I lost a friend on Wednesday. Mehmet Ergelen was in a fatal wreck driving home from his weekly Bluebag trip from Ikea-Memphis. Over the years we played soccer, threw dart league, and played kickball together. He was one of the few people I’ve known who was competent at everything he tried. He was ambitious, stubborn, silly, and generous. I’ll miss him.

His Obituary

Mehmet Ergelen, 51, passed away in a tragic vehicle accident on August 14, 2019 in Mississippi. Mehmet is survived by his wife, Kandise Woods of New Orleans; his mother, Sumer Ergelen of Istanbul, Turkey; his brother Ahmet and his wife Nuket of Istanbul; and his niece Ceylan of Istanbul, as well as his cousins Ahmet and Elif Guvener of Austin, Texas and their son, Cem; all of his beloved new in-laws, including his mother-in-law Elizabeth Sayles of Point, Texas and her parents, Kennith and Dollie Glenn of Walters, Oklahoma, his father in law, Mikel Woods and wife Tonya of Houston, Texas, as well as his loving extended family and countless friends. His father, Mustafa Ergelen of Mersin, Turkey, precedes him in death.

Mehmet was born on April 15, 1968 in Istanbul, Turkey. He attended high school at Robert College in Istanbul and graduated from the University of Texas in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering. He also attended the Rochester Institute of Technology and studied Industrial Design. Through his first job at Procter and Gamble he lived in many cities and gained lifelong friends in Rochester, Boston, Chicago, lived in Geneva, Switzerland, and finally, he moved to New Orleans where he worked for Idea Village, a springboard for his company, Bluebag, LLC. There he also met his wife Kandise through kickball where they both played in the Kickball of Crescent City league. After a nearly decade-long relationship they were married last year and recently celebrated their first anniversary.

Mehmet was a vivacious and entertaining man whose childlike spirit was infectious. He played tennis with City Park and Stern, among others, as well as soccer, originally with Finn McCools Irish Pub, and then with several teams. He was also an avid dart and pool player. Throughout his design career he accomplished many goals and received acclaim, and he developed his business with gusto. He appreciated his far-reaching customer base, many of whom he also called friends. A memorial service is scheduled for 12 o’clock noon on Sunday, August 18th at Jacob Schoen & Sons Funeral Home, located at 3827 Canal Street in New Orleans. A celebration of his life will take place at a later date. Mehmet will return home to his mother to rest with his late father in Turkey.

The post My Friend Mehmet appeared first on Richard Beu / Designer Developer Fullback Pirate Brewer.

Below are my notes from reading Brewing Up A Business by Sam Calagione.

Rating: 7 / 10
Reviews & Details: Amazon

Generating Ideas

It is important to see what is happening in the world. What you do outside of work informs what you do at work.

Reading outside of your industry is an effective way to get a fresh vantage point.

Look at your biggest competitors. What are their strengths? Is there an opportunity to create a strength for your company that is diametrically opposed to that of your biggest competitor? You have to learn everything there is to know within your chosen industry. It’s as important to know your competitors’ weaknesses as well as your own.

Planning

At the very least you should write a business plan to prove to yourself that your idea is well thought out and worth pursuing. Your business plan in hard form and your business practices in everyday work situations will provide your coworkers with the information they need to decide if they should trust you and buy into your big idea.

Give your business plan to a few people from different walks of business life for their opinions. Their comments will tell you if your sound business proposition is as clear to the outsider looking in as it is to you.

Creating a pro forma financial plan, including presumed build-out costs and operating capital requirements, is very important. But it’s equally important to update and adjust your financial plan after you are up and running. When putting together a business plan, always assume costs are going to be higher and sales lower than you think.

The ideal business model maximizes short-term profits without compromising long-term growth and financial returns.

At the same time that you write a business plan for your company, it is helpful to write a values plan for yourself.

I recommend that any budding entrepreneur form a board of directors or board of advisers to bring an element of experience to your venture. It is critical that you take the time to run the board as officially and legally as possible.

If a budget is your road map for the coming year, then it makes sense to involve the people who care about the company’s success in that budget.

Finances

Running out of money is the number one reason small companies go out of business. Most business owners go into business because they possess a passion for the product or service they sell, but rarely do they possess the financial background necessary to successfully manage their finances to the full extent. They open their companies to devote time and energy toward creating and providing the service or product they are passionate about, not to toil over balance sheets and cash flow statements. This is in part why most small businesses fail.

