's Peabody Museum. Supposedly he put them there for "safe keeping" Yeah right... Probably the most notorious pottery in his collection were the erotic ones. The erotic pottery depicted normal types of sex and birth. The only strange thing was that in all of them the women never looked very happy. Our second museum was the disappointing National Museum. The only interesting thing here was the museum shop. This is where I finally found my "every trip souvenir" a refrigerator magnet.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Great Peru Picture
Cemetary
After leaving Puno with our best tour guide of the whole tour, we traveled on some really bad roads including one section that was reduced to one lane because of rocks the striking teachers had put there. The rocks were small enough to be easily moved (my guess 20-100 lbs at the most) but they hadn't been and they looked like they had been there a while hampering traffic. Strange. Anyway our guide was great in that he answered all our questions that we had stored up - so a lot of the Peruvian history and tidbits you have read about in these blogs were from him. After about an hour of bouncing around the road we arrived at another part of Lake Titicaca where there were some burials towers along with souvenir stands and "pay-to-take-my-picture" children.
Side note: Most people here are so poor you really didn't mind giving them money for a photo and buying alpaca hats that you will probably keep in a drawer for the rest of your life.
The tower above was a tomb. They buried their dead in a squat position and in a inverted cone shaped container. The size of the outside tower depended on their rank. The towers were more examples their spectacular stonework. The circular depressions in the outer stones were filled with a ball of cement-like stuff to hold it together. (Remember this is an area that has a lot of earthquakes as you probably read about- It is amazing that so many of the Inca structures survived). Clever!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Lake Titicaca Algae
If you haven´t seen the show called "World's Dirtiest Jobs" it is because you are probably not a guy. It is definitely a "guy" show. Anyway Lake Titicaca has lots and lots of algae growing on top of the shallow waters around all the boats and by the hotels. Definitely turns off any thought of taking a dip. That late afternoon when arriving at the port, we saw a dump truck and a shovel type of machine trying to pick the nasty algae up. There was a guy on the top of the truck shoveling in the "misses". It appeared that sometime the big shovel guy would "miss" on purpose and hit the shoveler with lots of the slimy green stuff on his pants and boots. yuck. We found out later that they use it as fertilizer.
The Taquile Island Climb
That's me looking down to at our boat (it's one of those small white dots on the center left of the photo). Two more hours in a boat and you arrive at Taquile Island. This island is a TALL dirt and rock island. I stupidly thought that I could do the climb with my damaged ankle and I did because after we got off the boat - it left us at the first dock and traveled around the island to the other side - so no turning back. Going up for my ankle was only a small problem when compared to the huffing and puffing (and I thought I had become adjusted to the altitude - HA). Thankfully, on the way up there were lots of kids handing us the leaves that you crush and sniff to help you breathe. Surprisingly, going down was harder on my ankle (and hip) with the 530 uneven, unpredictable stairs. To make the trip down safely I led only with my right foot which made it being really hard on my right hip. I was so slow at both going up and down we didn't have time to look at all the stuff the people were selling on the sides of the narrow path. The outside meal at the top of the hill was good- fish, bread, fries and beer. (Restaurant bathroom was also outside and just a pit)
As you can tell I mostly seem to remember the climbing part of this trip, but the island has a pretty neat history. You can spend the night here with locals in their small homes (definitely NO private baths here) and if you want to find a wife bring a big boom box. That is supposedly how the modern boys attract the girls. Not sure what you need to bring if you are looking for a guy. Also if your marriage didn't produce children in 5 years, you move on to someone else.
Puno
Our Hotel was our third one in the Libertador group http://www.libertador.com.pe/eng/puno.php and a white monstrosity (but really nice) that was situated on a point quite a ways from town and any shopping. This meant that you were sort of limited in where you could eat. You ate either the hotel restaurant fare or your suitcase snacks.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Peru's Continental Divide
This is where we had lunch - Not a McDonald's in site
Yes, there really was a restaurant here among all the dirt roads and this is around the time I think I picked up my Peruvian Parasite (we won't discuss that part of the trip - but I am now "bug free"). Food was pretty good. It was native food with some of it quite tasty. The bread was great! Most of the tables as well as the toilets and sinks were outside.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Peruvian Graffiti
Since a lot of the people can not read, the candidates attach a symbol to their name and have it painted on the sides of houses. The symbol will have a x thru it so that the voters know how to mark the ballot. We never got a good photograph (had to get this one off the Internet) but the symbol we saw a lot of this summer was a red painted pottery pot with the x drawn across it. Wonder if he won or will win?
