Yesterday we got up at 4:15am for our 6:00 flight - first leg Seattle to San Francisco. On board were two flight attendant trainees. I think they might have been 12. No, I exaggerate, they were probably more like 17. Anyway, near the end of the flight they sat down in the seats just in front of us to chat with the flight attendant supervisor. Conversation goes pretty much like this... be sure to use a valley girl accent when imagining the trainee talking...
Trainee: I'm just so excited that our graduation is coming up in a few days!
Supervisor: Did they instruct you girls anything about ratting on other flight attendants? Because you know, that's just not right. It won't get you anywhere with your peers if you do that.
Trainee: Yeah, they told us to do that, but most of us like get it, you know? But there were some of the girls that I think would rat on people.
Supervisor: Well you go back and tell those girls it won't work, and they need to remember that people will believe anything. So if they rat on people, then people will say stuff about them too. Any questions about anything else?
Trainee: No I think we've got it. My favorite part is the serving stuff. Though the whole alcohol thing was really confusing.
Supervisor: What about it?
Trainee: Well like when you pour wine, why two fingers below the rim of the glass? And I heard even that there are different types of glasses for different types of wine, what's up with that? I mean not on the airplane but in real life I mean.
At this point it was all we could do not to burst out laughing. Thank you to Alaska Airlines for injecting a bit of humor in an otherwise uneventful flight.
From San Francisco it was onto Mexico City, and then the midnight flight to Lima Peru. When we reached Lima it was 6:30am by the time we cleared customs and our flight to Cusco wasn't scheduled to depart till 2pm. Originally we had booked it this way because we wanted to leave time in case the flight to Lima was late. Fortunately, we were able to get on the 9:40am flight instead - a relief as we were both asleep on our feet by this time. We arrived in Cusco and Lily (the hotel owner's wife) picked us up. We arrived at the hotel around noon - a mere 34 hours after having left our hotel yesterday morning.
The B&B we are staying at Gringo Wasi is very homey. The ceilings are all low and the doors really short - the doors are only 6 foot - 18 inches shorter than back home in the US. This is because Peruvians appear as a group to be somewhat short and stocky. We are super glad to be staying in this small town of Huarocondo outside of the larger town of Cusco. We didn't know it when we booked the B&B, but we wouldn't have been happy in Cusco as it was very poor looking city with trash piled everywhere you looked and stray dogs digging through the trash. While they might not be any richer in this small town, its clear they take quite a bit more pride in keeping it nice. We are told this small village experiences life mostly the same way they did 100 years ago - farming mostly by hand and cooking over wood fired stoves. Here is the view of the surrounding Andes Mountains near the hotel.
On Lily's recommendation, for lunch we went to the town square where ladies serve the town specialty - lechon. Its a whole pig roasted in an adobe type oven. They served it with something that looked like potatoes but tasted kind of funny to us, and a sweet corn bread that was cooked in a corn husk and steamed the way you would cook a tamale. The roast pig was tender and good. Note in the picture how they keep the pig warm all day - wrapped in blankets.
This is the town square - you can see the town ladies with their pig feast stalls sitting in front of the church.
Having just traveled 5200 miles to get here, we needed a rest. Not to mention time to adjust to the 11,200 ft altitude here. So we just hung out at the hotel the rest of the afternoon. Dinner was served at the hotel for $4 each, plus $6 for a carafe of wine. Dinner was a shredded chicken and sauce dish that was a bit like a curry. A bit of spice we were told was a local pepper. Yum!