Fri 11/13 - Cusco, Peru
I don’t remember. Arrived in Cusco. I was sick. Stayed in Hostel with occasional walks around cute historic Spanish/Incan hybrid architecture. Walked to the top of a big hill. Very, very good vegan restaurant called Green Point (in my top three). In bed by 9pm.
Sat 11/14
Still feel like shit. Gnarly dragon cough. Walked a huge Saturday market where everyone was selling everything under tarps from used shoes to pictures with a parrot for super cheap. Wanted to take so many more pictures, but you know, exploitation. I learned dubstep reggaeton exits. Saw a ska show with some German guy. Return to hostel. Techno party. A fifty people packed into a tiny room. Some guy has cocaine. I’m smoking cigarettes with a hodge podge of europeans on the balcony talking, and talking, and talking. Look in for a moment and I swear every person is making out with someone. One hundred people. I keep talking. Drinks. Drinks. Talking. Drinks. Everything is a bit blurry… I think I go to some club with some dudes from Lima. We talk to some girls. I go to buy a beer. I turn around and two dudes are being kicked out. I think about following but I have a full beer. And there are cute girls. One girls is cute and asking me questions but it’s way to loud and drunk and my Spanish sucks to me to understand. I break to bathroom. Room starts spinning. Swift exit. Sleep.
Sun 11/15
Treating your body while sick is a bad idea. Stay in bed for most of the day. Trying to sleep. Can’t sleep. Idle times lead to mini existential crisis about what I’m doing this day, days to come, and my life. Go to the market for $1 full meal in these weird little packed bench movie theater style seats where everyone just watches the sassy Peruvian lady slop spoons of rice, eggs, and meat onto a plates. I get double sick. English dude I met previous is still drinking and coked out. Night comes. Hippies show up. One has a didgeridoo. The sit in a circle and listen to the sound of the didgeridoo and make those stupid fake “oh my god this is the most magical thing I’ve ever heard and I’m vibing” faces. Still drunk coked out English guy steals the didgeridoo and sticks the mouth part down his pants and walks around the bar for a while with the didgeridoo hanging out. Turns corner and gives didgeridoo back to hippes. Hippies, unaware of what happened inside the bar, go back to prancing around in colorful capes blowing into didgeridoo. I’m dying laughing. Get super drunk again like a big idiot dip shit. It’s so hard not to when a bar is ten paces from your bed. Playing pool and talking shit to one of the hippies. Turns out she knows how to talk some shit. Flirty. Touching. She makes out with dark sexy Latin mother fucker. Pass out.
(this, is the drunk English guy, named Michael)
Mon 11/16
I swear I won’t drink today. 10am Free Walking Tour has totally awful tour guide lady who says things like "these are people who make coffee" while showing a huge group of tourists miserable people who are working behind a glass windows and refers to the gays as "the gays." Was supposed to go to Sacred Valley village but thunder storm. Take computer to study and plan trip in commons/bar room. South America, it turns out, is fucking huge, and plane tickets, it turns out, cost a shit ton of money to go anywhere. I ask facebook where I should go. In short - most everyone who has never been to South America says Argentina/Chile. Everyone who has says Ecuador/Columbia. Turn my route around. Heading north to Ecuador/Columbia. Nothing much happens. Except drunk English guy is very influential. We play rock paper scissors for happy hour drinks. I find dice. Get whole bar to play C-low. Very cute Canadian. We play pool drink and gamble. Flirty. Asks me if I have a girlfriend. Enter Ryan Gosling looking/acting/charming mother fucker. Free club wristbands. I say “fuck no I have to be up at 6am to go to Machu Fucking Picchu” she says “come on it will be fun” and touches my arm. I say “okay.” Go to club at 1am with me, her, her gay friend, and Ryan Gosling looking mother fucker. I don’t have to explain how this story ends. Within 15 minutes she is making out with Ryan Gosling looking mother fucker. Swift cursing exit. Pass out.
Tues 11/17
Awake drunk, hungover, and still cursing, I wander to get provisions for the trip to Machu Picchu. No ATM nearby. Grocery store is closed. Have to wait. Taxi pulls up to sketchy bus station. Whoever-and-their-mom “bus company representatives” have a taste for gringo are almost sticking their shouting heads in the window of my taxi. I get out and walk deep into the bus station like a mother fucking Star to find the last quite windowed paparazzi who offers me a ride for fifteen Soles (like, $4) to a town 6 hours away. I walk to the bus whose engine compartment is open and four dudes are looking inside scratching their heads. An hour after the time of departure, less because of engine issues but more because they wanted to fill the bus, the bus departs. Beautiful snaking roads through clouds over mountains. Tiny colorful homes brandishing hanging gardens of food and fish ponds. Multiple landslides opening rivers to flow over the road. Bus arrives into what I can only call the “Jungle” however this is like when the first dip shit American goes to Europe and calls every large stoned building they see a “castle.”
