I’m glad to be back in Arequipa, but sorry to be leaving Perú.

      My plan is to clear out the flat then drive fairly rapidly toward Lima, and sell the car there.  It’s suddenly a crowded schedule, because I’ve a lot to do to close up the flat, but must leave a reasonable window of time in Lima to sell the car and take car of a few other errands.

      Alone again, I’m relaxed.  But the fates conspire.   The car isn’t working, and several visits to a couple of garages seem for a long time to result in no improvement, but then do.  

      The next problem is that I should have followed my instinct in Puerto Maldonado and gotten a couple more words (“or his designee”) inserted into the document by which Ragna signed over any rights to the car.   I could sell it — but I cannot leave it with Aurelio or my friend in Lima to sell it for me. 

      I decide simply to transfer the car to my landlord and friend, Aurelio, who will sell it when he can, and send me my share, or decide to keep it, and send me a certain amount.  On balance, I will lose a couple of thousand from what I paid for the car, but I got six months’ hard driving out of it.   Six times the loss wouldn’t have been enough to rent a car for the time I’ve been in Perú, and the car has given me flexibility and some unusual experiences and pictures.  I wouldn’t care to trade those in (with the exception of that afternoon in Tacna!) for a bit more money.

      The deal with Aurelio places a great deal of trust in him.  I have no legal redress if he sells the car and keeps the proceeds.  He won’t.  Still, both of us know that most people wouldn’t trust most other people with that kind of money, and the knowledge contributes to strengthening our friendship.  (I’m writing this in a good while after the fact.  He did everything he was supposed to do, without the least problem.)  That I spend a lot of time with him and his wife, Andrea, and that they help me with the onerous task of sending off a bunch of Ragna’s stuff to Iceland, further cements the friendship.  I’ll long treaure the time we spent together — eating, drinking, laughing; meeting their children and soon-to-be son-in-law; having them teach me how to make some Peruvian foods or drinks, which I then neglect to write into this blog; learning better each other’s language, in “language exchange,” and working through the bureaucratic hassles involved in selling the car and shipping things to Iceland.  They’re good people. 

      Finally I leave.   Aurelio and Andrea drive me to the airport.  After I’ve checked my bags, they stay and have coffee with me in the little airport restaurant.  I feel sad to leave Perú, but also sad to leave them.   We’ve become close during the past months, and particularly close during recent days, and sitting in the airport restaurant until it’s time for me to go through security feels as if we are family.  I will miss them.

      Or, as I put it moments later, in my notebook:

  Gee, it’s “Columbus Day” — and I’m sitting in the Arequipa airport waiting to fly to Lima — and from there, in a few days, to the U.S.   My friends have brought me to the airport, and seen me to the security gate, with more love than I deserve.  I am alone.

  Cleaning out and leaving the apartment was a bittersweet experience.  I liked it there.  Space and solitude, and few distractions.  Not that I made the best of it.

    After a few days in Lima, I’ll be back in the U.S.  I hope to return to Perú soon.

My third and final stop in Lima this year is mostly errands and chores; but I have a delightful ceviche lunch with Aldo and a co-worker of his, wander the streets a little, and finally do what the locals always tell visitors to do first.  I take the open-top City-Tour, the bus that leaves from Parque Kennedy in Miraflores and explores the sights of downtown Lima, with no worries about parking the car or making sure to take the radio out of it. 

The City Tour

I should, finally, go on the City Tour. Wednesday is a fine morning, and I set out walking toward Parque Kennedy, only to learn I’ve misunderstood: the buses do not leave every hour or so between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 pm. Rather, one leaves at 9:30 and the next at 2:30. It is now 9:45.

But the next morning I front up at the ticket office in timely fashion, so early that I have a moment to snag a coffee at Starbuck’s and phone Aldo to arrange to meet for lunch when I return.

Sitting on the upper deck of the bus, waiting to start, feels odd: six months ago, perhaps to the day, I stood just here, looking at the international photograph exhibit and talking with a local man.  In my mind, I compared Lima perhaps to San Francisco and Beijing and Reykjavik, but not yet to Huancabamba and Cajamarca and Arequipa and Amantani.  I had not yet been to the mountains, so as to recognize, as I do now, the clothing on those indigenous women selling crafts a few dozen meters away.

Today, it feels odd to be wholly without control over the vehicle I’m riding in.

The greyness of the day or the murkiness of the emotional context give it all a very muted aspect. I am leaving Perú. I have come to like Perú. Very much. I am not quite sure what is next or why I am finally, on my last day, taking this tour I never got around to on our earlier stays in Lima.

From the “catacombs,” way below the huge old church, I look down to a still-lower level and find these:

How neatly arranged they are! To see the skulls and bones arranged so, in concentric circles, in a photograph, without more, is more compelling than the sight itself. The photograph alone has perhaps a bit more power to disturb us, because we do not have a context: how long have these been here, and who arranged them so neatly why? Were they placed here by the murderers as a cautionary tale for those inclined to question the regime? Or did they straggle separately into the land of death, over many months or years, from natural causes, and wait centuries for someone to arrange them so, and centuries more for this photograph to be taken? We do not hear the clipped voice of the tour-guide or feel the fat gentleman from Spain trying to push us out of the way to get a better view himself, as we try to hold the camera steady enough to make the picture in the dim light.

I want also to think about these for a moment, the skulls themselves. To muse on how often, in Perú but also in Mexico, the culture cheerfully rubs our noses in the fact of Death. That Death and Life, yin and yang, bear a deep and abiding relationship is pretty obvious, yet modern American culture [if you’ll forgive the oxymoron] brushes every hint of death from sight instantly, like crumbs from a table-cloth in a high-class restaurant. I feel quite sure St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, the little red one I was made to attend intermittently as a child, had no such interesting display in its basement, and not merely because of its limited size and age.

Fortunately within moments we are back above-ground, brought back to the reality of contemporary everyday life, with its reassuringly familiar sights and sounds.

 As we continue, I photograph also a woman and child, presumably begging. Of course I wish I could give them something, but from the upper-deck of a tour-bus whirling past, that isn’t too practical. I consider it just long enough to realize that a coin hitting the pavement from here would not only startle them and seem horribly disdainful, but could even bounce up and hit the kid in the eye or something. I content myself with certainty that at this distance, with everything going on at street level, they clearly do not see me photographing them, if that would matter. Yet when I look at the resulting photograph, their eyes seem to be locked onto me.

Nearby, San Martín remains in his saddle, and a long-dead orator passionately exhorts oblivious citizens.

Nearly a decade into the 21st Century, a portable typewriter can still make you some money on the streets of the city, writing for those who can’t.

When traffic slows down, vendors dance among the cars and trucks and buses, selling kites, toys, soft drinks, air fresheners, lottery tickets, and even books — though a sudden light change sometimes means sprinting a block to complete the sale.

From the top of a bus, from my vantage point as a lone visitor who knows no one and leaves on the midnight plane, without attachments, suddenly it seems as if I can see everything, and everything I see evokes senses, even if in fact I know nothing, not the text of the letter the typewriter man is composing for his client nor the dreams of this resting laborer, nor even the next turn in my own life, and yet everything feels quite right. I am full of reflections today, compelling ones to me but too inchoate and quirky to share.

For a moment the view from the top of the bus looks as if some Great Comic Strip Writer in the Sky had drawn me these two pairs of lovers, one large and one small, one flesh and one stone, but both full of such passion as to remind me that, as I have felt at various moments in my life, love is a country that canceled my visa long ago.

I grin, a little sorry that the sunlight isn’t brighter, wondering whether the picture would be stronger or weaker in bright sunlight, but mostly grateful that this bus with this photographer clinging to the top of it paused here at just this moment.

A familiar sight! La Rosa Nautica. Yet another view of it. But this is as close as I’ll get to it this week. It strikes me that this is my third stay in Lima, and the first not to include a supper down there. But the thought quickly gives way to curiosity whether framing three such different views of the same landmark would look at all interesting.

And then I’m back where I started. Back where the bus started this morning and the journey around Perú started more than six months ago, though rather than contemplating any of this I’m busy dialing Aldo on my Peruvian cell-phone and starting the short walk to his office building.

We have a pleasant lunch at the menu place where we’d lunched six months ago. He has with him a book of Vargas Llosa’s, in Spanish – and surprises me by telling me it’s for me. I point out that he has an optimistic view of my capabilities in Castellano. He acknowledges that, but encourages me to grow into the book.

In the evening I walk around.  In Parque Kennedy it’s a nice evening, and lively.  I stroll about, then find a perch and write idly in my notebook:

I sit, quite quiet and relaxed, on a bench in a park, city, and country that are not mine.  it is a cool evening.  There is a pleasant breeze.  Vendors, lovers, chess-playhers, and conversationalists are all here doing what they do, as are children, not far away, the rusty screeches of swings more consistently audible than their screams of joy, of excitement, perhaps merely of childhood.

I am alone.  Quite alone.  Too, I am in a curious moment when all waves have rolled in and crashed, with their usual sound and fury, and are ebbing now, while their successors are in sight and imminent, though I cannot yet discern their shapes.  This Peruvian journey is over, a sustained period of rhythmic peaks and valleys of excitement  suddenly ending, a little too soon, like a disappointing orgasm.  An eight-year relationship is also over, with a much louder crash.  I have left the flat in Arequipa, where i felt comfortble, isolated, relaxed, and the black quatro por quatro, which was our real home these many months.

After some speculation on how it will be working in San Francisco again:

I know nothing and, for the moment, am comfortable knowing nothing.

It’s a nice night, though.

Why is one often so much more comforatble in a park where the dominant language is not one’s own?

Only night’s cool breeze

knows me now.  All around, the

language is not mine.

It seems all my life people

have spoken some other tongue.

I feel very good.   Quite content in my solitude.  Curious about the future.

The next day all the way out to the airport, I feel more and more closely trapped in a web of sadness.  Sourceless, it subtly builds its hold on me, strand by strand, before I recognize it consciously.

The truth is, I do not want to leave Perú.  This Peruvian journey has been a delightful adventure, and I do not want it to end.  I’d probably known that, but as I ride to the airport, check bags, and wait for departure, I feel it a lot more strongly than I’d have anticipated.  I’m full of hopes for what lies next, but right now my sadness at leaving Perú is a fog that muffles the sounds and dims the lights of those hopes.

Perú has been kind to me.  A few individuals have become close friends I do not want to lose, many more have shared with me a moment or two of magic or kindness, wild countryside and beautiful images are stamped as clearly on my mind as on the hard-drive full of photographs.  Life here has been, more than usual, a string of steps into the unknown; and if some have brought hassles, most have brought wonder.     

The first day of October is a lazy sort of day in Cuzco. Skip this section if you’re looking for excitement.

In the morning I gab awhile with the two young Brits who are headed up to Ausungate to mountain bike for a couple of days, and with a young German couple newly-arrived, and finally with Ronald the owner of the BMW parked in the courtyard.

Ronald's moto being cleaned - not by Ronald

He left Alaska in July.  July 2007. Central America alone took him about six months, and not because he doesn’t know how to drive fast. He says border crossings usually take him a couple of hours, no more, so the paperwork isn’t too bad either. He must have an adequate source of income, because when he hits the southern tip of South America he hopes to ship the bike to Capetown and start North through another continent.  I’m not sure what he’ll do when he runs out of continents.

I ask if he has a web-site.  He says he uploads pictures for friends, but isn’t much of a writer. Disappointing, because it’d be fun to read an illustrated account of his trip, which is one I’ve long wanted to make on a motorcycle. His web-site for photos — RONALD / ALASKA -> PATAGONIA – is www.picasaweb.google.com/unerwegs. [Curiously, looking at it just now, I was drawn first to his shots of places I know well, such as San Francisco and Bryce Canyon. He has some nice shots – did a hell of a lot better in Antelope Canyon than I did!]

The sun is hitting our table, the Brits are waiting for their cab, and it’s hard to get motivated, but finally I wander down to the Plaza de Armas on my way to get my Peruvian cell-phone recharged with credit for international calls. The Plaza delays me further. I wander slowly about, just watching people and shooting a few pictures.

At first I took the girl for a tourist shooting a photograph of the nun -- but apparently she wasn't.

There’s a man reclining, and somewhat lackadaisically begging, in front of a church. I sit on a bench in the Plaza facing him, and shoot a few long shots to see if any interesting juxtapositions will happen along. They don’t, and I’m too far away for good photography anyway, but I’m not moving very fast, and just then I spot a couple of well-dressed young ladies with an abundance of pink balloons, moving his way from the far corner of the Plaza.  When they reach him I figure that’s about as well as I’m going to do here.

But as soon as I turn to leave, the shot I wanted smacks me in the face: 

Returning from the Claro shop, I spot a woman begging on the sidewalk on Avenida El Sol, and shoot a few more, wondering if any of the folks passing her will have clothing or body-language that contrasts elegantly with hers.  After awhile, having made use of her (though she hasn’t seen me), I cross the street and give her five soles, a lot to her but affordable to me. Before re-crossing the street I ask to shoot a photograph of her, and shoot a portrait of her lovely, deeply-lined face.

Back on the Plaza, and hungry for ceviche, I decide to try one of the small cafes with balconies overlooking the Plaza. I pick the El Aji [how could a New Mexican resist a restaurant named for chile?] and take a seat. The wait for the ceviche is long, but I’m in that kind of mood where everything I see down in the Plaza seems deeply evocative.

I shoot several shots of people on park benches, including one of a blonde American-looking woman reading a book. As I did with the beggars, I shoot a few more as people approach who contrast with her or might interact with her.

