Cuzco

So its September 20 and I have almost been travelling for 3 weeks and damn, I cannot tell you where the time has flown.
So first off, I am now in Cuzco which is the city that allows you to enter Machu Picchu and it was super cute, lots of Spanish architecture and reminds me much of Arequipa. I arrived here on Thursday morning, ate an interesting breakfast with these 2 lovely ladies I met from France and from there made my way to the hostel.
Its interesting because I was asked to be a Mystery guest for this hostel here in Cuzco and I must say,  I have found the job to be kinda stressful! lol when I took on the job I was like hells yeahhhh I get to live for free basically, in exchange for sharing my opinions! how much better can life be but holly crap it was has been morally challenging. So let me elaborate, for one of my tasks, I am to ask some random staff members for access to marijuana or cocaine and at first I was like umm that is gonna be so challenging because A) I look like the nerdiest most prepared backpacker ever with my super techy clothes (aka Merino wool shirts and sweaters, patagonia pants etc you get the point) B) I do not drink a lick of alcohol (which btw I am pretty sure was one of the reasons I was asked to do this hahaha) and lastly just talking to me for a minute you come to the realization that I am not a party cray cray on spring break chica looking to cool off or relaxxxx. So anyways yesterday I was invited by one of the staff members to go on a [private tour[ one could say to one of his favorite destinations in town, this off the beaten track, lack of tourists cave like area. I was with a friend so I was like hells yea!!! anytime someone offers me a private tour of something non touristy, I will 100% oblige! So we get there and we are completely taking in all the landscape and for sure there were no other tourists, just some local Peruvian kids playing around and the hostel worker offers my friend and I weed. I say I dont smoke, but my friend does so he rolls one up. Now as this is all happening I{m thinking in my head shit! Do I report this?!! I don{t want to in case the dude gets fired but ahh then I am not really doing the job I was asked to do. Anyways I asked a girl that was staying in my dorm what she would do and she said she wasn{t sure but either way, is the right decision. I felt that she made a good point in saying that technically he wasnt doing anything wrong as he was off the grounds and wasnt really working and I totally agree. But I also feel like had I asked him on grounds, he probably wouldve hooked me up. Ughhh so that was my dilemma last night.
Anyway moving onto other things, ohhh I got wicked ass food poisoning a couple nights ago and I am pretty sure it was the food I ate at the hostel which is a shame but oh well what can you do except try to excrete the crap from your system as fast as you can...omg I hate getting sick while travelling because you literally have no one to take care of you and you feel like ass and just wanna go home and that is how I felt....i was really sad to be honest. But luckily that only lasted less than 24 hrs and by 10am the next day I was eating fruit and yeah, i am happy my body recovered quickly.
hmm what else...oh ok, so for some reason these past few days I have spent in Cuzco I havent enjoyed all that much and I couldnt figure out why...i know part of it was the hostel environment i was in...I felt like it was more of a party hostel for youngsters and at times I just felt out of place but a bigger issue that i came to realize was that i was feeling really empty and indifferent to like everything....it was like I couldnt appreciate where i was, what i was doing...i just felt nothing and it made me slightly uneasy. I dont know but sometimes i would see these people in my hostel in clumps and would think to myself, why am i not in a clump or why am i not hanging out with the same people on a day to day basis and i became really insecure about that...was i not fun to be around, was i not exciting enough etc? but it only happened when I arrived here in this hostel...i didn{t feel this way while i was in Arequipa so i wonder whether it was because I started seeing the way other backpackers were behaving and it made me question my own self. but it all changed today when I did a great yoga class at this place called the healing house and essentially it is a hostel however the people who stay have to have an intention as to why they want to stay there, so its not like you can just rock up, pay and be like yo give me a room sorta thing...which i quite admired so you knew that you were amongst individuals who were in their own particular journey of self discovery. i toyed with the idea of staying there, the minimum stay is 1 week and i feel like it could be quite nourishing for the soul. but after that i ended up mindlessly wandering around the streets, had a vegetarian lunch and after sat on the stone steps of the Plaza de Armas and again just feeling that really empty indifferent feeling and was kinda getting nervous like shit...is this what depression is? in that moment i saw this dog approach a young family and all he wanted was to just be petted but the man shooed him away and this dog went back again and again until the man literally started kicking him in the side and the dog cried as he ran away...then he came to me and I literally leaned back as he approached me cause I was scared that he may have had fleas. But then after coming to me he went to this lady sitting by herself and she embraced him with this warm smile and put her arm on his body and started petting him unconditionally. At that moment I literally burst into tears because i felt so bad for the dog but was so happy that this lady was being so sweet to him and that finally he was welcomed. I dunno why but I couldnt stop crying and thank god I had my sun glasses on cause otherwise I am pretty sure people would have thought i was insane lol. but it was in that moment that I FINALLY felt some form of emotion and I sort of snapped out of that indifferent coma I had been in for a while because even though i was feeling empathetic and sadness for the dog, I was feeling someTHING! which is sometimes all you need to remind yourself that hey you are alive and not just a ghost floating through this physical form we call reality.
what got me confused was that when the young family started to leave the dog followed them...even when the man turned back and gave a stern look to the dog as if he was trying to warn him to stay away, the dog held back a few seconds but again began trotting behind them always a few steps back...why did this dog want that man to accept him when he clearly was not wanted?! it was confusing and weird to me and all i could do was watch this dog trot behind the family until they disappeared into the colorful crowds...
anyways i couldnt  help but see parallels to my life and how sometimes we really make our lives difficult and complicated by wanting to be with people who dont want to be with us. its like we want love and validation from people who will never give it to us but we still try....my oh my...dear oh dear.
anyways i think that is enough blabbering for one night, I am hoping that by the next time i write an entry i will have made a decision as to whether i will take another weeks worth of spanish lessons and stay with a local family, book machu picchu or whatever hahaha! I realise that I am super indecisive and that I make alot of my decisions based on finances which i don{t really like because then I feel like i am not really listening to what it is I want...its more like is this activity justified by this pricetag attached to it? and really, who wants to live that way? Its like living in constant scarcity instead of abundance...ok thats a whole other topic that i can blabber on about for another day. wow i felt like i really unloaded here and im not gonna lie, it feels good to be able to express your feelings and not really give a damn what others are gonna think!
total love and respect to all,
until next time!
xo