Brewpubs had one-tenth the failure rate of restaurants that open without breweries. The biggest advantage to starting out as a brewpub was that we could make beer on much smaller brewing equipment than if we had opened a distributing microbrewery.

Having a financial system in place when you open your doors is critical to managing cash flow.

Once you do have a positive cash flow, it’s important to establish some sort of war chest that can get you through hard times.

It’s important to recognize just how valuable and critical every single percentage of ownership is. Your decisions regarding who you let invest in your company matter greatly, so make sure the investor is someone you trust, respect and can reason with.

The first and seemingly biggest question you are asking banks is: “Will you lend me money?” The equally important question that you need to ask them after they have responded yes or no to your question is “Why?”

I would recommend that any entrepreneur look into the SBA for possible assistance in financing a business; it’s an excellent resource.

Contracts

We rarely sign contracts with terms of more than one year with any of our vendors.

Never make critical deals on a handshake.

Values

Business integrity is a combination of your values, work ethic, and the value you provide to potential customers.

If your business is not perfectly aligned with your own values and beliefs, you will resent yourself when times get tough.

If you care more about how much you make than what you make, you are bound to fail or at the very least create a negative workplace environment.

The single most important component to our success is aligning the passion of the people who make the beer with that of the people care enough to buy it.

A good company is a group of good people gathered around a good idea.

If there is anyone working at your company who isn’t upholding the values you prioritize, your first objective should be realigning that person to the company.

Hiring

Identifying motivated and talented people is extremely important.

Hire managers who are more capable and ambitious than you are in their areas of expertise.

Leadership

You truly act as a leader only when you take the time to reward and recognize the people who help the community grow for the better, and redirect or let go of the people who are incapable or unwilling to help the community grow.

As a leader (or a parent – I’m looking at you Dad), it’s useless to say, “We are doing it this way because I said so.”

The most successful companies are those that recognize labor not only as an asset but as the most important asset a company has.

People learn best from watching, and you should never underestimate how much coworkers learn about the company by watching how the leader goes about a typical workday.

Nothing will establish your reputation more than your respect for the people around you.

You can only successfully incorporate a family dynamic into your company if the coworkers who care about the company are repaid by the company caring for them.

When coworkers feel they have contributed to a new product, service, or way of doing business, they develop a strong sense of loyalty to the company.

The more coworkers feel like they are listened to, the more they feel like they matter in the grand scheme of the company. The more they feel like they matter to the company, the more they care for it. They begin to believe that the future of the company is truly their future as well.

You need to create an environment of empowerment where coworkers perceive the company as something belonging to them as much as it belongs to you. This is why I speak of the people I work with as coworkers, not employees.

Cultivate your own unique perspective and incorporate it in the philosophy of your company.

For most small-business owners a day will come when the decision must be made to concentrate on either the left-brained or the right-brained business activities. It is a very rare leader who will be able to oversee everything and stymie neither the growth or the health of the company. You have to be honest with yourself and recognize where you are strong and where you are weak.

Management

You need to accept that the decisions your managers make will not be the same ones you would make. You must acknowledge that this is okay and at the same time involve them in the long-term decisions that require your leadership.

In order to maintain communication, small-business owners should schedule management meetings at least once a month. This should be done whether there is only one person managing a facet of your business other than yourself or seven managers overseeing distinct parts of your company. Monthly meetings should be held in the middle of the month. This will give you and your bookkeeper time to put together a review of the previous month’s financial performance.

To manage effectively, you need to clarify your expectations of everyone who works with you. You must continually track, recognize, and reward the efforts and achievements of the people who work with you toward proving to your potential customers that yours is a worthwhile business proposition. Have an aggressive bonus program for all brewery coworkers based on net operating profit and other performance metrics. We set goals that are fair and within people’s control, and they are rewarded when they meet those goals.

To find out what benefits are most important to your coworkers, ask. We sent out a questionnaire to all coworkers annually asking them to list in order of importance the benefits that they would like most to receive. Whatever level of benefits you can afford to offer, start there. As your business evolves, ask for the input of all your coworkers about what is most important to them.

You send mixed messages if you only half-heartedly embrace the ideas of those around you. But if coworkers witness the boss getting excited about their idea as they do and then following through to make sure it gets a fair trial, then they and everyone around them will truly believe that they work at an innovative company.

