End of the Year: Pt. 1 - Cuzco, Puma City

Another 5am taxi to the airport. The drive to the airport alternates between light and dark, speed-bump side streets and neon boulevards, toll booths and the shining teeth of incandescent billboards; nothing in Lima is regularized. The airport wait and the flight were thankfully short. By 7am, we were walking out into the mountain morning.

Andrew Pastor (SM 05) met us at the airport. The man who used to live across the hall from me has been living the dream in Cuzco on Uncle Sam's dime for the last month, having spent his time since August toiling in a village three hours outside of town. A much more adventurous man than I, and not just for eating the dubiously priced lunch menus. Weeks of potatoes and chicha will make a man of anyone, even the only gay Jew in all of Peru.

A little about Cuzco: located deep in the Andes at almost 10,000 feet, Cuzco is the oldest continually occupied city in the Americas, stretching back several thousand years before Christ, (the love/hate symbol of the city's destruction.) It's a strange place, nestled between steep mountains and jagged valleys, but by the mid-1400, Cuzco was the center of the Andean world, the capital of the vast Inkan Empire, and home to several hundred thousand people. Of course, then came the conquistadores conquistadoring across the landscape, imperial buildings were dismantled to make churches, and Lima replaced Cuzco as the capital of the new Viceroyalty of Peru. A bunch of history happened after that, whatever.
But then, they came. First the adventurous, then the wealthy, and finally anyone with enough time and money to find their way south. Cuzco depends on tourism for an unbelievable amount of its economy; one woman said 90% of all jobs in the city are directly or indirectly related to the tourist trade since the small industrial sector collapsed. Hell, even Cusquena beer is made in Arequipa. While a boon to the population in general, tourism brings mixed blessings, as it attracts ambulantes, thieves, and everyone else trying to pry another dollar from your hand. More on this later.
I remember being especially exhausted from being up so early in so high a place. Despite a short jaunt to the main square, I was content to nap for much of the day in Andrew's cold bedroom. Ah, but dinner, glorious dinner! Though a generally mediocre meal, I finally broke through the last barrier to my Peruvian heritage - I ate cuy al horno. And alpaca. In the same meal. Alpaca was pretty delicious, very steak like; I could taste the cuteness. Guinea pig is a whole different experience. First, you're not eating an abstract animal; you're literally eating a small beastie and you know it. Because cuy is a complete guinea pig cut lengthwise, boiled, and roasted in an oven, many details remain: eyes, teeth, a nub of a tail, paws. You can even see the defiant sneer on its little guinea pig face. And, to be honest, it wasn't very good. Maybe I just got a dud, but the meat is a little greasy, very tender, and difficult to obtain.
More important than anything, I added another two meats to my life's rich pageant. No bets on what will be next, but penguins, watch your back.