My family
First of all, a bit more about my family. How can you go wrong when the first thing they do on your arrival is offer you coca tea to overcome the effects of altitude sickness? I'm not sure if that is what has done the trick, but I have been OK and am happy to keep taking the medicine, although I am not smoking quite so much here just in case. Apparently, it is tall, skinny people who suffer most from the altitude so no threat to me there...
Palmira, the wife, is an anthropololist, originally from Venezuela, who now teaches the native language, Qechwa, here, while her husband, Lito, coordinates a multi-media project for young artists. As you can imagine, with that sort of profile the house is full of interesting books and colourful artwork but like everywhere in Cusco, there is no heat. This means that my bed is piled high with hundreds of blankets so every night it is like the princess and the pea, but in this case I am the pea.
The only fly in the family ointment is the four-year-old son Rodrigo - the Peruvian Damian - whose favourite sport is Ann-baiting. I nearly committed infanticide the other day when he drenched me with his water pistol. Still, they have really been kind and on Sunday took me out for the day to a little village just outside Cusco, to a restaurant full of Cusqueno families enjoying the sunshine and a delicious lunch of guinea pig (a bit like rabbit in my view, but not something I am in a hurry to try again - alpaca is next on the list to try!)
The main meal of the day is at midday as the altitude makes it hard to digest if you eat to late. Unfortunately, my Spanish classes are in the afternoon so I have to start concentrating when I'd really prefer to take a siesta, but hopefully that will change next week.
Study
Despite the annoyance of being in the afternoon, my classes are pretty good and the school seems well organized, although I got depressed the other day when I was recounting some fascinating anecdote from my past and I realized it happened 20 years ago - a year before my classmate, Ben, was born!
Social life
I have mainly been spending time with the family in a bid to improve my Spanish, but on Friday evening when my first week of study was over, I decided to go to one of the bars on the lovely main square and treat myself to a beer. My first impression of gringo social life is that travellers are incredibly boring. It is all a game of one upmanship. 'I've been helping orphans in Peru for 3 months.' 'That's nothing, I'm in my 10th year saving sexually abused Peruvian midgets.' Still, it is useful hearing people's recommendations of places to go and I hope anyone reading this blog will write and warn me if I start to take on the smug tone of the hardened traveller in this blog. I want this to be a testament to the amateur traveller.
My other social outing was on Sunday evening. I went to a concert given by a group called Alborada - a combination of samponas and an orchestra of backing musicians with violins etc. It was at the sports hall and was packed and I really enjoyed the music and the atmosphere although these guys are really in to reaffirming their Inca roots and that seems to consist of wearing silly clothes, having long hair and jigging around a bit between tunes. A bit of a contrast to Razorlight, which was my last gig.
Next time I'll talk a bit about my trip to Machu Picchu. What an experience.