 One is a small, elderly man who looks a bit down on his luck. I shoot one of him glancing at her, and wait for him to pass, but instead he plops down on the other end of the bench and quickly begins talking with her. Too far away to hear them, and not really curious about the words, I’m shooting their interaction as avidly as I shot the monkeys in trees at Lago Sandoval a few days ago – and with better results. (Gee, it’s a lot easier to take photographs from a chair on a café balcony than from a moving canoe, and when the sun’s shining on your subject rather than blocked by the branches above it.) The older man is talking animatedly, the younger woman is smiling. He reaches out his hand and they shake hands, in some intricate manner reminiscent of the way “brothers” in the U.S. used to shake hands. Then he kisses her hand. After awhile she gives him a coin or two, “because he’s alone and has nobody,” as she tells me later when I ask, and offer to send her a picture.

For no real reason, I keep shooting until he leaves. Or perhaps the reason is simply that I feel like it, even though I’ll toss most or all of the results away. I feel very comfortable in Cusco’s Plaza de Armas, and am in one of those moods where every face and all the body language I see seems to tell me a novel’s worth of story about the people.

He leaves just as my ceviche finally arrives. I run out anyway for a moment, to offer to send the woman a photo of her sitting on the bench. Then I go back and start on the ceviche, which tastes good. I have been longing for ceviche for days.

I watch another American girl sit on a bench in the Plaza, and within moments a young man selling his paintings has failed to interest her in buying one but has sat down to chat with her.

When he leaves, I am nearby, shooting casual shots of people on benches, kids playing with the seagulls, and the like. She gets up and walks in my direction, and I remark, “And after all that, you didn’t buy a painting.” She says they were having Spanish/English lessons. She has just arrived, jet-lagged and sleepless, from Colorado, and has a headache. She’s hungry but figures the places on the Plaza all cost more than she feels like spending, and asks if I know somewhere. I suggest the vegetarian place where I ate yesterday.  She assents.  I show her where it is and have coffee with her. We have a casual but pleasant conversation, her headache dissipates, and we walk back to the Plaza, and I shoot a few last photos before returning to the hostal.  

I feel surprisingly good. Refreshed, by solitude and by working on the pictures and by various pleasant conversations. I begin to think I will do the mule trek around Ausungate before I go back to Arequipa. And stop in Juliaca for a night on the way home, to shoot pictures of people there.

But in the evening a long-distance phone conversation tells me I won’t. “Real-world” work is on offer, and it appears that I should be back in San Francisco by mid-October. Wrapping up things in Arequipa, shipping Ragna’s paintings and extra stuff to her, and selling the car in Lima will take some part of the next couple of weeks, as will driving back to Arequipa and then up to Lima. I will walk around Cusco another day, watch the vice-presidential debates, then spend the next couple of weeks doing chores, writing a little, and saying good-bye to my friends.

As I work out a schedule, it starts pouring rain on the courtyard, and loud thunder interrupts my thoughts.

Thursday, 2 October

I reprise a bit of the previous day, lazing around the plaza and shooting photographs, and getting a coffee in the same balcony restaurant, El Aji.   Crossing the Plaza on my way up to Plaza Nicoletas I notice a woman with a bundle — and, as she’s walking in the same direction as I am, my camera catches this interesting juxtaposition that may be the Cusco image I’d been after the previous day:

In one of the museums, a model of the Machu Picchu area, and some photographs from back in the country, whet my appetite to return and travel further in Perú — by mule!

Near Plazoleta Nazarenas I shoot these images of tourists photographing a mother and daughter in local garb, and three nuns walking past an old church, then sort of combine the two.   I figure I owe the mother and daughter their photography fee for the purloined images above, but have no interest in a posed shot, so I ask them just to walk a little ways beside the church wall, ignoring me.    Even so, it ain’t much of a shot.

Cusco is a lovely place, but maybe a little too comfortable.  It’s no accident that suddenly my camera focuses on these juxtapositions of wealth and poverty, pre-industrial and high-tech, local folks and gringos. 

Travel Notes:

As discussed in the initial Cusco post, I liked the Hostal Q’orichaska, at 458 Nueva Alta.   It’s an old building with thick stone walls, and I’d highly recommend it as a budget hotel, although the rates were a good deal more than those at the ones we saw higher up [and much further from the Plaza de Armas].  I slept marvelously every night. Calle Nueva Alta gets little late-night traffic, and almost no sound penetrated to my room [which was ground-floor and not near the front gate]. The courtyard was a great place to breakfast, or to read or gab or catch a few rays during the day, or to drink a glass of wine at night. The rooms were adequate in size and cleanliness: undecorated, but pleasant. The place was convenient to the Plaza, a very modest walk or a quick cab-ride.  Hot showers, modest kitchen facilities, and Internet hookup.   The staff was generally friendly and helpful, and during both the trip to Machu Picchu and the Puerto Maldonado / Corto Maltes trip we left stuff in storage there, without problems.  Laundry was done and returned fairly quickly. Phone number, I think, is 228 974 – from elsewhere in Peru, preface that with (84) for Cusco; and from outside Peru, (51)(84) 228 974.

I liked the low-budget vegetarian cafe mentioned above.  It was a comfortable, informal place to hang out, the vegetarian food was tasty and nourishing, and it was relatively inexpensive.  It’s on Santa Catalina, a couple of doors back toward the Plaza de Armas from Grano.

 Several second-floor cafes with balcony seating beckon from above the Plaza de Armas — and both on the Plaza and down the side streets to the Northeast there are pricy restaurants with tasty food and often floor shows displaying local music, dance, and costumes.   

I also liked al grano.  Good coffee, quiet during the day time, varied food – and a pool table downstairs, though I didn’t venture down to confirm that or get a chance to go back in the evening.   Place had a good feel to it though — but not cheap, at S./45 for lunch, limonada, and coffee — modest for that area of Cusco, though expensive by Peruvian standards generally. 

Departure morning I’m up early and walk to the cochera, where no one’s in sight to open the place. I bang on the metal gate often and loudly, to no effect. When someone finally does return and open the place, one tire on the car is dangerously low. Fortunately there’s a gas station nearby.

Packing the car, I realize that the front seat will be empty. It is empty, save for the little cylindrical black-and-white pillow Ragna rested her knee on to limit the pain from long drives. The empty seat is a melancholy blessing: it reminds me of what has ended, but I can actually keep stuff on it during the drive. I put the pillow in the back seat.  Immediately that doesn’t feel right, and I return it to its rightful place. But I don’t think I’ll start talking to it, like Tom Hanks to the soccer ball.

I say my good-byes at the Q’orichaska, negotiate the outskirts of Cusco, and am gone.

Quickly I’m in very nice countryside, on a very nice morning; but I’ve a long way to drive and a lot to think about, and don’t feel motivated to stop and shoot pictures.

Then I do stop, to photograph a lake that probably isn’t worth it; but I’ve broken the ice, and as I pass through smaller and smaller towns, among people living their daily lives on a very nice morning, I stop here and there, to shoot a photograph or just watch and listen a little. Suddenly it seems a splendid morning.

At the edge of town a man is studiously reading a book, perhaps a bible. He sits in the few feet between the front wall of his house and the road. Something about his intense concentration appeals to me so much that I find a place to make a U-turn and go back. I shoot from the car. He looks up. Expressionlessly, he studies me for a moment, then goes back to his reading. He doesn’t appear proud, curious, annoyed, or embarrassed. He just doesn’t give a shit. I shoot another image or two, then pass him, make another U-turn, and continue on my way.

It’s morning in the mountains. Sometimes high hills block the bright sun. Women are taking flocks of sheep or small groups of cows to pasture. The road, with periodic large trucks and very few cars, snakes through as if it existed in some other dimension, some parallel universe.  The trucks and occasional cars whizzing through have as little to do with the surrounding scene as football on television matters to a fish.

I pull off the road and sit for awhile on the rail of a bridge.  It’s peaceful.  I write in my notebook and stare across the river.  It’s this kind of country again: modest villages giving way quickly to steep hillsides terraced for agriculture.

As I sit, a woman and her dog leave the village to head for the pasture with her animals.  I watch.  She passes just below me with her small group and continues on her way along the river — toward canyons that look pretty unpromising as far as vegetation, but she knows what she’s doing a good deal better than I do.   I feel very much at peace, and realize I’m enjoying the drive.   Again, driving enables me to stop at will; and again, although the road to Cusco is far better traveled by foreign tourists than the roads to Huancabamba or Cajamarca, small villages along the way might as well be miles from a paved road, because tour buses have no reason to stop in such places.

Perhaps it all seems particularly precious to me because I will soon be elsewhere, in a modern, post-industrial city filled with time-sheets and lattes.   I will be in a city where there are no cows or sheep.  Where children can grow up without ever seeing a cow or a sheep.   Or perhaps it is because I felt a little melancholy and now feel, again, just wonder.  “Buenos dias,” I say to the woman bicycling pass with her precious cargo.  She just smiles.

Across the road some people are working in a field.  A man with two oxen is plowing.  Others are assisting him, or perhaps dropping seeds.   I cross the road and shoot a bit.  They keep on doing what they’re doing.    Afterward, as I’m just about to drive off, one of the men approaches me. He rubs his fingers together to indicate money. His expression is hopeful, but not demanding. I cheerfully give him a little money. He thanks me more profusely than seems warranted, and reaches into the car to shake my hand. He has few teeth but a warm smile. I tell him I thank him. I drive off, feeling good but with a couple of regrets: I should have given him more; and, selfishly, I should have stepped down into the field for a closer and better shot of them working. I had feared intruding more than I already was, but shouldn’t have worried.

I stop in a village, possibly Checacupe, and buy bananas.  The Plaza de Armas is nearly deserted.   People are industriously cleaning the narrow streets leading away from it.

In the next village, or maybe just in the southern end of the same village, two men are putting the grasses on the roof of an adobe building. They watch me shoot from above, standing on a pile of logs, and invite me down closer. I drive into the village and back up to where they’re working, to shoot closer.  No reason.  Just feel like it.  It’s tough to photograph, because the sun is so bright and the men’s faces – looking down and shaded by hats – are so dark.

When the man on the ladder climbs down, we chat casually for awhile. I answer his question about where I’m from, where I started driving today and where I’m going.  I remark that we use a lot of adobe in New Mexico but don’t use the sort of roof they’re working on. A neighbor, an older man, emerges from his gate and looks curiously at us. My companion hollers to him that I’m taking pictures, and that he should pose. The man assumes a rigid hands-at-sides posture, like a kid posing for a school photograph, and I shoot one, which seems to please him.

Finally I leave. The neighbor assumes the same stiff posture as I drive slowly past, so I photograph him again and wish him a good day.

At the turnoff for a town called Combapata, I pass an intersection busy with local folks leaving or arriving, and a sign promising a “circuit of four lakes” just six kilometers away. It sounds good, so I make a U-turn and drive into town. Within a few blocks I’m on the Plaza de Armas, which is almost empty on the near side but has shooting galleries and foosball and other indicia of a market on the left side. A lot of people are doing something on the far side of the plaza, so I park the car for a few pictures.

The Plaza is full of local women in spiffy local garb. Clearly something more than a market is happening. There are a great many women with bags of local produce on show in front of them, but almost no one is actually buying anything, or even walking around looking. Many of the women are dressed particularly finely. Some other people seem to be wandering around with papers and forms. There are few men present, and no teenagers wandering around. Many of the women have small children with them. A row of chairs and a loud-speaker blasting music, with a banner on the wall behind, suggest that something more formal is going to happen soon. A Peruvian woman is rushing around photographing the local women. When I ask her what she’s photographing, she says she’s with a program of some sort to which all these women belong, or which helps them. Something to do with development, a cooperative.  The banner mentions a “Programa Nacional de Apoyo Directo a los más Pobres.”

Whatever it all means, it’s a visual paradise.

Many of the women laugh when I shoot pictures. A few turn their heads away or put a hand up in front of their faces. Others stare at me, mostly with smiles. One sticks her tongue out, then laughs hysterically, tells those around her what she’s just done, then poses good-naturedly. A couple of others, seeing me trying to shoot pictures of their kids, entice the kids back in front of me or gently turn a kid’s face in my direction. None asks for a propina.

On the way to the car I stop at a booth and shoot a gun instead of the camera, winning a couple of packages of cookies that look as if they might have been in Combapata since Atahualpa’s time.  Lunch.  

I go to the car, and pull around to head out of the square toward the lakes, but now the music suggests that dancing is imminent. I stop the car again and wade back into the middle of things – just as, indeed, dancing begins.

I shoot until there’s a break in the dancing, then leave.

I drive slowly through town toward the circuit of the lakes.  For awhile I’m traveling along railroad tracks.  Eventually the road climbs out of town and, after a couple of switchbacks, there’s a nice view back toward Combapata.  From there the road continues climbing, then suddenly brings me to a view down toward a pastoral lake.

The first lake.   Serene and silent.  I do meet a young couple, walking toward the village.  There is no car parked nearby, so they are strolling.  They’re Peruvian; but they too are visitors who find this place very peaceful.  

This is beautiful country. It isn’t the most dramatic I’ve seen, but it’s especially peaceful. The lakes aren’t the cobalt blue of the lakes in the Cordillera Blanca, reached ultimately through rock cliffs and surrounded by unrealistically pure white peaks, but more a lake surrounded by rolling hills and farmland, a tremendously inviting place to live.   Not a person in sight, just cows grazing down by the shore and flamingo loitering about in the shallow water.

