Jack’s

April 16 2013

We didn’t do much the day after our tour. The big event was walking around the part of the city on the opposite side of the square from where our hostel was. We were looking there for Jack’s, a restaurant Barbara had read about, that apparently had excellent breakfasts.

Being the late risers we are, we were hoping they still served something yummy in the afternoon.

The names of streets in Cusco can be difficult to figure out, they aren’t marked by clear signs, and maps may or may not have them all labelled, or labelled only with the name that is used for that particular part of a street. Looking up things on Google maps ahead of time only gets you in the general area, since for many places it’s really just Google’s best guess about where that number lands on that street, assuming it knows where that street is.

We followed the streets around a few corners, we went up a hill. At the top, the sidewalk was level with the roof of the house next to us. Looking across the red terracotta tiles we could see the square and the rest of the city behind it, and the mountains behind that. Cusco is in a valley, ringed by mountains.

We took a wrong turn on the next street and ended up asking for directions at a small hotel. They didn’t know precisely where we should go, but sent us back in the direction we had come from. After another few blocks it felt like we must have gone too far.

But then we found it, at the end of the street we were on, in the corner of one building. There was a line up of people waiting to get inside, that was good sign!

We examined the menu while we waited. It was a lot like what you’d find at a diner back home. The thought of pancakes and syrup was very exciting.

Inside it was not only packed, it was tight. There was no way another chair could have been added anywhere in the place. The servers had to turn sideways to walk between tables. We were squeezed into a corner table, between a window and the ice cream freezer.

The food was very good, and it seemed even better than that since we were starved for something more to our tastes. The fact is, twelve days without any really familiar foods had been a long time. We felt like guilty travelers for not appreciating the local cuisine more, but this would wear off. By the time we were in Bangkok we had no qualms about hitting our favourite Mexican restaurant in the shopping mall day after day, foregoing any local Thai food. At some level, the trip had to be about us as much as it was about the destinations.

Jack’s was a hit and we wished we had found it sooner. We knew we would return.

The other big event for Tuesday was Barbara going out in the evening to the Cultural Arts Centre, which she wrote about on the blog. The girls and I stayed at the hostel. They did some times tables. I checked up on the mortgage. Today was the day when the next payment was due. I hoped my communications from New York City had got through, and the reduction was had discussed with the bank had been implemented finally.

But when I checked our bank records, it showed there had been no reduction in the payment amount. I e-mailed our contact at the bank and tried to impress upon him the urgency of dealing with this while we were still in a relatively large city; in two days time we would be leaving Cusco, and heading to Iguassu Falls, in the jungle on the border between Brazil and Argentina.

Locations

Cusco

Transportation

None

Spending

$31.50 for lunch at Jack’s
$16.60 for groceries