Yesterday afternoon Beth and I got a Starbucks and when were strolling back to the hotel, a teenager in front of the Black Panther coffee shop said “really? Starbucks? We have the best coffee in town”. We laughed and promised to come the next day and he told us he opened at 9am.
Well, 9am rolled around, and while the kids slept in, the adults were pounding on the doors of Black Panther but apparently they did not open at nine! I took Alex and Kim on a similar loop to yesterday, and led them to a large, almost hidden, tourist market. After stuffing more Alpaca stuff from Beth in my bag, we continued on to the San Pedro central market. The place was huge!
Part local, part tourist, I decided to finally get a Jugo (juice) from one of the twenty ladies down “juice aisle” that were trying to flag us down. I had her choose the most popular /tasty option and she made one for me with orange, mango and two delicious Incan fruits that I’d never seen much less tasted called Cherimoya (kind of a sweet tasting pear/citrus combo white fruit) and Lucuma (like a tender, sweet tasting sweet potato).... so good.
We made our way back towards Black Panther, passing kilometres of local market/retail streets that were packed full of locals buying everything from spices and fruits, to clothing and shoes.
By the time we got back to Black Panther, we met with our sarcastic friend, Favian, and we were quickly impressed with this kid. He was 18 and was here by himself on a refugee visa from Venezuela (South America has absorbed some five million of the thirty million Venezuelans over the last couple of years due to the corrupt government and poor conditions in the country). We asked him where he got so fluent in English and he said, “you may not believe me, but I owe most of my English to a tv show, maybe you’ve heard of it... Friends?”. Oh my god, we almost fell off our chairs. Our four kids have been watching friends on Netflix for what seems like, years. Robin got so bad, I figured out how to lock Friends out from our Netflix feed.... lol. Favian said he got his sarcasm from Chandler, his technical terms from Ross and his casual speak and ways to pick up girls from Joey... too funny.
We had lunch at an awesome place called Avocado (literally each dish had a fresh, giant sized avocado in it, including the tomato soup!) and then connected with Jeffrey on Whatsapp to find out where they were at.
The kids had done some research and found a great breakfast area in the backpackers district called The Meeting Place. We found them upstairs, half a bottle of syrup down and playing cards. The place reminded me of the typical places we saw in 1997 in Asia, with a wall of used books that were available for purchase or exchange. The kids seemed so independent... like a mini version of when we pick them up from summer camp after four weeks away. I can really picture them doing their own backpacking adventure in a few years.
After breakfast/lunch we split up... Alex and Kim when back up to Saqsaywaman while Beth and I and the four kids did a huge loop, up and down winding cobbled streets laden with trekking shops, tiny restaurants, colourful characters, VW bugs, dogs, dogs and more dogs. We took them through the market area again and then back towards the center.
We took the kids back to Black Panther to introduce our little Venezuelan friend and they quickly began talking about their favourite Netflix shows. We ended up staying there an hour while Beth and I continued to chat with Favian and the kids played cards. So impressed with that young man!
We did some research on trip advisor and found a great place for dinner, again in the backpackers areas, called Chakruna Native Burgers. The tiny place had an awesome little set up and everyone was satisfied, including Alex who opted for the Alpaca burger. When we left the place, there was a lineup 10 people deep... good timing!
Well, we are ready for our trek tomorrow. Each of us has a portion of our clothes and supplies packed into a duffle bag with a strict 6kg weight allowance. The rest of our stuff is split between our day packs (which we will carry) and our main packs, which will be shuttled forward to our after trek hotel in Aquas Calientas.
One more episode of Stranger Things for the Tyndall four and we were tucked into our frigid rooms until our early morning wake up.
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