I park the car at the edge of the road and walk toward the water, negotiating a couple of rock walls on the way. Then I find I have to leap over a small stream to reach the field that ends at the water where the flamingos are. I’m concerned that the sudden motion will spook them, but it doesn’t. I advance slowly, but they’re alert. They suddenly fly up, a profusion of red and white, but they curve in unison and fly down over the lake, passing right in front of the village I was hoping to have in the background.

Another group of flamingos floats near the shore just 60 or 80 meters away, so I I work my way toward the birds, but this time they swim away slowly as a group. I reach the water’s edge, my feet making deep indentations in the soft earth, and watch them swim out into the middle of the lake.

These flamingos are visiting with a flock of sheep.   Nobody seems in any hurry about anything, so long as the two-footed intruder keeps his distance.

Alternately driving and stopping the car to walk around a bit, I don’t see another person except a shepherdess.

She gets to sit all day in this splendid place, watching the pink and white flamingos and other birds on the blue lake, with golden fields and hills surrounding her. Does she take her surroundings for granted, and concentrate on her knitting or dream of Cusco or Lima or Paris? She certainly looks contented, but who knows?

This group of birds neither flies nor swims away, but begins walking along the shore away from me. They’re walking faster than I’d supposed they could, and it’s clear that if I start moving faster they’ll just fly away, so I leave them in peace.

I drive on, but stop to say hello to a second shepherdess.  I ask if I may photograph her.  She nods, and says, ”Plata.” It means silver, literally; but the context suggests that in this part of the country they say “plata“ instead of “dinero” or “propina.” 

I haven’t forgotten that I’ve a long way to drive. I’m concerned about the time but deeply drawn to this peaceful and tranquil countryside.   I consider driving back to Combapata, but instead continue onward, to explore.  The road climbs for awhile, with a long sight of llamas at the crest of a hill, then descends toward another lake, slightly smaller and greenish instead of blue, with a small town at the far shore.

I shoot some photos at the edge of the small town, then drive in I pause on the Plaza de Armas to figure out what to do next.  A woman unlocks a door and disappears inside with her three burros. The town bills itself as “Capital of the Circuit of Four Lakes.”

A cop or security man passes on my right, and when he glances into the car I ask him for some information. He confirms the name of the town, and I can see from the map that my choices are to circle another lake or two, to return the way I came, or to continue North several kilometers and drive back out to the main road up there. I settle on driving back the way I’ve come.

The cop points at one of the other men and says the man would like to accompany me to Sicuani. “Por que no?” I reply, starting to make space on the front seat. Ragna’s little pillow goes to the back seat now, along with my maps.

Meanwhile a local woman approaches the left side of the car, pleading. The men are discouraging her, gently urging her to stop pestering me. I suspect a class difference between my passenger, who’s wearing a blue sweater and clean shoes, and the woman, whose clothing is neither new nor fully clean. He is employed in a white-collar position, and she clearly is not. Whether or not that plays a role in their discouraging her, I can’t be sure, but they speak to her as something less than an equal.

Does she want money or a ride, or what? They say she wants a ride too. She is alone. I can fit one person in the back without an extended effort to move things out of the way. “Por que no?” I say again.  I get out to open the left rear door to toss stuff to the other side and make room. The men are surprised. The woman is grateful. As we start off, the man asks where I’m from, and I answer. As we turn right off the Plaza, he greets a friend, and shouts loudly that he’s going to the United States, and we all laugh.

I take a banana and offer each of them one too. They accept. Conversation is minimal. Beautiful country.  They agree.  Do tourists visit here?  Yes.  I cannot resist detouring for a quick look at the village near the first lake.   The front gate is brightly painted, but the only inhabitants I see have little to say to us.

When we reach the main road, it’s crowded with women leaving after the event.  A bunch of them are climbing into the back of a huge blue truck with wooden slats on the sides, evidently to return in a group to their village.

The passenger in front, the man, is a teacher. We talk sporadically. He lives in Sicuani and teaches in the village where I picked him up. (It’s a long commute!) I answer his questions about my travels in his country and ask if he’s visited the U.S. Peruvians don’t go to the U.S., he says very definitely, adding a one-word explanation: ”Plata.” I reiterate my admiration for the local countryside and inquire about land prices up by those lakes. He says lots can be as much as U.S. $7,000 apiece, sometimes can be encountered for as low as $2,000 – and that he has two for $3,000 each that he might sell.

Before Sicuani we reach Rakqi.  We stop.  He is enthusiastic that I must see the ruins at Rakqi.  But the village is filled with tourists holding cameras but unable even to shoot a picture of the church because their own tour-buses take up most of the tiny Plaza de Armas. Handicrafts shops. I tell him I’ll return some other time. I’m thinking that sunset, somewhere, might be nice.

I let the woman off where she lives, and the man in Sicuani, and negotiate the streets of that town.  I’m sort of headed for Lampa.  There’s something there I’d wanted to see on the way up, but got outvoted.

Suddenly there looms a sign: Juliaca straight ahead, Arequipa to the right. The right turn must lead to the back roads I’d originally wanted to to take up to Cusco with Ragna and Selma, but they didn’t have time – for what promised to be a great many hours on dirt roads when the paved road would be quicker; and we wanted to go to Lake Titicaca on the way. I turn right and immediately pause to question two men standing near a motorcycle. How is the road? They say it’s much quicker, that Arequipa is much further away if you go around by Juliaca.

At first it’s paved, but quickly it’s a dirt road. The countryside is pleasant, and quite unpopulated.  At some point I pass a kid near a tiny village.  When I ask him whether I’m indeed on the road to Arequipa, he points — then says, ”Plata.”

For a while, in the middle of nowhere, the road is beautifully paved, leading to the town of El Descanso. I stop to snag a juice, and ask the shop-keeper how many hours to Arequipa. I ask again outside, on the street. The respective answers are three hours and five hours.  As soon as I leave El Descanso, the road is dirt again.

Eventually I come to a large town.     In the middle of nowhere, it boasts an airport and is 3,900 meters alto, according to a sign.  I don’t recognize the name the sign mentions, but I’m where I might have expected Yauri to be based on the map.   As I reach the outskirts of town, unattended llamas walk home along the road from an arduous day of grazing.  The town has plenty of one-way streets and traffic jams.  As I rush through, I stop for one photograph:

On the far side of town, I see a woman and ask how long it is to Arequipa.  “Seis horas,” she says, quickly reconsidering and saying, “Cinco. Cinco horas.” It is a few minutes past five. I know that the paved portion of the drive, on the main road from the crossroads to Arequipa, cannot be much, so most of the drive will be along these dirt roads, often unmarked, and perhaps without grifos, or even villages. In darkness. I should have kept to my original plan. I should also have bought gas in the town through which I’ve just passed.  I consider turning back, but don’t.  I have a bit left in the extra gas can up top.  Maybe that’ll be enough, or some town along the way will have a grifo.  

Still, it’s a nice sky and vast, empty land.  I rush on through late afternoon light, dusk, then darkness.  There are no towns, and certainly no grifos.

In total darkness now, I reach a village.  It’s cold, too. There’s a restaurant, with a bus stopped near it and passengers eating inside. I ask about gas, and am told that it can be encountered at the far edge of town.

The gas at the edge of town ain’t easy to spot. I drive to what seems like the edge of town. Nothing. I drive on, another kilometer or so, eyes scanning the night. Nothing. I return. I see a light and an open door, and look for someone to ask, but encounter only the barking of dogs. I cross the street and walk back down to a small store.  The lady confirms that they do have some gas, and disappears into the back to get it.   We stand in the darkness pouring gas into the car’s tank with a smaller can and a makeshift filter, hoping not too much of it ends up on my shoes.

I drive on through the night.  Lightly traveled, curving roads.  I was up early and feel tired.  Sometimes it’s hard to pick up the road surface, which isn’t the distinct black of a paved road.  In this light it’s indistinguishable from the dust and the surrounding countryside. When trucks pass, I can’t see anything anyway for a moment, in the flying dust.   At some point I see a sign for Chavin, and stifle a sudden impulse to go back to Cañon de Colca. 

Finally I reach the main road. I’m further from Arequipa, further back toward Juliaca, than I’d expected, possibly by 50 or 60 kilometers.

I reach Cañahaus. I could use something to eat or drink, and wouldn’t mind getting a little more gas. In the darkness I approach a road-block.  The cop asks the usual routine questions, quite surprised to see a lone gringo at this time of night. I ask him if there’s a grifo around. There isn’t – but he sells me some gas. Another makeshift funnel, in pitch darkness.

Setting out again, I’m tired. I’ve traveled a long way today; I’ve shot a lot of photographs, walked a bit, and worried about possibly running out of gas or losing my way. On the other hand, I’m refreshed by the knowledge that now it’s just another 78 km. of road, paved. Still, all I really want is to be in the flat, at rest.

There’s a further delay, of course. More than half the way to Arequipa, I spot a bunch of people surrounding a car in a small turnout on the other side of the road. Folks in distress – as I might easily have been, had I missed a turn or blown a tire or missed the gas in that small town. There’s a lot of traffic tonight, but after another kilometer or so I can turn around. I drive back and pull in where they’re stopped – well aware that friends in Lima and probably Arequipa would warn me to do nothing of the kind. Ultimately I take one of the young men to the next town, the last noticeable town before the outskirts of Arequipa, and to a mecanico. I wait awhile, until it appears that they will be all right, then continue.

Fortunately I negotiate the streets into Arequipa more accurately than usual. I’m too tired to do much beyond stopping at the corner store for some snacks and milk and juice.  I just want to crash.  Home in the flat, there’s little time to contemplate the fact that I now live here alone — or the sadder fact that I’ll be leaving Perú very soon.  I do turn on the TV, and discover a Red Sox game. Texeira is batting; but I can’t even stay awake through his at-bat.

The boat from Corto Maltes back to Puerto Maldonado passes many egrets and the occasional caiman.

All too soon we are there. The Canadian points out the supports for the future bridge, and we muse on how soon the bridge may be a reality and how it will change lives here.

The van drops me at the Corto Maltes office – directly across the street from the Wasai Lodge. I  leave my backpack there and reserve a room.

Luci plans to take the group on a tour of the Sunday Market in Puerto Maldonado. She’s shown us a tree that produces something they call “Dragon Blood,” a somewhat miraculous cure for minor scrapes and bruises and infections, and says they sell it there. The van will stop there, then head for the Don Carlos Hotel, where Ragna and Selma are staying.

I head instead for the SUNARP office, which I’d managed to locate before we went to Corto Maltes. It’s urgent that I do some paperwork: when I bought the car, I put it in Ragna’s name and mine, and now will need her to sign off on it so that I can sell the car when I leave Perú. I’ve figured everything out except a pretty basic fact: it’s Sunday.  Offices are closed.

So I grab a moto-taxi to the market to tell Ragna about this new problem.

In the market, at first I’m rushing to find Luci and Ragna and Selma, but it’s a market, and pretty soon I’m seduced by its photographic appeal. I shoot what I see: children giggling beside cages of tiny chicks, skinny chickens hanging in the air between vendors and customers, a tiny girl in a stroller wearing over-sized sunglasses and clothes that match her stroller, like some Hollywood starlet; the fresh meat and fish and the tired or laughing faces of the women waiting to sell them.

I even shoot these videotapes — thinking of a kid I know who worked full-time on “Ratatouille.”

Luci greets me from a few feet away before I even see them. I explain to Ragna and Selma that it’s Sunday, and that I’ll get up early on the morrow to go to SUNARP or a notario. They’ve already bought the dragon blood, and Luci waves very generally back toward wherever they bought it, then leads the others toward the van.

I decide to have a look for the dragon blood. A young man from Corto Maltes asks me if I’m lost, obviously sure I’m meant to be on the van with the others. I tell him I’m not. He asks, almost incredulously, whether I mean to stay at the market. I do.

Still shooting intermittently, I head off in the direction Luci pointed in, and ask. Early on when someone fails to recognize “dragon blood” I mime the idea and learn the Spanish phrase (since forgotten), which is more useful. Everyone knows the stuff. I get pointed in several directions, figuring I’m getting closer, and finally one man, having pointed me back toward the meat and fish vendors, decides instead to walk the few dozen meters with me, and I find myself back where I started, a few feet from where I encountered the others. A man is indeed standing by the meat and fish tables with a few small bottles, and sells me one for five soles.

Working my way back toward the corner I first arrived at, I’m hailed by a fast-talking young man who wants to sell me a native spear. I tell him that I can’t.  When he asks why, I explain that I have a long way to travel, back to my country, and can’t take too much stuff. He recognizes the logic, but suggests that instead I take a picture of the indigenous man standing there with more spears and a young boy. I’m not clear on his motive. Does he think I’m going to pay him a propina for taking their photo? Is the slight mockery in his tone just good humor, or is he, as I infer, making fun of them? I decide to photograph them and pay them something. It’s an unpromising photograph, but they look like they need something. The indigenous man’s face appears full of confusion, uncertainty, timidity, as if perhaps he doesn’t come to the city often or feel comfortable here.

So I shoot a couple of quick shots of them, then pay the indigenous man (who looks as if he might not even have asked for a propina or expected one) two soles and the boy one. After a moment the boy puts his arms around my thighs and holds me tight, leaning his head against me affectionately. I’m embarrassed by how little I gave him, touched and saddened by how small an amount could evoke such gratitude – or perhaps more than the coin it is the unqualified friendliness he feels from me in a market where people are not treating him and his father very well. I pat his back for a moment.

