Sunday – 7:00am     11/9/03

We arrived after midnight yesterday. The flight was surreal, with a spectacular sunset out the right windows and a perfect view of the full moon eclipse on our left side. As I watched the moon slowly disappearing, I was having a hard time pulling my mind forward toward Peru since it was still swirling with so many thoughts from the weeks before at the Plein Air Painters of America show on Catalina Island as well as the mad rush to get everything finished and shipped off to the galleries before we left on this adventure.

Sitting on the plane reading Montaigne’s “The Essays” was the first time in a long while that I’d just had some time to simply relax and unwind and I felt myself wondering if I’d be up to the rigors of three weeks of traveling in Peru . My favorite quote from the book: “Nothing is more firmly believed as that which is least known."  I think we can all agree with that statement, at least of everyone except ourselves, of course!

At the Lima airport, the driver we’d arranged to meet us was waiting with a little sign bearing our name, almost lost among the sea of signs and faces just outside the barrier. Even at 1:00am the streets were crowded with late night carousers and every stoplight brought children with their own children or younger siblings tragically clutched in their arms up to the windows begging for money. Tired, the lights and buildings blurred past without making much of an impression on our listless minds. The language on the signs was different, but all cities have become more or less indistinguishable at first glance.

After a good sleep we set out to explore Lima a bit, catching a cab to the Monesterio San Fransisco. Being Sunday, the small square was filled with a departing religious procession and people having breakfast at makeshift tables before the decorated church.

Below the packed church, we toured the catacombs with piles of skulls and bones arranged in ornamental patterns as if festive cake decorations. The sounds of the mass drifted down eerily into these catacombs via a couple of grates just above our heads through which we could see the church above – so filled with light and angelic song, it was quite a contrast to the gloom and skeletal netherworld we were inhabiting. 

          From there, we walked all around the area, overdosing on the Colonial architecture until Sue was about to collapse. We returned and napped till dinner, which we had at an Italian restaurant just a short walk from our hotel in the Miraflores district of Lima. I’m glad we decided to arrive a few days early before the rest of our tour group and explore Lima since there are a surprising number of interesting things to see here.

 
Here's Susan videotaping some of the interesting streets -- you don't think anyone suspected we were tourists, do you?

Monday -  11:23am    11/10/03

Susan and I are relaxing in a square adjacent to the Museo De Arte, where we saw several great painting by an artist we’d never heard of - Castio. 

After leaving the museum, a sweet lady asked if she could talk to us and practice her English. She’s very interested in the USA and teaches an adult English class. 

  
One of the many friendly people who came up to us while we were in Lima.

Like everyone else here we’ve met, she was incredibly polite, but warned us to be careful of “Bad People”. Though we haven’t seen anything personally, you can sense the danger by the large quantity of police everywhere, the fact that our hotel, even in the safest district of Lima, keeps their front doors locked at all times. Even on the cab ride here, when we came to a stop from traffic, the driver locked his door and rolled up the windows and asked us to do the same. I can only imagine what it must have been like when the Shining Path Guerillas were at their height of terrorizing this country as well.

 
A very common sight everywhere in Lima.

Tuesday  -  7:42am    11/11/03

Susan and I just had our complimentary breakfast in the open air hotel lobby. It is at the center of the small four story building: an utterly impossible arrangement anywhere but here since it never rains, though they do have relatively frequent earthquakes. If it ever did rain, it would be a disaster since there aren’t even any drains and the water would simply have nowhere to go.

          Yesterday afternoon was wonderful; the Museo de Arte Italiano (a gift from the Italian Government in the twenties or thirties) was spectacular, although quite small. They had an incredible epic painting in the entryway that stopped us in our tracks. 

This is the best photo I could get of this painting in the cramped and dark entryway to the museum, but I think you can still see what a masterpiece it is. To give you an idea of its size, the figures in the foreground are lifesize!

Then, inside was a gorgeous Mancini as well as a small collection of other Italian masters. As unusual, despite the overrun streets outside, we were alone in the museum and the bored museum staff seemed amused at our excitement over the paintings. Luckily this was the only place that let us take photos inside.  

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the title and artist's name of this one.

          On the street, a few young guys shout out “Welcome to Peru! ” While others warn of us “bad” people for the dozenth time.

