Just another manic South American country...

And so, it came to pass that I was well enough to start enjoying the new city I will be calling home for the best part of a month. This week I finally started my bar shifts here at Loki, got involved with the volunteer programme they run here, started running again, finally managed to get out on one of those hikes the city and its surround are most famous for, oh, and went shopping for fancy dress outfits and halloween costumes.
The volunteer project here is fairly similar to the one I was involved in in Paraguay. We travel to the suburbs of the city to provide basic English lessons to local children whose schools don't offer the subject. In return the children get fed, and hopefully pick up enough English to help them out when they ineveitably need to work in the tourist trade (Cuzco's main source of income by leaps and bounds). The work is enjoyable, although its a much easier project than anything else I've been involved in before... partially because the time committment is less, partly because I'm working with an age group of children I have a lot of experience with and partly because Cuzco just doesn't have poverty like I saw in Bolivia or Paraguay. These children are happy, well fed, well loved and properly clothed... a far cry from some of what I've experienced over the last 4 months. However, the project is enjoyable, and after a week I've already moved into a supervisory role within the charity and were starting to build a logical curriculum and putting a little bit more stucture in place with the English the children are learning. Its also a fantastic way too see a bit more of the real Peru, as opposed to just sitting in the tourist areas.
The bar shifts here are much the same as those in La Paz, although as the outfit here is run by women instead of men the whole thing is a bit more professional, and we actually finish at 1am when we're supposed to, insead of the 5.30 that was fast becoming the norm in Bolivia. I really like my new workmates, and have been on the backpacker trail long enough now that I frequently meet people who know other people I know (my firned Katlin for example was in La Paz the week before I arrived and know all my friends from there), which is refreshing as you don't have to introduce yourself from scratch ("aren't you one of the people who was there the night Alen went insane with the machete?!"). The management team here seem equally lovely, if not quite as crazy, and are just as well known around the local bars as we were in La Paz, which is good for my budget!!
Which brings me back to the city. Cuzco is a whole other kind of gorgeous... quite unlike anything else I've seen in South America. As you wonder around you feel privileged to be standing in such historical beauty. That's not to say there aren't parts of it that aren't poor, but with such a huge influx of tourism in recent years (you can fly direct here from the UK) the poverty is incomparable to what can be witnessed elsewhere. Yesterday, being a sensible rehabilitate yourself slowly kind of gal, I walked up to the local ruins 'Sachsaywaman' (above) and along the ridge surronding the city to Cuzco's own big white Jesus. Naturally this turned into a 6 mile hike in the midday sun, but it truly was beautiful and I enjoyed so much to be surrounded by beauty the like of which I hadn't seen since Rio. Naturally today I'm shattered, but I'm sure it wont be long before I'm out to hike again!
Luckily this week the hostel got hammocks so I've been chilling out in the glorious sunshine reading my book to recouperate... this life experience stuff is hard! Also, on a side note, I LOVE hammocks, and am wondering where one will fit in my room at home...
So now Loki is gearing up for Halloween... the biggest event on the backpacker calendar. And the bar already looks like a giant pumpkin threw up all over it, there are daily showings of horror movies, everything is either orange or black. Very excited for Sunday!!!