cusco

Cusco is a wonderful city. I loved the old cobbled streets. it is an old city and u can see alot of spanish architecture happening near the main square (again a very spanish concept). i was pleasantly surprised to find mud houses within the city too. Although it is extremely touristy, it was still not as crowded as it can get. Plus u need to know the right places to go to in order to escape the crowd. And this I learnt from Brett (a friend who happened to be at the jam too). he is particularly good at smelling out places to eat that serve great local food. He introduced me to the local market, where u can get anything u want. Under one (huge) roof u find fresh veggies, llama woolen clothes, fresh fruit juices, grains, herbs, all sorts of corn and potatoes, gift items, meat, cheese (yummy), incense and stuff for the traditional ceremonies and a huge variety of freshly cooked food. As u go deeper into the market, all your senses are tingled one by one, row by row. At the food area, you can choose between a hot, delicious soup or rice and vegetable (and meat) soup, or a traditional dish with fish. The list is endless and everyone sits on the benches facing the counter where your meal is cooked. As u walk into the food section, u r lovingly invited by numerous cooks to their stalls. Every stall has something different cooking, so u can choose and sit wherever and no offense is taken by the other stalls. And so cheap!

I was reminded of our kisan mandi, only difference being that this place had a lot more, and the wonderful smell of dust was missing.

Another place I liked was not so local but had amazing smoothies; jack’s café! Touristy to the core, it had nice sandwiches and as I said smoothies and a very cute waiter! I also fell in love with their strawberry and banana fresh juice. Just opposite jack’s was a place I can’t remember the name of. What I do remember is the live music; some Latin concoction with traces of jazz and a very flirty guitarist.

There were a lot of bakeries too, which looked great from outside, but that’s all I can say. I never managed to go into any of them.

On my first day in Cusco, while walking around the market, we walked into a small street with small touristy shops. The kinds u find in Macleodganj. So while we were just looking around (and I was admiring myself for being able to resist the temptation to buy everything from each shop), a Quechua woman came out of her shop and invited us in. she was quite persistent so we went. She pressed crystals in our hands and told us to keep it in our hands whenever we felt low in energy. She was a round, old woman with a very serene face. We asked her about the music she was playing in the shop. Suddenly she got very excited and started dancing to it and invited my friend (who had been talking to her in Spanish) to dance with her. Slowly all of us shed our inhibitions and joined them in their circle of dance. It was great! Such was the spirit of Cusco.