Fri 27 May - My Birthday!!

What a wicked birthday!!
I decide on breakfast @ Jack's Cafe and meet the travellers I met yesterday. Ends up that we're both staying in the same place too!! Arrange to meet for dinner, and then go meet Puma. He arrives, and when he learns it's my Birthday, he takes me to Sacsayhuamán, and as goes the Peruvian tradition, he showers me with confetti, to represent the flowering of a new year. I found it real interesting that I should be 'flowered' on the day that my Mayan signature turns into a Seed - the keywords of which are 'flowering targets awareness' :)

Have lunch at the vegetarian resturant. I go to a shop I had visited the day before, and from where I wanted to buy a flute, known as a Quena. When the people in the shop find out it's my brithday, they start asking me what about cake? And I end up going with a lady from the store to the cake shop. I get to blow out a candle, and get my face pushed into the cake, as I'm encouraged to take a bite directly from the cake! All good fun!!

Then in the evening, I take the friends I've met with me to Puma's home, where we enjoy a meal of king fish, and rice. Then we finish with bollywood music from my iPod, as well as some bollywood music dvd's that Puma has... it was the last place on the planet that I'd expected to find some of the 'home' culture, and yet here I was, celebrating, and dancing to music from home! Puma's mom even had her favourite song!