You know you are running a company well when it doesn’t need you to make day-to-day decisions any longer.

Make sure everyone within your organization understands how what you are selling is different from and better than what is being offered by competitors.

Execution

It is not having the great idea that makes you a success in business; it’s executing it.

Competition

Since you cannot compete with big business on price, you must be sure that the value of your product is apparent in all aspects of your offering. If what you are selling is truly more special and extraordinary than similar products from bigger competitors, then you deserve to be paid more. When you can’t win on quantity you have to win on quality. You must charge more in order to provide the quality that differentiates you from the crowd. The consumer with the lowest expectations in not in your targeted demographic.

If the main category that your business falls into is overcrowded, then it’s time to create and define your own subcategory.

If you take the time to roam constructively, you will learn a tremendous amount about your company and its place in the competitive environment.

Marketing

Through promotional materials any customer at any level can know not only what the beer tastes like, but what glassware it should be served in, how well it ages, what wines it would replace in a meal and what foods it would accompany well. As a small company it is especially important to err on the side of sharing too much information.

The consumer education process starts with the first interaction between the customer and the company. The publicity event, when executed correctly, can be the perfect forum for this interaction. You must analyze what you are trying to accomplish by holding an event, and focus on that objective. It costs time and money to pull these things off, and you want to make sure it is time and money well spent.

You need to get down on a single page what your company does, what products it makes, some quotes from respected sources touting the quality of your products, and directions toward where to buy and learn more about your products.

The more samples you give out to appropriate potential customers, the more you will see sales grow.

No matter how good a product or service is, it will remain irrelevant unless the buying public knows it exists. The way you gain customers is by gaining attention. The way you gain attention is by standing out from the other businesses you compete with. If you can disrupt business as usual, you will attract positive attention while shifting the spotlight away from your bigger competitors.

If potential customers are told about the merits of your service or product by someone they believe in, you have a fighting chance. This is why public relations is much more important for a small company than advertising.

We make sure the first time we release something, there is not enough of it to satisfy demand. By not satisfying demand initially we create more demand for the future.

Your marketing efforts will be unsuccessful if you create a brand on par with or below those of your competition.

Spend less time trying to figure out what your brand is and more time recognizing your brand in the world around you. Let your products and services earn your brand identity for you. Spend the time to explain yourself, and your customers will appreciate your effort as much as they do your offerings.

If you are willing not only to apologize for your mistakes and make it up to your customers, but also to actively defend your customers when their taste in your product is brought into question, that sends a powerful message.

You can build demand at the individual customer level, which leads to demand at the retail level, which leads to demand at the distributor level.

We dedicate roughly 3% of our annual sales to all aspects of marking, including advertising, press releases, social media, special events, our website, free samples and so on.

Sales

When the aggressive-to-empathetic ratio is way out of whack in one direction or the other that the salesperson is ineffective. The personality trait that best summarizes a sales-centric mentality is compassion. You need to be compassionate and empathetic to sell.

Remember that you are selling to human being with feelings, not a commodity.

You must always consider your value proposition from the perspective of the customer first. Once you have figured out what motivates the buyer to choose your offering, you should expand all of your sales activity around that reality.

You need to recognize that everyone in your company, regardless of title, is a salesperson.

When you are constructing your sales budget, make sure that your sales force is given a lot of responsibility for and input to the budget itself.

Feedback

Closing the gap between your perception and the public reality of your company is something all small business people need to be engaged in. A simple and revealing means of identifying the gap between the perception and the reality of your company is the initiation of a program of customer feedback cards.

When you are small you can react quickly to customer feedback and your reaction will show your customers that you care.

If the customer had a legit gripe that can be corroborated by someone who was working at the time, we send the customer a gift certificate. We want them to come back and try us again.

Innovation

You need to be conscious of the impending changes and the opportunities to initiate change within your own industry.

The more unusual the killer app is, the smaller the niche it will appeal to. When you are stalking a killer app for your own company, the process should include a forecast of expected results. Defining success simultaneously with the design of your killer app will keep you focused on achieving the desired results.

Innovate in pairs. It takes a lot of guts to try something new, and experience has taught me that if you are going to try something new you might as well try two things at the same time. Two things are less likely to fail than one. Conception, packaging, advertising, distribution – if all of the costs associated with a launch can be shared between two brands instead of shouldered by a single product, the launch itself can be more affordable and the products more sustainable.

