Unfortunately on my third day in the Colca valley it was very cloudy, foggy and also pretty cold. I spend the morning and early afternoon reading in my room - Elisban checked on me every now and then and send some hot coca tea :-) I started reading my new book on Macchu Picchu and it was amazing as some things around me seemed to make more sense once I read about them. For example the terraces around Cabanaconde date back to pre-Inca times and are build exactly as described in the book with different layers of soil and walls and canals to keep them from slipping during rainy season. Also the architecture described in my book can still be found in Cabanaconde - windows which are wider at the base than at the top and niches in the walls used for storing goods and tools... It seems that the legacy of the Inca can still be found - not only in the ruins of Macchu Picchu and the like but in everyday life all over Peru. Its very fascinating reading about it and then discovering traces of this legacy close to you!
After lunch I went down to the Plaza de Armas to buy some water and write some mails in the only cyber cafe. I read my mails and started to chat a bit on msn when Jeremy arrived. Jeremy is 6 years old and veru curious. First he wanted to know with whom I was talking and then he wanted to see pictures. I showed him some pictures of me and my friends in Brazil but he didn´t seem to be satisfied. "Is this your bofriend?", "Where is your boyfriend?" - only 6 years old, little Jeremy already asked the typical question of all Peruvian men I´ve met before. But Jeremy was not only interested in romantical issues - he also showed great interested in the economical side of life: "How much did you pay?", "How long will you stay in the internet and how much will you pay?". He kept on counting my open windows and then closing them, deleting the things I wrote and requesting more pictures of friends, family and most of all the "novio". Unfortunately little Jeremy also suffered some severe "winds", which made his presence a bit undelightful ;-) We chatted a bit more about his school and his friends and then I gave up on using the internet and went back to my book.
In the evening Elisban recruited the kitchen staff for another round of volley and later on, football - one of the guys still wearing his waiter uniform of white shirt and black pants and vest. The football pitch looked quite professional, as they had small iron goals and put on a little floodlight to lighten up the backyard. Unfortunately it was so foggy that at times even with the floodlight you couldn´t see much. Right next to the hotel is the local public phone and usually around 6-7pm there are usually little groups of people calling their loved ones outside the valley or waiting for incoming calls. Most of the women wear their beautiful embroidered dresses and woolen blankets against the cold. It was hilarious to see how they kicked the ball back when it ended up in their direction! It reminded me of a documentation I had seen on arte where Bolivian women in fluffy dresses and bowler hats played football! But they also enjoyed our game very much, especially when the cook fell in the flowerbed or the ball woke up the decrepit dog.
After a more entertaining than athletic match the guys suggested a round of "sapo". The sapo or frog game is a typical Peruvian game from the Andean reagion dating back to the times of the Inca. The legend says that the game envolved from members of the royal Inca family and their court throwing golden coins into the lake Titikaka. Frogs were known for their magical powers so the players hoped to attract one´s attraction. The Incas believed that if a frog came to the surface of the lake and took a golden coin in its mouth, the player would be awarded with a wish and the frog would turn into solid gold.
The Sapo Game nowadays consists of a wooden box with holes on top. Some of those holes have metal spinners on top. In the middle of the top of the box sits the golden frog with an open mouth. Each of the holes lead to a different "drawer" - each of them having a different score. The mouth of the frog leads to the maximum score of 5000 points. Each player gets 12 metal tokens and the goal of the game is to throw these tokens into the holes reaching a maximum pointage.
The game is really entertaining but due to the cold my fingers where so numb that I barely managed to hold the tokens - not to think of throwing them anyway near the frog! ;-) The kitchen staff team won (a bottle of beer) and we went inside to unfreeze and have dinner. Elisban and I stayed up until midnight sharing "chistes picantes" (dirty jokes) and discovering that they were the same ones in Peru and Germany only with slight modifications. Later on we turned to more serious subjects like relationships, families, destiny... As I had to get up pretty early the next morning to catch the bus back to Arequipa we skipped the Chuchuhuasi and I went to sleep in my warm and confy room :-) Once again I congratulated myself on my decision to switch hostels - but also knew that it would be sad to say goodbye the next morning as I had not only found a warm and safe place to stay but also nice company and a good friend for life.
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