          In the late afternoon, we decided to take the hotel’s City Tour even though we had already gone to many of the places on the tour on our own. It was worth it just meeting some of the others in the small group – a few from Columbia and Costa Rica that we picked up at a 5 star hotel. Our guide, Ivy, was a beautiful girl of about 23 and is engaged to a NY school teacher she meet on a trip she guided to Machu Picchu.

          One of the Columbians boldly sat down next to a shabbily dressed homeless man to have his photo taken; it took us back a little at how rude it was, at least from our American sensibilities, but the two older men were extremely outgoing and quite a lot of fun to talk to.

          At the Monestario De San Fransisco, I sat down out in the square and took photos of people and pigeons while Susan got a more thorough tour of the catacombs. 

The shoe-shining boys eventually gave up on trying convincing me to have my old hiking boots “shinned” and sat down next to me to try out their English. I was gratified when one of them shook his head sadly and looked at my camera, saying, “You need a new camera.” This in reference to my two month old D100 Nikon digital camera that probably cost as much as the average yearly income here. I had smudged some muddy colored oil paint all over it and covered all the brand logos with tape, making it appear that the tape was actually the only thing holding it together. Susan had been shocked that I’d do that to my camera since she knew how reverently I treat and care for all my cameras but I’d rather not be a target while traveling in a place like this and the alterations make absolutely no difference to the quality of the photos!

          Susan bought an alpaca sweater in a store down the street from our hotel. A gorgeous Indian girl ran the store and we wished we could have painted her. While we were there her boyfriend came in, he was from Australia and had only been in Lima for three months.

          We had a group meeting with our guide Manuel at our hotel at and met the people who would be in our traveling group. We’re the only ones from the US, probably because people from the states only get two week vacations and could never do such a long trip. There is a couple from Northern Ireland, a couple from England and six others from Melbourne, Australia. There was a young girl of 23 named Melanie who has been traveling the world by herself and she amazes both of us because she is so sweet and soft spoken for someone so adventurous!

Tuesday  2:31pm   11/11/03

          Sitting with Susan on the city bus to Pisco. Though it makes many stops along the way, the wide assortment of passengers that come and go are fun to watch. The dune-scapes are mesmerizing. Buzzards soar on the thermals, shanty towns fly past, and a man with a wide hat on a donkey tops a dune silhouetted against the sky in the barely visible distance. All is brown and gray-blue; the eye craves color and when it comes, it’s the addition of humans. There are occasional oasis of irrigated fields; maize, palm trees, and a few crops I can’t identify.    

The group is going to a ranch to eat some barbeque and then see a cockfight since the farmer (a friend of Manuel’s) raises and trains them on his ranch. Susan and I decide to skip the fighting fowl and hire a local guide and driver to take us to a nearby fishing port and meet up with the group later at the hotel.  

8:00pm      

          The fishing dock was pretty interesting, with groups of men and woman smashing shells, gutting fish, unloading boats, and then bartering for the recently liberated occupants of the deep. Walking is treacherous since the layer of slimy fish guts make the ground as slick as ice. I don’t think there’s a ton of painting possibilities, but seeing and documenting the scene with photographs was lots of fun.  

          I found the dynamic of the social organization especially unique with the entire scene more akin to a large extended family picnic. All the generations from little children mending nets, all the way up to grandparents cleaning fish were present, working for the common good. My guide told me that because the men catch the fish and then leave it up to the woman to clean and then sell the fish, it’s the women who hold the purse strings here, as they’re the ones who end up with the cash.  

One of the many men mending boats; the cloth in his teeth is used to insert into cracks that have opened between the planks, before sealing and then painting it.

As everywhere people were very interested in us and welcomed our presence and didn’t object to having their photos taken. I showed some of the young boys who were mending nets the photos of themselves on the digital screen and they were very interested, some studying the image carefully while others burst out laughing.

We walked down the shore a bit, passed men restoring boats, the rotting carcass of a dead seal, and came across a family from the mountains who were harvesting kelp to dry and sell in town. Their faces were distinct from the fishermen and the work looked backbreaking.

There’s not much to Pisco, most of it almost appears like a town leveled by a hurricane with a white Jesus statue atop a distant dune. We walked with the group through the main square at night while it bustled with activity. We saw an exhibition of  jungle tribes in the local church and then walked passed the crowded bars and restaurants with everyone.  

Tired out, Susan and I left the group and headed back to the hotel to get some food and sleep. The group wasn’t far behind and soon joined us at the table, though Garrett, from Northern Ireland , had become badly ill and stayed in his room while we chatted with his girlfriend, Joanne, who is very sweet. Both are pharmacists.