Before bringing your innovative product or service to market, test it under an array of environments and with a selection of potential customers to make sure the bugs are worked out. Serving our new beers in our pub before selling them coast-to-coast allowed us to formulate our message and establish our unique voice.

The post NOTES: Brewing Up A Business appeared first on Richard Beu / Designer Developer Fullback Pirate Brewer.

Emily and I went on a two week trip to Peru. Below is a detailed account of our travels.

NOTE: You can click on any of the photos for the full sized version.

05/03/2019 – Flying To Lima

Dave Lanser drove us to the airport. Thanks Dave!

We took flight 1422 JetBlue NOLA to Fort Lauderdale // 11:37am Departure – 2:34pm Arrival

We ate lunch in the Fort Lauderdale airport. I had a Cuban sandwich and Emily had a veggie wrap.

We took flight 1825 JetBlue Fort Lauderdale to Lima // 5:07pm Departure – 10:00pm Arrival

When we landed in Lima there was a large crowd gathered around the exit with signs and balloons. Our hostel had a young woman with a sign with Emily’s name on it pick us up. She took us to our driver after waiting a bit for another passenger that didn’t show up.

We got to the PayPurix Hostel around 11:30 pm. We were showed to our communal room where everyone else was asleep. We fumbled around in the dark with our bags and ended up putting them in our beds with us. I slept poorly due to the large amount of noise from traffic outside and what I think was a warehouse next door.

05/04/2019 – Flying To Cusco + Driving to Ollantaytambo

We got up at 6:00 am and were out the door by 6:30. We had the same driver as the night before. He was parked outside the hostel sleeping in his car when it was time to go. We had a couple of good breakfast sandwiches at La Bonbonniere and departed.

We took flight VV752 Viva Air Peru LIMA to CUSCO // 9:29 am Departure – 11:02am Arrival

Emily enjoyed looking out the window at the mountains during the flight. We arranged for a cab company to take us to Quechuas Expeditions in downtown Cusco so we could pay for our trek and then to the Garden Lodge in Ollantaytambo.

We had a hard time finding the Garden Lodge. It was down a side street and then a right turn down a small foot path across a garden. We knocked and rang the doorbell. No one was there so we walked back into town and got lunch at Restaurant Sergio. We both had lomo saltado – beef stir fry with peppers, onions and tomatoes and coca tea. We hung out for a while watching soccer and waiting for an afternoon shower to end.

We headed back to the hostel around 4pm after wandering around town for a while. They still weren’t there. A neighbor came out and called them for us. They showed up a little while later with a roll of laminate flooring and glue.

After getting checked in we wandered aimlessly around town. Emily bought a necklace from a street hawker. We felt the altitude as a little unpleasant tightness in the chest, but it wasn’t a problem. We headed back to the hostel early, played skipbo and read until we fell asleep.

05/05/2019 – Ollantaytambo Main Ruins + Quarry Hike

We had breakfast of a hard-boiled egg, bread with strawberry jam and butter, and a banana served with coffee and coca tea. We went to the ruins and hired a guide with a crippled hand named Willan. He gave a good tour, but I think we annoyed him with the amount of questions we asked. Ollantaytambo was never finished because the Spanish conquest interrupted construction. You could see where stones were still being worked. The stones were dragged from a quarry 6km away. They had a temple of the condor with a condor carved in the side of the mountain. It is a combination of Incan and pre-incan ruins. 60% of the original Incan town still exists today. They carved the giant face of the creator god Viracocha into the side of Pincuiluna Mountain. They rerouted the river and made showers for the Inca and his wife to purify themselves before ceremonies. We climbed above the main ruins to where the guards stood lookout. We then went even higher off the beaten path. The views were incredible.

After the ruins, we hiked along the path to the quarry and watched the sunset.

We got back to town around 6pm and ate dinner at La Esuina in the town square. We tried Cusquena beer. I had a tasty alpaca dish with mushroom sauce. We played cards and feel asleep easily after having hiked approximately 10 miles.

05/06/2019 – Ollantaytambo Granary Ruins + Driving to Cusco

We got early and had the same breakfast except the egg was fried and there grapes instead of a banana. We hiked up to the granaries that are opposite the main ruins. We got a little lost on the way. The trailhead is not well marked. After our hike we grabbed our packs and checked out of The Garden Lodge.

