Cusco

Hola!

So, another week has passed and more adventures have been had. After scary cockney girl left the hostel, it became apparent that actually, there was very little drama at Loki, and that staff and guests alike were very calm and relaxed and fun, apart from when it came to scary cockney girl, where one guest summed up the sentiments of all with the statement, 'I want to stab her in the face'. Aggressive, but maybe true and necessary.

Anyway, my bar team, who no longer need pseudonyms to protect identity, are very lovely and work hard and have lots of fun, apart from maybe Shaggy who is on a completely different planet due to the consumption of far too many illegal substances and a profoundly philosophical outlook on life. He is very concerned with good and bad energies. Yes, Shaggy...

So all my shifts are going very well. Being at the Loki hostel is a little like being at freshers week in university over and over and over again, which is fun, but quite damaging for your liver. Despite many nights out, I have forced myself to be cultural and have visited the nearby ruins of Saksaywaman, many garish Catholic churches, and a little further afield the market town of Pisaq, which also has Inca ruins. Now when I arrived in Pisaq yesterday I was feeling a little worse for wear as the night before had been a rather messy Smurf Party and as staff, I had been obliged to dress up and make a fool of myself, but when I got off the little minibus, having just driven through the beautiful sacred valley (really, really stunning), I discovered a market full of pretties that I wandered around and took artistic photos of, and then thought 'ah, these Pisaq ruins look like an easy cultural sight to tick off on my list, and since I have an extortionately overpriced tourist ticket, I should go and check it out.' Little did I know that the ruins at Pisaq are MIGHTY and AWESOME and HIGH UP and I had to walk 3 miles uphill in jeans and rubbish little trainers, feeling hungover and needing the toilet, to get to them.

However.

A most joyous and wonderous discovery has been made.

The. Incas. Liked. Steps...!

So through the mist of delicate stomachs and fatigue, and heat and sweat and chaffing jeans, I was truly and honestly ecstatic. Just imagine - thousands and thousands of very high steps, branching off in all directions to reach cool fort ruins where you can still clearly see separate rooms and doorways and irrigation systems and round look out fort bits with windows for throwing spears and shooting arrows. Who wouldn't want all that when grossly hungover and probably still full of vodka? Of course I took many photos of BEAUTIFUL STEPS that I am unable to upload onto the blog, and now I am pretty much convinced that I am somehow descendent from Incas and that this obsession of steps has trickled down through the bloodline to endow me with a special feeling every time I climb steps.

After going 'ooh, aah, Pisaq is way cooler than I expected' and realising there was an easier, fat American tourist way of reaching it by road and minibus and feeling superior and fit despite the many 5 minute rests I took on the way up to 'appreciate scenery' (read: die inside a little), I walked aaaall the way back down again and had pumpkin soup in a restaurant. And then I came home again. Home being the hostel I now feel I was born in and will never leave, and for the first time in a week had a quiet night and watched a ridiculous Will Farrel movie and ate an overpriced McFlurry. Because I am wholeheartedly embracing Peruvian culture, you see.

I have, also, had ten intensive hours of Spanish lessons and have learnt conjugation of all verbs including reflexive in the present, preterite and perfect past. Now I only have two other past tenses, the future and the conditional to learn myself... and I have to remember them all and put them into practice! It's been very encouraging that nobody I meet who speaks Spanish and has the ability to at least speak basic English, has bothered to speak English to me. This has of course left me with the delusion that I am now trilingual, which I am not. But the goal of learning conversational Spanish has been achieved. Well done.

Projects for the coming week include: trying to convince all guests at the hostel that Stu and I are in fact related, booking my trek to Machu Picchu, doing some more cultural things, having at least one night off from drinking and uploading some photos onto my bloggy blog. We shall see how many of these things can be achieved...

Only four weeks until I come home. So many things still to be done!