6 weeks in Cusco! Memories and moments from my favorite city

Writing this post I am finishing my 6th week here in Cusco and I genuinely cannot believe how quickly the time has gone. In just three days I will leave the city I have begun to call home and fly to the depths of the Amazon jungle - the next chapter in my adventure. But while I hold so much excitement for this next step, I feel the great sadness that comes with leaving a place I love so much. While I know this will definitely not be my last time in Cusco, I will be saying goodbye to the first place other than Colorado that I feel like I have actually lived in, not just traveled through. My time in Cusco has taught me so much about who I am, the people I enjoy, the experiences that light me up, the ways I hope to live my life and has given me memories and connections that will last a lifetime. I have made so many friends, a mix of other travelers and local Cusqueños, that have shaped my time here and brought me so much joy. I have found that you can meet friends anywhere – I met some of the best friends I have here dancing at a local jazz club.

I wrote this blog post in the same way I write in my journal, picking a memory or moment and just putting pen to paper whatever comes to my mind when I think of it. This is a collection of a few memories that will stick with me from my time here.

Pizza Night!

On my housemate Ella’s last night in Cusco last Friday, our host dad Victor took us all out to pizza. He is so thoughtful and like a sweet grandpa to us all and took us to his family's favorite pizza place – a small cozy corner with a wood-fired oven on a street off the main plaza. It has been so chilly at night in Cusco and our house doesn't have heat so I am generally forced to walk around with multiple sweaters and a scarf, but in the pizza place I was so happy to finally find somewhere warm. The food was amazing and sitting right next to the oven I got so nice and toasty for the first time in a long long while. The pizzas in Cusco are incredible and every restaurant uses a wood fired oven – there are entire hillsides around Cusco covered in eucalyptus trees just for wood for pizza ovens. I’ve found that the best pizzas here have chicken, bacon, and mozzarella cheese on them but I am still looking to try new kinds. The pizza here is also served with a white sauce that they say is mayonnaise but tastes nothing like the mayo we  have back in the US. This sauce comes with most things here, from pizza to french fries to burgers and sandwiches. It is so delicious that no matter what I’m eating it with, I always have to ask for at least two refills. In our homestay one night Victor made us salchipapas (a peruvian dish of french fries and deep fried hot dogs called salchis) and his son made the mayo sauce and it was even better than in the restaurants. It's made with egg, oil, oregano, garlic, and some other spices. I genuinely love this sauce so much and think it goes on everything and I will be trying to make it back home (I got the recipe from Victor's son). 

Favorite Restaurant (and my $6 steak)

I have found a favorite restaurant in Cusco where I have my regular order I get each time I go there. The restaurant is called Republica del Pisco and I was first taken there with International Medical Aid when they took us out to lunch one day. It is a huge restaurant that often has live music and they have the most incredible lunch special menu. I always get a dish called “bistec de la republica” which is a big thin steak with chimichurri, an incredible pesto pasta with the best pesto sauce ever, and comes with a passion fruit lemonade. The whole dish is massive and only costs $6.75. I have taken both my roommates there and one day we went on a big excursion with Maximo Nivel and when we got back I took our whole group of about 12 people there.  

Public Transport in Cusco

Taking the public buses in Cusco is a wildly variable experience. They are either empty or so full someone will literally shove you in and have to close the door as fast as they can so you don’t go tumbling right back out. The buses always accelerate and stop as quickly as they possibly can and sometimes you have to jump off while it is still moving. When you get on the second both your feet are off the pavement the bus will accelerate so fast you are thrown face first down the aisle unless you grab onto something (or someone). The stops are yelled out by someone working the bus and to get off you have to shout back “baja” and say the name of the stop. On the way out of the bus you hand a coin to the worker, one sol every time. The buses here each have a unique look and name – some names of the buses around here include the Batman, CorreCorreo (the roadrunner, it is decorated with the loony toons character), Tupac Amaru, and the Satellite. Each bus's unique look is so helpful for spotting when your bus is coming and it makes it just about impossible to get on the wrong one. There is absolutely no schedule for the buses,  sometimes two of the same buses will come to the stop within a minute of each other but sometimes it is up to ten. Taking local public transport is definitely not a common thing for foreigners to do, sometimes people look at me a bit confused when I get on and it is extremely rare to see someone else who is clearly a foreigner on the bus (much less understanding all the unwritten rules and steps for taking the bus.   

Sweet Treats

Getting picarones at night with my housemates! Picarones are Peruvian donuts made out of sweet potato, butternut squash, beer, anis, and dough that are deep fried and drizzled in honey. They are some of the most delicious things I have ever had. I have loved finding local sweet treats to try – the most recent has been a desert called “queso helado” – a type of ice cream from Arequipa. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with cheese. It is a creamy ice cream made of milk, eggs, cinnamon, cloves, and coconut and all around Cusco there are people in orange vests with little round carts selling the queso helado. It has become one of my favorite desserts ever. It is served in a little paper cup and dusted with cinnamon. Walking around looking for the orange vests is always so fun and I get so excited when I find one and get to go buy myself a cup. 

Puppies

Missing my dog has been extremely hard here but there is one little dog who always makes me smile when I see her. She is a little black dog named Luna who wears fuzzy pink overalls and sits outside the shop next to my apartment. She has only recently gotten comfortable with me, she used to be very skittish and run into the store when we walked past but then her owner introduced us to her and now she loves to come out for little pats when we walk by. 