As we wandered around town we had street chicken with green sauce and ice cream for lunch. We went through the local market. Meat conditions were questionable. Nothing was on ice or refrigerated. We found a chicharia. They are marked by a red flag on the end of a stick. In this case they had a bunch of red plastic wrap on the end of a hunk of wood. It looked like a weird q-tip. It was served to us by an old woman who was amused by us in the courtyard outside her house in a quart sized cup. There were a couple of locals there drinking and talking. They made fun of my useless attempt at speaking Spanish. We had asked for two chichas, but she decided a giant one was the way to go. Emily bought a belt to use a camera strap at the market.

We found a car to drive us to our hostel in Cusco for $20. We checked into the Arcopata Guest House and wandered around Cusco for hours. We went through the town square and their large covered outdoor market. A young woman approached us and handed me a baby alpaca. It was so soft and calm. Emily gave it a big hug and some pets.

We got alpaca goulash at Restaurant Cafe Bar Pucara off the town square. There were stands set up outside the Qorikancha and it looked like show was about to start. We sat there for 30 minutes while a guy was testing the microphone by repeatedly saying “Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola!… Si!”. We started getting cold and headed back to the hostel.

05/07/2019 – Trek Day 1 // Biking from Abra Malaga Pass to Santa Maria + White Water Rafting on the Urubamba

We had a breakfast of bread with jam and butter served with coffee and tea. We needed to be out the door at 6:30 to meet our guide for our trek. We got annoyed with each other because Emily wanted to be polite and wash our dishes at the hostel and I wanted to be on time. We met our guide Guillermo outside our hostel and drove to the Abra Malaga pass at 4,316m / 14160ft. We then biked down the mountain to the town of Santa Maria at 1,500m / 4,920ft. It took about 4 hours with a short break in the middle. We biked through a bunch of streams flowing over the path on the way down and the views were awesome.

We signed up for the large trek group that averages 12 people, but we ended up being the only two people on our trek.

We put on bug spray and went white water rafting down the Urubamba river. We had a Brazilian raft guide. Our raft had another couple in front of us who had no idea what they were doing. About half way through rafting I was invited to go for a swim in the river. It ended up being an invite to hang on the front of a kayak while going through rapids. That was nuts. We had dinner in Santa Maria. Walked around town and looked at the stars. Our hostel’s toilet was possessed and we could hear everything a bunch of drunk bros were doing above us. Thank god for ear plugs. The shower was ice cold and Guillermo’s bed got wet from puke seeping through the ceiling.

05/08/2019 – Trek Day 2 // Hiking to Santa Terasa + Colcamayo Hot Springs

We were up at 6am and hiked all day to Santa Teresa. We started hiking down a dirt road to the trailhead. We saw a huge waterfall. We hiked on the real Inca Trail. We stopped at a coffee plantation called “The Monkey House” and had some coffee and banana bread with chocolate sauce. While eating a little monkey jumped in my lap and surprised me. A parrot tried to eat Emily’s shoe. We learned about coffee, chocolate and different types of potatoes. We did a shot of Inca Tequila with a snake coiled in the bottle. Then we rested in hammocks for a while. We bought some coffee to bring home from “The Monkey House”. The coffee really good. It has a chocolatey smoothness. We got our faces painted with crushed sacha inchi seeds. Emily lost the sole of one of her hiking boots while walking through an overgrown portion of the trail. Along the trail Guillermo was picking fruit, coffee beans and coca leaves for us to sample. The views were amazing.

We went across a river in a sketchy basket on a wire then walked through an old railway tunnel where I lost my water bottle. There was a ghost bike at the entrance of the tunnel. We finished the day with a dip in the hot springs of Colcamayo. There was a rainbow over the hot springs the whole time the sun was out. The hot springs people were PITAs for not wanting to break a 50 soles bill to pay for our entrance. We then went to the party hostel to dance and have a few drinks.

05/09/2019 – Ziplining + Hiking to Aguas Calientes

We went zip lining at Vertika Zipline. They have 6 lines with last one being 930m / 3,050ft long across a valley over a river and a forest. We ziplined in seated, laying, upside down, spinning and superman positions. There was also rock climbing and an extremely sketchy rope bridge. Emily loved it.

