Lost in the Cobblestone Maze of Cusco

Convinced Every New Turn Was The Way Back Home

The weather was perfect, and the view of the courtyard from my seat at El Cuadro was beautiful. A large Peruvian flag draped down from atop a grey stone building on one side of the square, and a light breeze funnelled through the covered patio where our table was located. It was going to be the first good meal we’d had after about a week of being in Peru, and I was excited to try some alpaca.

Our group from First Baptist split up for lunch on that first day in Cusco, since some people were diligent in their quest to eat McDonalds after so much time spent away from the US while others (such as myself) wanted to taste the South American cuisine while we had the chance. Zach, Newman and Nolan sat at the El Cuadro table with me, and we drank water and negotiated with the street vendors that came up to our table before ordering our meals. Before our food arrived, several of us were the proud new owners of poorly-knit sweaters and obviously-fake sunglasses.

When our food did arrive, I was delighted to find that alpaca is comparable to steak in both texture and taste. We continued to converse about our favorite moments of the trip thus far and what we were looking forward to in the next few days (we were hiking Maccu Piccu the very next day). About halfway through our meal, Newman stopped eating.

Without cluing us into his suspicion, he twirled his fork in his pasta and studied the contents of his meal intensely. Then he dropped his fork.

“I don’t feel good, you guys,” he said. “I think there’s peanut butter in this.”

Nolan, Zach and I looked at Newman, then at each other. I had forgotten all about Newman’s furious peanut allergy, but even if we had remembered, we didn’t speak Spanish so we never would have realized it was an ingredient in the dish without tasting it first. It wasn’t time to point fingers, though. Newman kept drinking water and staring at the cobblestone patio, trying his best to will himself to health. Soon, it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to do so.

When his allergies made it clear he was about to be very sick, Zach stood up.

“Okay Newman, let’s go,” he said. “I think we need to get you to a hospital.”

Newman nodded and rose from his seat.

He and Zach immediately started walking away, then Zach turned around and jogged back to our table. He handed us money for his meal, and then asked if we’d be fine getting back to our hotel on our own. Not wanting to add another wrinkle to the already-complicated situation of needing medical help in a foreign country, we told him we’d be fine. He then jogged back to Newman and the two eventually found a ride and disappeared into parts of Peru I will never see.

I won’t speak for Nolan, but I was lying when I told Zach we’d be fine getting back to the hotel on our own. I had no clue where we had come from or where we needed to go, and the four French courses I’ve taken in my life did nothing to help me read or recognize Spanish street signs. Every possible avenue looked exactly the same as the one before it, and each seemed to be leading in a completely opposite direction. I was helpless.

Nolan and I finished eating our lunches and paid for the four meals, then we walked out into the square. We stopped in the middle and looked around, and then I looked at Nolan as he looked at me.

“Do you…” I began.

“Nope. I have no idea,” he said. “You don’t know either?”

“Not a clue,” I said.

We laughed for a second, but it was the kind of laugh that communicates a feeling of we’re screwed, but at least you’re here, too. We continued looking around the square and hypothesizing about where we had originally come from, but we disagreed slightly at every turn. Even the general direction of where we needed to go was up for debate, and we were both too polite to take charge. After a while of standing in the middle of the large square and thinking This could be it at each available avenue, we both just started walking.

After walking down one street for a few minutes, we were pleased to find ourselves in a much larger square, with a beautiful fountain and a large building to the side. Plenty of people were sitting on benches, playing in the grass or congregated on the stone steps, and I realized that if we didn’t have the overwhelming fear of never returning to the only people we knew in the entire country looming over our heads, I would have loved to enjoy the beautiful day here. There was a beautiful peace about the area that was only enhanced by the idea that I had no idea what anyone was saying. Nolan and I were still lost, but we weren’t alone.