Walking further, I see them again, the old man negotiating with someone to sell the half-dozen spears he’s carrying. It’s hot and muggy, and the boy should have an ice cream. I see an ice-cream vendor walking away from us. When I catch up with him I ask for two ice cream cones. One for the boy and one for his father or grandfather. The cones are a sole each. As I give him a five-sole piece I point to two children playing on the ground nearby, and ask him to give them one each, then rush away with two cones and my change. It pleases me that the two kids will have a nice surprise – and that they won’t see who’s responsible, particularly that he’s a norteamericano.

The indigenous boy and his father are still near where I’d seen them. I hand the boy a cone, then ask the man if he would like the other, and his face lights up. I hand it to him and continue on my way.

Later that evening I wonder why third-world outdoor markets still hold such appeal for me. Okay, shooting the floating market on Inle Lake, with buyers’ shallow wooden boats just pulling up to vendors’ wooden boats for as long as the transaction takes, or the Sha Ping market near Da Li, in Yunnan, with all the weird medicinal stuff and the people in traditional costumes, sure; Lhasa, with Khampas standing around next to slaughtered yaks that haven’t even been cut up yet; even Pisac, okay. But this is a Sunday market in a city. Still, I can’t resist the faces and the tableaux, and the striking omnipresence of dead fish and animals.  The moment they set me loose in it I ran around like a dog in the Gila.

At breakfast the next morning, on the deck with a view of the Mother of God River, these thoughts will morph into a couple of tanka:

how many tired faces have

how and why we struggle on.

 (Finishing the second, I’ll be troubled by “we struggle on.”  They struggle on – perhaps.  But quite possibly their lives delight them, and it only appears, to the eyes of a spoiled gringo, that they are struggling. Maybe the weary indigenous man selling spears feels quite content with his life. I don’t know.   I can’t fairly say that I struggle.  ”Struggle?” Sure, I’m a little down about the end of a relationship.  But only a 16-year-old could seriously call going on with my life “a struggle.”

Back at the hotel, I get my stuff from behind the counter. I muse on the fact that while visiting a market where a kid was so grateful for a sole or half-sole, I left a computer, hard-drive, and extra photographic lenses in a back-pack on the floor behind the hotel counter, not ten meters from an open door to the street. Something I don’t often do. I think about all the things foreigners (and Peruvians, particularly in Lima) say about Peruvian honesty or dishonesty, and about all the hotel rooms in which maids have cleaned around stuff worth what they make in a year or two, taking nothing. All the men in remote locations who’ve grinned at me or posed for Ragna’s video-camera or asked me whether we’ve been to Cusco, without any effort to enhance their incomes by robbing us. The cab-driver in Cusco the other night who, when I automatically gave him three soles for the short ride from the Plaza to the Hostal, returned half a sole to me.

There’s some sort of parade going on, so I rush back out immediately.  I rush around shooting a bunch of pictures, but the only two I like are these:

Monday morning

At breakfast I sit watching birds and listening to the boats and other sounds from the river, and write four tanka: the “Mother and daughter” tanka set in Corto Maltes, one on the indigenous man in the Sunday market, then the two more quoted above.

I assumed that the man was the boy’s father; yet in memory, a day later, he seems too old.  I remember sad, weary eyes and something beaten-down about him — and hope I’ve merely imagined that.

Already feeling sweaty, I walk down Leon Velarde, one of the main streets, toward where I’d seen a sign for an abogado’s office.

The abogado’s office is empty, except for the man himself; but, as I’d guessed, it’s a notario we have to see, and he says there’s one in cuadro 7 – block 7 – and I continue walking. As I do I call the hotel to ask Ragna for her passport number. Selma comes to the phone instead, and eventually gives me the number.

The notario’s office is already full of life, with various employees of the notario helping various local folks, and other people waiting around in chairs.  A woman working there explains that they can draft a document in which Ragna authorizes me to sell the car – but that when I sell it I’ll still need a copy of Ragna’s passport with an “authorization to do business” stamped in it. Which Ragna doesn’t have; but I’m pretty sure the woman’s wrong about that part of it. I start giving her the information, as well as copies of my passport and the car owner’s card, simultaneously calling back to Ragna’s hotel. Again Selma comes to the phone, and I give her the notario’s address. Moments later she shows up with the passport. While the woman copies it, Selma and I talk briefly.

The woman says they can have the document ready for Ragna’s signature quickly. Selma says they’re just packing, and can come back in a few minutes. It’s about 9:35, and I know they wanted to be off to the airport by 10. I tell her I’ll wait at the office, and do.

Time passes. I get a cold drink from a nearby stand. I stand outside and shoot a few more photographs of passing motorcycles with families on them. I sit in the office. I review a draft of the document. I notice a change I would probably make if we were in the States – that instead of delegating me to sell the car Ragna should delegate me “or his designee,” in case I get someone else to sell it; but that seems a technicality, and I’m hot and sweaty. I try to write a tanka, but the place is too crowded and I’m out of sorts, and wondering where Ragna and Selma are, and whether I’ll get out of Puerto Maldonado today myself.

At about ten minutes past ten, I start calling Ragna’s cell-phone, then the hotel phone. When I finally reach someone at the hotel, she says they left for the airport ten minutes ago! It takes about three minutes to reach the notario’s office. I wonder whether Selma forgot the address, but she knows it’s between her hotel and the Plaza, and it couldn’t take long to cruise the dozen blocks involved.  The only other notario is a little ways down this block. Meanwhile, if I don’t soon do something about my own flight, I may not get out of Puerto Maldonado today.

Still, I wait; but I am beginning to guess that Ragna’s blowing this off. It seems crazy, since I have $500 I’m supposed to give Selma, and will also be spending time and money to send Ragna’s things to her; and even without those incentives, how could you hate someone so much you’d do something that could cost him ten or twelve thousand dollars, when all you needed to do was make a two-minute stop in an office?

Did she get panicked by fears she’d miss her plane, and then her connections? Or did they get lost, lose time, and then give it up?  Or does she hate me more than I imagined?  She has said several times, when I’ve mentioned the car papers, that she couldn’t care less if I lose a bunch of money.

Finally I tell the woman they must not be coming back, that perhaps Ragna is angry. I walk toward the LAN office, but even then keep glancing back or pausing to watch whether any mototaxi stops at the notario’s office.

The walk is an odd low point. I’m surprisingly un-angry at Ragna, although disappointed, both in her and in my own judgment of character.   I’m less troubled by the car problem than I might be: if I can’t sell it, I guess that’ll be an omen that I’m meant to move to Perú. It’d be a startling answer some day: Q. “Why’d you move to Perú?” A. “Because I owned a car down here that I couldn’t sell.”

Mostly I just feel sad. How else would one feel, ending a relationship of nearly eight years? Compound that with the distance from home, the heat and mugginess of Puerto Maldonado, the wasted morning trying to adjust the car papers, and the possibility I might not get out of town today.

The LAN office is a classic bad-news, good-news story: I tell ‘em I don’t have my ticket and guess I need to buy a new one, and they tell me there are no spaces on today’s flights and no spaces on tomorrow’s. I resolve to search more fully for the missing ticket. But when I ask which flight I was meant to be on, and my passport number confirms I’m on the second flight this morning, they point out that it’s an electronic ticket. The reason I can’t find my ticket is that I never got one, of course – and don’t need it.

I hail a moto-taxi, and the man takes me to the hotel and waits while I go to the room for my stuff. On the way, the cell-phone beeps, and the screen says I have a missed call – from Ragna’s cell-phone. For once I get through, and she asks where I’ve been. When I ask her what happened, she says they got lost, had problems communicating with their cab-driver, and couldn’t reach me. I give her the notario’s address, and tell her I’ll be back there myself as soon as I can.

The moto-taxi driver takes me back there. They’ve been and gone. The woman is doing whatever further stuff it is that she needs to do to give me an official, certified copy. Although I’m grateful they could deal with the problem at all on such short notice, the additional minutes seem awfully long. Then when I think it’s nearly over she tells me to go next door to the bookstore/stationery shop and buy a diskette, so that they can put the document on that too. I spend two or three soles for the diskette and return. Eventually she gives me the document and the diskette, and I’m off to the airport.

Of course I’m in a hurry. I should be in plenty of time for my flight, but you never know. On the other hand, if Ragna and Selma are on the earlier flight I’ll likely have missed them, and I need to give some money to Selma – and kind of want to say good-bye to them, after all the madness.

It begins to rain slightly, and the driver stops to get from the roof some flaps to place as doors to protect me from the rain. “No me importa,” I explain. He makes sure he understood me and climbs back onto his seat, mumbling something, maybe that I might find it matters a lot in a few moments when the rain becomes a torrent – which is, of course, what happens.

Soon one of my legs is soaked.  Drenched in rain and sweat, I’m guessing I’ll be cold once I’m in the airport. But I’ve no time to screw around with the curtain.   Then the moto-taxi stalls, and the driver removes some cover then kick starts the thing, and we’re off again. Almost everyone else in sight is diving out of sight, or driving under the roof covering a gas station’s pumps, or parking the bike and standing under a building’s eves with a notebook or newspaper over his or her head.

My driver pulls in to a gas station to put 50 centimos worth of gas in the tank, but doesn’t insist on the flaps, although I tell him sheepishly that he was right about the rain.

Now finally we’re cruising. The rain has diminished a little, and there’s less wind, so I’m not getting pelted anymore; and we’re beyond the main part of town, moving along smartly – when an ominous noise and a jerk puncture that dream. It sounds serious. A moment later, when the noise recurs, I look down and see that the chain has slipped off whatever it connects with around the rear axle.  I know it’s over.  Before I even get out of the moto-taxi I spot an empty one approaching from the airport.

As the new cab makes its U-turn, I ask the old driver how much I owe him. Getting rained on as he goes to inspect the damage, he’s the definition of “disconsolate.” When my question penetrates the haze – he’s surely uncomfortable, it may be that the necessary repairs will challenge him financially, and he’s losing the fare – he shakes his head and seems to indicate that he doesn’t deserve anything because he failed. However, he got me close to the airport; and earlier he drove me to the hotel and back to the notario. I repeat the question, and he aks in a low tone for five soles, and I give him ten.

Not long afterward, I’m sitting in the waiting room with Selma and Ragna.

We laugh over the day’s crossed signals. When I pass Selma the money, we laugh that it must look just like a drug deal, and joke that I should take her backpack and walk off with it, as if I’ve just purchased whatever’s inside. It’s good to laugh. The confusion and crazy rain have made moods lighter. Likely I will not see these folks again – Selma’s flying to Lima without getting off the plane. Ragna will get off in Cusco, grab some of her stuff from the hostal, then fly immediately to Lima. We’ve had harsh words. I’m glad to part laughing.

In Cusco, the hotel employees welcome me back. They are not surprised that the other two have left.

Travel Notes:

Lodging:

Two quite reasonable hotels are the Don Carlos and the Wasai Lodge.  The former is at the far [South] end of  the main street (Velarde) from the Plaza de Armas.   The latter is on Billinghurst, the single street between the Plaza de Armas and the hill overlooking the Madre de Dios River.  I liked the Wasai better — but it was awfully hot and muggy in Puerto Maldonado.  I took several cold showers each night, trying to get to sleep.

The Wasai is closer to the action (overlooks the river quite near the ferry boat and the landing from which boats head up to Corto Maltes and other such places, and is just a block away from the Plaza de Armas) and has a nice view.  The Don Carlos is further away — maybe a little more quiet if you don’t get a room that backs up against the yard full of barking dogs.   I’d say the Don Carlos would probably appeal a little more to upscale travelers.  The Wasai also organizes jungle tours and, I think, has a lodge somewhere in the jungle.  I think I paid S./ 120 per night at the Don Carlos, and slightly less at the Wasai.

Food:

Other Points:

There are two boats out to Corto Maltes. I take the early one, and ride out toward Corto Maltes with a group of Peruvians. Ragna and Selma must be taking the later boat. I’m the only foreigner on this one.

It feels good to be on the water. It feels good to be riding up the Madre de Dios River, a wide brown river with plenty of vegetation on each bank. There isn’t really much to see, but I keep watching with great interest.

After perhaps twenty minutes we reach a landing with a small dock and a couple of other boats tied up. I think we’re going to let someone off or deliver something, but this is it. We’ve arrived. I’d known the lodge was close, but not this close.

In fact, we’ve arrived so early that I get a bit of breakfast.

The dining room is a large, screened room flanked by a small shop and a large bar with a pool table. After breakfast I talk to one of the waiters. Ragna’s birthday is Friday. Even though we are no longer a couple, I want her to have a cake. We arrange that his wife will have one decorated with Ragna’s name and a little Icelandic flag, and he will bring it out after supper Friday evening.

I meet Luci, a knowledgeable young woman from the area who will be our guide during our stay.  (She does not always look quite as she does in the photo at right.)  She says we can go to Monkey Island with another group in twenty minutes or so. I agree.

As I walk toward my cabin I shoot a picture of a green parrot in the branch of a small tree, then put out my finger for the parrot to step onto it.

It’s not as if it’s the first time I’ve had a parrot perched on my hand; but I stare at his green and yellow feathers, and at the rich browns and other colors the sunlight finds in his eyes. He makes a small noise that sounds like “uh, oh,” and when I answer it we repeat the meaningless sounds over and over in turn, as I used to do with Ragna’s grandson Elia, who was then 4 or 5 years old, when I was first traveling to Iceland. I am growing quite attached to the bird, but as we move onto the main path, and I say “Buenos Dias” to a cleaning woman, she says something about the bird, then deftly removes him from my shoulder by placing the end of the broom handle near his claws. As he steps onto it, I ask her his name, and she tells me “Panchito.” She pinches her left forearm with the fingers of her right hand to warn me that he might claw or nip. I’m thinking he must do that only when frightened, but I’m not inclined to argue.