Walking around in Cusco you have to be very alert because of all the dog poop landmines. Especially on the sidewalks around the stadium where I live there are always trails of dog poop where people have stepped and then had to keep walking. 

Soccer (Fútbol)

Living so close to the stadium comes with one great advantage – I never have to buy a ticket to a soccer game! From my roof we can see directly into the stadium and have a perfect view of almost the entire field. Another fun advantage is the soccer games here generally come with a large firework show and watching them from the roof is so much fun. Just last night there was a huge game – the most popular team from Cusco called Cienciano and one of the biggest teams from Lima called Universitario. We made ourselves some microwaved popcorn, wrapped ourselves in fuzzy blankets, and went to the roof where we saw the whole game! The energy people have here for soccer is wild, people will spend hours chanting and dancing for a game that is still stuck at 0-0. During last night's game we could actually feel the ground shake when Cienciano scored their first goal in the last 60 seconds of the game, bringing the score to 1-1. Later that night we watched a mob of drunk people marching through our street singing in celebration of the game and the fireworks continued late into the night.

Photography in Cusco 

Cusco is an incredibly photogenic city and while I have not taken as many pictures as I would have liked, I have enjoyed going out to the plaza with my camera to capture the beauty and taking pictures from the roof of my apartment building. My apartment building has 9 stories, one of the tallest in the area, and the view from the roof is incredible. I can see the glacier Ausangate, the Plaza de Armas, the soccer stadium, and all the buildings around me. In the Plaza there are beautiful cathedrals, a statue of the Incan king Pachacuti, and buildings with Incan foundations. I have attached a few photos here but I also have a gallery section on this website where I have put the best photos I have taken as well as a photography account on instagram (sienna.q.photography).

Elevator Pictures

As my apartment is on the 8th floor, we take the elevator everyday. A fun routine we have developed (me and my housemates) has been taking pictures in the mirror in the elevator every time we go somewhere. This has been a fun way to document our excursions and has given us lots of cute photos to remember. 

Jazzy Dog

Finding a stray animal I fall in love with seems to be a common occurrence for me when traveling out of the country. In Nicaragua an abandoned kitten I named Dulce, in Colombia a street dog I called Amada, and here, in my last week in Cusco, I have met a street dog I have named Jazzy and fallen in love with. We first met Jazzy on a night out to a local live music jazz club called Casa Palacio (hence naming her Jazzy). We were walking through the old streets of the Plaza de Armas looking for the entrance to the club when a scruffy black dog appeared out of nowhere, wagging her tail so fast her butt was wiggling side to side. Normally I don’t pet the street dogs here, exercising a level of caution that takes a significant amount of willpower. However, something about this dog made me crouch down and stick out my hand. Immediately I was receiving whiskery kisses and when I looked in her eyes they had a special sparkle that reminded me of my Tucker back home. She turned around and clearly gestured for us to follow her as she made directly for an opening in the stone wall in front of us. Taking her lead, we walked through the stone archway and found ourselves in a courtyard with an elegant staircase leading up to the right. Reading the sign we saw that we were in fact at the entrance to the jazz club we had been searching for and the scruffy dog was already leading us up the stairs as if she knew exactly what we had come for. When we met her at the top of the staircase I crouched down to her again and immediately she was in my arms, kissing and cuddling me with such vigor I knew she must be the biggest love bug at heart. Upon closer inspection she was extremely clean for a street dog and bordering on the line of chubby. She had coarse black fur with a wiry white whisker-beard around her muzzle. I sat outside the club with her for at least 15 minutes before saying a long goodbye, hoping desperately I would see her again. The next day I decided that my goal for that night would be to find her again. Little did I know she would be the one finding me. We were out at a restaurant, not too far from the jazz club but up on the second floor, when all of the sudden my friend turned to me and said, “hey, is that your dog?”. I turned and was shocked to find that it was in fact Jazzy, she was curled up in one of the booths sleeping! She is such a dark color and the restaurant was dimly lit making her barely visible all curled up in the corner. I rushed over to sit with her and as soon as she realized I was there she popped her head up and crawled into my lap. I was so shocked that she was there, seemingly waiting for us just one table away. When I asked the bartender about her they said she is a stray and they let her come in to sleep because it gets cold out and she is very respectful. I picked her up and carried her to my chair  where she fell asleep on my lap while I ate my garlic bread. When we were leaving to go listen to some live music she followed us through the streets and waited outside the jazz club for us again. I wish that I had met her sooner on my trip but I will enjoy these last few days trying to find her again. 

Salsa Dancing!

Dancing salsa has been one of things that has brought me the most joy, friends, and connection while in Peru. Almost all of the friends I have made here I have met in the salsa classes at Maximo Nivel, where every Tuesday and Saturday nights about 30-40 people come to the Spanish school to dance. It is a big mix of local Peruvian students who study English at Maximo and international students like me. We also dance bachata in the class sometimes and that has been extremely fun to practice. Most of my Peruvian friends are really good salsa dancers and have been teaching me all kinds of fun steps and help me practice whenever we go out to dance. We have a big group of friends and we all go out dancing together – at the jazz club they have live music to dance to and there are lots of fun places with great music around Cusco and we have had so much fun.