Tonight I’m in the mood for a yummie pizza (mitad Vaticano y mitad Romana) and a jara de sangria, but the question is whether mamacita linda will be home early enough. One of the only bad things about living in Peru is that people who work corporate type jobs must work really long hours. Patricia’s normal hours are 9:00am to 8:00pm, 6 days a week! She does get a 2-hour lunch break which is enough to run home for a bit.

It’s not unusual for Patricia’s work hours to run a bit late in the evening, so here’s to my mamacita linda:

Meet me out in the street, to be exact, at La Romana Pizzeria on Av. Tullumayo in beautiful Cuzco, Peru

Also, not meaning to change the subject to awful bad, we have another reason to celebrate today in addition to my craving of hot greasy pizza: 20-something years ago today, somewhere in Cuzco in the back of a taxi (*) on its way to the hospital, a baby girl was born. Feliz Cumpleaños a mi cuñada!!!

(*) Not kidding, true story.

Cuzco during rain season.

Now mind you, not everybody is blowing at the sky during rain season in Cuzco, only those people whose birthdays fall during the DRY months of the year. That’s right, there’s a belief or superstition here in Peru that people whose birthdays fall during the dry months can make the rains go away by blowing at the sky!

Occasionally while walking down a street during rain season, when clouds are building or rain starts to fall, you’ll see somebody blowing at the sky. Brianna and I do it all the time when we’re playing in the park and rain starts to fall, it really helps to hold off the rain for a while

Rain season in Cuzco begins towards the end of November and lasts through the beginning of April. It’s not bad really, no tropical downpours, just a steady diet of clouds and rain. But the rain helps rejuvenate the lands and green areas look good again. Meanwhile in the coastal areas of Peru summer is just beginning, so many Cusqueños take a trip to the coast for the traditional summer vacation. It’s something to get used to for gringos coming down from the Northern Hemisphere, when you visit Lima in December everybody is getting ready for Christmas and summer vacation at the same time.

After the official graduation ceremony at UNSAAC, Peru's newest economist!!!

And another thing, lentils? You take the day off and that’s the best you can think of

All kidding aside, I’m very proud of my mamacita, this past Friday she walked in the official graduation ceremony at the Facultad de Economia at UNSAAC, the major university here in Cuzco. Studying economics at the Universidad Nacional San Antionio Abad de Cuzco (UNSAAC) is very intense and academic, and she did great. Mamacita finished her studies nearly 3 years ago but with baby and thesis her graduation was put on the back burner so to speak.

Felicitaciones Mamacita linda!!!

From gosouthamerica.com:

And how better to celebrate such a joyous event than with food! Here in Cuzco the traditional meal on “Día de todos los Santos Vivos” consists of lechon (suckling pig) and tamales.

Buying lechon on Día de todos los Santos Vivos in Cuzco

Here in Cuzco, Oct 30 to Nov 1 was also the festival of the bread, or T’anta Raymi. Sweet bread figurines, known as pan wawas (from the Quechua word wawa which means baby) are sold everywhere during these days. At the plaza Tupac Amaru close by our house we saw this gigantic pan wawa and I believe there was an even larger pan wawa set to be displayed in the center of the city.

A giant pan wawa on display at the plaza Tupac Amaru in Cuzco, Peru

There was a sort of baptising celebration for the pan wawa which again seems like a blend of Catholic and Andean traditions. We didn’t stay for the baptising of the pan wawa, we wanted to go back to the house and devour our yummie lechon

A while back we visited Jurassic Park in Oropesa. Many playgrounds in Peru are not that well done, but the Jurassic Park in Oropesa is the exception to the rule. It’s a very nice park and the dinosaurs are very well made. Brianna had a great time playing.

Oropesa is a small town in the “Valley of the South”, just outside of Cuzco. Oropesa is best known for its bread, seems like the biggest activity in Oropesa are bakeries that supply bread to the city of Cuzco.

The “Valley of the South” with its towns of Saylla, Oropesa, Tipon and Andahuaylillas is well worth a visit while you are in Cuzco. Many tour operators offer day-trips, but you can also hop on a bus (“combi”) and explore the area on your own. You can eat yummie chicharron in Saylla or “Cuy” in Tipon. Tipon also has ancient Inka ruins that rival Machu Picchu only with far fewer tourists. Most “Valley of the South” day trips end in Andahuaylillas, where you can visit the Sistine Chapel of the Andes – an outwardly unassuming looking little church with stunning murals on the inside.