My cabin is a spare but delightful wooden structure. The front porch has two hammocks. I quickly fall into one.

Aimlessly I push my hand against the cabin so that the hammock swings back and forth, at first fairly violently and then, like a pendulum, smaller and smaller distances. The rope groans regularly, like the heartbeat of the Great Mother, lulling me to sleep in safety. Hearing it not through the air but through the material of the hammock against my ear is perhaps like hearing from the womb, and the two-beat is regular: one beat as the hammock approaches the apex of its swing to the left, then a beat of silence as it reaches that apex and begins to drop back toward the center, then the second heartbeat as it approaches its high-point on the right.

Within moments I’m asleep.  But soon I drift back to consciousness, and we leave for Monkey Island.

Isla de Monos

Luci and I arrive with Carlos and the French, or French Swiss, to whom he explains everything in French. We cross a stretch of sand, then follow a path through the vegetation. It is the dry season. If it were not, Luci tells me, this path would be an inlet we would enter in a boat, or perhaps by wading. (It’s a fact of rainforest life I’ve read about: as here, a river’s height can vary ten feet or more with the seasons. In some places, a boat landing is on the edge of town in the wet months, but a mile or two away from town in the dry season.)

Luci and Carlos leave us behind near a huge tree and a feeding platform that can be lowered and raised with ropes, so that the platform, laden with inviting bananas, can be raised to a level where the monkeys feel safe but can be seen and photographed. They go on, hoping to attract the monkeys toward the feeding platform. She invites me to go with them, but I’m doubting the French or French-Swiss will appreciate that, so I pass. We stand around for a long time, occasionally hearing monkey calls almost certainly made by our guides. Eventually they return, and a monkey also appears, high in a distant tree, and begins swinging and jumping his way from there to the feeding platform, always high above the ground.

and do spot monkeys

we watch butterflies

and scan the sky

Isla de Monos is not terribly interesting. It is not an island the monkeys chose to populate, but rather a project to return monkeys, which had been pets in Puerto Maldonado, to their native environment. It started about eight years ago. The varieties of monkeys have dwindled a bit because the brown Capuchin monkeys killed most everyone else.

photographing each other

escaping the heat

Luci leads us on an evening nature walk that is a good deal more interesting than it sounds.  Highlights include: walking trees, a tree used for dyes, and a tree used to salve women’s broken hearts. (There is another for men, but we don’t see it on this particular walk.) She tells us a lot that is very interesting but will disappear from my feeble brain before I get around to writing this.  However, I do recall a tree used as a love potion (for lovelorn women – men use a different plant), another that provides a natural dye, and a third that actually walks, albeit slowly.

Night Ride

After supper we go upriver a ways in the boat, with flashlights and headlamps. There’s a searchlight mounted on the boat. Along with Luci and the boatman, we scan the shore for cayman. We do spot a few. It’s fun. Photographing them is a challenge.

We also see capybaras, comically awkward creatures who look at us in surprise. They look like refugees from Winnie-the-Pooh’s world.

Later, I drink a couple of pisco sours and shoot some pool in the bar with one of the guides. At 11, when the generator goes off for the night and there’s no electricity, I wend my way back to my cabin, feeling good.

Life at Corto Maltes

It is a peaceful and isolated place. The wood cabins are comfortable and romantic. The guides are knowledgeable.  The bar is relaxing, lively enough to enjoy but not loud.  There’s a swimming pool, welcome in the heat here.

Our group also includes a couple from South Africa and a retired schoolteacher from Toronto, accompanied by his two daughters. The Canadians, having just finished the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu, are particularly delighted by the pool.  There are also other groups, keeping different schedules and often speaking different languages, and we usually see them only at meals.

The cabins are well-appointed and simple. Dominated by wood and nature, it’s a place one might easily wish to enjoy with a lover. Oddly, that thought comes to me not as a sour-grapes lament that Ragna and I didn’t make it so far, but as it might if I’d come alone, seen the obvious romantic nature of the place, and pictured no particular woman joining me.

We all like the hammocks very much. One morning I pass the Canadian school-teacher lying in his, with one daughter in the other, and the green parrot sleeping with him in his. Or, in the Rilke-Wright formulation, “guarding his solitude.”

Ragna and Selma lie often in their hammock, chatting and laughing. Dozing in mine, I hear them and smile. It is wonderful to hear their laughter. Ragna has been so much in Iceland, and with me in San Francisco or Mexico or Peru, and Selma so much in Sweden then Milan, that they have not spent much time together. Now they lie for hours in the hammocks laughing. I do not hear what they are talking about, or care; but their laughter rings like two clear bells, or two more creatures from the forest: whatever it is or means, it sounds good; and I am happy for Ragna, at the same time wondering why we so seldom made each other laugh like that, when each of us loves to laugh and makes others around us laugh.

Mother and daughter.

their laughter as filled with life

as the wild bird-calls

that awaken us at dawn.

knowing neither tongue, i smile.

 

  Our domestic arrangements are a little like a bad soap opera for the entertainment of at least some of the workers here. I have asked Ricardo to arrange a birthday cake for Ragna, but also advised him that she and I have separated. The first day when Ragna and Selma are about to arrive, I go in for lunch, and one of the waiters asks, “Aren’t you waiting for two more people?” It’s easier to delay lunch than dispute the point, and so we eat together. Ragna is not pleased, and when I ask if I should tell the waiters we’ll need separate tables from now on, she says I should. I do. They set me a place at a table alone. But later, as we approach the area for supper, Ragna says, “You can eat with us if you want,” and I ask Ricardo to move the single setting from a distant table to the one where Ragna and Selma are sitting. For the rest of the stay, we sit together at meals. Sometimes we all talk amicably. More often, Ragna and Selma talk amicably with each other in Swedish.

Luci is always asking me whether things are better. At one point she and the other female guide enthusiastically insist that things between me and Ragna seem to be going better. “You’re such romantics,” I tell them.  I can tell that they, as well as Ricardo and perhaps others, like both of us and would like to see what they figure would be a happy ending. I can feel them rooting for it, and feel sorry to disappoint them, but Ragna and I know that we are not getting back together.

Most afternoons, just before supper, I’m in the pool. The Canadians are always there too, and often the South Africans. Colorful birds often visit us at pool-side. One bird even discovers the loose toenail on my big toe and kindly pulls it off for me with his beak.

and get more closely acquainted

The Canadians chat with a macaw

After supper I’m often in the bar.  The pool table is often in use, sometimes by me.  There’s also chess, backgammon, and the like, although I don’t mangage to find a chess game.  The bar’s not crowded, and Jean-Paul’s pisco sours are effective.  It’s fun.

Night falls early in the jungle.

dusk is not silent.

birds, cicadas, men all rush

to sing before night

descends like death’s sceptre on

the Mother of God River.

 

By 11 they’ve turned off the generator, and there’s no electricity back in the room. Corto Maltes is quiet; but the jungle is never silent, and at an astonishingly early hour there’s a cacophany of strange sounds, the oddest of which is some bird’s call that I will wish I could have recorded, to add the sound to this blog. It is very loud, and sounds almost mechanical – yet a little like a drop of water landing in a barrel and echoing, if that sound were magnified thousands of times. Each morning I lie awake, listening in awe, long before it’s time to get up.

The security whistles that all through Peru have sounded a little like they might be birds are finally birds, some sounding as if they might be security whistles.

Parakeet Lick

We get up early to walk to parakeet lick. We sit in a blind, waiting quietly. Parakeets do come, at a distance too great for good photography. Then another animal scares them away, and it is all over.

 

Isla De Monos - Take 2

On the way to Lago Sandoval, we stop again at the Monkey Island. This time we do not see any monkeys at all. We walk in further with the guides, and see a cage where the monkeys sometimes hang out, but we do not see any monkeys. Luci confirms that the monkeys here were at one time domesticated, then freed to live on the island.

 

Lago Sandoval

We go on up river from Isla de Monos to Lago Sandoval. The lake is a good place to see animals, I’ve read – but one has to get there at dawn. (There’s a place to stay at the lake. If you’re interested particularly in the animals at Lago Sandoval, stay there.)

It’s a fair hike into the jungle to where we will take a couple of canoes. I walk briskly ahead of everyone in hopes of shooting photographs of small animals, or macro shots of butterflies, before everything is stampeded by the general herd, which includes our group and a larger group of French folks. In fact, there ain’t much wildlife to photograph anyway.

One stretch of the path is dominated by processions of leaf-cutting ants.  It’s not clear to me where they begin and where they end, but I’m flopped down on my belly a while trying to photograph them.

three guides relaxing

Lake Sandoval

We eat packed lunches at picnic tables near the lake. A couple of the French people and I lose our clothes long enough for a short swim in the lake.

tiger egret

Then we canoe around for awhile. It’s a pleasant day, but most of what we see in the way of wild-life is too far away to enjoy very much.  For example, we see a sudden disturbance of water and Luci points out the otters one often sees at Lago Sandoval — but at the distance they could be Olympic swimmers  in training. 

 

By the time we’ve hiked back to the river, it’s become a long day.  It’s been good exercise.

Canopy

Friday we are going to a canopy, where we can walk above the forest.  We walk in from a place which has a sort of zoo of local animals. We lunch among a raft of impossibly slender volunteers. (Decades younger, I’d undoubtedly have been in love with one of them, but now they might as well belong to some other species.) We see various [captive] animals, including monkeys and a jaguar.

Soon after we leave, two birds start following closely behind us, barking at us as if they were dogs. They follow us a long way. 

looking up from mid-point

a view from the top

The canopy is impressive. It is said to be 45 meters high, and 90 long. When we arrive, the first step is to climb several stories of a green wooden structure, from the top of which a long suspension bridge extends upward across the valley toward a spot high in the arms of a huge ______ tree.

The bridge is safe enough, but it sways over open air and the tops of much smaller trees, and where lengths of its flooring meet each other they make a cracking sort of sound unnervingly like the sound of something cracking and breaking under sustained weight. Travelers who are convinced that nothing in Peru is built right must feel their complaints turning into nightmares here.

Even I felt a bit disquieted at times walking up the suspension bridge to the treehouse. (Although I’m far from impervious to fears, including physical fears, I have since childhood tended to respond by confronting them, and when younger I did a fair amount of wandering around at great heights under questionable circumstances. Still, the canopy is imposing.) Ragna, who is normally quite frightened of heights, courageously walks on up without hesitation.

Walking up, I get a bit impatient with the woman in front of me. She stops to shoot what seem to me pointless photographs, then I have to stop too, then Ragna gets impatient because she is behind me and wants to keep moving, presumably to get up the thing all the sooner; and I begin to share that urge. I know the bridge is quite secure; but it’s a bit of a rush.

We stay up there awhile, marveling at the view. Like being a kid in a treenhouse. A very high treehouse.

I start back first, hoping the others will stay a while longer. I want to stay on the middle.  Having felt a touch nervous on the way up, I want to hang out and eradicate that feeling.

Starting down early allows me to take my time, shoot photographs of the bridge and the sights and the folks still up above, and in the process to feel more and more completely comfortable on the bridge itself. I keep stopping, turning, taking photographs from awkward positions, etc., feeling not the least urgency to move along. (A fantasy pops into my head: wouldn’t it be superb to make love with a woman on this bridge, swaying 45 meters above the earth?! This is my new secret ambition.)

I feel so comfortable that I don’t want to go back down to the ground, but eventually the others start down, and I must. 

Ragna’s Birthday  

Then some of the guys are in the dining room, telling us there is some sort of fire on the river, and that we should all come out and have a look. We sit on the wooden steps leading to the dock and watch a bunch of colored lights – red, blue, green, and yellow – float gently across the blackness out there, from left to right. Although I jokingly ask whether this too is for Ragna’s birthday, and the guys from the hotel play along, the truth is that they have no idea what the occasion is. Someone in Puerto Maldonado has released these to celebrate the anniversary of something, but they have no idea what.

One night colored lights

secured in bottles float past

on the black river

from unknown celebration

they drift to unknown waters. 

Afterward I have a drink in the bar with Selma, shoot one game of pool with Jean-Paul the bartender, and gab for quite awhile with Marco, the new manager, who had been talking with Selma while Jean-Paul and I shot pool.  A rambling, interesting, late-night conversation that touches on deaths of parents, birthdays, Noam Chomsky, and my opinion of Peruvian girls.  (As to the latter, I tell him I have none, pointing out that I’ve had no chance to experiment.)  He’s from Lima, just recently assigned here as manager, and still getting used to being so far from the city.

I sit in the near darkness of my front porch, not quite ready to sleep. It is quiet and fairly cool. The horse is grazing around somewhere. I learn that the watch Ragna gave me has a luminous dial: it is 10:40. After I sit for five minutes or so, thinking of nothing in particular, the small lights that line the paths go out, and whatever lights were on in the main building.  I sit awhile in darkness, then retire.

Too soon, the bird whose call sounds like water dropping in a gigantic barrel awakens me, as always, well before dawn.

Antonio 

We see our South African friends again at breakfast. They’ve been up all night.  Ayahuasca. They are still sitting with Antonio, and he is still talking earnestly. They look fine. David stops by our table, and gives a one- or two-word report on the evening: “All great” or “Marvelous!” Then they are gone, taking an early boat to Puerto Maldonado to catch a plane.

