Beautiful Cusco

First of all, thank you for the nice comments (off the blog) about my last entry. Just want to point out that I am doing really well now. I am currently in Buenos Aires, Argentina and loving it. My activities consist of eating, shopping and going to wild rock concerts (ok, just the one, amazing, concert). And I haven´t cried or looked back since Cusco.

What to write about Cusco. It´s the prettiest place in Peru. Even the locals think so. It´s nestled in between mountains and it´s got-obviously-cobblestone streets and just an overall adorableness about it. Ever since we started our trip, we had heard about people getting ¨stuck¨ there for weeks and loving it. Here´s what I saw when I would step out of my hostel:

It´s got really cool gothic architecture, like this cathedral in the main square:

It happens to be the main point from which all the Macchu Picchu trips leave from and also a central place with a lot of activities like rafting, horse riding, trekking, paragliding etc. It´s very touristy and definitely not cheap, but it´s so cute that you just go ahead and slip into total tourist mode without blinking an eye. Here´s a picture of what the Israelis called ¨simtat hametsikim¨

inspired by all the tour agents that attack you like bees when you enter the street. We spent quite a lot of time there. The only reason it´s so empty is because the picture was taken on a Sunday. Obviously Cusco is full of Israelis and if it isn´t the Hebrew you constantly hear on the street that gives it away, there´s a ton of little notes like this all over the place to remind you:

So once again, I felt the pull and push of being Israeli. There was something very cozy and comforting about knowing that so many of ¨ours¨ were there and also something a little suffocating. What with my crying/introspection theme at the time, it seemed like a good idea to stay in a separate hostel which was not full of Israelis, so I picked this cute place which was literally just around the corner from where Rikki was staying.

So what did we do with our time in Cusco? We had decided that we would stay there until Inti Raymi which happens to be the biggest festival celebrated in Cusco, a pagan homage to the sun. It´s not that anyone really worships the sun anymore, but I guess they just kept the tradition up for the tourists. At any rate, that meant that we had about 2.5 weeks to fill with activities. But first we had a Shabbat + Shavuot combo to get through. So that´s how we started our 2.5 week love affair with Beit Chabbad Cusco:

The Beit Chabad was 5 minutes from our hostels and had a wonderful little restaurant in it. That´s kosher food on demand, people. Shnitzels, stir fry, chips-it was heaven! We even had fried fish for Shavuot! I think we cumulatively spent more time there than we did anywhere else on our trip. :)

The other great thing about Cusco was reuniting with our friends Maya and Omrit from Santa Cruz. We got along so well that at some point we even ¨swapped¨ our travel partners! Omrit and Rikki really wanted to do a rafting trip and a really cold hike to Macchu Picchu whereas Maya and I decided to go for a more tropical trek to Macchu Picchu and a kabbalah course.

Yep, you read that right. I did a kabbalah course. If Madonna is doing it, then why can´t I, right? :P You will not get a review of the course from me here since it was after all in a Beit Chabad and so had a heavy dose of their ideology mixed in with the mysticism. All I will say is that I am glad I could take a break from all the running around and put in some spirituality into my vacation. Plus, I got this wonderful shot of the Rabbi.

The other thing I did with my time was a Spanish course! Finally, after years of longing to learn this language, I did a proper, one on one course for 20 hours. It was intense. Because of all the time constraints (Shabbats, Sundays, Shavuot, various Cusco festivals) I only had 5 days in which to do it so I was doing 4 to 6 hours a day and oh my God, did I love it!!! I think I could spend my entire life learning languages. It is so fascinating. I found a really cute, informal language school and had 2 AMAZING teachers there.

OK, so remember how I mentioned that I was looking for bubbly South Americans? So here they were! Or was rather. Dora, on the left, is Peruvian whereas Eva is Spanish. Most of my time was spent with Dora who just cracked me up. She was super sweet and funny, telling me on our first lesson how she has never loved any of her boyfriends (TMI!) and later on expounding on how she responds to men on the street who try to flirt with her (you don´t want to know). The first time I met her she gave me a kiss and was all smiles. That´s the warmth I´m talking about people!! Ironically she is from Lima. She told me how Peruvians are divided into costeños (from coastal towns), selbaticos (from the jungle) and serranos (from the mountains) and how every group dislikes the others. She´s only 36 and she founded the language school 4 years ago with a friend and she said she had been treated with a lot of prejudice from Cusqueños (people from Cusco).

So all it took for me to finally warm up to Peruvians was one contact with one single person. This is what I had been lacking previously, but couldn´t pinpoint. I really enjoyed travelling with Rikki, who in her own right is really hilarious, but the problem with travelling with other people is that it makes it so much easier to stick to the crowd you know and stay away from these kind of interactions. In retrospect, I am glad I had all these sides to my trip (I´m currently all alone in Buenos Aires). I had a LOT of fun with Rikki and the girls, I really enjoyed spending time with South Americans like Dora and I am also very much enjoying my own company these days. As usual, God has been very generous with me.

With Eva I had about 5 hours of studying, but she was extremely sweet and professional. In our first lesson I discovered that she had, check this out, gotten divorced a mere 2 days before me and was going through pretty much the same kind of processes that I was! We spent about 3 hours chatting and I don´t know where time flew. At the end of the lesson she showed me the list of the vocabulary we had used during our discussion and also a list from a lesson with someone else. It was amazing to see how much that little sheet described about who I have become (the words that featured were: self confidence, process, gratitude, liberation, growth etc.).

So Cusco was where I took a vacation from my vacation. Not that I wasn´t running around like crazy-from an early breakfast to Spanish class to Kabbalah class to lunch to Spanish class to the internet to dinner to my room for homework and learning from subtitles on television (one of the main sources of my vocabulary!) . You know me, the movement keeps me alive.

Next post will be about Macchu Picchu hopefully and then on to the border with Bolivia...