Of course if you have kids along don’t forget to stop at Jurassic Park Oropesa. Just hop of the bus at the Oropesa stop, walk up the hill to the main square and continue up the hill a few more blocks. There are also taxis waiting by the bus stop that will be happy to take you there. Avoid mototaxis because the hill is kind of steep

Nada, nichts, zilch, nothing.

The final straw came yesterday morning as I started to boil water (we boil our drinking water) and the gas in the kitchen ran out. I called the gas company to bring a new cylinder of gas and, as always, they asked me with how much I would pay. This is so they can make sure the driver has correct change. I mustered up the confidence to open my wallet and saw I had S/.60 (~$21.80) left. A cylinder of gas is S/.35 and change. I don’t think most people tip the driver, but I do. After all, the guy’s delivering cylinders of explosive natural gas on a motorcycle in Peruvian city traffic for 12 hours a day, I think he’s earned a tip.

Since my previous post on day 4 of my “cost of living in Peru” experiment, this is how we’ve spent the last of my $200:

Food: I loose track of how many times I go to Mega – our local grocery store. Since the store is about a half a mile from our house I walk to Mega and back, consequently I only buy as much as I can carry (and still chase the baby if I need to). I think I go to Mega 4-5 times per week. I spent S/.20 at Mega yesterday and S/.36 the day before if I remember well. Some time earlier during this experiment I spent S/.170 or so at Mega because we bought expensive items like laundry detergents, etc.

Bread, snacks, etc: I spend S/.2.00 for fresh bread every morning and occasionally S/.6.00 – S/.10.00 to buy yummie treats at the bakery in the afternoon. I often take Pitufiloquita to the park in the morning and we both get our S/.1.00 ice cream when the sun is out.

Restaurants: Saturday we ate at “Sr. Panda”, a nice little restaurant right by our house. We like it because the food is good and reasonably priced, it’s only a block away, and “Sr. Panda” is about the only place in Cuzco (maybe all of Peru) where you can get good, hot and greasy chicken wings.

We also like “Sr. Panda” because right nextdoor is an arcade where I can take Pitufiloquita while we’re waiting on the food – just so she doesn’t raise too much cane in the restaurant

I believe I spent S/.28 (~$10) at Sr. Panda and maybe S/.5 – S/.8 at the arcade.

Mamacita and Pitufiloquita playing at the arcade

Brianna getting ready to race at the arcade

Long story short, I managed to make it through a week on $200. That’s about right as far as our cost of living here in Peru goes. Our rent is $220 per month, our bills are around $200 (some are discretionary such as cellphones and satelite TV) and with food, restaurants, day trips and the like we usually spend between $1,000 – $1,400 per month for a family of three (5 if you include the mutts).

When I lived by myself in the US my bills were around $2,400 per month just for mortgage, car payment, gas, utilities, etc. That was before buying food and any discretionary things like going out to eat.

How about you, how much is your cost of living and in what area?

Day 1 was easy enough. After paying some regular bills (see previous post) the only money we spent was S/.23.94 (~$8.86) at “Mega”, our local grocery store. Mamacita got a few things at “Mega” and we had our famous homemade salchipapas for dinner:

Homemade salchipapas

Salchipapas are a favorite Peruvian snack: a mix of french fries and deep fried slices of hot dog. Yumm!! Most Peruvians eat their salchipapas with lots of sauces (ketchup, mayo, aji, etc) but I prefer mine just with plenty of salt.

Day 2 of my “cost of living” experiment wasn’t bad either. The only things we bought were bread in the morning and some paltas (avocados) to make fajitas for dinner at night. In the US many people assume that all Latin American food is like Mexican food, but that’s not true at all. Peruvian food is nothing like Mexican food. Having said that, my homemade fajitas didn’t turn out bad at all

Day 3: now it gets bad

It’s my own fault, we had to spend some money. A few days ago I lost my cellphone, been looking for it ever since but it didn’t turn up. In Peru cellphones get robbed all the time, but in my case I’m certain I just misplaced it (or pitufiloquita may have taken it out of my coat pocket and disappeared it somehow). I can live without a cellphone, but the trouble is that I just sent out a few resumes to my potential dreamjob, and the resumes of course have my phone nr on them. Mamacita has threatened if I don’t get a real job by the time I’m 40, that we’re all moving back up North – so I can’t afford to miss any phone calls

Our plan to replace my phone was very Peruvian: mamacita has various cellphones and doesn’t use all of them. Since her phones are with a different company, we decided to take one of her unused cellphones to “Centro Commercial Paraiso” to have it unlocked. “Paraiso” is one of the less reputable markets in the Santiago district of Cuzco. A lot of stolen cellphones end up there to be unlocked and resold.