Antonio is still sitting there, so I take my coffee and join him. He is a strong, solid man. He confirms that he built the canopy, and apparently worked studying eagles for awhile. He asks what sort of camera I use and says he used to use a good camera, a Nikon, until it and a 400 mm. lens came undone and fell to the ground as he was starting to climb down from a high eagle-watching platform. He works in conservation and in cultural regeneration, and with healing. In the former capacity, he saw that people from elsewhere “would come in saying what we need, without understanding how things are here,” and so he started a foundation that relies on “people from here.” He speaks slowly, deliberately, but is not a slow man. His dark brown eyes stay on you while he speaks. He is a serious man.

Los Indios

Later that morning we visit with an indigenous tribesman and his family. They are far down river from their native village, making plenty of money talking to folks like us about their lives and culture, showing us how they drink and shoot, and selling us things they’ve made. For an hour or so, the “Chief,” Gregorio, speaks to us in his language, which is translated as necessary. Sometimes we get to participate, as when he’s showing us a native foul-tasting alchoholic beverage we get to drink, or a dance, or how to drink the juice from an unusual fruit we haven’t seen before. He also shoots a couple of arrows for us.

He says he has five wives. He mentions that several times, either because previous visitors have found it remarkable or shocking or because he thinks we should.

 

He’s a bit of a self-promoter, but a charming one.  He’s charismatic, and everyone enjoys the hour we spend with him.    His son plays the flute

The Farm

Later that morning we visit a farm.  High points include a new fruit, fresh from the tree, and a tree with vines up which Carlos can climb like Tarzan. I’m the only one from our lot dumb enough to try it, and it’s fun for awhile, but I can’t get very far and make the usual fool of myself in the process.

 

Travel Notes

Lodging

I found the cabins delightful: well-appointed but simple and tasteful. They sit on stilts and are basically wood and screens, with reeds or leaves in the roofs. A sizeable front porch accommodates a small table with a couple of chairs, perfect for an evening glass of wine or for writing or playing cards, as well as two hammocks.   There’s electricity — sometimes.   We were told we’d have electricity for only an hour or two a day, but in fact it seemed to be on much of the day.

There are also dorm rooms, I believe.

There’s pretty much nothing else around but jungle and river. 

Food

The only restaurant is the dining hall, and the menu is what it is at any given meal.  The food is reasonably good, although Ragna and Selma noted that every evening it was some form of chicken and rice. (I eat no meat, and the kitchen workers cheerfully produced a variety of non-meat dishes for me each lunch and supper.)  It’s a simple, pleasant place to be.  Staff are cordial and considerate.

Guides distributed water bottles whenever we went anywhere, and brought along fruit or lunches when we would be away from camp during a meal.

Other Points

The key question is, would Corto Maltes be the right jungle experience for you?

That depends on what you’re looking for; and you should take my comments with a couple of grains of salt.  First of all, I’m one who, as you know if you’ve read earlier posts, is accustomed to independence and solitude, which won’t be part of most jungle experiences here and certainly weren’t in Corto Maltes.  Secondly, I was there in the drier season, when water and mosquito populations are both down, but the place is probably also not so teeming with visible wildlife as in the rainy season.   And of course jungle tours come in all shapes, sizes, and budgets, depending on your age, condition, tastes, and mood.

I’d have rather gone to Manú.  Ragna’s preference for comfort and Selma’s schedule made Corto Maltes the best available option under all the circumstances.  When Ragna and I broke up, I tried to change my plans, but it wasn’t workable.   However, I enjoyed Corto Maltes.  I liked the place and the people; and if it’s the type of experience you are looking for, it’s a good (and economical) option.   Personally, I’d likely prefer something a little rougher and exciting;  but I liked Corto Maltes.

Having said that, I can offer some observations and can pass on comments I heard from others. Some of the others we met there had recently finished trekking the Inka Trail to Macchu Picchu, and were flying home to Canada or South Africa from Puerto Maldonado.  They found it precisely the sort of relaxing but somewhat interesting “wind-down” they sought. They enjoyed the flora and fauna we did see, and I saw them at the pool late every afternoon. They got what they wanted, and were basically pleased.

Corto Maltes is a very pleasant experience. Though there are others there, you don’t feel crowded, and it’s small enough to enable you to get to know most staff-members and some of your fellow guests, but sufficiently well-appointed to be quite comfortable.

The activities were a mixed bag. Monkey Island seemed a waste of time, and seemed as if it would be pretty much a waste of time even if more monkeys had shown up more often on cue. No variety, distance, artificiality, former pets.The canopy was a delight, although not what I’d expected. I’d expected a structure on which one would walk some distance at roughly eye-level with the forest canopy, so as to get a look at life at that level. Instead it climbed into the arms of one very splendid tree, with a fine but distant view of the forest below. It would not be for everyone, because not everyone’s gut will permit him or her to climb a swaying (and flimsy-looking, at first) bridge that high above the ground and so apparently flimsy. In fact, it seems to have been well-constructed and maintained, and appears not to be dangerous; but for some, the visceral fear would trump that knowledge. Other than the canopy, the walk itself was somewhat dull; but in a different season it might be quite a bit more interesting.

Luci’s introductory nature walk was more interesting than it sounds. She knows a lot, from having grown up here but obviously also from studying the subject, and presented what she told and showed us in a reasonably interesting way.  Luci, as well as the other guides I got to know, could not have been more pleasant, knowledgeable, real, and competent. 

Our encounter with the representatives of the T – T (los indios – I forget the actual name of the tribe) was more interesting than it sounds as if it might be, but limited.

The visit to the farm didn’t do much for me, except that I liked trying to play Tarzan on the vines, and the star-fruit tasted delightful fresh from the tree. Again, a different season might have made that a more interesting experience.

The Sandoval Lake outing was worth doing, but: reading and common sense both suggest that if you want really to see animals in a place like that, camp there or stay in a nearby lodge and get up in the early morning, or perhaps get settled in a blind or observation tower before sunset. Mid-day is warm and pleasant for swimming, but nap-time for a lot of animals. Too, two big canoes full of people cruising the same landscape at the same time means that one will scare away most everything worthwhile that it sees close-up.

On balance: Corto Maltes is an extremely tasteful, pleasant, and comfortable place to be. The simple lodgings are enjoyable without being opulent. The guides are knowledgeable and personable, and the kitchen and bar staff are pleasant and helpful. However, I think my own preference would be a slightly more rigorous experience. Alone, I’d have been inclined to arrange for a slightly more adventurous program that involved camping out but carried the promise of more beautiful and unusual sights. I regret that Selma’s schedule didn’t permit us to go to Manú. An acquaintance, a U.S. citizen living in Arequipa, has called it the single most wonderful experience in his several years in Perú. I strongly recommend Corto Maltes, though, in the sense that what it does, it does well.

Meaningfully assessing Corto Maltes is also difficult because I didn’t experience its competitors and alternatives, and because readers will have such varied desires, tastes, and explanations; and at least part of my assessment might be very different if we’d gone during a different season.

I breakfast alone, enjoying the morning light and visiting with the green parrot who hangs around on the front terrace. Then I head for the Wasai to rent a room for the night. While I’m up at that end of town, I rent a motor scooter too. The shift system is wholly unlike what I’m used to from decades of motorcycle-riding, and seems idiotic; and I’m pretty idiotic too: I drive a block, feeling very unsafe and edgy, before I realize that something’s missing. There’s no rear-view mirror, and my uncertainty about what’s going on behind me is far from comfortable. I drive around the block, turn the scooter in, and get one with a mirror. It has two mirrors, but also a right foot-peg and rear-brake mashed too close to each other from some previous accident. Finally I’m off, back to the Don Carlos to pick up my stuff and take it to the Wasai.

My other errand besides changing hotels is to find the SUNARP office. When I bought the car in Lima, I put it in my name and Ragna’s, thinking I might be called back to the U.S. to work on a case and she’d be using or selling the car in my absence.  Now I have to have her sign it back over to me alone, so that I won’t run into excessive red tape trying to sell it. Unfortunately I have no luck finding the SUNARP office.

At the Wasi, my new room has a nice view of the river. I lunch on the deck. I chat a bit with some Polish-Canadian folks on an organized tour, then read awhile and feel sleepy. The food takes forever to arrive, but tastes okay once it does. There are birds to watch, and river sounds to listen to.

I return to the room and fall asleep within minutes. A while later I awaken enough to realize I feel extraordinarily hot, but can barely make myself awaken fully, let alone move.

When I finally manage to get out of bed, I go first for an ice cream. I take a table near the window, to shoot more shots of families on motorcycles.

Then I ride the motor scooter down to the docks, determined to cross the river and see where the road goes from Triunfo.

the car safely aboard,

a motorcycle backs onto the ferry

I ride the scooter up a wooden plank onto the vehicle ferry. Of course my foreignness amuses everyone. As we approach the opposite bank, I ask the kid in the black T-shirt how much to pay, and he tells me to ask the older man who’s putting the pole in the ground to tie up to. It seems unlikely that he doesn’t know the answer, and I wonder whether he merely doesn’t know whether his boss wants to jack up the price because I’m a foreigner with a

nearly across

camera. However, after confirming that it’s just the bike and me, no passenger, the man says S./ 2.50. Both his manner and the modest price convince me that’s the normal charge. It certainly seems reasonable.

The wooden plank rests somewhat sideways on a long concrete ramp that runs up the bank at a fairly steep angle. I will need to drive down the wooden plank, then quickly turn right to drive up the steep hill. I cross the plank successfully, but in trying to slow down and turn right I manage to take a small spill. The camera’s fine, though, and the boy in the black T-shirt is there to assist me before I even stand up. I thank him, turn the bike, and head up the hill, guessing the episode probably added a little to everyone’s amusement. Hope so.

I follow the main road. It’s a hard and bumpy dirt road. I pass a few homes and businesses and a grifo, then pasture and jungle and occasional glimpses of the river.  It’s a long, dull, dirt road through the jungle, quite wide and quite flat; but for the little motor scooter, it’s treacherous and difficult. It’s hard and bumpy – then soft and gravelly, as if I’m back in New Mexico riding a dirt bike, except that this thing is a beat-up scooter. Keeping vertical takes more concentration than I might have wished. Often I think I’m going down, but manage not to. Sometimes a larger vehicle passes me, and I breathe dirt (which I don’t mind) and drive nearly blind for awhile (which makes staying upright even more of a challenge).

After awhile I spot the river off to my left, and pause to shoot a couple of mediocre pictures. I can also hear a small boat’s engine, and spot the boat progressing on the river from Puerto Maldonado. I walk a few dozen yards along a path toward the river. A pack of small dogs challenges me, barking furiously, obviously defending a small home against intruders while the family is off working or visiting. They aren’t a real danger, though, so I continue far enough to get the photograph I want, then head back to the scooter.

There’s also a spot where they’ve cut down a couple of huge trees and are sawing them up. I don’t know what kind of tree it is; but the smell as I drive past is almost like that of a slaughterhouse. The human figures, who look like ants as they scurry around attending to the huge fallen tree, and the isolation and the heat and the smell combine to leave me grateful I don’t have to spend my day working there.

I go what seems a long way because of the conditions, but isn’t, then return in time to enjoy a jungle sunset and check on where I’m meant to be when in the morning, to leave for Corto Maltes.

The Corto Maltes office is just across the street from my new hotel. They tell me I can take a morning boat or one that leaves about noon-time. Of course I choose the former, figuring I’d like to get out of the town and into the jungle as quickly as possible.

Travel Notes:

Lodging:

Two quite reasonable hotels are the Don Carlos and the Wasai Lodge.  The former is at the far [South] end of  the main street (Velarde) from the Plaza de Armas.   The latter is on Billinghurst, the single street between the Plaza de Armas and the hill overlooking the Madre de Dios River.  (Who, I wonder, was Billinghurst?  Curiosity about that leads me to a photograph of the new bridge that doesn’t yet exist [see previous post] but which is described as El Nuevo Puente Billinghurst at http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2039979, although the green river in the picture doesn’t look much like the brown Madre de Dios.   So I guess Billinghurst was sufficiently prominent to get the bridge named after him.   Wikipedia calls it the President Guillermo Billinghurst Bridge.  Further research suggests that he was elected to the presidency in August 1912, succeeding Augusto B. Leguia, and served until 1919, when Augusto B. Leguia succeeded him and served until 1930.  Wikipedia adds that Guillermo Ernesto Billinghurst was born in 1851 in Arica — and that he served only until 1914.   Congress wasn’t ready for his “advanced social legislation” and a military coup deposed him in 1914, when he was sent into exile to die in Iquique.  He’s also described as a millionaire businessman, populist, and “reform-minded mayor of Lima” prior to his brief and turbulent presidency.  “When Congress opened impeachment hearings against him he threatened to arm the workers and forcibly dissolve Congress.”  It’s interesting that he’s remembered so long afterward.   But Colonel Oscar Benavides, who headed the successful coup, has a main street in Miraflores named after him, while I had to get all the way to Puerto Maldonado to hear about Billinghurst. )

Probably the Don Carlos is the “better” of the two, but I liked the feel of the Wasai.   It’s also closer to the Plaza de Armas, if that matters.   The Don Carlos is far from everything, but if there isn’t a moto-taxi lingering outside, the folks at the desk will have one there pretty quickly for you.