Bus, Train, and Boat
I was figuring that the last part of our trip would be easy on my ankle (that I am icing down on the "morning after") because the amount of riding we would be doing. After we rode the train back to Cusco, early next morning we hopped on a bus ride that was supposed to last 9 hours. The bus didn't have the same nice Lima/Ica recliner bus seats but it had lots of stops. More dry scenery, llamas, alpacas and sheep.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Rainbow of Colors
The Peruvian Nose
Bus Ride Entertainment
To get to Macchu Picchu you ride a bus that winds around a mostly one lane dirt road (pictured above). There are probably a fleet of 30 or more buses that make the round trip many times throughout the day. It is amazing that they do not have daily accidents because the buses are generally going around blind hairpin turns. There is a lot of stopping and backing up so that the buses can get to a wider part of the road to pass each other. Maybe to keep our minds off of the harrowing driving experience, they have young boys in native costume that run down the 7 or 8 mile road waving at our bus at each bend. Granted they take the steep stairs that cut thru all the hair pin turns but you can tell that they are getting quite a workout in their sandals. At the bottom they climb on the bus and take donations. Yep, we made our contribution for that bit of waving entertainment. I hope they get to ride back up instead of climbing up.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Clever....
Stairs
So if they can make walls like what you see pictured below - why couldn't they build stairs that were just as even and smooth. Paula learned on the Internet that Peru was rated a 4 out of 5 in terms of physical difficulty. With altitude adjustments and the amount of uneven climbing that is required we are both glad we did it NOW. It probably should have had a 40 age limit so we were really pushing our limits. And yes that is Paula checking her pulse...
Macchu Picchu - Continued
It is really hard to pick the best pictures. We were very lucky in that we had perfect weather the entire trip. When we went up the second day we sat in one spot and took pictures every couple of minutes of the sun rising over the mountains. None of them does it justice. It is one of the things you need to see for yourself. The guides constantly talk about the construction and how the stones fit perfectly together but Paula figured out another reason it is so inspiring - She said "It is the how everything was built within the land and scenery". The whole PLACE just fits perfectly not just the stones.
Macchu Picchu
We keep hearing about all the people that do the 4 day hike to Macchu Picchu. We talked to 3 girls that had finished this morning. they were young, healthy and ran half marathons to get into shape. It was the altitude that got to them. All of them were from sea level. Now we know why some of the Olympians train in Colorado. We had a nice tour yesterday thru the MP site with a guide. Lunch afterwards in the only hotel that is up on the site (EXPENSIVE) and then Paula and I went back into the site to look around some more, we decided to save our climb up to the guard´s house for tomorrow morning. It was nice to climb and descend at our own pace for a couple of hours. We got back to the town in time for a little festival in their town square and had another Pisco sour. Took a nap then had dinner and crashed because we INTENDED to get up at 4:45am to catch the first buses back up to the site and see the sunrise. Unfortunately the hotel forgot to give us our wakeup call and we didn´t catch the bus until about 6. But we did get up there before the sun had risen above everything. Probably better that we were not climbing all those steps and rocks in the dark .... Went back down to the entrance for potty break and ice cream then back up for an hour more of reading in the shade of one of the ancient ruins. WOW one of those unforgettable moments! - When we went back down for the last time to catch the bus. I fell. Literally on the last step possible before standing in the bus line. Bus driver picked me up. At least it was after we had been to Macchu Picchu. And how many people say they broke their ankle at Macchu Picchu (but I didn't know it was broken at the time so I couldn't use that line till later).
