date night in cusco

ok before you all get any bad thoughts you should know that my date was 9 year old edwin and his 8 year old cousin alex. the story is one of street vendors who work after school selling finger puppets. they live an hour outside of cusco and must wait each night for their sister to come get them at midnight. so they work but clearly dont eat or bath much. the street vendors and shoe shine boys have tremendous memory and they remembered that Tresa had promised them a hot chocolate so off we went. as their story unfolded we realized that their mother worked farming potatoes in chinchero, a town miles away and their sister was a server in a restaurant around here. they sometimes got leftovers from her but had never eaten in a restaurant. so we all went to one of our favorite hangouts for pizza. tresa has such a way with children. we turned it into a sink bath in the banos, table manner lessons and just general fun. of course they sold me some finger puppets as well. they have a way with sales...
inti rymi was not necessarily what i had expected as it is essentially a tourist reenactment that began again in 1944 but it has served to reignite indigenous pride. the indigenous flag is the rainbow flag that has been adopted by our country as the gay pride flag. it was amazing to see hundreds of them all over the place. the reenactment at sauchyhyman was a combination of catholic mass components such as ancient readings, offerings , confession of sins and absolution at the end. just picture this all done in indigenous costumes from peru and bolivia. the best were the costumes from the jungle. they were made entirely of spanish moss... the site that wayne and i had seen earlier in the trip was completely transformed by the reenactors and the crowds of over 200,000 people. that was sight in itself.
since then i have been making up for lost shopping time. i love the indigenous markets the best where you get to haggle and actually buy from the people who made the goods. it makes the experience much more human. it is hard to believe that we will be leaving cusco tomorrow morning for lima. instead of staying in lima for the last 2 days we are hopping a bus down the coast to a town called pisco. it is just a hop, skip and a jump to the ballestros islands by boat. we will end our trip with a boat tour of the islands which promises glimpes of sea lions, dolphins and all types of bird life. how fast and slow time goes depending on what the perception is...