Cuy

Well haven’t updated for a while and this will most probably be my last before I start my trek home in 9 days.

A friend of Verónica’s had his birthday last weekend and they invited us to a Flamingo dancing concert, it was free which was surprising considering how good it was. Dancing isn’t really my thing but it was really entertaining, especially the guitarists, they were awesome. Afterwards we went back to their house to have something to eat and drink, it was quite a good night.

Greg & Helen, church friends from NZ, are currently traveling the world and they started in South America earlier this year. Just over a week ago they had made their way to Cusco, so they got to meet Verónica and we hung out with them a bit. It was really cool to see them

They flew out for Lima early this morning so we went out last night for dinner with them. They requested Cuy so Verónica organised a restaurant called Kusikuy to cook us up a couple. There wasn’t much to them really, the texture of the meat was similar to chicken and there wasn’t much taste. Still I’m happy I finally got to try it, have a look at the pics of the poor guys:

Arriving to Piura

Well just got back from a few days in Máncora yesterday. Had a really good time, 5 of us ended up going Verónica, Gissel, Josh & Nadia and me.

Verónica and I took a flight to Lima from Cusco on the 16th in the morning, did some shopping and then went to the airport to meet Josh & Nadia. Their flight had some really rough turbulence (article: Iberia flight from Spain arrives to Peru with 23 injured passengers) so they were a bit shaken up (hahaha I’m so good) when they arrived. We went to Vero’s uncle and aunty’s house, where we stayed the night. They took us out for dinner to a really nice chinese restaurant close to their house. Our flight was at 4am the following morning so we got about 4 hours sleep before we were all heading to the airport again. The flight was to Piura in the north of Perú and we then caught a minivan to Máncora which was about a couple of hours.

We arrived and the weather was really warm, we booked into a hotel called Punta del Mar which Jesse had recommended.

Me ripping it up, ha

We relaxed a lot for the 5 days we were there, the surf was big enough after a new swell hit so Josh and I managed to hire some boards and go out for one surf at the point. The rest of the time we spent walking along the beach, swimming in the pool and lying in the sun. Oh and eating quite a bit of fresh seafood, mainly ceviche mmmmmmmm.

I recommend going there, there’s so many hotels to chose from and judging from the amount of development going on it will be a really popular holiday spot for people visiting Perú. Next time Jesse’s resort Loki del Mar will be finished so that’s where I’ll be staying.

We made our way back to Piura for our flight to Lima, Josh and Nadia were flying out for Mexico City that afternoon. It was a bit sad saying goodbye, being with them at the beach and surfing had made me quite homesick but I’m just glad I’ll be able to enjoy the NZ summer this year.

Francine and Sébastien

This past weekend was Veronica’s cousin Francine’s wedding to Sebastian. The ceremony was at a church in the main square and started at 10:30am. Here they have 2 ceremonies, the religious and the civil, it seems the government doesn’t recognise the ceremony at the church. So after the church ceremony we went to Club Cusco where the civil ceremony was held. Then we went to the reception at Hacienda Gloria (Gloria Estate) up near Sacsayhuamán. It was really nice, every table had a bottle of Black Label Johnnie Walker woohoo haha. The food was over and done with pretty quickly as it’s all about la música y el bailar. So the music and dancing went on for hours finishing around 9:30 10pm. I had never danced so much in my life and it wasn’t just the young people dancing, EVERYONE was. So I danced with the Aunties, uncles etc and Verónica’s dad hahaha it was awesome. Oh and Verónica’s aunty Norka said I danced really well, yeah that’s right the gringo can dance hahaha.

Jesse was having a party at his hostel that night and I really wanted to go but we were just too tired so we went home.

The next day the family had lunch together at a huge restaurant in San Jerome, about 15mins taxi from Cusco city. There were few tired looking faces heh.

Just a quick one cos it’s funny….kinda.

The other night Verónica and I went to a pizzeria for dinner. While we were waiting for the bill I noticed a guy moved and sat behind Verónica and he keep looking down at her butt, I thought well fair enough hahaha I don’t blame him. But the more I looked at him the dodgier he seemed so I thought I better keep an eye on him. Then he takes his jacket off and lays it over his shoulder, and his head keeps looking down, up, down, up really nervously. Verónica’s handbag was beside her on the seat but i thought there’s no way he’d try and take it but yep the next thing I see is his hand come from under his jacket about to grab her bag. Well lets just say I pretty much lost it then, yelling at him (surprisingly no cursing heh not that he would understand) “What do you think you’re doing!!!”, he said some excuse in spanish so I jumped up and was going to lay into him but thought better of it as there were kids right beside us. Hahaha he was crapping himself, so I pointed to the door and told him “Get out!!!”, which he did thank goodness. This whole time Verónica was frozen wide-eyed and didn’t even turn around hahaha, when she finally spoke she said something like “Jamie! I’ve never seen you like that” hahaha it was quite funny although I was shaking quite a bit afterwards.

I couldn’t believe anyone could be so cheeky so I think that’s why I was so angry. It definitely got the adrenaline pumping though.

Lunch

Well I managed over a month without getting really sick, so I lasted longer than I expected. Unfortunately last weekend was probably the most sick I’ve ever been, well the most uncomfortable. We went out to a town called Urubamba with Veronica’s family on Saturday afternoon. Veronica’s Dad’s friend has a house out there, it’s an amazing house, pretty huge. Well we had dinner with their family and I started to get pains in my stomach so I ended up going to bed.

Recovering

I never really got to sleep as I keep burbing, it was horrible, reminded me of the fermentation stage of brewing beer ha. So I ended up spending the majority of the night and morning in the bathroom. At 3am I got quite bad and Diego (Veronica’s brother) ended up getting Veronica to come look after me. She spent the next 3 hours trying to comfort me but the pains in my stomach were so bad I couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep. I think I finally fell asleep just after 6am so it was possibly the worst night I’ve had and I’m glad it’s over.

Well it hasn’t been all bad, the weekend before that was the stag/hens do for Veronica’s cousin and her fiancee. It was pretty much the same as any stag do here except everyone was speaking Spanish and I didn’t know most of them. Their wedding is on 13th September I think, it should be interesting.

Veronica and I have booked Josh, Nadia and our flights to Máncora for October 17th. We’ll spend 5 days there on the beach and then see them off to Mexico from Lima. We’re hoping Jesse’s Loki del Mar resort might be ready by then but if not there’s plenty of accommodation up there. So I’m really looking forward to going to the coast and hopefully getting some surfing done.

My Spanish lessons have been non-existent, I was going to start this week but because I got sick I didn’t. So next week I’m definitely going to start as I need something to do haha.
Oh and Veronica has told her boss that she’s planning on leaving the company and coming to NZ in February for a few months maybe woohoo! So a pretty big move for her as she’s been there for almost 9 years. So we’re deciding whether she should apply for a working or visitors visa. So if anyone has a job offer for a Industrial Designer with management experience that would great haha, well we’ll see what happens.

Tonight we’re probably going to watch Jesse’s band play hahaha should bring back memories.
So that’s it for now, I have some more photos I’ll upload later. Chau.