Finally facing my Waterloo
I can, and have, sacrificed a lot of things for this trip – but I'll be damned if Eurovision is one of them
In planning for this year away, I knew there would be important events I’d have to miss. The sad fact of life is that every decision for something is a decision against something else; living my best nomadic life in Latin America is fantastic, but it also means not seeing friends, not going to weddings, birthdays, Christmas parties or the pub. This, I can just about handle. But more importantly – and devastatingly – being in Peru this week meant Dave and I were at risk of missing the biggest event of the year: Eurovision.
The Eurovision Song Contest is in my blood; I cannot remember a time when I did not celebrate it. I have memories of it being played on TV (possibly coincidentally) while my parents had friends over for parties when I was very small, and I’m sure I made them watch it with me in the years that followed, before I was old enough to force the Euro-pop joy on people my own age.
For the past two decades (!) my core group of high school friends and I have held Eurovision parties, and the format has become tight. Every year without fail, on the designated Saturday night in May, we assemble at mine around 6pm – preferably in our most ridiculous clothes, preferably with sequins – armed with alcohol, snacks, and flag making materials (felt tips, paper, wooden vegetable skewers for poles). I have a pink feather boa that sheds enough fluff for me to be picking it out of cushions for the rest of the year. My co-host and I (previously Anthony, now Dave – them’s the breaks*) perform a mandatory surprise costume change at a random point through the night, in keeping with the generic smiling TV hosts on stage.
We prepare food in the theme of the host country (Italy was a great year, the Netherlands not so much) and conduct a sweepstake by picking a country out of the enormous cardboard hat that Anthony once made me in the shape of the Roman Colosseum. Then the list of rules is reinstated and usually added to by Anthony (who is a teacher, and takes rules very seriously). This part is, effectively, Eurovision bingo: when pyrotechnics are used onstage? Drink. When Graham Norton gets sassy? Drink. Participants must also stand and sing along with their sweepstake country.
I love Eurovision. A few years ago, I even interviewed an academic who specialises in the politics of Eurovision for the magazine I was working for, such is my dedication to the cult. Even during Covid, when the contest was cancelled and a sort of filler show was played from the Netherlands instead, we watched it together on Zoom. It’s always a messy evening, at least for those of us who drink alcohol. Last year, our final guests left around 5am.
Of course some things have changed over the years: a few friends have drifted since high school, and other people have popped in and out of the annual party circle. My long-suffering friend Isabel (a Eurovision OG) wasn't drinking a couple of years ago and was pregnant for the last one, so goodness knows what the sight of us looked like from her sober perspective. Then again, she still owes us from the year she planned her actual wedding on Eurovision day. Campaigns for a screening to take place during the reception fell through, so we watched it the next day with hangovers.
This year’s contest was mired in controversy, as they say (and they say it most years to be fair). While Russia has been banned from the competition since 2022, Israel made it through to this year’s final – and a lot of people were not very happy about it.
There were calls among fans for a boycott of Eurovision altogether this year, including by some people I know. I totally get it. Personally, I didn’t want to boycott a show I enjoy that celebrates inclusivity and LGBT rights and all things camp and silly. Plus, I live for the drama. If someone was going to fight on stage, I needed to see it. However, I was in danger of missing it if we couldn’t find a way to get it up on our hotel’s supposed-smart TV.
Saturday, 1pm Peruvian time / 7pm UK time. I dialled in to my core Eurovision team on Whatsapp (“Hello London, this is Cusco calling…”) while Dave ran out to get us beers and food supplies. I’m sure the kind receptionist who checked us in and asked us what our plans were for the day – in this exciting city rich in activities – thought we were a bit strange (I mumbled something about needing to call my friends). But we’d seen Cusco by now and we had a mission to achieve.
The hotel internet wasn’t playing ball, and at any rate it was impossible to find a live stream on YouTube without ads cutting across the middle of the screen. Desperation stations, Dave signed up to a month’s free trial of VPN to trick my browser into thinking we were in the UK and get BBC iPlayer going. Not much joy. We took our laptop party downstairs in search of a better signal, braving the hotel’s central common space with our takeaway £2 menu del dia (they even put the strange corn drinks into plastic bags for us). But the stream was buffering and the situation felt a bit sad, especially in the middle of the afternoon.
And so we did what anyone should do in an emergency, and headed for the pub. Not just any pub, but one we knew had overpriced drinks and therefore higher quality internet…the scene of the previous week’s crimes, the beginning of the worst hangover in the world: Molly’s Irish Bar. And with great success, finally. We sat with my laptop open, white wine for me and beer for Dave and a headphone each, and had a grand old time. I should have known from the start we could count on the Irish to support our Eurovision ideals.