Mamacita thought we would be able to unlock her phone for S/.10 and buy a new chip at Movistar for another S/.10 but we had no such luck. Mamacita’s cellphone is a nicer new model, and nobody at “Paraiso” was able to unlock it for us. I gave up and we went back to Movistar to buy a new phone (S/.109 or about $40) and new chip so I could retain my phone number.

On the way back from the cellphone store we spent S/.39.40 (~14.59) at “Mega” again. Just some supplies, drinks, juices, etc. I drink a lot of juice in Cuzco, not sure if it’s the altitude or why?

KFC in Cuzco, Peru:

Later in the afternoon on day 3 mamacita spent some time with Maria, one of her best friends, to work on their univeristy thesis (presentation next Wednesday!!!). Exhausted and hungry from all their hard work, mamacita and Maria wanted to go eat at KFC at the Plaza de Armas late in the evening.

The KFC restaurant in Cuzco recently opened up in the spot where Cafe Ayllu used to be at the Plaza de Armas. I don’t care too much anymore for American style fast food, but since this is only the third American style fast food restaurant in Cuzco (the others are McDonalds and Bembos) I understand that mamacita and Maria wanted to try it out. In my opinion the food at KFC in Peru is better than KFC in the US. I haven’t eaten at KFC in the US in a long time, but I remember some years ago eating at KFC and thinking that the Colonel would have been ashamed if he was around to see what the food had become. Here in Peru the KFC chicken is pretty good, although in Cuzco I prefer “Brosso” for fried chicken and if you want really yummie fried chicken I think La Paz (Bolivia) has the best.

KFC restaurant at the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco, Peru

Inside the KFC restaurant in Cuzco

We spent something like S/.51 (~$18.75) for the big combo at KFC. Pitufiloquita was her wild usual self inside KFC. She managed to stay out of major trouble until she jumped and fell of one of the bench seats, but no harm done. At least no food ended up on the floor…

Yesterday was day 4 of my “cost of living in Peru” experiment. I didn’t really spend any money other than fresh bread in the morning (S/.2.00), S/.36 in groceries at Mega and S/.3.00 for more fresh bread, the Peruvian national bread pan ciabatta in the evening.

Conclusion:

I started out with $200 (S/.544) in my wallet on Tuesday. Right now I’m scared to look in my wallet, I’m hoping to at least make it through the weekend without having to hit the bank again

Dave and I used to work together. He was on my “team” at GE, now he’s moved on to management. Dave cut his teeth in aviation as a US Marine. He was a young Marine still in technical training when he started dating a cute young Navy electrician. If memory serves me they were both based in San Diego. I guess Dave didn’t understand at the time why this cute young thing didn’t seem to have a lot of dates and he took to liking her. After they’d been dating for a while, cute young electrician one night tells Dave that she is a witch. A bona fide practicioner of witchcraft, trained by her mother who was also a witch. I think cute young witch grew up in California, so that explains a lot.

Dave’s a good man and a God fearing Christian, the idea of dating a witch didn’t appeal to him too much but since he’d already been dating cute young witch for a while, he also didn’t break up with her right away. If I remember the story well, over a Christmas break he just decided not to call cute young witch and not to look her up after he got back to base. He didn’t really break up, he just disappered. In short, he woosed out.

The story ended with Dave standing around with his buddies one day when cute young witch snuck up on them and punched or yelled at Dave in front of all his buddies.

“You could have at least called!!!!”

And all Dave’s buddies: “Boohoo! She’s gonna put a spell on you!!!”

I never had the courage to ask Dave if cute young witch’s boobs felt really cold or not…

At any rate, the reason for all this talk about cold, is that it’s been unusually cold and rainy in the Cuzco area the past week or two. Normally between May and November the weather in Cuzco is great: sunny, dry and 21 degrees C (~72F) every day, with just a few clouds in the sky. As soon as the sun starts to go down though, it gets cold very fast. So these past couple of weeks, without the typical sunshine during the day, it was cold and miserable in Cuzco. Very unusual.

I had just returned home from a trip with stops in Nunavut (northern Canada), Greenland and Iceland, so you wouldn’t think I’d be cold in Cuzco, but I was.

The East coast of Greenland near Kulusuk

Even after almost 4 years I still have a bit of a hard time with the climate and altitude in Cuzco. Cuzco is at an elevation of 3,400 meters or about 11,000 feet above sea level. I tend to get a little cold or flu more often in Cuzco than I did in the US or Europe. Patricia and Brianna hardly ever get sick, because they were born in Cuzco they are much stronger. I’m weaker than them and Patricia fusses at me every time I catch a cold or flu, but I blame it on being a bottle-fed baby. Silly Europeans and all their progressive nonsense!

