Over the past few weeks, I've begun to feel more grounded, swapping the fast paced traveling for a slower more indepth approach to exploring a single place. My small hostel has grown into my temporary home which is helped by the fact that I have my own room and more or less free reign of the kitchen. The intimate dining-come common area has a wall of windows overlooking the outstreached valley of Cusco that's forever overlooked by an ominous backdrop of Andean mountains. With such a location and the means to cook, it's become an ideal place for entertaining and socializing.

25/12/08

Christmas was no different and Aiden (a very Irish, Irish guy who works in an Irish bar in town) and I decided we'd get the biggest Turkey we could carry from the fantastic San Pedro market.

The San Pedro market, close to the heart of Cusco, is a never ending frenzy of activity, with a hubbub of optimistic haggeling throughout. Cheap but amazingly tasty food is serverd at bar-like counters with everything from fruit smoothies, raw fish prepared in lime juice to the local speciality of Guinea pig. For the more adventuros chefs, cows heads, hoofs, spines and tounges are waiting to be made into who knows what. But for the most part the fresh smells and spices intice and turn heads in every direction.

Having bought a Turkey big enough to get a part as the Trojan horse in a school play, we quickly realised our kitchen lacked one vital ingredient . . . . . . an oven. With the prospect of chewing on boiled bird for the next month, we asked around to see what a local might do in our situation. To our suprise ovens are exclusivly status symbols of the Peruvian upper class and the vast majority think 'Russel and Hobbs' is a bad comedy duo. The result is an act of community, now lost in most parts of the West. The local bakeries offer up their gigantic clay ovens for one day only to anyone and everyone who need them.

We found ourselfves standing amoungst a gaggle of middle-aged Peruvian women, turkeys in hand, everyone with elbows out (chicken style), fighting for position. The man who carried the fate of a hundred families Christmasses on his shoulders was the sweat soaked baker, who had reportedly been working for 24 hours straight. We watched in amazment as he expertly shuffled and juggled each dinner to be, with a long wooden paddle that wouldn't have looked out of place on a Viking gallion. After three hours we returned to a perfectly cooked Turkey and a baker, continuing to shovel in new ones like coal into a steam engine. After a quick thank you toast, we headed back for a few unhealthly hours of indulgence.

Later we were joined by a few others from the hostal and Ciara and Harriet, who I'd met a week before. Fuelled by mulled wine and The Pogues singing in the background, much nonsense was talked and aimless games played. To get a taste of what was happening in the centre, we headed for a late night bar, leaving behined our still relativly untouched tasty turkey and a small bomb sight of drinks and candle wax. The bad singing to bad Christmas songs (Pogues excluded) continued where they left off, stopping only to say goodnight to a Kiwi from the hostal named Nick, who left declaring hunger had found him again.

A few of us, back in front of the panoramic view of the hostal windows, watched the sun slowly melt the top of the mountains. The moment was broken by Aiden's cry of 'what the #&€%!!' as he presented us with a completely stripped carcus, that a forensic scientist would have trouble identifying as our once plump turkey. To get to the bottom of this culinary crime, the next few minutes followed like the final scene of an episoed of Columbo with the conclusion coming down to a break-in by a pack of street dogs or our peckish companion from New Zealand. But it was agreed best left, till sleep could clarify the final finger point.

Around midday, the culprit turned himself in, red faced and apologetic. It turned out it was Nick after all and not the wild dogs (as was the popular opinion). Like a wise man, he came baring gifts, a box of chocolates and a cooked, ready to eat chicken. In the spirit of Christmas, all was forgiven and we wished him well as he left for pastures more plentiful. The extent of his gorging only became fully apparent later on, when the hostel owner discovered that his chicken leftovers had also been devouered. The man had eaten more than a herd of hungry hippos at a cheap buffet.

31/12/08

Fireworks are a common commodity in Cusco and most mornings you are woken up with the horrific thought that your neighbour has just faced a firing squad. New Years eve is slightly special though, anyone with a patch of land to there name (and ones without) stock up with any and every type of explosive they can get there three fingered hands on. An hour before the turn of the year, at eleven on the dot, every house, church, workplace, barn and park plays host to a display. I was fortunate enough to witness these displays from the top of a large hill, overlooking the entire town. I can honestly say it was one of the most encredible sights I've ever witnessed, it was too much to take in with one pair of eyes. The valley became a glow as a million multicoloured explosions filled the air in a relentless 10 minute cycle where new flashes replaced dying embers over evey square inch of the city. The effect was like a night sea swamped with glowing jellyfish, speaking in a jumbled morse code.

With flames still dancing in my eyes, I headed down to the main square for the countdown. Suddenly, as if the sky was replying to the earlier barrage the rain started to fall. However the downpour didn't seem to dampen the spirits, and a massive crowd had gathered in expectency. In keeping with Latin America's relaxed approach to the concept of time, there was no countdown, nor did anyone really know when it started to be 2009. This led to a prefered sucession of multiple celebrations that culminated in a mass movement of people walking, jumping and skipping in a anti-clockwise flow around the main square. The rest of the night is patchy.

03/01/09

Cusco has a relatively big football club, Cienciano, who in 2003 won the Copa Sudamericana (the equivilant of the Champions Leauge in Europe) against River Plate. So they seemed an obvious candidate for some fickel fan adoption. Aiden and I went down to the stadium, deep into the valley. After chatting with the security guard, we soon found to our disapointment, that the season didn't start till February. He did however seem quite proud of the footballing fortress he defended and insisted we come in and look around. We walked around the empty stands, hearing the ghostly raw of an imaginary crowd. We then found the grounds man tentativly preparing the seemingly perfect pitch for the coming season. Once we'd complemented his handy work a couple of times, he agreed to let us on to the sacred turf. I suddenly remembered seeing the security guard's dog chewing on an old football back at the entrance so with the guards help, I destracted the giant German Shepard and grabbed the slobber soaked ball from under its nose. What followed was a two grown men running around like idiots, fulfilling their schoolboy dreams. After unsuccessfully replicating some of the great moments of footballs past, undeservedly complimented by some ridiculous over-the-top goal celebrations, the grounds man had seen enough. We left, clapping to our imaginary crowd and offering to exchange shirts with a team that wasn't there. The grounds man, rolling his eyes, said goodbye through his teeth. The next set of teeth I encountered belonged to the guard dog so I willingly handed him the match ball.

We left with smiles cemented on our faces and commenting on what the reaction might be back home if we tried the same, we started to wonder where else we could get into . . . . . . . .