I had a Peruvian burger (mystery meat with onion and pepper mixed in) lunch at Hidroelectrica and napped in hammocks before hiking to Aguas Calientes. We could see the mountains of Machu Picchu during the hike. We were walking along train tracks and a train would go by every once in a while. We saw a lot of ants swarming and balls of insects.

We got to Aguas Calientes and checked into our Hotel. We wandered around town. It is a sanitized version of Peru and very touristy. There is a lot of wood oven pizza. We went to a couple of different markets and ate a lot of weird local candy and snacks. At this point our boots started to really smell. We took hot showers and tried to dry out our clothing as much as possible. We had dinner with Guillermo. My Bistek wasn’t very good, but Emily’s trout was.

05/10/2019 – Machu Picchu + Traveling back to Cusco

We started hiking to Machu Picchu at 6am. The hostel made us bag breakfasts. We made it up the 1,780 stairs to the entrance by 7:30. Yes, Emily counted all the stairs. It is beautiful.

Guillermo met us and gave us our tour. Our tickets were for 8am and Guillermo tried to get us in early. The guy running the kiosk was having none of it and we had to go to the back of the line. The path through the ruins is one way and you can’t go back. They are only supposed to let in limited number of people, but it was very crowded. I’m skeptical that they keep to their ticket sales numbers.

It was the Inca’s holiday home. 500 people permanently lived there including a harem of 100 women for the Inca. It was not finished. You could see the quarry the stones came from with uncompleted stones laying around. There were llamas running around. They carved rocks to mimic the mountains in the distance. We tried to climb Machu Picchu Mountain, but they wouldn’t let us up. We sat and observed the mountains and scenery instead.

We had to run down the mountain to get our bags from the hostel and get to our train to Ollantaytambo on time. We sat across from a couple of older ladies from New Zealand who were amusing. There was a train fashion show that was weird. They gave us coffee and a potato cake as a snack. A driver met us at the train station and drove us to Cusco. The road was blocked by a landslide and covered in boulders. They used a backhoe to clear the road. We got back to our the Arcopata Guest House hungry and tired. We showered and went to La Casa de Yudy for dinner. We had a three course meal with tea for 15 soles a person. We passed out hard and slept like bricks.

05/11/2019 – Cusco Churches + Festival of Senor de Torrechayoc

We slept in and ate a standard Peruvian breakfast. We went to the churches of Cusco. San Blas, San Cristobal and the Catedral de Cusco with it’s two adjacent churches. We saw the Last Supper by Marcos Zapata that has a chinchilla as the meal. The Cusco Cathedral has the heart of Inca Garcilas de la Vegas in a box. Not bounce trash can. In San Cristobal there were statues surrounded by toys. One statue was holding a model airplane with the flight number 283 from United Airlines. There was a statue of Joesph holding a sawtooth sabre. They all contained life size statues of saints with real human hair in brightly colored cloth costumes that are kind of like mardi gras indian costumes. Their alters to saints are huge ornate wood carvings covered with gold leaf with niches for statues and works of art. We saw Black Christ which is a large carved crucifix that is believed to have averted disaster during the 1650 earthquake. Unfortunately but understandably, you are not allowed to take photos inside of any of the churches.

We stumbled upon The Festival of Señor de Torrechayoc in the Plaza de Arms. There were a bunch of different dancing groups with live music. We got some chicha and churros from street vendors. There were lots of colorful costumes worn by masked dancers. That evening we went to Museo de Cacao and took a chocolate making class. We learned the history of chocolate, tried a bunch of different chocolates and made some ourselves. The teacher was a goofy med and finance student. We capped the evening off with some pisco sours.

05/12/2019 – Sacsayhuaman + Q’enqo

It was rainy in the morning. so we hung out at the hostel drinking tea and writing postcards in the window seat nook. We walked to the Sacsayhuaman ruins right outside of Cusco. It was a finished fortress. Cusco was built in the shape of a puma with Sacsayhuaman as its head. It was also used to stage religious ceremonies. Much of the stone used to build Sacsayhuaman came from 10-20 miles away. Over the years many of its stones were used to build buildings in the surrounding areas. About 20% of the ruins remain intact.

Then we got lost trying to go to Q’enqo. We walked past soccer fields and all sorts of stuff. A cowboy pointed us in the right direction. Emily found an Alpaca staked to a tree and became friends with it. Q’enqo was a religious site where sacrifices were made and nobles were mummified. Q’enqo had a cave carved into the rock where they did ceremonies.

