MUNGO EATS Latin America

Just a short post today.  We are still in Cusco, and at the moment, Cusco remains a city of chores.  Yesterday was spent in gathering gifts (although  that is not really a chore), the better part of today was spent in gathering auto parts.  Kevin had a list of bits and pieces that he needed to find, and so we wandered around town, trying to track down these parts.  We were largely successful, but it took most of the day.  Kevin would like to get a little maintenance work done on the van.  The bearings on the trailer need regreasing and the van has an exhaust rattle which he would like addressed, so tomorrow we will go in search of a garage to help us with this.  All these things need doing, but it seems strange to worry about doing these things when we are in such a tourist hot spot.

We did actually try to visit a museum today, but Cusco is strange in that is has decided that all tourists should see all the touristy things, and so has invented a “tourist ticket”.  This is a fairly pricey item that allows you entrance into all the museums in town.  There is a separate ticket that allows you access into the different churches.  The museum we tried to visit today ONLY allows access with one of these  tickets, you can’t even buy a ticket to visit only that particular museum.  Since we are not really sure how many museums we wish to visit in this town, we hesitated.  The “tourist ticket” would cost us about $4o each!!

One of the tasks which we accomplished today was to get a “fake” license plate made.  Alberta only issues one license plate per vehicle and you are to mount it in the back of the vehicle, but in Peru (and many of  the other countries we have been through), a vehicle needs to display BOTH a front and back plate.  In Peru, it has been more of an issue than in any other country, and policeman after policeman has pulled us over to ask us why we don’t have a front plate.  In addition, most of the toll booths we pass through, try to take a digital picture of our non-existent front plate to put the number on our receipt.  Kevin decided that it would be worthwhile to “make” a second plate, get a color photocopy of our license plate, laminate it and stick it on the vehicle.  We decided to see if this helps.  At first we were unsure if a copy place would even help us with this request, but it turns out, copy places don’t have really high moral standards.  The first place we asked just nodded, no problems, no questions asked, how many copies would you like?  The fellow was amazing actually, he scanned the plate, made a paper copy of his scan, trimmed the corners so that they were rounded like a real plate, and then laminated the whole thing in about 10 minutes or so.  It looks very real!!  There is even a little rust on it.  So now we have two plates.  We have moved the “real” one up front, since it gets looked at the most thoroughly, and the “fake”one brings up the rear.  Hopefully, it won’t get more than a passing glance.  Hope it helps!