The strangest part was emerging from the end results to find we still had the whole evening ahead of us, being six hours behind the UK. Maybe we should always start our Eurovision rituals at one in the afternoon from now on.
*A side note: I had to Google “them’s the breaks” because I realised I wasn’t sure how it was spelled, but also because it’s a strange phrase and the more you say it over in your head the more you think it probably can’t exist. It does. And I know this because the article I clicked on happened to be authored by none other than David Hughes, SEO Editor for inews.co.uk, aka Dave. God bless the powers of SEO.
The thing about bus rides in South America is you never can predict what you’re going to get – and that’s the best and worst part of it. Sometimes it’s a faecal prison and sometimes you’re riding high with views of Inca ruins and Nazca desert art. A case in point: as I write this newsletter on the bus from Cusco to Puno on Lake Titicaca, we just passed the Pikillakta ruins – one of dozens of Inca sites dotted around the region and one which Dave and I didn’t get around to seeing. So that’s a bonus.
I'm pleased to report that this bus ride is a much more comfortable affair than what we endured two weeks ago. We're back on the reclining seats with air-con, plenty of leg room and even USB sockets in the seats. After the Nazca bus fiasco, people have asked me why and how we can still bring ourselves to take buses for long journeys: this is why. Sure, the guy behind me is calling every member of his extended family one by one on loudspeaker, and nobody in Peru seems to own headphones, but it's always cheaper and often more comfortable than flying. And sometimes we really luck out with the views.
In the week just gone, Dave and I absorbed as much culture as possible through our Boleto Tutistico Del Cusco passes. You can purchase these little gems from any of the 16 tourist sites included in and around Cusco city. That means ten Inca ruin sites and six museums and galleries, all for around £27. It’s decent value and also provides hyperactive people like Dave with a fun game: how many sights can we tick off within the allocated 10-day period.
Some of the listed attractions included on the ticket pull their weight more than others. The Ollantaytambo ruins were incredible (or should I say Inca-redible?) while the museum of “popular art” was just a room of creepy figurines – accessed through the basement of the local council office – with no clear message or purpose. And then there was the museum of contemporary art: not much more than a room of trinkets and stones on a table, all carved by the geriatric artist sleeping in the corner (very village fête raffle vibes). The evening of traditional dance at the centre for culture (Central Qosco Arte Nativo) felt uncomfortably like sitting in on a school assembly, but was very sweet nonetheless.
We had a very pleasant afternoon visiting the Q’engo and Saqsaywaman ruins, both a reachable walking distance from town. Saqsaywaman (also spelled Sacsayhuamán – try saying either out loud) is impressive for its huge, dry stone walls – some of the stones used are said to weigh 300 tons. Imagine building a wall with 300-ton stones without any kind of vehicles or machinery – just humans and ropes to drag them upright? And imagine, me getting so into wall craft as I have on this trip?
Q’engo is a smaller but deliciously creepy site used by the Incas for sacrificial ceremonies. It is one of the largest huacas – holy places built into unusual natural rock formations – in Cusco and is said to have been used for mummification, too. The Incas were big into killing selected members of their community to give as offerings whenever there was a bad harvest or to prevent bad weather (sound logic). If you were really lucky you might be sacrificed to honor the death of an emperor. Visitors can walk through the Q’engo cave to see the sacrificial tables carved inside the rock, and what threw me was the fact they had multiple sacrificial tables going on at once. It would be a bit of a buzz kill to be the selected and see your predecessors lying down around you.
But the best thing on our ticket turned out to be the Inca site at Pisac, a village about 45 minutes outside of Cusco. Nilo, our wonderful Machu Picchu guide, had recommended it to me and Dave as a place to stop for the night, and so we decided to treat the trip as a little holiday (don’t laugh, travelling is hard work). We booked ourselves into what looked like a nice hotel/guesthouse and left our big backpacks in Cusco overnight, inspired by the freedom we experienced when our luggage was taken from us for the posh night spent in Machu Picchu.
On Friday morning we hopped on another collectivo – this time just 5 soles, about a pound each – and arrived in Pisac in time for some lunch empanadas baked by a woman using a 200-year-old clay oven and overlooked by a guinea pig castle, which I'm trying not to think too deeply about.
