Day 22

Today I arrived in Cusco.  Ok standard of living went down a bit.  The whole city is much like Mexican parts of Dallas.  But the house is secure and very nice.  My room is comfortable.  Except that at night and early morning it is very cold here.  No one has central heat, so you use heavy blankets.   Which serve fine, until you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.   Well I will tell you I do not linger for sure.

The first day I was advised to go slow and take it easy as my body adapts to the altitude.  Cuzco is 11,000 ft above sea level.  I can feel it,  just a little more effort to walk. Started to get a mild headache in the evening.  Thankfully, I started the altitude pills before I came so I should not have any severe problems.  A great side effect is that the digestion moves a little slower here.  I have eaten a ridiculously small amount of food, but I feel stuffed and force myself to take another bite.   Maybe I will be a little slimmer on the return?

When I arrived my taxi we could not drive to my door because the road was blocked for a football game.  My house is next door to the stadium.  The father of the house came and helped with getting my luggage down the rough road.  It wasn't far.  But it didn't stop there.  The house has a locked door on the street and he opened it to two flights of stairs.  My big bag weighs 50 lbs.  we took the smaller ones up and while resting the other young student brought my large one up for us.

After introductions I was shown my room.  The house is really very nice.  I love the open air patios that are incorporated into the houses.  My room is very small but with no central heat I do not want any more to heat up!  I rested for a bit and then walked outside.  It seemed like everyone in town was going into the stadium for the football game.  So I decided why not.  Imagine my surprise upon entering the stadium because I forgot that in every other country, football is really soccer.

The stadium consist of stone steps and you just find a spot to sit.  Your ticket only divides you up to which side you are on.  There were a lot of police in riot gear.  So I didn't know if to feel safe or not.  I mean if they were preparing for trouble....  But the police used their shields to make a tunnel for the players to go through.  Also at half time they had a staged run on to the field.  A group ran on and the police sprang into action to stop them but then they  allowed them to go into the tunnels with the players.  So I think it was for entertainment purposes.  The crowd loved it.

After the game it appeared that all shops were closed.  So I just went back home and became a sloth in my room until dinner.  The only thing that my house mother in Lima made that I didn't like was cream of asparagus soup.  Guess what was on the menu?  Yep, it was a bit better because she didn't fill it with stinky Parmesan cheese.  But it was barely edible. A type of cake that was dry and a bit of flan.  I can tolerate flan but I'm not a fan.  Fortunately I was not too hungry even though I had had no lunch.  So I picked enough to not hurt her feelings and headed off to bed.