Wednesday   11:40am   11/12/03

          We’re on the road heading into the desert; a few lone palm trees dot the landscape. We just finished a boat tour of the Ballestra Islands , which was far more spectacular than I’d imagined they’d be. Thousands of Cormorants, Penguins, Seals, even a few Dolphins. One of the Islands looked like a massive pearlescent iceberg from the layers of white guano covering it (guano being the fancy name for bird poo).

 Far above us on the cliffs are seasonal workers from the Andes harvesting the guano for fertilizer, this is one of Peru’s biggest exports and has been going on for thousands of years; during the Inca’s rule, the penalty for killing birds or stealing eggs from the island was death since the fertilizer was so essential to their agriculture. Caves abounded and the soaring cliffs were a rainbow of colors and odors.

          Just before we got to the boat to take us to the Islands we stopped by a fishing port called Chacho that looked a hundred years old. The boats were painted diverse colors and some had billowing sails. The weather-beaten faces of the men and their simple clothes made them seem straight out of a Hemmingway novel. This hectic scene lasts only as long as it takes to unload their boats. It would have been great to have a few hours absorbing and photographing this scene but as it was we only had about 10 or 15 minutes. I had to remind myself to be thankful for what I was seeing since I probably never would have even come here if we were traveling on our own!

1:28 pm   

          On the bus again on the way to the sand dunes after a brief stop at a place that makes Pisco sour, the locally famous drink. The fuel line of our small, rickety bus had begun leaking, filling the back with fumes. There are so many noxious fumes from the vehicles here that it wasn’t until we were all becoming lightheaded before realizing that something was wrong with the bus. While we toured the traditional farm and sampled the traditional drink, our driver worked on repairing the bus. I wondered why we had even bothered fixing the bus since the Pisco sours seemed to cause the same effect as the fumes within the bus had!

          While there we ran into a group of American Asparagus farmers studying farming techniques. They were all very impressed by some of the innovative things they’d learned, which didn’t surprise me since I’m always amazed at how some of the best ideas come from people who are forced to make due with less than the state-of-the-art technologies. I’ve seen old car engines converted into sawmills, houses built from scraps we would have thrown away, and children create games out of the simplest junk. In some ways, I think some the creativity that America was built from is being lost as we train our children to simply buy anything we need and then even drop Art classes from the schools curriculum. Creative thinking isn’t something that you just pull out of your pocket after getting your MBA and are finally working for some corporation somewhere. It’s just like any muscle that grows with constant exercise.

Thursday   10:50am    11/13/03

          We’re on the bus back to Nasca after touring the reconstructed open graves of the pre-Inca civilizations. The desert sun is sweltering, but seeing the mummies, desert owls and New Mexico-like Mountains were incredible. 

I’ve been talking photography with Mike (from England) a bit and it’s made me think about being in the moment. Each place is unique and no one else will ever be here at this particular time. Today, my most interesting subject wasn’t at the cemetery, it was snapped at high speed through the windshield of the van, it was a family pushing carts along the main road in Nasca.

A shop we stopped in with a man making traditional pottery.

          Well, yesterday was incredible, though exhausting –  I can’t believe we crammed so much in. In the afternoon after getting the bus fixed we headed out to the true desert, soon reaching the edge of it with miles of rolling dunes stretching out as far as we could see. The group was being taken out to sand board down the dunes, which didn’t interest me, so I just tagged along and hiked around exploring and taking photographs while Susan and the rest of the adventurous adrenaline junkies got their fixes. 

Here's our whole group.

There weren’t enough seats on the dune buggy so Manuel and I had to stand on the back and hold on to a brace bar for dear life as Carlos the daredevil driver zoomed up and down impossibly steep slopes, accompanied by a chorus of screams from within the car (who, were well strapped in with full-body seatbelts, unlike the two of us on the back!). You know you’re a bit obsessed with Art when your heart pounds faster at the sight of an incredibly beautiful abstract formation of sand, then when you’re about to plunge over the rim of a three-hundred foot drop at high speed, the only thing holding you onto the buggy being two hands that have just been thoroughly greased with suntan lotion!

The clouds are just to tease you since they never produce any rain.

I could have taken in the beautiful abstract forms of the sand for days.

          Susan was very good at the sand boarding and didn’t fall once, though she used her hands to slow her the whole time. I enjoyed taking pictures and everyone else had a great time, though they were soon caked in sand from head to toe and several of their cameras became so jammed with sand that they were unusable. 

