I am in Peru!

Just a heads up, my posting schedule is going to get confusing as I am now in a different time zone to normal.

I spent 12 hours on a plane yesterday, an exhausted evening in Lima trying to adjust to the 6 hour time difference and more exhausted time on a brief flight to Cuzco this morning. I’ll also be in the Amazon for a few exotic, relaxing days where there is no internet so I apologise in advance for the sporadic nature of my posting.

Right. Now that’s out of the way let me tell you about how ozzum Peru is!

We got complimentary crisps to dip in very mildly spicy sauces at dinner!

To be honest, I haven’t seen much of the country yet. However, what I can tell you is that the food’s superb. Our first guide told us that the UK compiles a top restaurants list every year and 15 of those top restaurants are in Peru. From the food I’ve experienced so far, I can see why.

Our guide recommended eating at Tanta, an airport restaurant run by one of the country’s top chefs. This particular meal (Lomo Saltado) was the delicious thing that I ended up having for breakfast there! It’s a traditional Peruvian thing.

I’ve never been to south America before or had the chance to potentially experience altitude sickness. This is a holiday of firsts.

Cuzco (or Cusco. It’s a phonetic language so there is no correct spelling), where I am now, is 3399m above sea level. I’d been bracing myself for the horrors of altitude sickness but ended up feeling surprisingly normal. By normal, I mean that I feel about as headachy, lightheaded and occasionally nauseous as I usually do. The only difference between me now and pre-Cusco me is sometimes getting a tingling sensation in my feet and weird shooting sensations in my legs after a bit of walking. It’s not really that painful and I’m so used to headaches at this point that they don’t bother me all that much. My brother, on the other hand, won’t shut up about it. For someone who insists that talking at high altitude is difficult, he won’t stop complaining about how difficult it is.

The recommended beverage for altitude sickness and in generally dealing with the difference in oxygen levels up here is cocoa tea. I don’t like tea but I stuck enough sugar in it to make the drink vaguely tolerable. I also got to chew some cocoa leaves which tasted like leaves, unsurprisingly.

Peru reminds me of Laos and Berlin simultaneously. It’s got Berlin’s city feel but similar houses and signs to Laos (like Laos, you also can’t put toilet paper in the toilet). Today (Saturday) is Peru’s national independence day so I’ve heard the occasional firework go off and everyone’s out and about.

A square near our hotel.

We did wander around Cuzco a bit today but didn’t do anything too strenuous as we were still adapting to the altitude. The temperature was around 20°C and lower, which was a pleasant relief from the UK heatwave that we left behind us.

This is causa de pollo y palta. It involves chicken and avocado and sauce. I think. I wasn’t too keen on it (I swapped it for dad’s soup starter. Digestion is different at high altitudes so you’re not supposed to eat too much anyway) but it looked real pretty.

Tomorrow I finally get to lay in and then we start doing more intensively touristy things.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been feeling pretty stressed out about this holiday, but the live music in the hotel tonight finally got me into the right mindset. I am in a beautiful foreign country. I may not understand Spanish outside of approximately 5 words (please, sorry, thank you, hello, goodbye; the basics for any foreign travel) and I may get the urge to strangle myself every time I quietly stutter through any food order to a local waiter but it DOES NOT MATTER! No one but me cares about that shit. Why worry about such inconsequential things when I have a exciting new place to explore? I am on an ozzum adventure. It’s time to start treating it like one.