In case anyone was wondering, yes yes it´s hard to drink at high altitude but somebody has to do it. Being an avid subscriber to the theory that the highest effectiveness is achieved through regularity, i of course wanted to drink and try all this local stuff. A drink with dinner went alright, but going to a club afterwards and downing a free cuba libre (and no pun intended here) gave me the biggest headache. I guess it´s not the quantity that counts. We´ll see what happens today.
Speaking of free drinks--the moment you hit entrance to the main plaza at night, you get accosted with twenty thousand people shoving flyers into your hands that allow you and your friends to get free drinks. How they get anyone to pay is beyond me, but if one were to make a circuit of the bars before getting to the place they were originally intending to go, just for the free drinks, i doubt they would know where they were going in the end. That was the most convoluted sentence ever, but it makes sense to me, so it stays.

Anyway, it has been a lazy day today if i do say so myself. As i was trying to wake up with some hostel breakfast and insufficient quantity of coffee I got approached by an argentinian dude (and NO! not approached THAT way!) who explained that he was working on a flyer for this touchy-feely thing, something about self therapy, la dee da. So of course, i am just about to say no thank you, i already have one, he says that what he was actually asking was if he could take pictures of my face for the self therapy page. apparently i look self therapeutic. and so my mug will now bless some poor unknowing sucker who will be talked into looking at the brochure (ha! they wont know what hit them!) while i am getting a free shiatsu massage for it. i am not sure what a shiatsu massage is, but seeing as i have never had a massage in my entire life, i´m still psyched. One of the hollander girls (of which there are about a bizillion here) said that she was disappointed with hers when she got one, but hey, whatever--i am not even paying for mine.

And on the subject of paying for anything, did i MENTION how incredibly cheap stuff is in this country? And to make things even cheaper, the hollanders and i went to the market today, to explore. It was a unique experience i must say. I was tempted to take pictures, but having been warned about people getting their cameras and wallets stolen, i refrained from even pulling it out of the backpack. Aside from the numerous llama sweaters and hats and gloves and multicolored belts of all shapes and sizes and other stuff geared towards tourists, there were many rubber shoes being fixed, bras and underwear and all sorts of clothes being sold (who tries bras on in the open market is what i want to know), some old dude was trying to push toilet paper rolls. (speaking of toilet paper rolls, this country has an abhorrence about putting t.p. in public restrooms for some reason. in yesterdays bar the t.p was being kept in a cupboard and probably reserved for the VIPs) There were also sheep or cow or some other cattle´s heads being cut open (and i mean HEADS. there were no bodies on that table)... many strange and disgusting looking cuts of meet some of them blue some purple and very few red. There were live birds of all kinds, most of which i couldnt tell, I figured out the ducklings and the chicks but the rest eluded me. They were fuzzy and didnt have a clue they were soon to be dinner. or lunch. And here i get back to the cheap thing--$3 for a three course lunch with alcoholic or nonalcoholic drinks. Say whaaa? And then of course i ran rampant on the fruit market, since there were all these fruits i had never seen before and needed to ask about and forget their names immediately and see if i could stuff them in my bag for later. I tried cactus. I never knew cactus was a fruit. It´s yummy. Who knew and didnt tell me?!
Also i got to stock up on woolens for the inka trail to machu pichu--apparently on the second night it gets down to freezing. Weeee!!! going to machu pichu on thursday!!!!