Food:

 At least for a fellow who doesn’t eat meat, Puerto Maldonado was not a delight — yet I got a couple of good fish suppers, one at each of the hotels.   There’s a pizza place on the Plaza, and also a nice restaurant-bar on the north side of the Plaza that seemed appealing and tasteful but had no fish on the menu.   I should note that I didn’t try the inviting-looking ceviche place on Velarde that I photographed every time I passed it, and that I heard tales of a couple of good restaurants not near the Plaza.   Somehow evenings in Puerto Maldonado I felt too lazy to explore beyond the pizza joint.

Other:

Unfortunately, I don’t get through the metal detector unscathed. The guy starts checking me with the metal-detecting wand, and in my right pants-pocket – oops! – is the Swiss army knife that has lain there, unnoticed except when needed, for six months.  Gone.  Then the lady checking my bulging backpack discovers my second Swiss army knife, stashed conveniently in a small compartment and forgotten, since I haven’t lost or misplaced the one in my pocket. Two Swiss army knives gone in a moment – just when I’m going where they might be useful!

When I board the plane, there’s a family of three in the row where I’m meant to have the window seat. Too bad. But I wait patiently and do get a seat. I start reading Garcilaso. 

It’s interesting reading.   I recommend it.  Garcilaso writes of the Incas from a unique viewpoint: his father was one of the conquistadores with Pizarro, his mother was an Inca princess, and her family taught him much about the old culture that the Spaniards did not know.   He grew up in Cusco, very soon after the Conquest. Of course, being a Christian, and having moved to Spain before he was 20, he wrote with some interest in making the Inca appear no more savage than necessary to European eyes.   He’s not unbiased.    But his account is interesting, knowledgeable, and believed to be generally accurate.  (He’s also significant as the first important Latin American writer.)

The Inca mode of conquest seems to have been to march up to the edge of your territory with a force sufficient to destroy you, then parlay.  They sent in emissaries to explain why their religion, engineering, customs, and social organization were superior to anyone else’s, and point out that it would be in your interest to join the Inca empire rather than resist it.   Obviously this argument was buttressed by the fact that they had brought a force sufficient to kick your ass.   Still, they parlayed fairly patiently, and often conquered new territory without the need for violence.  When violence did ensue, they were up to it, and ultimately prevailed; but even then they were relatively forgiving.  They took your leaders to Cusco to learn to be good Inca administrators, then sent them back as such.   (Even if Garcilaso exaggerates a bit, this seems to be basically accurate.)

There was one exception, which I mention not to make anyone uncomfortable but because I think it’s worth knowing, particularly among those who have questions concerning Peru’s reputation for what is now called “homophobia.”   The exception: occasionally the Inca conquered a region in which homosexuality was widely practiced — or was believed to be.  In this case they killed every homosexual; and the wife and children of any homosexual, if he had any; and all of his livestock; and burned his home and crops.  

From the moment we land, and as we ride the noisy moto-taxi in from the airport, Puerto Maldonado is just as I imagined it – no, knew it – to be, from some haphazard collection of dreams, filmic images, and mental visions formed while reading.

What flies past us on the way into town is not beautiful: a lot of motorcycles and moto-taxis, few cars, several grifos, the sloppy greenery of the jungle, simple buildings and houses, most of wood and some on stilts, and occasional food stores surrounded by motorcycles.

It feels different, not merely because of the lower altitude or the humidity.   (The air is warmer and heavier.)  This is an engaging and unpretentious place.   It is quite distant, of course, from Peru’s major cities, let alone the more famous cities elsewhere.  More, it feels influenced by the jungle and the climate.   None of the buildings is beautiful or elegant or complex, perhaps because one feels here that the jungle will reclaim everything soon enough.   No one is dressed elegantly or drives a fine car.  The muggy weather,  the intermittent rain, and the mud would sabotage finery, and probably rusts cars.   It seems a place not at all of indolence, but where the heat and humidity and mud and jungle are too dominant to permit pretentions.   The finest clothes would be stained by mud and sweat here, and the finest cars crippled by the roads and rust.

We check in at Don Carlos’s, which overlooks the Rio Tambopata.  Its most impressive feature is a green parrot who hangs around on the terrace while you are drinking coffee.   It is perhaps the best hotel in town.

Almost immediately I set out to walk to the Plaza de Armas.  It is a long walk on a fairly warm Sunday.   Domingo.  I am alone.   Almost all stores are closed.   Still, I feel energized, curious about my new surroundings.  Too, my mood is odd: the domestic tension and uncertainty make it somber, but  fresh solitude in a new place lends it a certain excitement.    Traveling alone is always different from traveling in a group or couple: one is freer to follow chance encounters where they lead, and able to munch on and digest one’s impressions before conversation dilutes them.

It’s a pleasant and solitary walk.   Even with most businesses closed, the walk to the Plaza de Armas is marked by colorfully painted buildings and lively music.   Children are out playing.   Moto-taxis ply their trade.  Toward the end of the walk, a tall statue of Mary watches over the Plaza. 

I find a pleasant ice cream shop, and sit near a window eating chocolate ice cream and taking occasional pictures, mostly of whole families on motorcycles.  This is nothing new (decades ago in Taiwan it was like that, and I was guilty of it too, carrying both my girl friend and a tall friend of ours on a little 125 cc. bike), but seems even more extreme here.   Soon I also realize that a lot of the motorcyclists I see stopping for friends are actually motorcycle-taxis.  The passenger climbs on the back of the bike, sans helmet, and pays a few soles for a ride. 

I also spot a place to rent scooters, and resolve to do so the next day.

Around the corner from the scooter-rental shops, a pleasant-looking hotel overlooks the other river, the Madre de Dios.   It’s the Hotel Wasi.  I arrange to move there the following day, thus complying with Ragna’s desire to have me stay in some other hotel.  The Wasi overlooks the other river, the Madre de Dios, not far from where the ferry boats dock.  I walk down there, past the sign for the local shaman.  

Resisting the lure of the maestro’s sign, I walk a few steps further and see an appealing composition: a shop wall painted bright red as a Coca Cola ad, with a few children, a bicycle, and a dog approaching it. I pause, waiting for them to reach the sign, and notice the shop to my right, with very different advertisement painted on it.  

It’s a visually interesting spot, just a few meters from the entrance to the  Madre de Dios ferry. I shoot a couple of shots of the kids and the Coke sign, realizing that part of its appeal is its contrasting associations for me: it’s half some Norman Rockwell picture of kids by a barn with a painted coke sign three-quarters of a century ago, and half this frontier river town in the jungle.   Another motorcycle family passes them and decides to stop and be part of the picture. It’s such a magical spot that the next motorcycle to pass actually has a family of five on it, trumping anything I shot at the Plaza.

When I reach the long stairway down to the ferry, I learn that it costs half a sole to cross.  I walk up the wooden plank from the mud, to general amusement: I’m the only foreigner; in fact, I’m the only foreigner I see on any of the ferry boats I ride or see in Puerto Maldonado, except for one minibus-ful of French-Swiss people traveling with a guide.   

Note Rambo’s universal appeal. Decades ago, now, I was walking past Lhasa’s magnificent Potala Almost no one in Tibet spoke any English then, and few even spoke much Chinese. Nevertheless, among the shops and restaurants and chang spots along the street at the base of the Potala, one establishment was proudly labeled “Ranbo Bar.”  The misspelling added to the effect.

I’m in the mood to shoot everything I see. The boats tied up to the dock, the boats approaching from across the river, the ferryman, my fellow passengers. I’m like a child, looking at everything with wonder, and my fellow passengers seem to know that – or they’re unaccustomed to an old gringo wandering onto a passenger ferry alone. Is this another place where the tourists are all clumped together in minivans, riding the larger ferry and grouped around a guide? In any case, the men on the ferry boat greet me, grin, remark on the camera. I confess to taking a great many photographs, and as they see how true that is some of them laugh.

Soon after we push off, I spot a huge concrete structure – at least, it looks pretty huge from a small boat on the river – that must be a support for a planned bridge over the river. I ask the boatman, who confirms that it’s for a bridge. The bridge may change his life. It must be for the Trans-_____ Highway that’ll make the drive to here, and the drive from here to Brazil, a whole lot easier. Undoubted progress I hope won’t happen too soon. I imagine the boatman hopes it won’t, either. It’ll probably destroy his livelihood.   Intermittently I wonder how it feels to work as you’ve worked for decades, in the shadow of a concrete reminder that you will soon be obsolete. 

The future looms over the bow of the ferry

Car Ferry - Rio Madre de Dios

passenger ferries waiting at Triunfo

There is nothing special to see at the ferry-landing on the opposite bank.  Just more ferry boats, more steps, a few food vendors and what looks like a bar, and a huge logging truck.  And a dirt road heading off toward wherever.  Still, I walk about, looking and listening.  Then I buy a Sprite from one of the vendors — actually from a young boy spelling his mother at her stand — and sit on a rough wooden bench beside the stand.

waiting

Sitting on a little unpainted wooden bench is good. My legs are old, and it gives them a rest; and it’s a kind of camouflage, allowing me to watch and listen in a lazy way, and shoot the occasional photograph; and closer around me, I have a briefly view into the lives of the vendors. The boy says nothing, but I can feel that, alternately standing and sitting behind me, he’s curious. In the next stall a child with oddly light hair – reminding me of a Mayan girl I photographed one morning in the jungle near Bonampak – stares at me. When I photograph her, her mother watches, amused. When I approach to show the little girl her image, asking “Quien es?” in my sweetest, cajoling tone, she cries. Her mother looks at the image in the camera viewer and invites the girl to look again, but she isn’t having any, and eyes me with distrust as long as I sit there. When I turn around, the boy, whose mother has come back to the stall, is doing puzzles or something from a book. His mother leans over to help him with one, and I realize it’s a schoolbook, which he confirms when I ask. Then I notice that the dictionary is a bilingual one. He’s studying English. So I ask him about that, but he must be just beginning – or his lessons are almost purely from the printed page, and he’s had no experience actually conversing in the language yet — because even “What’s your name?” and “How are you?” draw blank stares from him.

It’s Sunday.  Domingo.   I sip my soda and enjoy life.  When I finish it, now with no good reason to hang round, I descend to a ferry, and after awhile we’re headed back to Puerto Maldonado.

Now the logging truck I photographed up on the bluff is driving onto a larger car ferry, to cross the river toward wherever the logs will become boards. More consumption of rainforest trees, vital to our survival. Above, the truck full of logs was just a big thing to photograph, the biggest thing around up there, dwarfing the little houses and the motorcycles and the food stalls. On the river, it strikes me as one small part of humanity’s rape of the rainforest. Innocuous, unnoticed, quiet, unremarkable. But part of something larger and sad.  At the same time, the truck looks almost respendent for a moment in bright sunlight, carried across the river like some huge king.

As with certain witnesses and friends I’ve dealt with, nothing is every quite black or quite white in the rainforest.  

almost home

I take a moto-taxi from the ferry area to the hotel. From the hotel I hear music, as if from some festival or perhaps a sporting event. The girl behind the desk explains that it’s a football game, a few blocks away. Having no pressing engagement, I start toward the noise.

Walking the dirt street toward the stadium, the visual surroundings are unfamiliar, but the sound and feel in the air are of a Saturday afternoon high school football game in the beautiful countryside along the Hudson River four decades ago. I am walking down uneven dirt lanes with occasional sheep, and women gossiping in front of houses with slogans written on them, rather than the proud suburban homes of small-town North America; and the kids in short pants playing pick-up soccer against the wall of the stadium are not playing “one-a-cat” with a baseball and a bat against the brick walls of Pierre Van Cortlandt Elementary School. But the energy in the air, the band music, the cheering and jeering of the crowd, are as I heard them striding toward the high school field for that different kind of football.

When I turn onto the street along the stadium walls, though, I am clearly in Peru. The walls are the exceptionally tall walls Peruvians favor. But through holes, perhaps scraped into the wall for just this purpose, youths watch the distant game, as kids watched through knot-holes the major-league baseball games from Shoeless Joe Jackson’s time. And atop the high walls sit groups of men and boys, and a few women. Some have climbed, using the ridges at some levels of the wall and its natural decay. Beneath others stand wooden ladders, just high enough so that from the top rung one can pull oneself up onto the top of the all, as in a comic-strip indication of a burglary.

I walk along, photographing the folks on the walls, and turn right to see more of them, as well as a huge delivery truck parked on the street with three men standing on top of it to watch. There are nearly as many people on top of the wall, or watching through holes or breaks in the walls, as in the stadium.

I’m an outlaw myself. I photograph one family up there, then ask if I may move their ladder slightly to the side of them and use it to join them. Of course I may. The spectacle of a middle-aged foreigner [or shall I simply say "old" ?] climbing the wall with his camera and fisherman’s vest amuses everyone in the area. My legs are not limber, and there are four rebar rods sticking up out of the wall just where I’d like to swing my legs over to let them dangle on the football-field side, but I manage.

The game is not right below us. Several meters within this brick wall is a chain-link fence – also high, and with wire to discourage anyone from climbing over it.  Inside the smaller enclosure, a team in red is playing a team in green. Legitimate “stands” are on the side of the field to my left, and in the far corner, to the right of the field, there appears to be another small grandstand. There really do seem to be a lot more people on the fence than inside it, and snack-vendors working the game periodically walk around the perimeter to offer their wares to the spectators on the wall. (Is a seat inside costly? Or do a lot of these folks just feel that an illicit view of the game is a whole lot more pleasurable?)

At some point I ask the girl next to me whether one team is from here and another from elsewhere, or whether these are two teams from Puerto Maldonado. “Los Rojos,” she says, are from Puno. It is a long way. The players from Puno must have flown here.

