Olah!
Today was our earliest rise so far... had to be at our work site by 9 which is wayyyyy out of the way, at least 20-25 minutes from where we are staying in Cusco by taxi. After the sketchiest 20-25 minutes of our lives (without really recognizing anything en route from the day before, and with pseudo-faith in our driver) we arrived at our placement!
Today was a really productive day, with very little down time and loads of manual labor. As soon as we got there Marco (the foreman) got us to bring up bags of cement mix (110 pounds a pop!) from the bottom of a huge hill to the top where our daycare is. After 10 minutes I was pretty much gassed, and then I got to bring 2 wheelbarrow loads of fine cement (for solidifying the foundation from the inside) from the storag shed (probably 100 meters from the daycare, nopt complaining!)
I filled in the inner foundation with another woman from South Africa, which was pretty tricky in`places because there were fairly deep holes in the cement we were filling in. But after a while we figured out the right consistency to mix up the cement so it was a lot of fun! Really similar to mixing up mortar for layin ceramic tile if you´ve ever done that before! This finer cement apparently burns your hands when it mixes with water so we had to wear gloves, and every time we mixed up a new batch (it dried quickly so had to mix A LOT of batches) dust would form a billowing cloud and there was no way to avoid breathing it in. Nasty stuff to say the least, masks would definitely not go astray.
Angie was on plaster duty all day.. she pretty much plastered her whole house so she was already an expert at it :P Only problem was the ceilings are at least 9 feet tall, and we don´t have a ladder so no one can really plaster the upper walls! She rigged up some bricks for steps but without a ladder, no one but Shaq was getting up there.
So tomorrow I guess we will figure out some way to get up there with the plaster..we are just touching up things tomorrow (chistling down imperfections in the walls and floors and plastering a ceiling) and the painting will be done once all the plaster and concrete dries.
After construction we followed our group to a random Combi we´d never taken before (different route). On our walk to the random Combi, we noticed how you could probably paint a picture of the entire region with varying shades of brown (with the exception of occasional greens or yellows).
And then we got lost.
Instead of ending up at the main Plaza, we got off close to our homestay (15+ minutes from the Plaza, lol) Apparently that Combi goes way, way out past the district of Cusco into another ¨Plaza de Armas¨, so for anyone planning on coming to these parts, theres a ¨Plaza de Armas¨ for every district. Wish we thought of that... almost ending up leaving the city! The district of Cusco is within the city of Cusco but there are different districts, or something along those lines.
So after 45 minutes of Combi riding, a 15 minute taxi ride and 15 minutes of walking around, we finally got to Jacks Cafe (our safe haven for cuisine in Cusco). At this point we were pretty well on the verge of collapsing from hunger so we ate a small feast before proceeding to the next destination. Christo Blanco.
It wasn´t as far up as we expected it to be, but a 30 minute trek up cobblestone steps after 3 hours of construction was pretty taxing to say the least! When we finally made it to the top there was huge white statue of Chirst himself (surrounded by a barbwire fence), many merchants selling the typical Cusco merchandise, and most importantly a llama to take pictures with. After we´d had our share of llama pictures and the city (we were at around 3600 m at this point, so we had an amazing view of the entire city!) we decided to head back and down and explore the side streets close to Plaza de Armas some more. We found a few gems for restaurants, including a hippy-ish restaurant/bar/swingers club called the Muse. Literally felt like we walked into an Austin Powers movie.. all sofas and poofy chairs, low tables, and a 5-song playlist with Kings of Leon and Radiohead playing on repeat.
After we finished up at Muse, we dropped into Maximo to finalize our arrangements for the trips to Puno/ Lake Titicaca and the Amazon (SOOO EXCITEDD!!!) We were still wearing shorts and t-shirts and it had dropped to around 5 degrees Celsius at this point, so we were basically on the war path to get to Maximo and then to get a taxi to avoid getting hypothermia, or at the very least buy some clothes off a street merchant out of desperation.
We had planned to meet up at Normans Tavern for a drink with the construction team, but only Angie myself and the woman who I was paired with at construction and her son showed up. We ended up having a drink at the pub (Angie daringly ordered a Pisco Sour, the countries drink of choice, with no egg white... it tasted like a Whisky Sour from ack homek, but 100000 times more sour) before coming back to the Muse later in the night to try and make it for happy hour. Turns out we missed it by around 10 minutes, so we decided to just split a bottle of Champagne between the 4 of us.
It tasted like dirt. But it was cheap as dirt. No harm, no foul I guess... I still drank close to half of it so no complaints here :P
And now its just after 1230 here and we are volunteering (final day tomorow! :( ) at 9 am so I s´spose I´ll head off to bed.. more to come tomorrow hopefully! Doubt there´ll be another post until Saturday after tomorrow as the Titicaca Tour sounds to be very old-school (a.k.a, nar bit of internet)
Until next time, Buenos noches and word to your moms!
(<3 u mudder!)
-DD
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