Amanda & Adam: Cuy, hospitals, futbol, & other adventures

For some reason I had this weird desire to try Cuy ever since I came back from my first trip to Peru. Cuy is also known as guinea pig here the the states...you know the cute furry house pets? I was actually kind of mad at myself for not trying it the first time since it is a Peruvian delicacy. The people will raise them until they are ready to eat. So on the "Peru bucket list" it went. For anyone that knows me you know that I am not a very adventurous eater and as a general rule of thumb I don't eat things that are considered as house pets or things that have teeth. Apparently when I am south of the equator all bets are off because I didn't hesitate to order "cuy" when I saw it on the menu and when 3 other people decided they wanted to split it I was even more excited. Little did I know what was going to be brought out to me. Don't worry...I ordered Alpaca as a back up in case I didn't like the cuy.

of course I had to imitate a guinea pig before I ate it

LUCKILY the Alpaca [similar to a Llama] was heavenly and also ridiculously delicious or I would have starved... I had a hard time eating the Cuy since I had to eat around the organs...

We also got to help pass out flyers around Cusco with one of the girls, Martia, who works at the clinic. It was a lot of fun. She is super cute and I think between me and Tya's spanish and her english we had some pretty good conversations. I got to work on spanish and got to see more of this beautiful city that I never would have seen before.

We got to visit one of the 2 public hospitals in Cusco. TWO HOSPITALS...there are 10 in Augusta alone. This was something I didn't get to do last year. While this whole trip was a good reminder of how lucky and fortunate I am to live in the US this was especially humbling. The guy who was taking us around said that each floor has 22 beds and there is ONE nurse to each floor! 1 nurse to 22 patients... To all my nurse friends... could you imagine that?? I don't think i will ever complain about having 4 patients again. We also found out nurses make 500 dollars a month and doctors make 1500 a month. A big reason for this is that the hospital only receives 25,000 soles per year.... which equals about 12,000-15,000 dollars. I couldn't imagine that. Suddenly, I love my job even more.

the different floors

one of the babies in the NICU

Generally, there are 3 doctors there a night... an OBGYN, a surgeon, and a pedaitric doctor [I think]. They generally stay in the ER. The ER has one room designated as the code room. If a patient goes down hill they will move them to that room which is equipped with a crash cart, ventilator, and cardiac monitor. That is considered shock trauma.

the code cart

a list of the doctors that are on call

ventilator

heart monitor

our group with some of the doctors

The rest of the day was spent exploring Plaza de Armas and hiking up to really pretty cathedrals. We were trying to find a church we went to last year. We thought it was called San Cristobal so we found a map and went on our way. After getting a little lost and almost getting attacked by dogs... [okay so we weren't really attacked or even almost attacked but getting the pee scared out of you is the same thing right?] We finally asked for directions and found it. Totally worth the hike! It was absolutely gorgeous and the view of Cusco was breath taking.

in the bell tower at the San Cristobal

Cristo Blanco... bambino. We called it baby white jesus since the one in Rio is HUGE.

Tya and I

I love all of the side streets in Peru.

Later that evening we went to watch a Peruvian futball/soccer game. It was Cusco's professional team. That was probably one of my favorite things we did. We bought jerseys and cheered and our team won! We also bought some really good food from one of the street vendors there. I think it was alpaca. Either way it was really good. Eating food from street vendors isn't really the best idea...but it smelled really good. It was so worth it.