Cusco: a break from the norm (9/6-9/21)

22 hours and many films (El Campeon, Beer Fest, Unknown, The Switch, Meet the Fockers, Gifted Hands...I really cannot figure out how they choose films to show) after we left Lima, we found ourselves pulling into the Terminal Terrestre de Cusco. Naturally, I wanted to go to an internet cafe to watch the ¨Cuzco Theme Song¨ from The Emperor´s New Groove, but instead we decided to get a bit of food and walk the mile or so to the Plaza de Armas, otherwise known as ¨the place where you can´t walk more than two feet without being offered a massage, having wool hats shoved in your face, or accidentally ruining a tourist´s ideal photo op.¨

We found the hostel we´d be working at for the next several weeks, checked in with the bar manager, and by 7pm that night Scott was already working his first shift. It´s somewhat difficult to characterize our time working at the bar, as routine is always harder to sensationalize than constant new experiences, but I´ll do my best. We each worked either during the day (a 5- or 6-hour shift) or the night (a 7- to 10-hour shift, depending on if the bar closed at 2am or 5am), and spent the rest of our time in the city sleeping, eating, visiting various attractions (the infamous and incredibly difficult to find Choco Museo and the nearby Incan ruins of Saqsaywaman (see picture), or ¨sexy woman,¨ being the highlights), buying costume pieces for the various parties at the bar, or hanging out in the meat aisle of the nearby warehouse-style market (I think it was all those years as a vegetarian, but I am completely entranced by the pig heads being chopped to bits, mysterious entrails lying on dirty counters, the old women sipping soup contentedly in the midst of horror-movie gore...).
At the hostel, we worked almost entirely with some groups of traveling Aussies, who often convinced us to go out until the morning light. The nights were filled with boisterous guests and weird, 6-year-old-boy antics, while all the while we tried to save money - and inevitably failed - by resisting purchasing giant beers for beer pong or as pool bets. Some of the more notable incidents:

- One night, for lack of anything better to do, several (all?) of the male employees doused their heads in sambuca, then stood in a row. Someone lit the first guy´s head on fire, which he then rubbed on the next person´s head, and so on, until there was a row of seven or eight troll-like fire-heads behind the bar. Scott´s almost didn´t go out, and his eyelashes definitely got burned.

- At some point most nights, there would be a mass exodus for the backyard, where someone would each time come up with a stupider, more dangerous way to set off large amounts of fireworks.

- I was apparently the only person in the bar who could make a chicano, a pisco-based drink that two girls from Lima ordered about five of everyday for the entire week they were there. Of course, I only knew how to make it because they showed me...but it meant that even if I wasn´t working, I was making chicanos.

- Various theme parties, which systematically meant all of the employees and one or two long-term guests dressed up in any of the myriad costumes from the secret costume boxes. Some themes: Ladies Night (featuring boys in dresses and cartoonishly oversized balloon breasts), toga party (reminiscent of my college days...ahh), 80s Night (ideal because when I put on John Farnham´s ¨You´re the Voice,¨ all of the Aussies actually sang along, also because everyone had drawn-on facial hair by the end of the night), and Fetish (lots of feather dusting).

- For about a week, I tried to put together a Pub Quiz. I had the questions. I had the enthusiasm. It got written on the theme board about five different times...and each time it got killed by the bar manager in favor of things like lighting each others´ hair on fire or making people drink beers with cigarette ash in it. I ended up asking my 125 questions to Scott and one other guest on a slow night.

- Movies. Scott and I relished the nights when someone would cut the crazy techno music, turn off all the lights, and put on a film. Those were the easiest times to work, since even the lights in the beer fridge were turned off. Films usually featured Mila Jovavich, the weird Russian chick from Resident Evil.

- One of the many strange items at the bar was a tazer, which - for the first part of our stay - had no batteries, and was therefore harmless. At some point, however, someone invested the 4 soles in order to terrorize the rest of us - I got tazed while sitting at the bar drinking tea one afternoon...
- Towards the end of our stay, both the numbers of guests and workers began to dwindle, and Scott and I began to wonder what we´d be doing to occupy the nights. As it turned out, we needn´t have worried. An alarming trend of taking large quantities of Jaeger bombs in a row (a shot of Jaeger dropped into a glass of Red Bull, then consumed with maximum speed) and then receiving tattoos developed. The tattoos occurred throughout the bar - on tables, couches, stools - and ranged from Incan Sun God faces to BACKWARDS initials (JB inadvertently received ¨BJ¨ in 6-inch tall letters on his shoulder. Whoops).
- One day, when Scott and I were feeling a particular urge to be outside of the hostel, we walked to the Plaza de Armas, and took a seat on the sidewalk near some ladies selling massages. After listening to their lackluster ¨masaje-masaje?¨ for a few minutes, we decided to help. We began aggressively and somewhat furtively offering massages in Spanish to all the white tourists, who were somewhat nonplussed by our apparent inability to speak English. Several of them tried hard to understand us, saying loudly, ¨Only English, sorry!¨ then getting upset when we continued repeating ourselves. Scott started offering people his California driver´s license, whispering enticingly in faux-broken English, ¨...to look is free...¨ Whenever anyone got frustrated and walked away, we´d call imploringly after them, ¨mai-bee lay-ter?¨ Needless to say, the masaje-masaje ladies loved it. We started thinking that perhaps we should come up with our own ¨hustle,¨ since people all over the city sold small batches of everything from papas rellenas to bruschetta. I decided to see how well it would work if we sold brownies, by suggesting ¨brow-nees?¨ to a passing Peruvian man. It got confusing when he thought I was referring to his skin tone...I decided to change my tactic and instead offered him ¨pan kekes,¨ and he was incredibly relieved that apparently all the gringa was trying to say to him was the word for pancakes. It was this day that we also developed the incredibly effective ¨spin tactic¨ - when someone offers you something and you´d rather not have to be persistent in your refusal, simply continue walking past them, but start spinning in a slow circle. It has the effect of both perplexing and amusing them, while removing you from an awkward situation.

- One day, we decided to actually put one of our ¨hustle¨ plans into action. We bought cake mix and a pineapple, and built an incredibly burnt cake in the hostel kitchen, using Rita Smith´s painfully sweet water-and-powdered-sugar frosting recipe. The piña cake was good, but didn´t hold together too well, so we ended up feeding it to everyone at the hostel, who unanimously agreed it was ¨muy rico.¨ (This is what you say when you don´t know what else to say about a food item.)
- Gambling. As I´ve mentioned, Scott likes to gamble, and there were two casinos directly next door to the hostel. One of them specialized in delicious cappuccinos, tiny but scrumptious sandwiches, and little plates of delicate chocolates, so we played lots of roulette in exchange for these ¨free¨ treats.
- As a parting gift, Scott and I signed my Cuenca jersey and wrote various ridiculous but signature sayings on it (including a rendering of the BJ tattoo, the saying ¨Rest in Piss,¨ and ¨Pete! Pete! Pete!¨), then hung it on the wall above the bar for all to see. Wonder how long that´ll stay there...
Overall, it was quite an experience, and although it wasn´t difficult working at the bar (it mostly consisted of handing out beers, watching TV, making a mojito once a week, and running down to the kitchen to bring people food), it was nice when we finally broke out of the routine of going to sleep after 3am and waking up after 11am. It just felt like a healthy decision the morning we woke up at 4am to leave for a 5-day hiking trek to Machu Picchu.