Here's Garrett, from Northern Ireland, after his ride down the hill.

Here's Susan as she reached the bottom, still on her feet!

          The sun set and the desert became cold fast. We headed back to our little bus and the two hour drive to Nasca.

Here we are in the dune buggy before setting back.

          As I sat in the front seat of the bus, speeding along a dark highway looking at the cracked front windshield held together with some putty in strategic places, trying not to lean too hard on the door just in case it was jarred open, it occurred to me how relative my standards are. I would never drive in a car in the US without a seatbelt on, and yet here I was in the seatbeltless, suicide seat of a provenly iffy machine at night on mountainous Peruvian roads. And yet, to observe the out-of-the-ordinary, you can’t always live by ordinary standards. Having consciously made that bargain, I didn’t feel the slightest bit of nervousness and even drifted off to sleep.

9:40 pm   11/13/03

          Sitting in some nameless hotel’s courtyard with the rest of our group, waiting to board the local night bus to Arequipa . I was pretty exhausted after the heat in the cemetery so Susan and I rested at the hotel while the others of the group took the scenic fight to see the famous Nasca Lines made on the side of the hills here. After a light lunch, we went into town a bit early to walk around. It had really cooled down by then and Melanie, an Australian Psychology student traveling by herself with our group, accompanied us.

          The town is very busy but most of the old architecture seems to have been destroyed by earthquakes. No old church like most towns; just an ugly modern structure with a neon cross stuck on the outside, and in the main square there’s only a pipe sticking out of the cement where the fountain should be. Because of this the whole town has an unsettled feeling and it makes one realize the psychological effect beauty has on you. I had the same feeling the times I visited people in the Caprini Green housing project in Chicago and it made me remember some things Clyde Aspevig told me about the importance of surrounding yourself with beauty and of preserving the beauty of nature. Indeed, beauty isn’t just a luxury, but something that concretely effects our actions, aspirations, and psychological well being. If you subtract nature and Art from the word the mind despairs and strikes out.

          We checked e-mail at an internet café and then met our group at a restaurant called El Porton that had some great dancers and musicians performing. 

          Sounds – distant rock music across the street – beeping, barking, beeping, barking – Ausies in a circle talking and drinking, the hum of flickering florescent tubes hung vertically next to each room of the hotel. Not enough light to read by, wish the bus would get here so we can be off!     

Friday  5:02am   11/14/03

          On the overnight bus to Ariquipa, been napping intermittently the whole way, brief glimpses of cliffs below and the ocean to the right.  

Susan slept very well on the overnight bus.

It's a nice two story bus with plush seats. From the second story here it feels like flying since the edges of the cliff are invisible below. The moon is still pretty bright so the mountains are just visible. Now, we’ve reached a plateau and it looks like a moonscape. My bottle of water lets out a hiss as I open it, the pressure having built up from the altitude change.  

Here's the view out the window as the sun was coming up after all night of driving.

Saturday  10:28am  11/15/03

          Susan and I are on a bus from Arequipa to Corporaque. The mountains are beautiful and the day clear and sunny, already getting hot. I got up early this morning and walked around the town from 5:00am to 7:00am . Once again people were incredibly nice and I enjoyed seeing the town waking up, though there was a lot of smoke in the air, possible from burning garbage.

          When we arrived yesterday Susan and I cleaned up and then went on a couple-hour walking tour with our guide Manuel. Unfortunately he had food poisoning from some food he had eaten in Nasca. Manuel’s father had a job in the Peruvian embassy and he improved his own English by living in Pennsylvania as an exchange student.

          Everywhere we go there is a stop at a pub so our group can get a cervesa. We don’t mind since they are all nice. The group went on a tour of a convent and we went off by ourself to lunch at a great Turkish restaurant.

Inside the Convent

 We got to the room around 5:00pm and stayed in for the night, while our group had a late dinner and then partied late into the night. In fact while Susan and I were eating breakfast around 7:00am Andrew (Melbourne) was just returning from his nightly partying! Needless to say there were some very tiered looks this morning as well as several more queasy stomachs.  

          The town of Arequipa is very relaxed with several beautiful sights. The cathedral, cloisters, and the main square are all nicely kept up. I’m really looking forward to Colca Canyon tomorrow. All the landscape around here is so spectacular and I doubt I’ll do it justice in my painting.