We walked back to Cusco as it got dark and we ate a restaurant with no sign. I had ceviche and Emily had lomo saltado. A mariachi band ate near us and a couple with a big dog at by the door. We then got beers at a grocery store and played cards at the hostel.

05/13/2019 – Hunting Treasure Game + Qorikancha + Bus to Puno

We were supposed to Rainbow Mountain, but protests closed all the roads around Cusco.

We played the Hunting Treasure game that Guillermo runs as a side hustle. You are given a card with nine landmarks and compete to find the landmarks as fast as you can. When you’re done your guide explains the significance of each of the landmarks. After we finished game, we headed over to Cafe Punchay. Emily got a victory coffee as prize for winning and we had pisco sours. The back room of Cafe Punchay is where Guillermo has his office. It’s a nice little space. I gave him some advice on his website which was a bit awkward because I was criticizing another guy’s work in front of him.

We ate stuffed peppers fried with dough and potatoes from a street vendor. They were really good, but we both felt a bit queezy afterwards. Then we mailed our postcards. I was hoping we’d get some cool stamps on the postcards, but they used a small shipping label instead. After that we went to the Qorikancha. The Qorikancha is a mishmash of Incan, Colonial Spanish and modern architecture. It has been used by the Dominicans as a church and monastery since the Spanish conquest. It had parts dedicated to Incan history and the Dominicans. The Dominican part was a much larger section. The Qorikancha was the most important temple in the Incan empire. Much of its original stonework forms the foundations of the Dominican buildings.

Then we went to the Traditional Textiles Center. They have a museum dedicated to the history of weaving in the Andes and a large store. We ate dinner a couple blocks away from the Qorikancha at a joint with wifi. After dinner we walked to the bus station and took an overnight Cruz Del Sur bus to Puno.

05/14/2019 – Puno + Uros

Arequipa, Arequipa, Arequipa… Arequipa, Arequipa, Arequipa…

We got into Puno at 5:30 in the morning without sleeping much on the bus. We waited around at the bus stop until it was light outside. Emily napped on my shoulder while we waited. We strolled down the lake front which smelled like decaying plant matter and sewage. On our stroll we stumbled upon a protest and went around it. We went to the town square and dozed off on a bench for a bit. Sleeping on the bus was less than ideal. We walked up to the statue of Machu Capac that overlooks Puno. We went to Candelaria for a pleasant lunch. We played king’s corners while drinking chicha and eating chicharrones, potatoes and corn.

After lunch we headed back to the bus station to meet our contact to go to the Uros Aruma Uro hotel. They weren’t there. The lady at the Peru help desk was able to get ahold of them and we were on our way in 10 minutes. We drove to a boat launch and were taken out into Lake Titicaca amongst the reeds. We paid a toll and made it out to our floating reed island hotel. The island is a bit squishy and bobs a little bit with the water. We had our own cabin with a lot of blankets and a hot water bottle for our feet. There was an observation deck so you could see out into the lake. There were so many reeds that it looked like a field of grass. As we watched the sunset, six fellow travelers showed up. We did the vast majority of our trip just the two of us, so it was a change of pace to have some company. We had a nice dinner of trout, potatoes, steamed veggies and crema. Then we sat by a fire and talked for about an hour before calling it a night. Sitting around a fire on an island made of reeds is a bit odd. It was a bit disconcerting that the fuel for the fire was the same reeds the island is made from. The stars were brilliant, but the half moon outshone them.

05/15/2019 – Uros + Taquile Island Tour + Puno + Bus to Cusco

We woke up on the reed island and had a breakfast of eggs, bread with jam, and the best pears I’ve ever had served with tea and coffee. We then hopped on the beginning of a tour of the Uros and Taquile Island. It was supposed to be 25 soles, but ended up being 42 soles per person. We ended up having the exact amount of money needed. There was an explaination of how they build their islands and then we were off into the lake to Taquile Island. The hotel had run out of water, so we were pretty dehydrated by the end of the tour. The boat ride was gorgeous. Our tour group was called “Cusi” which means happy in Quechua.

Taquile has about 2,000 residents who adhere to their traditional ways. No outsiders are allowed to purchase land. It is about two hours from Puno by boat. There are quite a bit of pre-Incan ruins on the island. It is about 4,050m / 13,290 ft above sea level at it’s highest point. The waters in the area were blue, green, and remarkably clear. We got back to Puno from Taquile Island around 5:30.