To get to the ruins required a taxi up the mountain because we didn't fancy another 13km hike. Predictably the taxi drivers wanted a lot more than 5 soles to take us, but I spotted a group of younger backpackers looking quite lost and we went over to ask them if they wanted to share a ride to the ruins. They were French Canadian and very glad to share a couple of cars with us since they'd been looking around for the path to hike there for some time.
A confession: before arriving in the Cusco region, I'd been... not anti- old stuff exactly, but a little nonplussed about the prospect of visiting a bunch of old stones over several days. It's just not usually my thing. I'm haunted by terribly dry history lessons in school (which I gave up at 14 and went on to fail geography twice instead). But then obviously Machu Picchu was an incredible thing to experience, and it helped to have an expert like Nilo bring it all to life for us.
And then Pisac – wow! It literally took my breath away when we arrived at the site. Bigger than MP, the ruins are spread along a series of four mountain peaks, with acres of terraces used to cultivate food below. What was especially cool were the honeycomb patterns in the rock behind the site – apparently these were tombs looted by grave robbers some time afterwards. Terrible practice, but you can't help but feel impressed by anyone who managed to scale that cliff face to get to them.
We spent the rest of the afternoon pottering along between the buildings and along more terrifying mountain top paths, gradually working our way back down on the old Inca trail to Pisac village. I was glad we hadn’t opted for the 13km hike to get up there, especially in my lighter trainers.
What also made Pisac special was the fact it was so empty of tourists – quite the opposite to MP. We waved to the French Canadians from time to time as we crossed each other’s paths, and later had a nice conversation with an older man from California on the way back down into town. But mostly, we had the route to ourselves.
Back in Pisac, we rewarded Dave with a trip to a craft brewery, before heading back to our lodgings to don our warmer clothes for the evening and head out to La Paila for a happy hour Pisco sour and dinner at La Ruta (lamb for me since I was getting sick of chicken; alpaca steak for Dave).
Much like Ollantaytambo, Pisac is a small and beautiful little town surrounded by mountains and clever inca architecture. But the big difference between them is that Pisac is where the new age gringos are found. Much like visiting Ibiza town off-season (something we actually did once), a common sight to see in Pisac town is a dreadlocked white guy robed in traditional shawls and carrying a hand-carved stick and maybe a knotted knapsack. He probably arrived here 20 years ago as a youthful backpacker, took a few too many native potions and forgot to go home.
I fully support anyone choosing to leave a more peaceful life close to nature. And clearly I'm a big advocate for travel and remote work wherever one can do it. But I'm just going to leave some pictures from the local noticeboard right here.
On Saturday morning we treated ourselves to a lie-in. Peruvians are early risers and the place we'd been staying in in Cusco included a breakfast that ended at 8am, so we'd had a week of late nights and early starts. But when we strolled down to breakfast at 9.20am at the Pisonay hotel in Pisac, we were told breakfast had already ended, despite the sign on our bedroom door telling us otherwise. A similarly awkward interaction occurred a few minutes later when I saw that the check-out time on the front desk was at ten, an hour earlier than my booking confirmation had told me. And so our relaxing holiday away ended with a bit of an irritating and frantic morning.
After a quick stroll around the artisanal shops in the town (I bought some local art, or what Dave would describe as a piece of paper with some string attached to it for a fiver) we headed back to Cusco via collectivo once again – for we had an important mission: find a way to watch Eurovision…
Travel bits and tips from this week
In Cusco, Dave and I stayed for two nights in this very pleasant Airbnb, but it was booked up for the rest of the week…
…So we booked ourselves into a nice hotel! The “Velvet Residence”, nonetheless. Only £19 a night (but not quite as fancy as the photos make it look). They also kept our big backpacks for us…
…While we went to Pisac on Friday. There, we spent a night at the Pisonay Hotel – it was ok at £25, but there was confusion over the breakfast timings and seriously weird blue lighting (below).
Then we went back to the Velvet (Varvel) Residence in Cusco for one more night for Eurovision mayhem.
In Pisac we enjoyed a drink at the Cervecería del Valle Sagrado taproom and then another at La Paila on the main square, before heading next door to La Ruta for a delicious dinner.
In Cusco, after Z&G left, we had some more excellent £2 menu del dias, the best one I think being at La Chomba bar near the main square.
We also enjoyed lunch on the Vida Vegan Bistro balcony and drinks with a view over Cusco main square at El Meson De Espaderos.
In the evenings we had a couple of picnics in our hotel room with cheese and bread from the Mercado de San Pedro while watching the Chestnut Man on Netflix. Zero regrets.
Molly’s Bar saved us for Eurovision and we followed it up with a very good pizza at Cholo’s.