Llama-Sutra
Cuscooooo! shouts the bus driver through a muffled barrier of ear foam. I remove my earplugs and he repeats his statement in a needlessly aggressive, pre-breakfast manner (it’s just not on). Hurriedly we are made to leave the bus as the turnaround is a short one with our wheel-man definitely wanting to leave. Other passengers slovenly arise from their slumber and look as confused as we are, trying to remember belongings, current location and the addresses of lodgings to frequent in Cusco.
I check the citymaps app on my phone which has our destination pre-pinned from our most recent blast of wifi, as our taxi man thrashes Cusco’s cobbles to the Millhouse Cusco. We decided to stay there partly due to the chain’s exemplary hostel experience in Buenos Aires but also because the hostel is super-central within the city. Our taxi driver is keen to talk in English but the five thirty AM arrival weighs heavy on our eyelids leaving us little in the bank of chitchat. We get dropped off outside the hostel and drag our wobbly wheeled backpacks through the two stepped courtyards into reception. From a humble looking exterior, the Millhouse opens up to a be a grand expanse, like a Tardis had a sideline in Peruvian hostelry. Chalkboards present hostel happenings throughout the week and we note what stuff is going on and when. A menu of adventures lay before us and we just have to decide which ones to do first.
We attempt our check in at the Millhouse, guessing our room won’t be ready for at least six hours. The receptionist confirms our fears of lack of room readiness, but takes pity on us and allows us to rest in the unusually placed cinema room. We drop off our backpacks with the night porter and sport our entry wristbands when prompted.
“If you want, I can lend you a sofa” says the receptionist. Slightly confused by our tiredness and a strangely presented sentence, we are escorted to the cinema room entrance whereby the receptionist drops his voice to a whisper.
“We have another guest sleeping in here” says the receptionist. We tiptoe into the long room trying not to wake our cinema room roomie. The air is chilled from the length of the concrete expanse. The other guest is layed out on the sofa nearest to the entrance, so we give him space and move to the sofa in the far corner.
The leather sofas are cold and a little squeaky. Try as we might, we fail to deflect the cold or minimise unnecessary squeakage as Lucy and I huddle together for warmth. The sofas are slightly too small to lay two-abreast and parts of my body lay exposed (not those parts). Lucy manages a little shut eye denoted by her heavy breathing and dream-whimpers, but I fail to reach destination nod any time soon.
A couple of hours pass by and I can’t take it any more. My shuffling wakes Lucy up and we communicate by stifled whisper. Our impromptu roommate on the nearby sofa takes us by surprise by asking: “Where are you guys from?”, in a broad Irish accent. Sleepy introductory small-talk grows into significant and anecdotal conversation and we realise this guy would be a good companion around Cusco. We invite Eoin (pronounced Owen) out to join us for my Birthday frolics and he agrees to meeting us for drinks later on. We all eat breakfast together upstairs in the long bar/breakfast area which is hidden at the end of a labyrinthian set of stairs and corridors.
Weary, hungover travellers trickle in through the bar entrance craving carbs and protein to soak up hangovers earned the night before. The elongated tables hold gangs of people who compare drunken battle stories, sexual conquests and haggling victories over omelettes and toast. The more solitary types take cereal on the outside veranda area with coffee and sometimes cigarettes. The prime seating spots are those next to power sockets as iPhones and iPads recoup exhausted batteries, weary from Facebook updates and email exchanges.
Most groups of travellers have at least one ‘lonely planet’ book between them and it becomes a bible for wandering types roaming near and far. Dog-eared and battle hardened editions litter bookswap bookcases with the oldest edition we could find being published in the nineteen nineties, It’s battered cover telling only a part of the journey it has been on.
We grab our cereal, bread rolls, coffee and tea, and get to know Eoin better over breakfast. Eoin turns out to be a super sweet guy from Dublin who is taking a few weeks to travel parts of South America. Sharing a good sense of humour, we end up hanging out for the entirety of Cusco before we take different routes to get to Machu Picchu. Eoin is taking the four day trek whereas we decide to take a combination of train and buses to reach the top.
Cusco has a well earned reputation for being a party town with a high density of European, and North American travellers. There is plenty to do in Cusco which serves as a launch pad to Machu Picchuage. Menus are penned in multiple languages with local businesses keen to chase the American dollar most. Compared to the rest of South America there is a surprising proliferation of English spoken throughout the city. Strangely unbranded McDonalds and KFC hug the edge of the main centre square and street sellers old and scarily young pitch their haggles in our direction. Lucy buys a small Llama keyring, complete with stripey socks, which she calls Pisco after the South American drink.
The center has a larger touristic base than we are used to, with a number of shops selling expensive North face hiking gear and eyebrow raising, massage parlours in the main thoroughfare. A short walk takes us to a myriad of bootleg market stalls and shops selling thousands of good quality rip-off goods. They call this the ‘North fake’ markets. These markets have the density of commerce of La Paz in Bolivia, but business is done inside buildings here.
The South American cash machines start to play their old games refusing us money until we find an ally in Nova Scotia bank. The bank scam in Peru is to charge us a withdrawal fee, (no biggie) but limit how much money we can withdraw. This forces us to withdraw maximum amounts repeatedly, doubling or tripling the fee the bank cons us with for a withdrawal.
My thirty fifth birthday evening is suitably inebriated with our Aussie nurses and Eoin completing our ragtag band. The nurses gift me an hilarious, semi pornographic “llama-sutra” T shirt with a number of cartoon llamas in provocative sex poses. We try the drink Pisco which smells suspiciously like Tequila but without the vomit inducing strength or flavour. Eoin mixes with the nurses well (like a well blended cocktail) and we endure the rain to try some recommended bars and restaurants around the city.
We walk a considerable soggy distance to a cafe called Jacks which has the best food we have tasted in months. Things start to get blurry at this point, with banter getting hilarious and dangerous (the best type) and a never ending flow of beers and cocktails flowing in my direction. We hit a few more pubs watching an odd Peruvian rock trio who perform in a tiny space to a tiny crowd and us. We position ourselves nearly face to face with the band who play rock classics from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Dad rock lives in Cusco. Things now go dark. Memories fail to form.
The next morning at 7.30 am, we are awoken by fireworks. The Peruvians are excited by something. We never find out what, but rue the locals for their sleep intrusion. A truly painful hangover feels as if someone is testing a new type of drill in the back of my eye sockets. An excavation party rages on in my brain with special variations of frontal lobe earthquake experts and cranial miners making appearances throughout the morning.
We scan the chalkboards again to find something cool to do today and the attraction of quad biking in the Sacred Valley beckons us towards it’s shiny, motorised direction. Awesomely, Eoin, Rachel, Alba, Jasmin, Kiky and Kathy also sign up too. But for one of us, a near death experience awaited in the Peruvian mountains.