Last Friday we went to Cusco again for an overnight stay. We didnt travel in until the afternoon so I didnt bother contacting Juan this time. It rained heavily so I didnt feel like going to KamiKase either, getting soaked to the skin before even arriving there, even though I am sure Juan would have accompanied me had I asked. On Saturday morning Nohemy went back to Urubamba immediately after breakfast as the workmen were due to arrive, and Alfredo accompanied me to a street market where we were going to buy a kitten. Alfredo let me choose and I picked out a tiny female, with tiger markings in pale grey and white, a really timid little thing. Once in the carro and on our way back to Urubamba I had her on my lap and she seemed happy enough. When we got her home though she almost escaped so I went out and bought a collar and lead from a nearby vets, plus a supply of kitten food, and we made her comfortable in a nice box lined with old sweaters and a nearby litter tray of soil from the garden - which she has used right from the outset, with no nasty accidents indoors. We have named her Poppikins (my first choice was Poppy but that is a name for tomcats here). She is very affectionate and when we are playing monopoly in the evenings I tuck her into my shirtfront and she is happy snuggled in there, and fascinated watching the dice land on the board and sometimes a little paw comes out and swipes at one of them! Not long after I got her settled in at home one of the musicians phoned and said they were having a drink in La Chinita and asked me to join them, so I did and spent a couple of enjoyable hours with them. Whilst there I met Wilber´s friend Raoul who was visiting Urubamba along with his wife and two young sons. He lives in Esaraty which is beyond Quillabamba and is also a musician.
On Sunday Nohemy, Alfredo and I decided to visit the Sunday street market in Calca which is about an hour by bus through the villages of the Sacred Valley. The market was huge and we spent a couple of hours wandering round it and stocked up on lots of fruit and veg - the papayas especially are exceptionally delicious in Calca, and enormous too - any one of them can weigh several kilos. Afterwards we found a nice restaurant and enjoyed a good lunch before travelling back.
On Monday I went to the restaurant again and Raoul was there accompanying Wilber as they played for the tourists and afterwards we all shared a litre of beer and were chatting, and as usual the restaurant owners invited me to partake of the lunch buffet for free and are always urging me to visit for lunch as often as I want, although I try not to take too much advantage of that and usually go just twice a week. Whilst chatting Raoul said I could pay a visit to him as Esaraty is a beautiful place, an hour by carro from Quillabamba, that he and his wife have a restaurant there and would be really pleased if I would go and visit them. I said I might be able to in January but then he said why wait that long, why not come real soon. I told him I was committed to attend a wedding on 5th December and he said I was perfectly welcome to go and visit them before that and turned to Wilber and said why don´t you come along too so that you can accompany Angela on the journey. So all being well I may be paying a visit to Quillabamba and Esaraty next week which will be fun. I went to the restaurant again on Tuesday thinking Raoul might be playing there with Wilber again, but he had gone on a last visit to Cusco before returning to Quillabamba next day. I will be going to the restaurant again the day after tomorrow, Monday, to see if the trip is still on and if so, we will probably go and buy the bus tickets with a view to travelling on Wednesday. Fortunately we can get the bus from Urubamba without having to go to the terminal in Cusco, as Urubamba is on the way to Quillabamba. It is an 8 hour journey and if possible it would be good to travel overnight in order to arrive there in the morning. Raoul´s family have a chacra which is a kind of andean farm, an hour zig zagging up a mountain and we will visit there too - they grow their own coffee as well as coca leaves to dry and sell. It will be a new experience to see that. Alfredo´s brother has a guesthouse and shop in Quillabamba so I might spend a couple of nights there as well on the way back.
On Wednesday Nohemy, Alfredo and I went to Cusco again for an overnight stay. We left after lunch and yet again it was raining (although still sunny in Urubamba - fortunately now that the rainy season has begun it mostly only rains in Urubamba at night, whereas there is heavy rainfalls in Cusco by day and by night). We took Poppikins with us, made comfortable in a box placed inside a large textile bag and sorted out a litter tray at the house for her. I went to an internet cafe later and whilst there had a phone call from Henry - the young guy whose wedding I am attending on 5th December as godmother and witness - he needed a photocopy of my passport for the Town Hall, one of the requisites needed from participating people in the wedding. People have identity cards here but in my case a passsport copy sufficed. I said I did not have my passport with me, that I was in Cusco (whereas he was visiting Urubamba from Cusco!) so he suggested we meet in Cusco next morning and I agreed.
After breakfast next morning Nohemy and Alfredo returned to Urubamba and I made my way into the centre by bus (I am learning how to get around Cusco by bus now - it is a really cheap form of travel with a set fare of 10p, compared to 60p in a taxi, so a worthwhile saving, especially as I pay for the three of us whenever we travel anywhere. I was waiting outside a tour trek office for Henry - having got there earlier than expected - when I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was another friend called Gorky - I am godmother to his and Lydia´s son Sebastian and he said he could hardly believe it when he looked out of the window and saw me standing outside! He told me Lydia now has her shop right on Plaza de Armas and I said I would go and visit her on my next visit to Cusco. Henry then arrived and I suggested we went into a nearby coffee shop and asked if just providing the number of my passport would suffice and he said we could go to the town hall and find out. Outside he carried my bag (having already met Poppikins who sat on my lap in the coffee shop) and said we could drop her and my things off at his place first as it wasnt too far away. We hopped into a taxi, him in the back with Poppikins and my bag and me in the front. We hadn´t gone far when he said ´´Angela, when we get to my place we will have to give Poppy a bath!¨ Yes you´ve guessed it, she had had a little accident! When we got to Henry´s place he was brilliant with her, washed her feet under a running tap and dried them with tissues, and sorted out a lacy shawl for her to lie on and we left her with food I had with me and set off for the town hall.