Sept 5-15

Okay so its been a few days since I've landed and so far so good! I've met some really nice travellers and the latest 2 I've met are from none other than Toronto!! Met them this afternoon while I was mindlessly wondering the streets of Arequipa looking for a Spanish school. I found one and I think I'm gonna enroll. It seems quite professional and it costs about $15 for 2 hrs. The bus ride from Lima to Arequipa was 17 hrs long omggggg but it surprisingly flew by and the view was stunning. Exiting the city and congestion of lima, we drove along this long road that was never ending and on my left were stretches of
mountains that kept on going on as long as the road. Every now and then I would see these small communities that appeared very slum like and couldn't help but wonder what kind of life the people had living there. Then sun fell and the slums all lit up and it appeared to go quite deep into the mountains. During the day though they had all these colourful roofs but appeared to be held up by wooden legs, the barest of the bare forms of shelter. Anyway I ended up eating dinner on the bus and it was surprisingly yum! I had a little dish of rice, green mash potatoes and a tiny bit of chicken. I met this lady from Finland who had been travelling for 10 months and told me it has sort of turned into a lifestyle. I was amazed but I don't know if I could do that. The bus was pretty cool, the seats reclined like 55° and in front there was this platform that you pull down and you rest your legs on it so it's the closest thing to being flat. It was awkward cause I had to sit with this fairly overweight Peruvian man and when I was trying to sleep on my side, he was doing the same and our bums were like pressed up against each other ha-ha! When I arrived I hadn't booked any accommodation yet so I took a cab into the city and went to the first dorm hostel that I found and omg it is so not up to date...I'm the only guest there in a dorm for 4 people and the owner speaks no English so I am gonna be leaving tmr :p anywho that's all that's been happening so far ..trying to speak some simple Spanish every now and then but my god it is so hard not being able to speak or comprehend what is being spoken to me and just looking like a complete moron :( now I am sitting here in the Canadian couples hostel watching Harry potter, not really the way I wanna be spending my Saturday evening but I know I will be having some crazy canyon adventures in a little while! So the first 2 pics are of Arequipa, the first is from the city center and the second is of my hostel. Then we have more pics from Lima. One of them is of a local market that I bought some fresh juices at!

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