This man was so excited to have me take his photo that he even moved his easel and everything around to get the best composition.

11/15/03    1:00pm

           Well, we’re on the bus after a brief stop for some coca tea which helps with the altitude since we’re well over 12000 feet. I can definitely feel the need to take deeper breaths when going up hills or running to get a shot of some of the colorfully dressed people herding their Llamas.

Great faces everywhere -- an artist's paradise!

          The cameras are dropping like flies! So far three have broken within the group, in addition our trusty Nikon 5700 that I took as a backup and for Susan to use. The combination of jarring roads, sand, dust, and extreme temperature changes, are quite hard on anything electronic or mechanical. The landscape is a subtle combination of grayish yellow and blue gray, punctuated with intense spots of color from the people’s clothing or the decorations on their Llamas.

Sunday  11/16/ 03   5:00pm

          I’m just relaxing on the patio outside the little lodge we’re staying at. I have a beautiful view of the terraced fields below with the lowering sun breaking the surrounding mountains into jigsaw puzzled pieces of green and orange. A mother with a huge cloth bundle on her back slowly works her was across the fields and over the short stone fences. A young boy and a girl accompany her, neither dressed traditionally as she is. Though not tall, about 4 feet, all the fences are topped by very prickly cactus. Though small, they seem to be enough to keep the many donkeys, pigs, horses and llamas from crossing.

          By the time we arrived here yesterday two thirds of our group were either suffering from various degrees of altitude sickness or stomach difficulties. Luckily, Susan and I both seem fine, though when we stopped at a scenic overlook on the ride here that was at 15,000 feet, I was incredibly light-headed and kept tripping on the steep pathway as I climbed to get some photos of the piles of rocks stacked upon each other. The way people pile rocks for religious reasons was eerily similar to what we saw high in the Himalayas . 

Here's a man with his herd up at the 15,000 feet pass, next to one of the prayer piles of rocks.

Even Mike, a former mountain climber from England, has a severe migraine that won’t go away no matter how much aspirin he takes. Some others of our group are throwing up from the altitude and Neefa, Mike’s wife says she can feel fluid building up in her chest.

          Once at our hotel here, we were greeted by their pet Alpaca and then we went on an easy hike up into the hills overlooking the gorgeous valley.

Here's Susan with the lodge's mascot.

  Susan; On most of our outings there will be women dressed in beautiful outfits just standing waiting for travelers. I was astonished when I asked our guide and he told me they will stand there all day just for people to take photo’s of them and hoping for a tip.

We returned just as the sun set and then we took a short bus ride to a large thermal bath fed by hot sprigs up in the mountains. 

We stayed for an hour and felt like mush afterwards. Both Susan and I felt no ill effects from the altitude, which was a relief since this quick rise was much faster than we’d done in Nepal and had been something I’d worried about with this trip.  

In the mornings all the farmers head out to their fields with their shovels and pickaxes on their backs; in the evenings, the journey is reversed.

          Whether due to altitude or just the excitement of the trip I only got an hour of sleep last night. I felt fine during the morning hike through the Colca Canyon, though a bit disappointed that the hike was only along the rim and not down to the bottom. I think they wanted to take it easy with so many in our group getting used to the thin air. There were several condors circling below, but Susan and I missed them as we explored on our own. 

Here's some people that were using horses to winnow their wheat the old fashion way.

By 1:00pm when we headed back to the hotel for lunch. The hour-long, bone-jarring ride on the gravel road – at some places barely passable over steep chasms – was wearing on my nerves. This, combined with the thick haze of road dust, occasionally seasoned with diesel exhaust fumes from trucks ahead, and possibly the altitude, gave me the beginnings of a headache.  

Looking back along the dusty road

One of the numerous little towns we stopped at for breaks.

          Lunch was fantastic! Fresh soups, vegetables, and an open-air barbecue of Alpaca and Chicken. Most all the food we’ve had here has been incredible, in fact. Susan was practically bouncing around with energy at lunch, while I was really dragging from lack of sleep and general exhaustion, though my headache disappeared once out of all the road dust. The constant photographic opportunities has also been mentally draining and I decided to just relax at the hotel while Susan and the group go off on a hike up to the thermal springs and have a swim. It’s been so nice having a few moments of solitude and stillness!

          Well, all the camera batteries are charged back up, digital photos burned to CD’s with the portable CD burner I brought, so I think I’ll go on back to the lobby and get back to “The Essays” by Montaigne.

