Puno and Cuzco

As a result of running around visiting islands in Lake Titicaca, when I returned to the lakeside town of Puno, I completely forgot it was Good Friday. In the evening about 7 o´clock, I walked out of the internet cafe just as a procession was coming toward me. At the front was a priest and altar boys and behind them was a glass casket. Inside the casket was a statue of the dead Christ. The casket was carried on the shoulders of about a dozen men. Behind them was the Peruvian Navy marching band, about 15 strong, playing a funeral dirge. (Peru, just like Bolivia, has a navy contingent stationed at Lake Titicaca for reasons probably no one knows.) And of course behind them all were hundreds of locals all carrying candles and looking mournful. The people of the Andes may mesh their Catholicism with their ancient (Tiwanaku and Inca) beliefs, but they definitely take their Catholicism seriously!

Today I arrived by bus in Cuzco. After having spent several weeks in Bolivia and in the high Andes of southern Peru, landing in Cuzco is a bit like walking through the dirt roads of the Los Padres Forest and landing in Carmel! And the prices feel like Carmel as well!

The ride here from Puno was really interesting. The firt couple of hours we were on the high plateau of the Andes, much like driving up Hwy. 395 to Alturas. We went up to a summit with snow-crested peaks all around and then started descending through more than a dozen valleys. The landscape reminded me very much of Switzerland: lush green valleys and steep green mountains going way up on either side, with a river or creek rushing down the middle.

In Switzerland, there are cows grazing in the valleys and on the mountain slopes. Here, there is a mixture of cows, burros, llamas, alpacas, and sheep! And there´s always a human standing around somewhere watching them. In both Switzerland and here, the valley floor has scattered houses. However, here the houses are adobe with red tile roofs. One unfortunate thing about all of South America is the people´s complete disregard for the environment. The sides of the road near the towns are littered with garbage, sometimes with dogs digging through it. What a shame. This characteristic of Latin Americans however is not going to change, if at all, for centuries.

I am sitting here in this restaurant, because I´m starving after that long bus ride. The restaurant is about 10 feet by 20 feet. The door is open and it´s started to hail outside! After it started hailing, the waiter went to the door, shivered a little bit, and put a jacket on! The door remained open. The nice thing about the showers here is that they blow away in 20 minutes.

It seems like in most places I´ve been in South America so far, I´ve been the only gringo on the street, or on the bus, or wherever. Not so here! The little hotel I´m in is on a plaza pretty high up the hill from the center of town. I picked it because I figured most tourists would opt for accomodations easy to walk to, not up steep cobblestone streets. Instead the place seems filled with American and European tourists. Cuzco of course is the jumping off place for Machu Pichu, so that explains a lot. However, it´s also the "shoulder season" so I figured there wouldn´t be a whole lot of action going on....WRONG!! This place must feel like an American town in our summer months, the dry season here.

Well, the shower has stopped. Time to go explore Cuzco. Hasta luego!