The train leaves promptly at 3.10 p.m. for Cusco. I’m sitting next to a Frenchman on holiday with his family. Food arrives and I speak Spanish to the steward. Then I converse in French to my neighbour, sometimes mixing Spanish in. This is good practice for me as I’ll soon be in eastern Canada (French-speaking Québec) followed not long after by France, especially since my brain has been in only Spanish mode for so long. We have quite an in-depth and interesting chat for almost the whole four hour train ride. We fix the world’s problems in that time, as well as comparing notes on language differences.

The train carriage is visited by a colourful character – the same one I saw at the airport on arrival – in the form of a man dressed a bit like a jester with a similar mischievous nature, who chooses attractive women in the carriage to dance with to the traditional music. His costume is festooned with rainbow colours (the colours of Cusco) and glitter, and his back has a design of a condor in full flight. He makes everyone laugh at his antics. The sun sets and I can see the train’s headlight illuminating the dark train tracks. Lights on the distant hills tells me I am close to home, Cusco. The Frenchman’s family and I say our farewells.

My taxi driver swerves madly through the single lane of slow moving traffic from the station and deposits me near my hostel in the plaza. I am feeling quite sick now, light-headed and headachy, as well as remnants of my chest infection and cough lingering even though antibiotics has worked. I spend the next full day in bed to catch up on sleep and recover, emerging from the covers only to eat some leftover Peruvian chicken soup that I bought the night before and couldn’t finish. I am happy to have a base for a couple of days.

The following day I emerge from my cocoon-like room in the afternoon to have one more long look at Cusco before my flight the next day back to Santiago, Chile. I walk towards the direction of an old stone gateway that I saw on arrival. It is immense and picturesque, as are most vistas here, and leads to an enormous covered market. I enter and inside it is a cool, otherworld of noise, chatter, and colour.

 

 

Fresh fruit, vegetables, and meats sit close by stalls of Andean blankets and trinkets, and down the back are the food stalls. I see a baby in a crib woven with what looks like wide grass reeds. Many small children are slung on women’s backs wrapped up in colourful strips of fabric. I order a fresh juice from an elderly lady. Her fruit is bursting from the stall in healthy abundance and its combination of papaya, banana, and pineapple mixed in a modern blender is delicious and just what I need. I buy some more fresh fruit and a woven table-cover then walk back to the afternoon sunshine to people-watch on a seat bench in the plaza, passing two women pulling a llama.

Storm clouds move in and the first cold wind and spatter of rain sends people indoors, myself included. It is only a brief shower, and hunger is calling, so I revisit the Peruvian place from before.

Overnight, I keep getting woken by someone hoicking up sputum, and after breakfast I sit in my taxi going to the airport. The traffic is mayhem as per usual and you take your life into your own hands just crossing at the pedestrian crossing, even with a lit up green walking man. My driver is great but as he swerves around some pedestrians stuck in the centre of a crossing, with traffic flowing around them in a torrent, he comes very close to the car on my right. This annoys its driver immensely, and a bit later that driver pulls up alongside us and shouting escalates. My driver undoes his seatbelt in a bold move to prepare for a fight! Even though it is in rapid Spanish, I get the gist that if he didn’t have a passenger going to the airport, he’d already be out of the cab. A slinging match ensues, in the middle of the street full of cars. My driver calls him a ‘marecón’, a word I don’t understand but which he later explains more or less means homosexual. The other driver gets angrier. Then my driver calls him a ‘gallina’. That does it. The other driver swerves, accelerates in front of us, and stomps on the brakes, narrowly missing us in an attempt to cause a crash or at least a bump. My driver expertly pulls out of the way. Then the other driver decides to turn left suddenly ahead of us for the same reason. My driver yells at him and drives off. Unsuccessful in his attempts, the other driver gives us the finger – a universal code I realise – which leaves my driver laughing. I ask him what ‘gallina’ means.  It’s a bird, a bit like a chicken. Being called homosexual was not as bad as being called a chicken, apparently.

I give him a tip at the airport for my interesting ride and line up to check-in. An hour later, at the desk, I discover I’ve been in the wrong line all along. I curse under my breath and wail ‘nooo’ quietly. The woman is helpful and takes me to the right desk, and I get served in front of a line of people. I feel bad for cutting in. I walk toward International departures but remember just before passing through the gate that I am travelling from Cusco, Peru to Lima, Peru, a domestic flight. Shaking my head at my second stuff-up in two hours, I enter departures and wait.

Once on the plane I realise that the helpful woman at the desk gave me a window seat. I never choose it if I can, for confrontation reasons. If you’re in the aisle at least you can ignore take-off and pretend you’re in a bus. No so with the window seat. What is worse is that the windows are supposed to be open on take-off, so you cannot look away. You are drawn to the goings-on outside. The. Whole. Time.

Once above the clouds, you have the view, which on a sunny day is mesmerising, but try not thinking about the fact that you are in a metal tube high above the earth.

At last I am distracted by a snack of nuts. I munch away and drink my juice in a contemplative mood. Of course, when I visit the bathroom, I have nuts in my teeth and braces, but no toothbrush easily accessible – oh joy.

I reach Marcia’s flat in Santiago, Chile at 11.30 p.m. It is wonderful and comforting to have this as my starting and return point – a friendly face and companionship.

I have never travelled on my own for an extended period. When I left her to go to Peru on my own I had an attack of nerves. She said to me, ‘Believe in yourself!’ It made me feel a lot better about doing this whole trip and the solo jaunt to Peru. When I was there making decisions alone – all while feeling sick and tired with chesty flu – my self-confidence increased a thousand-fold. Plus I found so many people were helpful and nice. I truly believe that if you exude positivity then things usually work in that direction. I don’t mean that bad things or mix-ups or problems will never happen; I’m realistic. And I am a fairly resilient, proactive, sensible, and optimistic person with the ability to cope with issues as they arise. But I found that things fell into place eventually. I hope this trip continues to surprise me that way. On this trip I have friends and relatives I am meeting up with along the way, but I have a large portion on my own, so the week-long side trip to Peru built my self-confidence a lot.

Marcia is away at a conference when I return to the flat. It’s like we are flatmates sharing a home. I know my way around her neighbourhood and I let myself into her flat with spare keys I had cut. It is good to do my washing, rest, and reassess.

I plan my next short trip to Bolivia via Calama and the Atacama Desert in central Chile.