11/17/03 – 10:00 am

We’re finally off the gravel roads and high up on the Andean Plateau, speeding along toward Puno. The vegetation is a mustard color with herds of Llamas and Alpaca to both sides. The wind whistles through the gaps in the window and I’ve been enjoying sitting in the front seat snapping photos of the spectacular mountain scenery.  

These dust tornados were a common sight.

The mountains were such uniquely beautiful colors I've seen nowhere else.

          I took a couple of Benedril pills last night and got a great sleep! No lingering headaches and I feel incredibly energized. Unfortunately, Mike is getting worse and worse, his condition probably not helped by the beers he had last night. Everyone else is doing better, slowly acclimatizing.

          Susan and I got up early, had breakfast and then went to the town’s main square for about an hour. I absolutely loved the mix of old men and women dressed traditionally and the little kids in the neat and tidy black and white Catholic School uniforms, not much different from the ones my brothers and sisters and I wore when we were kids at St. Celestine.  

Just as in many of the countries we've visited, this is the generation of transition from the old ways to the new. The parents and grandparents wear the traditional dress, while the children dress western. Notice the dried cow paddy in the girl's hand. Each child must bring one of these or some wood as their portion of the general heating for the schoolroom.

          I stood for quite a while with a view of the church and shooting the various people and animals who went by since I can already see a painting of this in my mind’s eye. There, an old woman with a huge load on her back, a man on a horse, donkeys being herded down the church steps – I wished we had more time here to actually paint on-the-spot!

11:14 am same day

Had to pause in the writing since the road suddenly degenerated into on of the old paved roads, which is far worse even than the dirt or gravel roads since it simply becomes one long series of rutted speed bumps that jars you to your core.

          After a brief stop at a way station where there were lots of kids dressed up with baby Llamas and Alpacas for photos with tourists like us, we are back on a real road again! 

We are so high up now that even with the full sun out it’s cold. The scrub is becoming sparser, giving way to sandstone cliffs and rolling brown hills. My ears are popping!

          I really like the group we’re traveling with. All are very gentle and easy to get along with. There are no complainers, in fact everyone is almost too polite! Susan told me that, the other night at the thermal baths, the hotel there provided them with towels, but had forgotten to give them to their group. Getting out of the hot water and then walking up the extremely long set of stairs in the freezing thin night air dripping wet would not have been fun. So when Susan saw someone from the hotel, she called him over and asked him to bring towels for them all, which he gladly did. A little later a German woman was walking by and, assuming the towels were just for anyone, started taking them. Susan called out and said she was sorry, but that those were their towels. One of the Australians said in relief, “It’s a good thing we have an American with us!” Sue was dumbfounded that they would have been too polite to say anything.

          I don’t know if this can be applied generally to any of our represented countries, just to our small group – I’ll leave it to the sociologists to unravel the larger issues!  

"Children of the Andes" oil, 24" by 18"  (Peru)

"Andes Herders" Peru  oil, 14" by 11"

11/18/03 – 11:13 am

I’m sitting on a boat right now on our way to an Island called Amantani where we’ll be breaking into groups of two and three and staying with local families on the island. We’ve just exited the large area of reeds on Lake Tititkaka after stopping briefly on a couple of the Reed Islands some of the local peoples have constructed to live on. These little communities about half the size of a football field are made almost exclusively out of reeds woven and bound together into large, floating “islands”, complete with huts and even schools for the children. You have to be careful where you step though, since some sections sink right into the water. Mike is still really suffering from altitude sickness and Loren has also become ill.  

          The lake is crystal blue, rimmed 360 degrees with puffy clouds. The air is cool, the waters calm and restful.

Susan and I had a fun morning walking through Puno’s fruit market. The colorful costumes and character-rich faces will be fantastic material for paintings. Susan bought some oranges and tiny bananas which we’re snacking on now.  

Yes, the guinea pigs on the left are a very common item of food here.

Oh, and I finally found something that the rest of our group will become assertive about – Rugby and Soccer! They were desperate to see and Australian/New Zealand match and even asked Manuel if we could hurry to Puno to see it. The driver consequently zoomed along at an even faster pace than his normal hair-raising one, but when we got there, no one had that particular station. Even so we went out to diner and watched a rugby game they were also interested in until the satellite connection was lost halfway through.  

Typical street in Puno.

Well, think I’ll just relax here on the boat, which we’re told should take about four hours to the island.

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