Sacsayhuaman
Hard to explain this site. Our guide had a very strong accent and was sort of hard to understand. Also the altitude headache and my huffing and puffing sort kept me off focus - as Larry, my neighbor, would say - I was really "spacey". Even though I didn't begin to understand it, the zig-zag wall was sure impressive. On one of our tour spots we bought a piece of delicious local corn bread wrapped in corn husks.
Click here for more information on Sacsayhuaman
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Cusco
Our hotel http://www.libertador.com.pe/eng/cusco.htm was right outside the Cusco Cathedral formally the Inca Temple of the Sun. The hotel was built on old Inca ruins originally used as an ante-chamber, where important personalities of the Empire gathered, bringing offerings to the Inca. When the Spaniards arrived, the building was modified into a residence for the nobility with the name of Casona de los Cuatro Bustos. Many other churches and buildings used the Inca ruins as their base to build on. the Inca stone placement was so sturdy and precise that it resisted any damage from the many earthquakes in this area). After drinking some Coca Tea and having lunch, we went on a city tour and visited churches, town squares and the chilly Sacsayhuaman (pronouced sex-zy-wo-man).
Paula found an outdoor restaurant named "Quinta Eulilia" (sounded a little like she said Eulonia) in Frommers Guide to Peru so we treked up and down a bunch of steep hills and asked lots of people directions - of course we didn't understand a thing they said BUT we could follow their hand gestures for a couple of blocks before we had to ask someone else. The restaurant was a locally family owned business with entertainment that obviously did not cater to tourists except for the ones that had read the Frommers guide. Paula picked a very, very spicy pepper dish and I lucked out and had a nice baked chicken. I got an extra corn dish which was weird. The corn had very big kernals and a grainy taste and was paired with a slice of cheese and weird big brown beans that sort of tasted like lima beans. We figured out that these big pseudo-lima beans were the ones that are smashed, baked and salted and served as a bar snack.
Side Note - Paula is a great person to travel with because she always buys a Frommers Guide beforehand and does background research as to what to see, do and eat. When she gets home she sells the guide on eBay, Thanks Paula
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Shopping and Peruvian Hat Fashion
In Cusco we really started our serious souvenir shopping. Everything is so colorful. Alpaca, weaving, pottery, and of course the hats. Not for us, but maybe these silly looking hats will look good on some of my friends or family members (snicker, snicker). I did buy one hat for myself without the ear thingys and it even had funny gloves to go with it. I will be so "cute". Paula couldn´t find a hat to suit her taste and anyway it definitely wouldn´t top the mink one she bought in Russia.
We have noticed that we are easy target for the beggars and the street sales people. I haven´t learned how to say "don´t want any or no thank" you in Spanish ' I can do it in Chinese but that doesn't do any good here. Besides looking like an American - I think that eye contact may be one of my problems. I look around too much. I m curious what they have to sell. Eyes forward! Some poor little girl followed us 4 blocks and still didn't make any sale - so even though I look like an easy touch - I am NOT.
Coco Tea and Native Dress
Yes, we had tea made from the coca leaves. We started drinking it in Cusco ( altitude approx. 11,000 ft). It was supposed to help you with altitude sickness but Paula's husband's Colorado altitude pills worked better. Paula didn't seem to have much trouble with the altitude so she only tried one cup, but I drank at least a cup a day because I had the expected huffing and puffing when climbing stuff. I had the same problem in China's Yunan Province. I tried drinking several cups of the mushroom dirt flavored coca tea and it helped with the headaches but not the huffing and puffing. TIP - don't drink any after 2 pm -- it will keep you awake. In the end Paula split her altitude pills with me and I still huffed and puffed but not as soon and I recovered quicker. One restaurant or hotel gave me a cup with mint in it which really improved the nasty taste. Another Peruvian herbal remedy that was passed around to the wheezers was a handful of Peru's mint leaves. You rubbed the leaves between your hands and smelled the oils. Not sure it they helped me breathe but they smelled good.
Above is pictured is one of the bell boys at our Cusco hotel. He probably didn't have to go to school because of the teacher strike. One of the strangest things in Peru was that most people not in a big city actually dressed in native clothing. As Paula noticed they looked exactly like what you would see pictured in a 5th grade Social Studies book.