Chabad Cusco — August, 2010
This was a lot of fun because there were >100 Israelis there. The Shabbat dinner was in a large semi-outdoor courtyard area surrounded by the main building, which gave a really cool feel to the place.
The Israelis were necessary because the Rabbi only spoke Hebrew so we needed lots of translation. Our translators became our (Facebook, at least) friends and we got to see the rest of their super long post-army travels around South America.
The meal was not the greatest (they were serving hundreds so I’ll cut some slack), but I really liked meeting the Israeli people near us. When we asked this guy Oren if we could sit at the table w/ him and his girlfriend and friends he enthusiastically told us “of course, you are my brothers,” which felt like a really nice connection, especially in the middle of Peru.
I concluded that Israelis are very awesome. They all go to the army, they do these awesome travel tours, they’re usually funny, usually very blunt, just a great group of people.
They’re also extremely economical and thought I was completely crazy for getting what I felt was a great deal on a (#1 TripAdvisor rated!) hotel @ $60/night. They kept going on about how they could live for 2 days on $60 and how they can get these crazy $3 meals with 5 courses and $10/night rooms if you know where to look. All I could think about was how gross the food must be and how they could live eating that stuff for 2 days, let alone 6 months. Meanwhile I was probably eating the same stuff and paying tourist prices for it. Also my Foreman grill that I use 4 times a day probably hasn’t been cleaned in 2 months, so who’s eating disgusting food now?
I didn’t get to speak to the Rabbi much aside from one conversation. He kept speaking Hebrew and didn’t understand English. We told him we don’t understand Hebrew, which he understood, and then he kept speaking Hebrew. Our translators weren’t handy, so he learned where we are from and that was about all we could do.
