How to get things done in Cuzco…

My day started out slowly, moving from store to store around the Plaza de Armas, trying to find a good price on a duffel bag to bring things back to New York in.

Plaza de Armas, Cuzco, Peru

The boleto toristico that one has to buy to enter into virtually any of the site in the Cuzco area, also includes various museums in Cuzco.  I spent much of the morning in the Contemporary Art Museum, the Regional History Museum (where I learned a lot about both Tupac Amaru and Garciloso de la Vega- very interesting!) and the Museum of the Incas, where it suddenly occured to me that I should be able to buy blueprint/ survey drawings of both Machu Picchu and Choquequirao somewhere to bring back to school.  This simple seeming task led me on an adventure to not one, but EIGHT different offices through out the city!  (Eight does not count the three different offices that I had to return to at least two times more after completing a step in the process).  Wow!

Steps to obtaining blueprints/ survey drawings of archeological sites in Cuzco:

1. Find the correct office.  This entails going to three different places based on information given at each subsequent place and returning to the 2nd one because it was correct, even though the person at the reception desk swore it was not.

2. Find the correct person in the correct office.

3. Explain why on earth a foreigner would want blueprints of the sites and not only to visit the sites themselves and take pictures to the correct person at the correct office.

4. Go to the internet cafe to write a formal letter of your request.  Ask a 12 year old who is running the cafe to proofread my Spanish.

5. Return to the correct person in the correct office to have them put a special stamp on the letter.  Be told that I will need to call him on August 9th to get the blueprints and really, to find out where he is because the location of his office might be moving…

6. Go to another office down small twisty roads with no name and hope that you are in the correct place.

7. Go to the information window at the payment office to make sure that you are in the correct place because the place you are in has a million tourists waiting in line to buy tickets to Machu Picchu (Did I explain myself correctly in Spanish that I wanted to buy plans  for Machu Picchu and not buy ticket?)

8. After confirming you are in the correct place, jump the reservations  line and go directly to the payment  line.

9.  Completely confuse the man behind the desk that you indeed want to pay for blueprints NOT a ticket to Machu Picchu and watch him crash the receipts computer as you confuse him beyond belief.

10. Pay for the blueprints and get a receipt.

11.  Walk for 6 blocks before finding a copy machine to copy the receipt, which feels strange because everywhere else in the country it feels like you have passed a copy place every other step.

12.  Realize that you have not actually given the solitation letter nor receipt for blueprints to anyone so the order is not actually going to be processed.

13.  Go back to the payment office to figure out who and where exactly I need to deliver the letter and receipt to be processed.   Arrive at 4:01 pm and beg to be let in to the nice guard.

14. Speak to a nice older gentleman who conceeds to help me after hours and then asks me for a copy of my passport.

15. Realize that my copy of my passport is fairly crumpled.  Solicate the elderly mans help to copy my copy of my passport and escort me to the correct window back in the payment office.

16. Go to the final window in the payment office and deliver the letter, copy of the receipt and copy of my passport.

17.  Hope that when I call on the 9th of August after my trek to Choquiquerao, the copies of the blueprints are waiting for me.

🙂  I actually find the entire situation incredibly humorous.  The truth is, we have just as messy and complicated systems in the US to get certain things done and obtain certain documents.  I know though, that I would not have been nearly as patient if I had not already done similar things in Tanzania when I was in the Peace Corps.  And despite the multiple steps involved, everyone was so incredibly understanding and helpful.  They really were happy that someone wanted to bring something home to use in teaching somewhere else.  🙂

Oh yes… and yesterday I went to most of the other Incan ruins just outside of Cuzco.  Lots of interest there!

Tambomachay: Incan Baths

Trapezoid niches.... but how many different sided polygons can you find in the Incan stonework?

I simply cannot get enough of these trapezoid shaped doors. The question for you: Why trapezoids?

The Incan ruin "sexy woman" from afar. Only a fraction of it is open to tourists. Some of these blocks weigh up to 100 tons!

I am still amazed at how closely the stones fit together. I found out today that the made a clay copy of EACH AND EVERY one before actually carving it out of the quarry.

This is part of an Incan temple that the Spanish built a church on top of. In 1950 there was an earthquake. Some of the Spanish church fell down, none of the Incan temple did.

Super interesting to me... there was a protest on the Plaza de Armas about genetic engineering of food and seeds. Apparently the new president of Peru has just entered into a contract with Bio-genetics giant Monsanto.... uh oh....

 

Tomorrow I take off for 5 days for my trek to Choquiquerao…. more to come after then!

 

Ms. Bruck