Valentine's Day, not quite a massacre...

Ruth the accountant and morning manager is pilfering from the B&B supply purchases on an almost daily basis, probably has been for a long time; the other staff discuss it openly and document it, but have no idea what, if anything, will be done about it. Gemma watches her like a hawk, checks every shopping list and bill and inspects the purchases for missing items when they come in, and challenges her on every missing item. After a fanciful explanation which usually involves "oh, the shopkeeper must have forgotten to put it in the bag", Ruth produces the missing item a day or two later. Or she is quick to blame Pancha, who walks down to the market with her to help her carry the groceries back, but Gemma says Pancha has nothing to do with it. This has happened twice in the three days we've been here! Gemma and Cesar are just unpaid Helpx volunteers, like us, sleeping in one of the rooms for free and working much longer hours than Helpx recommends, and technically buying their own dinner, although they are running out of travel budget and generally eat lunch leftovers in the lodge kitchen for their supper. Gemma deals with Ruth because Carlos can't - when he engages with her over these issues, they fight. The rest of the staff filled us in on what they've documented before we got here. This week Gemma is going to Cusco to do the big shopping trip herself, partly to save the hassle of counting every item and balancing the cash when Ruth gets back.

Carlos, who is from all first appearances an honest, well-educated and quite bilingual manager from Bolivia (was in Australia as a kid and the U.S. as an adult), didn't record a reservation for the couple that arrived unexpectedly yesterday - with their confirmation email in hand! This morning he endured a snarled mess in the booking of horses for a newlywed couple and another group later in the day who wanted to enjoy a ride in the nearby hills. He was supposed to phone very early to confirm so that the horses would be brought and ready. Gemma says that Carlos "gets distracted by a passing butterfly"...on the other hand, the horse owner who sent his horses somewhere else because "it was raining" when he woke up and he hadn't received the confirmation phone call should have phoned Carlos before sending his horses somewhere else. He seems to have been confused about the fact that there were two separate couples who wanted to go riding, and took the two times he was given as some sort of "choice" that he could select. Mind you, the agent for the second group said that there was a newly married couple in that group as well (actually they were only engaged and are here with both sets of parents so they couldn't share the room that Deb and Gemma had carefully prepared with flowers and cut-out red hearts!), so perhaps that sowed the seed of misunderstanding.

Gemma the ultra-efficient Philippina Spaniard photographer and traveller who speaks English, Spanish, Catalan, Tagalog and one other language of the Philippines and is working on her French and now Quechua, had to be woken up at 7:30 to respond to a desperate call from Carlos. She worked the phones trying to source other horses. (Ruth should have been here by then but didn't show up until 9 a.m. with her son in tow and spent the first half hour just chewing the fat with Francesca the cook.) Oddly, Gemma spoke with Walter the horse guy just last night right in front of me here in the lobby and confirmed the need for the horses, but she wasn't made aware that an even earlier morning phone call might also have been required; that was, apparently, part of a conversation Carlos and Walter had earlier. Gemma got Louise's husband (ex) into the act (he usually just occupies a room and does sweet nothing to help out at the lodge) because he's a local and has a contact who has horses, but the contact also owns a bar and just wasn't available at this hour of the morning! Gemma sourced other horses but they wanted $80 for a couple of hours (an insane price for Peru, lots of stables in Canada or the U.S. are cheaper than that), rather than the $50 Carlos had originally contracted. I guess Carlos and/or the lodge will have to eat the difference. Smart Gemma located these horses on the internet by reasoning that a more remote stable might not be as busy, so the groups had to travel a bit and the first couple experienced a bit of a delay, but their two hour tours on horseback were saved, and they reported being very pleased with the views and the experience.

When he returned to the lodge at 4 p.m., Carlos began to take it out on Gemma even though it was clearly all his fault and she had saved his bacon. She was already upset with him for several reasons, so she let him have it back with both barrels, and he went away and cried about it all a bit, then came back and apologised to her. I'm pretty sure all will be better now; Gemma felt badly because she's convinced that Carlos is a really good guy and they've had a good relationship and built up a lot of trust until now. He's soft-hearted, but maybe just a little soft in the head as well, sometimes...a distractible academic who has a business in the winter doing astronomy with the tourists, using his telescopes.

Louise's husband is a recluse, except for the occasional local visitor. He seems to have some sort of company to do "spiritual medicine" that involves mescal tea (psychedelic mescaline = "spiritual" visions...) but Deb says he charges a ridiculous price and doesn't have many customers, so he just sits around all day, showers in the empty rooms in the mornings, and maybe spends a lot of his day at his friend's bar or hangs out with other buddies in town.

Deb wants to start a novel using the characters at the lodge - "they're all here", she says.

The water is low and none is coming in; the propane may be out (my shower went cold and didn't recover); and they are expecting a full house tonight. If reservations are overlooked, what about the possibility of overbooking? Hmm...I hope it doesn't get more awkward and uncomfortable than this. If Gemma weren't here, I don't know how this place would function. I've checked the water situation and informed Cesar and Gregorio, and mentioned Louise's email instructing them to fill the emergency tank with river water from the aqueduct above the back garden wall (she cc'd me), but so far nothing's happened; I think they're waiting for Carlos' arrival at around 2 p.m. to decide what to do, and maybe they're keeping their fingers crossed that the city repair will be finished before the guests arrive.

Evening: Paradise Restored! I had a nap, got up at 4 and saw the first of tonight's guests walking up the path. I went out to meet them, and met Carlos who was also just arriving. I ran over to the underground tank and popped the lid and...glory be! Full of clean, clear water. The upper tank was already also full and ready to go, pumped up there automatically. I met the guests, shook their hands, and enjoyed their ecstatic appreciation of our surroundings. The newlywed couple from last night has decided to stay over, and this seems to be a family of five spanning both sides of a couple about to be married - not sure exactly when or where, yet. For now, then, nothing but bliss and joy surround us. Oh - and nice flowers. I spent part of the day collecting flower photos from the plants in our garden to create a fresh slideshow for you. And of course, it's my snowbound family I'm thinking of when I post this. No captions this time, the flowers speak for themselves, but most of them are snapdragons and geraniums, with some cana lilies and a few other things, all in magnificent colour.

Carlos has asked us to do some research for him, finding well-recommended local businesses on the internet that he can create partnerships with the lodge, to do mutual referrals of customers - horseback riding, tours, better quality lodges and B&B's in onward communities, etc. Hosting was fun today.

We went out for Valentine's Dinner to Puka Rumi, probably one of the top three restaurants in town. Deb had alpaca with a spinach potato puré. I had the best $8 gourmet plate of "tropical chicken" you can imagine: succulent slices of breast in ginger sauce on a bed of puréed sweet potato divided by slices of peach and pineapple. We swapped plates halfway through, of course, but Deb decided she didn't like having her dinner and dessert all on the same plate, so I had to give hers back after I'd tried the alpaca. And we split a large bottle of Cusqueña Negra, a very black beer but not heavy like a Guinness; it actually has a very fruity flavour. We finished off with some chocolate heart shaped cookies from a baker just off the plaza. Lovely.