A bit of randomness from Cusco, Peru

Still no pictures, sorry. The computers in Peru seem to suck worse than those in rural Ecuador.

The Grocery Store
Almost everyone that knows me at all knows that I hate going to the grocery store. Well, going to a grocery store in another country makes the experience a bit of an adventure and you find yourself laughing when you realize how brand dependent you really are. I wanted to make tuna salad and eat it with saltine crackers...a few problems: 1)there are a MILLION kinds of tuna, but of course known of them have the friendly little whale on them that you know and trust and almost all of them come with aceite y sal (oil and salt). I ended up paying extra for the ONE type I found that came in water. 2)Pickles or relish. I made friends with an Argentino also attempting to shop and we searched everywhere for pepinos. The closest we got was a cucumber. He and I had a good laugh at how stupid we felt about lamenting over which kind of coffee and crackers to buy. 3)Mayo. There are officially 5 different types/flavors of mayo one can buy...I literally mean actual difference in the mayo and not the brand. Needless to say, shopping turned out to be really funny.

Indian Store
I ducked into this little shop on the way back from the grocery store and I thought of Mom and Auntie. It was a store that only sold Indian influenced clothing and jewelry owned and run by Peruvians. There was a Baliwood movie on in the back of the store and everything. I wanted to take a picture, but I had left my camera in the hostal.


Cocaine
There is a bar that is part of the hostal we´re staying at and there was a party here last night. It was a lot of fun and everyone danced a ton. My friend of one day,Molly from Colorado, accidentally punched me in the eye when she got too animated telling a story. I got a free beer out of it as I needed something to make sure the eye didn´t swell. Haha. Beyond dancing and fun, there was also a lot of cocaine at the party. Drugs are totally against the rules here, but every time I went into the bathroom there were like 8 huges lines of cocaine ready to go and plenty of people (more natives than foreigners actually) ready to take em. People were eager is offer it up to others, but no one was like seeking people out to do lines (I obviously declined..just in case anyone wasn´t sure).Coke is so cheap here that it´s definitely not a middle class drug like it usually is in the states. It was an interesting experience.

Off tomorrow at 6:15am for the Inca Trail.