Heading out again

I head to Lima tomorrow on a 10:30 flight. Normally, I would take a bus, but as it's a 24 hour ride, and the ticket was on sale (and cheaper than a round-trip bus ticket), I succumbed to luxury and paid up. I'm adding more in the way of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but until they solve the collective action dilemma which is carbon emissions, I'll make these decisions based on economic, not altruistic, factors.

I'm going to miss the family here. Lucy and Ricardo, my evangelical protestant hosts, have been fantastic to stay with, including connecting me up with some interviews that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I'm also going to miss puffed quinoa cereal, the beautiful Cusco architecture, and the sense of history that pervades the place. I've been asked a couple of times why I like Cusco so much, and there are a couple of reasons, but the one I usually give has to do with history.

Cusco, for those of you who have never been here, is one place everyone should go to. It's made easy by the presence of a bustling tourist trade, it's pretty affordable, and it's not too far away.

Much of the center of the city is literally built on Incan foundations--when the Spanish showed up, they tore down Incan palaces and temples, but were smart enough to leave the foundations in place. Incan stonework is better designed for the occasional earthquake that hits the area.

Cusco was the capital of the Inca Empire. The founders of the empire came from Titicaca, and the story goes, they tried to sink a golden rod--given them by their father, the sun--into the ground as they wandered, until the ground eventually swallowed the rod easily, signifying that that was the place they should settle. The place where the rod eventually sunk is Southwest of the current center of the city, near where my last set of pictures were taken ("Barbecue Time").

Nowadays, you probably see as many gringos in the center of the city as native Peruvians, but if you go a couple of miles outside of the city, you're pretty much seeing life the way if was lived two hundred years ago or more. Some things have changed--cellular phones are pretty common, and growing numbers of villages have electricity, potable water, and (in some cases) sewage, but the houses I've visited have been, for the most part, mud brick homes with dirt floors and holes for windows. Sometimes, they have fiberglass roofs, and sometimes, they still have thatch (or ceramic tile), but the farm animals often share the home with the family, and rural rhythyms still form the backbone of country life. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man... well... parasite-ridden, exhausted, under-educated, and maybe illiterate.

There's a lot of poverty, of course, but there's also a lot of hope. Rural governments are starting to play a strong role in economic development (including promoting industry in a way that Chalmers Johnson would love to see) and there is a lot of optimism. A lot of frustration, and fear, too, but I think things are moving in a good direction.

If all goes well, I'll be back before too long, if only for a couple of days. We'll see how it goes, but I should be back here briefly at the end of April, then on to the Titicaca region, and then on to Bolivia.

Never enough time, but trying to use it as efficiently as I can.