While we sat down on a vacant bench and took in the beautiful day with this crowd of strangers, I had an idea. With it, I was sure that I was going to save the day and have us back to our American friends in no time. It was such a simple idea — so obvious — that I wondered why we hadn’t thought of it at the very beginning. It was perfect.

“Let’s just tell someone the name of our hotel,” I said. “Even if they don’t speak English, I’m sure they’ll recognize the name. Then I bet they’ll be able to at least point us in the right direction.”

Nolan was quiet for a moment.

“Do you know the name of our hotel?” he asked.

(OK, so the plan wasn’t perfect.)

“No,” I admitted. “Do you?”

“I think it starts with a ‘T’ or a ‘V’ or something,” he said.

We were quiet for a moment as we each looked around at the activity all around us. Silently, I wondered if the plan could work despite being built upon the foundation of “‘T’ or ‘V’ or something,” and I ultimately reached the conclusion that it could not. We didn’t have cell service to call any of our friends, so we were completely on our own.

While our new square was bustling and beautiful, it was also much more complicated than our lunch location. There were twice as many entrances and exits, and Nolan and I were not oblivious to the fact that, if we had made a mistake in our initial direction, continuing to go that way would only make matters much, much worse. A change of direction could also derail us if we had started out on the right way, though.

Basically, we realized that every choice we made had specific and intense consequences.

While we I dealt with the harrowing idea of spending the rest of my life as a coffee farmer in Peru, we realized that we needed to make a move. Any move. We just had to start walking somewhere.

So that’s what we did. We walked one way, then when we couldn’t walk that way any more or we realized we had gone too far in one direction, we’d go another way. The city of Cusco (at least the section where we spent most of our time) was surrounded by beautiful hills, and those hills were littered with houses and shops that looked noticeably different from those in our section. When we got to a part of the town where we realized we were surrounded by these houses and shops, we knew it was time to turn back.

Together, Nolan and I navigated that foreign cobblestone maze for the better part of two hours. We walked in crowds of strangers and we walked in isolated alleyways. We walked in the middle of empty streets and we hugged walls as cars drove by with only inches of separation. Nothing ever looked familiar, but we also didn’t know what we were looking for. For a short period of time, our navigation of the Peruvian streets was exciting.

Then, in an instant, it became decidedly less exciting.

We climbed a hill of alleyways and emptied out onto the Peruvian street, except this time we were met with an army of street vendors and women weaving clothing and blankets while sitting down in the shade. Barefoot children played in the streets, and we couldn’t concentrate on our next steps because a man was aggressively trying to sell us watermelon from his cart. We tried our best to decline, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Eventually, we stopped trying to explain that we didn’t need any of his watermelon (a notion that simply didn’t exist in his world, I suppose) and continued walking. We wove through the streets and crossed the railroad tracks, and eventually we found ourselves at the base of a hill.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, we spent much of the afternoon in a section of Cusco named Centro Historico. Our restaurant, the giant square with the fountain and beautiful building, and ultimately our hotel were all located in this district. It was a place welcome and accommodating for tourists who aren’t as directionally-challenged as Nolan and me. Our new location — the one with watermelon man and people sitting all over the streets — is not in Centro Historico. I don’t necessarily know if it’s a bad place to be, but in our situation, anywhere that wasn’t designated as a “fine” place for us to be was a place to be avoided. We had ventured too far in our quest to venture back to our hotel, and we realized that we needed to hurry if we wanted to make it back before it became too dark or before anyone began to worry about us.

It’s a peculiar feeling, trying your hardest to fix a problem and then realizing that you need to try even harder somehow. Noticing that the stakes are highest when your confidence is at an all-time low shouldn’t be a recipe for success, but somehow we usually find a way. That day was no different.

With the knowledge that time was of the essence (and the freedom associated with the idea that it would be difficult to get more lost) we made our way up the hill. We stepped past local Cusco men and women and politely declined anyone pushing their products in our faces. Our view was impeded by a large stone wall to our left, but we continued.