We discovered that a photocopy of my passport was definitely needed so decided he would accompany me back to Urubamba later in order to fetch my passport and get a copy made. We were on Plaza Tupac Amaru on one corner and he showed me the church on the opposite corner diagonally where he and Carmen would be married. The church ceremony is at 7.30 pm on Saturday 5th December, and the civil ceremony will take place in the Hall of Exposition at 9.30 where the reception is being held. At weddings here the bride chooses someone as a godfather and one of the witnesses and the groom chooses a godmother who is the other witness - the latter being me!
After exiting the town hall and seeing the church Henry took me to a nearby cafe where a friend of his works and treated me to Caldo de Gallino, Limeno style which is a delicious soup with a whole chicken breast in it, a whole hard boiled egg, potatoes, spaghetti, herbs etc, which is then altered to taste with juice from limons and the addition of a spicy chilli relish - very delicious it was too.
After that we met a friend of his from the Superior Institute of Haute Cuisine, where they are both studying and where Henry will soon graduate with his Master´s degree - he had shown me his thesis at his home which is more like a book. We walked to the Institute which took about 30 minutes, walking through a neighbourhood called Progreso which is very tranquil and with lots of pretty parks and we took a few photos on the way. I then waited in Reception whilst they dropped off some papers and we headed back to collect Poppikins who looked really happy and settled when we got back, snuggled in to one of Carmen´s lacy shawls. And although we´d left no litter tray, fortunately there had been no little accidents.
We then travelled back to Urubamba and first went to visit Henry´s parents who had not yet met the person who would be godmother at the wedding. Their home is high above La Chinita restaurant (which Henry used to run before moving to Cusco to be nearer his fiancee) and now only opens at weekends as a bar, his Dad managing the beer sales and his Mum selling the local brew, Chicha, which she makes herself. They welcomed me warmly and next minute beers and cokes were being brought up from the bar and a table set up outside on their patio and we chatted and enjoyed the drinks. They had four little kittens about the same age as Poppikins but she nearly had a heart attack when one of the children introduced them and leapt back into her box! His parents then suggested Henry take me up to visit their chacra, telling me I would love it. So we dropped Poppikins and my bag off, got my passport and had it photocopied, and then got a moto as far as the cemetery where the paved road ends and becomes a stony uneven track winding upwards. We walked from there and it was very pleasant with birds singing in the trees, the water gushing down in a stream alongside from the snow peaks of Pumawanca mountain above. After about 15 minutes we climbed a wall and walked through a field of maize which was the beginning part of the chacra, then followed a tiny canal a foot wide, then a path through a forest until we reached cultivated terraces of other plants and flowers and climbed down these walls into another maize field and this eventually gave way to potato plantations and then orchards full of fruit trees. Henry found a bag and was picking peaches, a fruit similar to blackcurrants but bigger, tiny wild strawberries, bay leaves, oval pale green skinned cucumbers that are added to fruit juices here, tree tomatoes which are oval in shape, boiled, skinned and mashed into a popular table condiment here, and finally climbed a tree to find the ripest cenizas which are like a cross between an apricot and yellow plum. We then walked through an enclosure full of tame ducks and chickens, including roosters and chicks, with their own water supply - plus a type of barn full of guinea pig runs - although Henry said they had recently been robbed of 80 of them. Considering that guinea pig costs 8 times more than any other meat here, someone would have made a fortune out of that little lot. As well as all the fruit and veg they also cultivate lots of different flowers. I took some great photos of that chacra which will appear in the photostream in a couple of weeks or so. There was a guy tending the crops who also lives there and acts as custodian along with some dogs - none of whom are fierce enough to ward off potential robbers! At one point Henry was helping me up a wall and said ´give me your hands´and when I did so we both almost landed on the ground and the old guy split his sides laughing. Poor Henry hadn´t realised how heavy I am!!! We walked back by a different route which was like a stony lane with the narrow canal flowing in the middle, and we could see bulls tethered either side who watched as we passed by. I was glad they were tethered as the wall between us wasn´t very high! I told Henry I thought it was a paradise of a place and he agreed and said he wished he could visit it more often. He said that soon after the wedding he would invite me, Alfredo and Nohemy to join his family there for a day and that he would cook for us too. His parents know Nohemy and Alfredo so they have been invited to the wedding too. Back in Urubamba centre once more he treated me to a chicken dinner before saying goodbye as he wanted to rush back for another visit with his parents before going back to Carmen in Cusco. I had really enjoyed that whole day with him, having only expected to be with him about half an hour that morning! I might not see him again before the wedding unless I am back from Quillabamba in the week before the ceremony if he should pay a visit to Urubamba again then. My next blog entry will feature the last of the special events celebrating 170 years of Urubamba (a major event celebrating Inca times with costumes etc), plus the visit to Quillabamba and Esaraty if it takes place, and probably the wedding on 5th December.
