When their lips are moving

I had a new experience happen to me in Peru. Two people, one a travel agent, and one kind of like a travel agent in that he puts together mountain bike rides, totally unrelated, absolutely completely lied in my face. At the risk of sounding naive, I´m still a little shocked by it. In the course of traveling around latin america, I´ve had people hem and haw when asked a direct question. I´ve had people point off very vaguely and say something was "over there," meaning they don´t know where it is. I´ve had people tell me half-truths, or shade things, but never flat out lie through their teeth.

I´ve talked to an English girl who lives here and she confirmed that it is an ever present problem. I´d like to think that it´s not a Peruvian characteristic, but just a Cuzco characteristic, a symptom brought on by the horrible tourism situation which permeates this town.

In my earlier post, I reported on the high cost of visitng the ruins at Mucha Moolah. I was wrong about the entrance fee to the ruins. I said it cost $20. It costs $40.

The only good news is that I was able to find out that the train, the one and only transport to Mucha Moolah, stops at a town halfway there. Not only that, the fare from there to the ruins is $57 round trip, which is a far cry from the $140 round trip fare from Cuzco. There´s a 2 hour bus ride from here to that little town. The bus ride costs $1.50. I found all this out from fellow travelers. A word of caution: if you ever come to Cuzco, avoid travel agents like the plague.

Hasta luego!