A town called Santa Maria. I meet two small Polish girls both named Agata and we get some food and drinks. Drinks turn into more drinks. Packed drinks. We hop in winding gas-brake taxi that sends us flying around dirt corners with a non-existent guardrail protecting us from plummeting into imminent death canyon while bumping every pop hit of the summer including Taylor Swift and the Selfie song. Show up to what is only a pair of train tracks and a bunch of shops made out of tarps that line the beginning. Some more drinks and we set to walking these tracks. We get lost immediately. Find cute homeless dog. I make a “this is our spirit dog and she will lead us to where we should go” joke. We follow dog. Leads us up a random path to where we are supposed to go. Dog sticks with us for 30 minutes over ratty bridges made of fused together sheet metal. Darkness falls. Polish girls are getting worried we are going to die. I don’t really care either way. Random tiny powered two person train car approaching. We stick our thumbs out. The random tiny powered train thing, no shit, actually stops. We negotiate a price that is about two dollars for all three of us. We pull away. The dog, of which we named Cusqueña, after the beer we were drinking, chases us. We make the train guy stop. Throw the dog in the train. Arrive Aguas Calientes - the base of Machu Picchu. Some guy immediately solicits us for a $4 hostel. We oblige, so long as Cusqueña can stay. He argues, but the Agatas are very convincing. The dog can stay upstairs. We go out for victory drinks. Everything is super overpriced, but we find 4x1 Pisco Sour happy hour, and talk them down even more (the Agatas are very convincing). Drink. Fucking Exhausted. Pass out.
(this is the very beginning of the walk and that's the dog that slipped into my shot)
Wed 11/18
Wake up. 6am. Walk to patio overlooking town. Cool air and unbelievable views of towering vegetation and cloud spotted black rock cliffs. Tube cheese rolls and mango breakfast. Cusqueña is gone. Someone must of let her out in the night. A moment for Cusqueña and we set to hike to Machu Picchu (note: there is a train directly from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, and buses that take you directly to the top of the mountain, but those people are soulless and/or have more money than I). Buy way overpriced tickets ($40!!). Long ass steep hike to top. Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu is like the quarterback of a football team. The best, but steals all the attention and is totally and completely overrated (I stole this analogy). Though utterly spectacular, the amount of selfie-stick wielding tourists and security personnel (we got yelled at seven or eight times) made it as spiritual and awe inspiring as its postcard counterpart. After walking around for about an hour we saw, no fucking shit, Cusqueña hanging around some dumb blonde Europeans. We run to Cusqueña and expect this homeless rat dog to rejoice in happiness to see its loyal owners, but alas Cusqueña turns her cheek and struts back over to her new Euro trash fling. We get upset and feel betrayed, to which we all express to the dog, to which every tourist looks at us like we are fucking crazy, and leave Cusqueña. After some laps of the Incan attractions, Cusqueña shows back up and starts following us. We try not to make eye contact for a while but eventually give into her charm and give her some water. Our last stop before exiting the park is a bunch of alpacas who roam around the corridors, who absolutely are out to kill Cusqueña, and we have to try to save our homeless spirit dog from a rampage of five alpacas, security, and twenty plus very confused and frightened tourists. Cusqueña runs away in terror and we never see her again.
We exist the park. Hike back down the mountain. The first restaurant is pizza and beer. We tell the lady we aren’t sure. She literally counters with “but pizza and beer” of to which my burnt and sweaty body immediately collapses into a chair. Refreshed we are already fighting time. It’s 3pm and we have a long hike ahead. We grab our shit from the hostel, pick up a full liter of Pisco (grape liquor, Peru loves it), fill up some plastic cups, and hit the tracks. An otherwise shit walk after hiking ruins all day was saved when half way down the tracks we polish off the bottle (no pun intended). Drunk I find out the cuter of the Polish girls has only had sex with four people, because she only enjoys sex with people she loves, so being the terrible person I advance. On the dark taxi ride home we canoodle and tangle bit in the back seat, but the taxi ride quickly turns into convenience store cement floor wait for a bus that gets us into Cusco at 4am. They come to my hostel. Completely exhausted, we all pass out.
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