We went to a restaurant, downed a lot of water, ate a guinea pig, avacado sandwhich and some cheese cake. Emily ordered a jar of sangria that ended up being a pitcher of sangria. A traditional band played three songs and then went on their way. We found an internet cafe that let up print our boarding passes for the next day’s flight for one sol. We walked down by the lake to the bus stop and took another overnight bus back to Cusco.

05/16/2019 – Cusco Market + Flight to Lima

We got to Cusco at 5:15 in the morning and slept decently on the bus. We wandered around Cusco until places started to open around 7am and found a coffee shop for breakfast. I had an empanada with coca tea and Emily had a “mother in law’s tongue” pastery. We went to the market and did our gift shopping. We grabbed our bags from the Arcopata Guest House, who had been nice enough to store them for us when we went to Puno, and got a ride to the airport via Uber.

Flight VV753 Viva Air Peru LIMA to CUSCO // 11:35 am Departure – 1:19pm Arrival

We flew to Lima. After we grabbed our bags, we took a 40 minute cab ride to the Global Family Backpackers Hostel in the Miaflores district.

We got ceviche at Costazul. Walked by the beach and found a chocolate shop for desert. There were surfers and parasailors. We threw rocks in the ocean and Emily got a bit wet. It was quite loud due to wave action over rocks. The shower at our hostel was actually hot! We hadn’t showered since the 13th and were rather ripe. We read for a while and fell asleep.

05/17/2019 – Museo Larco + Flying to Fort Lauderdale

We got up and had breakfast with Jessica, an Edmontonian who we were sharing our communal room with. We sat around talking until it was time to check out. We walked out to Museo Larco and go lost on the way. A street vendor selling really good Peruvian beignets set us straight.

Museo Larco was started by Rafael Larco Hoylea when he was 25. He was an archeologist and collector of Incan and pre-columbian artifacts. The museum covers the history of Peru and has a ton of artifacts. The grounds are very nice with colorful flowers. It felt like a country club. There were a lot of burial headdresses, ear plugs, sliver and gold shirts, nose ornaments and so much pottery. Emily wanted all of the torquoise jewellery.

On the way back, we ate at a cevicheria and said hi to the fried dough lady. We managed to get lost again due to the lack of street signs in Lima. We barely made it back in time to meet our scheduled cab. We picked up our bags from the hostel and started out for the airport at 7:00 in the evening. It took us 1.5 hours to go 14 miles. Peruvian traffic is insane. It was the most intense driving I have ever experienced.

Flight 1824 JetBlue Lima to Fort Lauderdale // 11:00pm Departure – 6:05pm Arrival

Our flight was originally supposed to leave at 11:00 pm, but we didn’t take off until 2:15 am. We drank pisco sours, played cards and took off our shoes while we waited. Taking off our shoes felt great, but smelled terrible.

05/18/2019 – Ft. Lauderdale

We landed in Ft. Lauderdale at 8:40 in the morning. We had to get through customs, check our bags again and get on our connecting flight by 9:20. We made it through everything at 9:30 and we missed our flight home. We waited in line for an hour to get to the help desk. While we waited I talked to the airline and got us on a flight out the next morning. There is only one flight that goes to New Orleans each day and they couldn’t figure out a way to reroute us. They gave us a hotel room and meal vouchers for our trouble.

We walked from the Hampton Inn to the beach to go swimming and relax. We had a salad and a calzone for lunch and pizza and beer for dinner. I took an epic shower. We fell asleep while watching Deadpool after talking to our families.

05/19/2019 – Flying to New Orleans

Flight 1423 JetBlue Fort Lauderdale to NOLA // 9:54pm Departure – 11:02am Arrival

We got to New Orleans on time, but the airport was closed due to a thunderstorm. We circled until we were about to run out of fuel and were rerouted to Mobile, AL. We spent over an hour on the ground while they refueled and argued with the airport. We made it to New Orleans about two hours late. Jess picked us up and we made it home alive. Thanks Jess!

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This was my Thanksgiving beer for this year. It came out quite well. It is heavy and sweet. It makes an excellent beer float with chocolate ice cream.

The post Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout Recipe appeared first on Richard Beu / Designer Developer Fullback Pirate Brewer.