Who moved my Sushi?: Friend, new and old // Lima & Cusco, Peru part 2 // September 14

Lima take 2

Alas, I had to return to the grey city for a couple of nights as I was meeting Derek on the 15th to set off for Cusco. I suppose I didn’t have to spend 2 nights here, but I was getting a bit tired of doing nothing in Huaraz (I was sick and had to conserve my hiking muscles for the upcoming 5-day Salkantay Trek, and other than hiking there’s nothing much else to do around here), and I was quite keen to dig into the restaurant scene a bit more in Lima. So I left the blue skies and snowy mountainous views of Huaraz on a day bus, 9 hours later I was back in the concrete coloured capital, greyness rushing back into my veins as the bus crawled through rush-hour traffic.

Leaving the blue skies and chill vibes. of Huaraz

Ceviche at Mercado de Surquillo

For dinner, Google maps guided me to a fancy mercado (Mercado 28) - a food market or food hall, somewhere where it is socially acceptable to dine alone but also potentially find another single diner or two to mingle with. After circling the food court 2.5 times inspecting all the stalls and their offerings, which ranged from ceviche to sushi, steak to seafood, fried rice to ice cream, I settled on tacos and seated myself at a counter by the window; and sure enough, a lady put some food next to me and asked if I could watch her seat while she got more food. When she came back, we started chatting and she graciously shared her food with me. I told Danielle from NYC about my plans to try out a famous chocolate & churros place the next day and invited her to join me, so we exchanged numbers and went back to our respective hotels to pass out.

The next day, Danielle joined me at a “real” (wet) market for ceviche (Mercado De Surquillo), and then we walked back to the Miraflores area and got chocolate and churros from Manolo’s. We exchanged our IGs, and she is now my info portal to the pandemic situation in NYC and US politics.

Churros y chocolate @ Manolo's

New food buddy

Cusco - 15-17 Sep

Ceviche @ Punto Azul

When I told friends and family I was going to travel around Central & South America for 6 months, a number of them expressed what seemed like real enthusiasm to join me on parts of my adventure (while a larger number of people expressed horror of the idea of me travelling ALONE in ‘THESE parts of the world’.) In the end, only 3 people joined me, and it was all in the space of 1 month. Understandably, it is quite a lot to ask given how far South America was from anywhere, especially Asia. And I didn’t have solid plans before I started my trip, only had a vague outline of which country I might be in at which month.

So it was really nice to see my first familiar face Derek who flew into Lima from Seattle on the 15th. We spent the morning catching up over chocolate & churros (again), and ceviche (again), before getting to Lima airport in the nick of time for our flight to Cusco.

We were to acclimatise to the altitude in Cusco (at 3400m) for two nights before embarking on the 5-day Salkantay Trek from just outside Cusco to the ancient city of Machu Picchu, covering 80km of trekking and climbing up to 4650m ASL.

Cusco is a much much more interesting and pleasant city than Lima - partly helped by the weather being nice and sunny and dry, but also because it has so much more history as it was the ancient capital of the vast Inca Empire. When the Spanish conquerors came in 1530s, they found a ‘very noble and great’ city, and many buildings constructed after the Spanish conquest have a mix of Spanish and Incan architecture. They Spanish built a new city on the foundations of the old Inca city, replacing Incan temples with churches and palaces for the Spanish.

Old food and travel buddy

Derek and I spent a day and a half wandering the cobbled streets, in and out of the cathedrals and ancient temples, petting baby alpacas, eating at nice Peruvian restaurants in the main square as well as sampling fruit juices and $3 chicken noodles in San Pedro market. And a lot of shopping, as you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing a shop selling alpaca-wool sweaters or an old lady on the street with her ‘alpaca’ knitted accessories strewn across a mat on the floor. On the night before the trek we attended a briefing which foretold us of the challenges that we were about to face - the kilometres upon kilometres of hiking, the thousands of metres of altitude change, the campsites, and the final reward - a T-shirt!!

I mean, Machu Picchu.