Cuzco, where the catwalk got it’s claws

Black hair, dark eyes, pretty smile.

Somehow it always seems to start with a girl and a pretty smile…

I sent her a message through Couch Surfing and met up with her. She wrote she was an artisan, did photography and was happy to show people around Cuzco. I love creative people, so she seemed like the perfect person to give me some insight into Cuzco and its inhabitants…

A week later. I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, for four hours now. Emotions swung back and forth between deadly bored and deadly afraid. Don’t think about what you have to do in a another hour or so… How did I get talked into this again?

I had been hungry, so she told me she knew a nice place for a drink and some food. Sitting down, she was sizing me up. As she spoke, her big dark eyes stared down at me (well, up, actually, I have still to meet a Peruvian who is taller than me). I suddenly felt I could relate to small furry animals caught in the glare of an onrushing car’s frontal lighting…

“… so we are looking for tall, slim guys…”

Having missed most of what she said, I still figured she was talking about me (even the great Peruvian food hasn’t been enough to gain me any weight). Of course she was kind enough to repeat her very generous offer / request.

“I’m helping to organize a fashion show here in Cuzco and we are still looking for tall, slim models. Would you please audition?”

Right. That’s how I got suckered into being there, at the Hotel Cuzco, a week later. Cold fear running down my back (hoping that I wasn’t staining the designer’s outfit too badly), as my calves cramped up from the way-too-tight pants (I felt I, and the rest of the “models”, had run away from the opening scene of a bad gay-porn movie. No offense meant to gays or bad-movie makers of course. And I guess I still was lucky that I didn’t end up with the short pants or the more-revealing-than-covering alpaca “ropes” generously called a sweater).

We’d practiced. Walk up straight, large and fast paces, face neutral, shoulders backwards. Come on! I’m a guy! I can do one of these things but not all at the same time! Of course they wouldn’t listen…

Four people in front of me. Three. Two. One. “Go!” The assistant-manager-producer-something whispers. Down the stairs, turn, wait for three seconds (flash, flash, flash go the cameras). Walk (flash), turn (flash, flash), walk, walk (flash), turn for the press (flash, flash, whirring of a video camera, flash), turn back (flash), walk (flash, flash), up the stairs (final flash, for good measure). Finally, safety. I’d survived my first catwalk ever!

And before you start worrying: I promise I’ll still remember all you little people when my name is up there with Heidi Klum, Gisele Bundchen and the rest: Bastiaan Reinink, supermodel!

And of course some pictures:

PS.
The title is a slight twist from a line of this Gwen Stefani song:
Harajuku Girls