Long story short, I’m seriously thinking about moving to the Sacred Valley of the Inca, which is about 3,000 feet (1000 meters) lower elevation than Cuzco and consequently has a milder climate, more tolerable for us gringos. With the boom in tourism and real estate in Peru, I’d like to beg, borrow or steal (not really) some capital and build a few villas in the Sacred Valley of the Inca as an investment project. From a little bit of research we’ve done here, building villas in the valley is a good business, as is building apartments in the city of Cuzco for that matter. I’m told you can make 20% return in less than a year, probably more if you have capital available and don’t need to borrow it. What many people do is build 5-6 apartments, condos or villas, sell all but one and have a free house for themselves at the end of the day.

That’s my plan, all I lack is time and money

Here’s some random pictures of the Sacred Valley of the Inca:

Brianna in Urubamba, Sacred Valley of the Incas

Overlooking the Sacred Valley of the Inca from the shrine of Señor de Huanca

Dining room of a hotel in the Sacred Valley of the Inca

It’s not a bad report, although it’s sensationalized as anything TV usually is. The report only takes 2 snapshots and leaves out the middle class, which is thriving in the city of Cuzco. Life in our middle-class neighborhood is nothing like either the partying tourists or rural poverty that is shown in the video.

As for the rural poverty, the longer I’m in Peru the more reluctant I’ve become to suggest that more money and material possessions equals a better way of life. Having said that, it is hard to comprehend how the South of Peru (especially the regions of Cuzco and Puno) can be so poor and with such bad infrastructure when so much tourist revenue is generated there. That has to be a failure of local authorities.

Much is said in the report about the popularity of Ollanta Humala in the South of Peru. On the surface it may seem that the rural poor support Ollanta Humala because they believe he offers them a way out of poverty. I’m not convinced of that. I think it has more to do with being able to associate with your leaders. The way of life of the market-oriented, neo-liberal ruling class in Lima during the last 10 years or so is completely foreign to the way of life of the rural poor as well as urban poor, and this in my opinion is the reason why the Peru presidential runoff is between Keiko Fujimori and Ollanta Humala, the 2 candidates who represent the greatest perceived change.

What do you think?

This past Easter Sunday we decided to take a trip to Urubamba and eat Easter dinner at “Sol de Mayo”. This in itself was a big step for us. “Sol de Mayo” is one of our favorite restaurants, where you get a heaping plate of excellent typical Andean food. However, “Sol de Mayo” was also the place where Brianna decided to throw noodles on the back of an unsuspecting customer about 6 months ago, and we hadn’t been back there since

Instead of taking the traditional buses from Cuzco to Urubamba, we took one of the “fast cars”. These are simply combis (vans) that drive direct from terminal to terminal, which saves about 20 minutes or so over the traditional buses between Cuzco and Urubamba.

No matter how many times we’ve taken the trip from Cuzco to Urubamba, I still enjoy the beautiful scenery along the way:

Riding from Cuzco to Urubamba, Peru.

So we’re the proverbial fat and happy in the back of our combi, no more than about 1/4 of the way to Urubamba, when the driver pulls over to check the rear tire. No big deal, tires get damaged regularly on the winding / pothole-filled mountain roads. The driver gets back in and gets into a fairly agitated discussion with the boletera (the girl who takes bus fares). The boletera gets on her cellphone and starts an equally agitated discussion with the person on the other end of the line.

Next thing we know the combi turns around and limps back to the nearest service station. By now Patricia is mad because she overheard the driver and boletera discussing something about a problem with the tire before we left. The combi pulls into a service station and we get out.

Combi driver knew tire was bad before leaving Cuzco.

Combi has no spare tire.

Service station has no tires.

So these guys started out on a trip with a known bad tire, no spare tire, and a bunch of paying customers in the back. Oh, and the driver drove like a maniac on the flimsy tire. Only in Peru!

The boletera took off walking, never to be seen again. We waited about 15 minutes hoping that a spare tire would magically appear, but then we just hailed a taxi and went the rest of the way by taxi. Luckily the road from Cuzco to Urubamba is quite busy with numerous combis/buses/taxis, so we didn’t have to wait too long.

After that we had an uneventful trip and a wonderful Easter dinner. Brianna ran around the restaurant and generally acted like the lovely little hellraiser that she is, but at least no food got thrown at anyone

Typical Peruvian food

Easter dinner!

Papi can smile and chew at the same time!

Playing in the park after Easter dinner.