House Hunting in Pisac

We are happy to report that we have found a place to live in Pisac, the town where Katie and Georgia will be attending school beginning in a couple of weeks.  We spent this past weekend looking at houses, apartments and other potential places to live.  In doing so, we learned a variety of things.

1.       Taxi drivers are great sources of information.  We struck up conversations with two taxi drivers, both of which had relatives with houses to rent.  One had a sister who owns and rents several houses just outside of Pisac.  While these houses ultimately weren’t the best choice for us, the taxi driver was nice enough to call his sister and take us all out to visit one of her houses.  A second taxi driver had an aunt with a house for rent.  Again, this one didn’t quite fit the bill, in part because it was still under construction and even with assurances that it would be done by March, we weren’t too confident of this, given the state of the construction process.

2.       In addition to talking to taxi drivers, it’s great to ask for help from anyone and everyone you can find.  We talked to friends in the area, our Spanish teacher, the director of the girls’ school, random people in restaurants and anyone else we could talk to and ultimately ended up with a variety of different leads.

3.       Prices and types of possible housing vary widely in Pisac.  Rents per month varied from less than 450 soles (about $150) to nearly $3,000 soles ($1,000).  In several cases, people were willing to bargain and come down significantly in price (e.g., by as much as half).  Similarly, the places we looked at ranged from a five-bedroom totally furnished house on the edge of town, to simply two bedrooms in a “Hospedaje” with a shared bathroom and no ability to use a kitchen or any other facility there.

But ultimately, we found what we think will be a great place to live.  It is also a Hospedaje called Hospedaje Beho.  A Hospedaje is essentially a cross between a small hotel/hostel and a bed and breakfast.  However, in addition to having two bedrooms, we’ll be able to share the owners’ kitchen, as well as their living room, spacious garden/patio/courtyard, other common areas within the Hospadaje, along with a choice of several bathrooms (I guess there are probably pros and cons with that last bit).  It is in an ideal location, just a block from the main plaza in Pisac and about a two minute walk down the hill from the girls’ school.  It is also just a few minutes walk from the entrance to the Pisac ruins.  It is located slightly uphill from the rest of town with nice views of the town and surrounding valley from our windows and the second-story walkway outside our doors.  The courtyard is generally open to the street which will afford plenty of opportunities for interaction with passers-by.  At the same time, there is little to no vehicle traffic on that street and much of the time the owner reports that it is a pretty tranquil place.

The owner, Hipolito is a very nice man - extremely welcoming and generous - and we look forward to getting to know him and his family better.  So in less than two weeks we’ll be moving from an apartment in Cusco (thanks Jan, Amilcar and Rocio!) to our new place in Pisac.  We don’t have any pictures of it yet but we will post some photos of our new home in the coming weeks along with more updates on how we’re doing. 

Matt