When we reached the top of that hill, we walked down the other side. Then we walked up another hill and turned a few more corners, following that stone wall the entire time as we went. The crowd of Peruvians thinned in stages, and eventually Nolan and I were the only ones that seemed to occupy the streets again. We were tired, and we didn’t have the time or the patience or the strength for this walk to continue much longer.

Then, we came to a corner where there was a blue and white sign for a grocery store on our left — the same grocery store that was at the corner of the street where our hotel was located.

As we left for lunch earlier that day, we walked down to that end of the street and, with the grocery store on the right-hand corner, took a left to head into the heart of Centro Historico. As Nolan and I now turned left onto this homely cobblestone street, the scope of our excursion became abundantly clear: instead of even remotely going the right way as we left the restaurant, we ventured in an enormous circle that took us the longest possible route.

We were back now, though, and the first thing I did when we got back to the hotel was take a picture of its name in case this ever happened again.

Epilogue

With our newfound understanding of the city streets, Nolan and I ventured back into the beautiful square at the heart of Centro Historico during our free time that night. Newman was still recovering from his run-in with peanuts and the rest of our group wanted to go shopping, so the two of us were on our own once again.

While Cusco was breathtaking during the stressful afternoon, it was even more so at night. Soft yellow lights from houses in the hills above the city mirrored the stars in the purple-blue sky, and the cold mountain air necessitated my comfortable new llama-wool sweater. We stopped and bought Sublime chocolate bars on our way into the square, and then we bought beers before sitting down on a bench by the fountain. The latter tasted good, but the fact that we were under no circumstances supposed to be drinking beer on this church trip made them taste great.

When we finished our beers, we walked around the square to buy some time before we needed to meet up with everyone else. As we did so, two events occurred. Each was uniquely absurd.

The first happened as we stood on the steps of the beautiful building, minding our own business. A man walked over to us and interrupted our conversation as he turned specifically to Nolan. He spoke wonderful English, so it was easy to understand exactly what was happening when the man asked Nolan if he wanted any cocaine. Nolan laughed, and then he looked to me and I laughed, then we both looked back to the stranger and he laughed. When we all finished laughing (but before the ghosts of our laughter left our smiles or our eyes) he turned again to Nolan.

“So, do you?”

Nolan smiled as he realized this man didn’t understand the context clues of our laughter.

“I can’t,” Nolan said. “I’m here with my church group,” as if that were the only thing holding him back from making this purchase.

“So?” the stranger continued. “They don’t have to know about it.” He laughed again with the two of us.

Say what you will about strangers offering drugs to minors, but this man was undeniably friendly.

Still, we knew we couldn’t buy his cocaine. It just wasn’t practical. We told him this again and again, and slowly he began to get the picture although he continued to converse with us about other things. At the end of the conversation, he tried one last time.

“Nah, dawg,” Nolan said. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

The polite cocaine dealer understood, and he shook our hands and bid us farewell. I tried to sneak a picture of him, and I was initially upset when I saw that it was blurry. The more I think about it, though, the more I like it. The blurriness captures the shadiness of the interaction, and it protects the identity of this man who no one would have tried to track down, any way.

As we made our way back to our group from First Baptist, another stranger stopped us in our tracks. This person had a camera in their hands, and they were motioning us to join a picture. Beside the stranger was a newlywed couple, and they watched us eagerly for our response.

“They want us to take a picture with them?” I asked, as I pointed first at Nolan and myself, then at the bride and groom. The photographer nodded.

Nolan and I looked at each other and shrugged.

“Sure,” I said, motioning for them to join us in the street.

The four of us smiled as the flash momentarily blinded us, then Nolan and I were met with a chorus of “gracias” from the three strangers. As they started to walk away, I took out my phone and asked if the photographer could take one more, for Nolan and me.

While our day proved time and again that the two of us were outsiders in this environment, there was something about smiling with strangers on the happiest day of their life and knowing that we had seen much more of the city than anyone else we came with that made me feel content.