Peru - Saturday 17 October 1998
We wake up early again (5 AM!) for our departure to Arequipa Airport. What a hurry. When Diederick wants to get our money out of the safe, it appears that the safe is open only on certain times. What to do?!
Diederick decides to stay behind to wait for someone who has a key. He has to come later with a taxi. Finally, he has to wait for so long, that the hotel-van that brings us to the airport, can drive with him a second time. He can also bring a pair of shoes one of us left in the hotel. Lucky for us, the plane is more than half an hour late. Otherwise, our whole group would have had to stay in Arequipa.
We fly in a Aero Peru Boeing 737 to Cusco. Quite relaxed. Like Arequipa, Cusco is in the middle of hight mountains. Both our departure and our arrival are quite exciting between all those mountains.
Cusco is a beautiful city, with a lot of monuments and even more tourists. Our hotel is located on a small road uphill. Again, we have very luxury rooms.
Diederick and I decide to go into the city together. To buy some souvenirs, make some phone calls home and just walk around. Cusco appears to be much richer, more tourist-minded and better preserved, compared to Arequipa and Nazca.
On our way from the airport to the hotel, we see several radio stations near the main road. We can't restrain ourselves, so we decide to have a look.
The first stations where we get in, are two AM-stations with traditional local music. Their equipment is quite suitable for a broadcast-museum: very simple and very old. One record-player, two cassette-players, a prehistoric audio mixer and signal-monitoring through a transistor-radio! This people don't speak English, but they're very nice. With our hands and feet, and a few words of Spanish we can communicate quite well.
A little bit further away is Radio Simfonia. Only after several calls, the door is opened, by a strange man. When I tell him in my best Spanish what we want, he goes away for another man. He asks us to get in... in his house! We don't see any radio studio.
After a while he asks his son to come, a boy of about 15 years old. He understands English a little bit, but doesn't speak it. Finally, we can make clear what we want.
We can visit the studio, on the other side of a little square. A DJ is playing records. The studio is quite modern: An Eela-kind audio mixer, an qualiser, a CD-player and some other stuff. They even have a simple compressor/limiter, I think it is a 1-band Innovonix.
We make some pictures, and tell the DJ we'd like to record some jingles. The DJ says 'come here', puts his microphone open. We're ON AIR! I speak some words in Spanish and a lot in English. They really like it! Our day is a success.
We try to find another station, Radio Carolina, but we can't. Even an official taxi-driver doesn't know - whilst he is listening to that station! Too bad.
We decide to go the the San Francisco cathedral. It's built by the Spanish on Inca-fundaments. The Spanish wanted to show their superiority. In 1950 an earthquake prooved that Inca-techniques were better. The Inca-fundaments stayed unharmed, the Spanish building disappeared. Now parts of both buildings are combined.
We walk through several market places. There are really no tourists over here! A policeman warns us to take care of our goods.
On the market, we eat fried cookies in sirup. Four for only one sole. Delicious!
In the city, we find a cash-machine with a Cirrus-logo. I get some money, but forget to take my pass out of it. In Holland you take out your pass before you get your money, here afterwards. Stupid. I hope my pass isn't found by criminals who can crack my code. I think it's gonna be allright. I make a call to my bank to block it.
In the evenening, we have dinner with our whole group. Patricia made a reservation, because she's afraid there won't be enough place for eleven people otherwise. Not so strange, there are more groups like us in Cusco.
To be honest, I should have said 'twelve people', because Elisabeth from Australia joins our group from now on. During dinner I have a talk with her. She is an accountant on a TV-station! When I say I'm a TV-journalist, she says 'Oh no!' Too much negative experiences with my Australian colleagues, who never are on time, never make their own declarations and always forget to deliver notes with it. It must be really horrible...
Dinner is good, but the restaurant is poor again. Half of our meals are late or don't come at all. Patricia is upset by it the most, this time. Next time we can choose a restaurant, she says.
At night, part of our group visits a discotheque, called Mama Africa. Nice music, good atmosphere. At 11 PM there is a concert of a Peruvian rock-band. With electric guitars, drums and...... pan-flute!!!
I meet two Dutch girls. One comes from Delft, the other from Nijmegen. The girl from Delft decided to quit her job for a five months world tour. The other girl is nurse in a centre for refugees and goes back home next week. They travel together, but know each other only through an advertisement in a newspaper, de Volkskrant.
Ronald thinks they're desperately looking for a man. I think they're especially interested in themselves.
Around midnight we go back to our hotel... quite tipsy.