As I start shooting photographs, something brushes my left shoulder lightly. It is a man who has moved the ladder a few inches from where I left it, and climbed up to sit just the other side of the protruding rebar.

I immerse myself in shooting. The game is too far away Still, it amuses me. It is what I do.   Around me the game continues, with kicks and headers and penalties, but no goals; the crowd jeers at one foul, and people toss a few things off the wall onto the grass between us and the soccer field.  

At some point I grow a little tired of sitting up there watching. Although I am naturally rooting for the boys in green, I can’t pretend to care very much who wins. (I do not witness a goal and do not ask whether or not any were scored before I arrived.) I haven’t played the game for years and can’t see very well from here anyway.

I glance down for the ladder, which of course is gone. Again I think of a comic-strip burglar dangling from a second- or third-story windowsill by his fingertips, a house-painter having borrowed  his ladder. There are now eight or ten more people sitting to my left on this wall, and the ladder is beneath one of them. It’s a good ways from me, there’s no possibility of standing up on this wall and trying to step over people, and it’s not clear that anyone could pass it over to us without climbing down to the ground.

Of course, as soon as I see that I can’t feasibly leave, I desire even more to get away. I am a stupid old man sitting on a wall.

To my right, the young woman also gets curious about the location of the ladder. She can’t see it, doesn’t dare lean back far enough to see how far it’s traveled, and asks her boyfriend or husband or older brother. (He’s holding the child, so I’m guessing they’re parents together.)  Someone on the ground manages to recover the ladder and return it to where we are, and I gratefully descend.

I walk back the way I came. There are even more illegal spectators than before, including a fellow who’s pulled his moto-taxi close to the wall to stand on its roof, and others who at first glance look as if they’re hanging by their crossed arms on top of the wall. The pick-up football game has six or eight players now, instead of three.

I have had a full, odd, useless day. 

My room is appealing: large, and with a writing desk near the window, and a bit of a view of the river; but quickly I realize that some large population of dogs occupies the yard just below my window. The dogs aren’t happy, and are continuously barking their complaints to the world at large, and as I am unlikely to manage to solve their problems, I ask for another room. Unfortunately, the only inner room available is right next door to the ladies. I have no choice, if I hope to sleep tonight; but it is odd to hear their voices and laughter through the wall.

I eat alone in the dining room, reading Garcilaso. The meal is quite good. The television offers what will be the last major league baseball game ever played at Yankee Stadium. As a child, I hated the Yankees and was thrilled by the Dodgers’ upset win in the 1955 World Series. In my youth, I took delinquent kids to ball-games there, and drove cabs in the shadow of the stadium. Tonight it seems odd to be watching U.S. baseball, but I can’t resist doing so – at least Ragna and Selma come in. Then I retire to my room to write.

not bad; adequate rooms with desk and chairs and shelf space for clothes and other stuff; new wing appears to have rooms in some ways less charming but better-appointed than those in the old wing; and they have a view over a set of old houses or huts. Unfortunately, those houses or huts come accompanied by dogs, whose loud barking sent me begging for a new room by mid-evening.  Nice folks. Friendly parrot. Quite good food. Modest view of the Rio Tambopata from some rooms and the front terrace.

For better or for worse, somewhat isolated. It’s a good hike to the Plaza de Armas, fun the first time but not something I’d want to have to do when I was in a hurry or carrying a large pack, or in the heat of a sunny day. However, there are usually mototaxis hanging around out front, and if there aren’t any the staff will send a young man to find one.

Hotel Don Carlos serves good suppers.

The Wasai Lodge is another reasonable hotel choice.  I moved to it the next morning, to ensure domestic tranquility. 

Other Points:

There are few cabs, but plenty of moto-taxis, and some motorcycles that function as cabs.  The moto-taxis are fine, except perhaps in a sudden downpour.

Motor scooters can be rented fairly cheaply near the Plaza de Armas.  There are four or five shops on one block.   Be careful to make sure the one you get has rear-view mirrors and all!  The first one I rented didn’t, and I didn’t notice it — and driving a motor scooter with no rear-view mirror and an unfamiliar gearshift system can be unnerving.

We have a few more days in Cusco before going on to Puerto Maldonado. Mostly we go our own ways, but once or twice we have supper together. I also try to buy for Ragna’s birthday a bracelet Selma has described to me. Ragna’s birthday will come round while we are in Corto Maltes, and birthdays [it will seem sexist to say, perhaps] mean rather more to women than to men, generally. Ragna’s has sometimes meant a lot to both of us.

Hostal Q’orichaska is a pleasant place to hang around, mornings, working a bit on this blog or just gabbing with other travelers. I also explore Cusco a bit on my own. One afternoon, I spot a sign that advertises a van to Macchu Picchu for S./ 70. Back at the Q’orichaska, some Israeli acquaintances get very curious about that, since we’ve all heard only the train was feasible.

it's the shop with this hole out front!

pictures at major sites. (See contact info under Travel Notes / Other Points below.) I ask whether I could drive there in a private car, or even on to Aqua Caliente. He says I could. (I neglect to ask why his vans do not go  there, so folks don’t have to ride the train at all. Perhaps the road is unappealing.)

In search of a new Peruvian cell-phone, I walk down Calle El Sol a few blocks, and get everything I need: new phone and phone number, TUN rates, and a card for international calls. How much more comfortable I feel at this moment than I did in Lima, half a year ago, buying my first Peruvian cell-phone! Too, I make the clerk laugh a few times.

A man stands beside me, and pushes a small wicker bowl onto the table between the clerk and me. Instantly the clerk has money out and is putting a coin or two in the bowl, with the same alacrity I saw in Thai shopkeepers rushing to donate food to wandering monks in their orange robes. This man is old, with long, greyish-white hair and a beard, and bright eyes gleaming from a face of dark, wrinkled skin. When I add a coin or two, he smiles at me. There is a reason to give money to this man. He has the air of a holy man, simple and unassuming. I do not know, in words, why the kid behind the desk is giving coins so quickly to this man, when the street is full of beggars the kids working here would probably ignore or shoo away. But I know.

Perhaps I say something to the man like “buena suerte” or perhaps I just smile back, but he looks into my eyes very closely, then places a hand on the top of my head and gives me a blessing. I do not follow it all, but it begins with good luck or good health or good fortune for me for the rest of the day, and continues to cover the same for the rest of the year, and continues for several more sentences, none of them comprehensible to me. Then he puts his hand near mine to shake. I tell him I did not understand it all but I thank him, then shake his hand. He is not asking for more money, as he might reasonably have done once he spotted my camera. The blessing is kindly meant and quite welcome.  I do not question it or wonder about it, although I am not religious.

I don’t even think about it until later, but I haven’t a clue why he paused for so long to bless me. My business transaction in the Claro shop halts, like a freeze-frame in a flick, while he stands there with his hand on my head. I do not wonder why. He felt like I needed it, I suppose; and quite probably I do. I wished to take a portrait photo of him, but did not ask. After he leaves I ask the Claro kid if the man comes in there every day, and he shakes his head “No.” Then we finish our transaction.

As I walk back toward the plaza, a woman greets me. I recognize her, and quickly recall from where: Pisac, just this past Sunday, before we went to Macchu Picchu. We chat about my photographs and Macchu Picchu and the Sacred Valley and a healer she knows and trusts in Puerto Maldonado should I wish to try the ayahuasca. When I tell her I might drive out to Santa Teresa when we return, and about the folks with the van, she says there’s a new bridge there. That explains why my map showed the road stopping at Santa Theresa. She also says there ain’t much out there, but that as it’s a little lower you can grow more different things.

Bradley

Back in the Plaza, shooting a couple of pictures, I’m greeted by a tall, slender fellow with bare feet, sitting on a park bench with his open notebook. We talk briefly. He lectures on finance, professionally, but is often here. He’s working on a book – for children, possibly in comic-book style – on investing, and specifically on arranging your investments to match up somewhat with your convictions. It’s an unlikely and interesting concept. He turns out to be from a small and interesting town in British Columbia. Here some years ago, he first tried the ayahuasca – and it changed his life. I told him I’d just been chatting with a woman about that.

“I don’t know if she said this, but it’s marvelous. I took it, and it completely opened my mind, my heart. It’s the one thing I know that I wish everyone I know would experience it.” He plans to do some again in a few days, and I find myself regretting that I won’t yet be back from Puerto Maldonado.

As we discuss drugs and healing, the gulf between finance / law / banking /litigation and where we sit now, and how we feel about the world around us, two little girls pester us to buy the omnipresent little cloth bracelets for one sole. We decline. One girl keeps telling Bradley he has a sole for her. I point out, “El no tiene zapatas!” She grins, but finds his sandals and holds one up. The two girls are so sweet that I can’t resist a photo, for which I’m to pay them a sole each. I offer a two-sole piece, but the numeral on the front is slightly obscured, and they tell me it’s counterfeit. (Folks are like that here: this morning the travel agent taking our money for the Madre de Dios outing rejected a U.S. $20 bill that had a minuscule bite out of one corner.) I have a sole and a half-sole coin, and the questionable S./ 2, and invite them to choose: the purported S./2 or the certain S./ 1.50, but they happily manage to take both the S./ 2 coin and the S./ 1 coin.

I shoot a photo of Bradley, telling him he can use it as the author-photo on his book – showing him at work, barefoot in Cusco on a park bench.

I’m thinking about drugs.  Their uses and abuses, their power.   The way in which, years ago, the occasional peyote trip seemed a beautiful and therapuetic aspect of life.  How long it’s been.

birds, real and otherwise, . . .

. . . enjoy the fountain.

I also feel good. Casual jokes with the young man who sold me the phone, perhaps the blessing, a chance meeting with an acquaintance, and this pleasant conversation with a stranger . . . the day is taking a somehow welcoming shape to it.  A fine, warm afternoon on the Plaza de Armas.   There is no urgency to anything.  The warm sun ripens the melancholy of separation into a rediscovery of my solitude.

I wander into the Catedral – or, more precisely, into the small church on the left of this cathedral complex, of which the Catedral in the center forms the largest, oldest, and most significant building. (It’s flanked by the _________ on the left and by the Iglesia de Triunfo on the right.)

The Catedral de Cusco quickly fascinates me. I am not religious; and the feelings it inspires in me are not religious, exactly. I’m fascinated with the history, the art, and the odd wrinkles in this unique collaboration of cultures. The audio guide they give me as I start turns out to be quite precise and well-organized.

As noted elsewhere, most of my visits to ruins and historical places occur outdoors. Indoors I have a short attention span. Put another way, if I can’t ride a motorcycle through it or take some pictures, it may not capture my attention.

I mention this to emphasize how much I liked the Catedral. Perhaps my sombre mood contributed; at the ends of relationships we are often both in pain and rather excited by the change in our lives; certainly our experiences are often more vivid than at less turbulent emotional moments. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoy wandering through the Catedral.

It always amazes me to contemplate the vastness of early Spanish colonial churches. This one took a century of work, which naturally involved changes of architects; and, being in Cusco, the building suffered fairly extensive earthquake damage during construction, and had to be repaired.  All of this, of course, was a long way from “home” for the Spanish participants.

I enter, and rent a small cassette-player containing a recorded tour that will tell me about something, then advise me of the next spot it wants to tell me about, so that I go there, press a button, listen to what it has to say, and then move at myour own pace to the next spot it likes, though also stopping at spots that appeal to me but apparently aren’t of interest to the recorded voice.

I quickly decide to buy a CD with the recording on it, to supplement memory when I write this post – but by the time I’m back in Oakland getting around to that, I find that the CD doesn’t work.  Then once it works it has lots of intormation about Cusco, but not the specifics that so interested me walking through the Catedral.  My notes are worthless:

San Antonio de Padua . . . Celeque and the Virgin de _______ . . . The choir; the seats, the “mercies” the organs, built more or less when the church was, and silent at some point for a century. . . . El Negro

El Negro was a black saint who saved Cusco. From earthquakes, I think.

“The Last Supper” displays a table replete with cuy [guinea pig] and fruits from Peru – the cuy unmistakable. Well, it was a special occasion – and cuy was eaten on special occasions in the Inca times, as well as today. As the tour-voice suggested in connection with some of the paintings showing female Catholic saints in dress familiar to the Inkas, part of the point was to make all this strange mythology familiar and accessible to the locals.

It is all quite splendid; and it is interesting. It was all being built so ornately so far from anywhere so long ago!  What a turbulent mixture of thoughts and emotions must have flowed through the minds of the local artists, Inkas yet (perhaps) Catholic converts. I’m always fascinated  by the mix of conquerors and conquered in the blood and hearts of the people, then and later.

I stop for awhile by a statue: a Spanish gallant, sword raised, riding a white horse with a distinctly human and unhappy face, and a small fellow with a goatee kneeling beneath and holding horse and rider in the air. The audio guide is silent about this sight. It’s visually interesting, but I’m wholly ignorant about it.

I pause, wondering what she's

pouring into her motorcycle.

The night before we leave for Puerto Maldonado, Ragna cannot remove a contact lens from her eye, and we experience a bit of Peruvian medical care.

The hotel folks call a doctor. She soon arrives, examines Ragna, and takes us to a clinic. The clinic is far away through unfamiliar streets, and when we arrive it is very quiet. It is modest, but clean and well-appointed. The doctor efficiently takes care of Ragna’s eye. We pay a relatively small amount. Then they call a cab for us, but the cab doesn’t come, and in the end they kindly drive us back to the hostal in an ambulance, declining my offer to pay for the service.