Drinking like the locals do..

This particular little blog bit will be devoted to our drinking expeditions in Cusco. And food.

Firstly, a week ago Saturday, Rafaella and I met an Cusquenen named Puka who was selling his drawings in a bar/club/music place. We met up with Puka the following monday because he promised to take us to a Chicheria. Chicha is an alcoholic drink made from corn. It´s cloudy, doesn´t taste like much, and comes in a really big glass. Oh, and it´s really cheap, unless you´re me and you knock over the glasses as you´re leaving and have to pay 5 soles for it. Two glasses of drink would have cost me just 1 sole, that´s about US$0.30!!!

The chicheria was just a little house that didn´t look like much. We got our goblets and went and sat outside somewhere in the vicinity of the house with an awesome view of the city. You can´t see much of the city in the photo though.

Saturday night before Inti Raymi was meant to be a huge party in town. The night before we had been in the Plaza de Armas too and watched bands playing. We´d also witnessed all the Peruvians drinking out of big soft drink bottles, pouring themselves glasses just slightly bigger than shot glasses and getting more and more drunk. So we thought, tonight, we will do like them and drink out of big bottles and tiny glasses. For 15 soles, about US$5 we got one bottle of rum and a 2.5 litre bottle of coke (Cuba Libre ready to go!) which we then started to mix, in our glasses and into the bottle. Needless to say, very quickly the rum and altitude took their affect on us.

When I took the two bottles back out the next morning the whole bottle of rum was empty and 1/4 of the coke bottle empty too. No wonder we had so much trouble getting up for Inti Raymi the next day.

We then headed to another bar we´d been at before called Siete Angelitos where we moved onto mojitos and danced and laughed and Joey decided we needed more mojitos and suddenly Kristina needed to go outside. Not that the night finished there. In the name of keeping taxis clean I decided it was better that we stay out and dance some more until Kristina was car worthy. Always planning ahead, I am.

After Inti Raymi, for a somewhat delayed hangover breakfast (at 4pm) we decided to try Chicharron
- basically deepfried pork with a big deepfried potato and big bits of corn. Surprisingly enough this can be consumed in a Chicharroneria!! It´s meant to be eaten hot because it´s so incredibly fatty, however ours was lukewarm, two of us ate icecream afterwards and two chocolate cake and when Rafaella was sick the next day everyone had the 2 cents worth to add on what to eat (not cold fatty stuff) and what not to eat (icecream and chocolate cake) and that we´d done it all wrong. Pfft!

I´m yet to try cuy but it´s a bit hard when it looks exactly like a shiny flat guinea pig. I don´t have the other photo with the at the moment, but I´ll post it soon. They even put them up in .. errr... not so tasty poses.. but you´ll see later.

Also yesterday I went to a type of ´show´ like a country fair where I saw lots of massive pigs and massive sheep and bulls and cows and all different types of food including the flat cuy and the whole pig on the BBQ. The other photo of the cuy above was walking back from Inti Raymi. Don´t those teeth look delicious?

It´s off for a 5 day trek past the mountain called Salkantay, sleeping in minus 5-10 degrees, walking up to 9 hours a day, and ending at Machupicchu, so wish me luck!

Happy Birthday Hardy!