Love & Light and everything bright...

FROM CUSCO, PERU

(click on images to enlarge)

Back in Cusco Again

CUSCO, Peru, May 30 - I was surprised by my emotional reaction to the return to Cusco. After we landed here, and I saw the mountains around Cusco again, I started to tear up as one might when returning home.  Of course, I don’t mean the physical home.  That’s the Rainbow Shower and my beautiful Elizabeth who is taking care of it for us while I am away.  I mean returning to a spiritual home.

Also, unlike last year, my first ever visit here, meeting my Inca hosts again also felt like a homecoming.  The weather and the scenery were also familiar.  The day was fairly chilly (in comparison to Lima), but very clear.  Beautiful quality of light, just like on perfect winter days in Arizona or in Hawaii or in Western Australia, my other three physical homes in the last three decades.

For those of you who are new to my travels in Peru and Cusco, I invite you to check out my last year's stories about this city that was once believed to be the "center of the world."

Just like last year, a group of Inca musicians welcomed us to Cusco with their enchanting music (left). Of course, at the back of the airport parking lot, there were inevitable souvenir shops that one finds all over Peru (right).

Here's a short video clip of the Inca music that welcomed us to Cusco...

After I checked into my hotel, and had spent considerable time on the phone dealing with the American Airlines baggage people, I went for a short walk.  Join me, if you will...

Since this is winter in southern hemisphere, the days are short.  In Cusco, a city that lies in a valley surrounded by mountains, they are especially short.  Sun sets shortly after 4PM.  I took the above pictures just before 4PM.  Later, you'll also have a chance to see some of these scenes by night.

The leftmost shot is of Avenida El Sol, the main street in Cusco.  My hotel, St. Agustin Dorado is also on it.  At the top of Avenida El Sol lies the beautiful main square of the city of Cusco. The middle left shot shows is from that very spot, where Ave El Sol stops, and the square begins. At that moment, loud fireworks erupted from the hills above the square (middle right).  I have no idea what they were celebrating, nor why they were wasting all this ammo on fireworks in broad daylight.  But the loud explosions continued during the next hour or so.  Occasional booms could also be heard in the evening.

Here are more views of Cusco main square from different angles.

Once again, I marveled over the artistry of wood-carved balconies that drape the square like some finely embroidered shawls. The two pictures on the right were taken at the hotel in which I stayed last year.

By the time I reached the lower part of Cusco, where this monument to Cusco and the Inca can be seen (left), the sun had set and the evening chill was in the air.  I was wearing a fleece vest and a long sleeve sport shirt, yet was starting to shiver.  As I passed that Spanish Language school (middle left), I was reminded again of a failed vow I made last year - to try to learn at least enough Spanish to be able converse in the streets when I come back to Peru. 

"Shame, shame..." I was chastising myself.  I had even bought the Rosetta Stone software and took a few lessons last summer.  Then I got swept up again in my worldly travels, and then the move to Hawaii, and so here I am... still at Lesson #3, completed eight months ago.  :-(

Not far from there, something made me walk into a souvenir store.  I am not a shopper, and only do it when I have a purpose.  But something drew me inside this fairly long store (two right shots).  That "something" turned out to be a poncho which hung high up on the balcony.  It was a rainbow poncho.  Its pattern included the Inca rainbow flag, as well as the rainbow streaks through the middle of it.

It was only then that I also remembered how cold I was.  And that clinched it.  I bargained a little and bought this gorgeous poncho for a song in U.S. dollars.  Then the sales lady took a couple of pictures of me - with and without a flash (two right shots).

Not far from there, I came across a string of stores, all "hole in the wall"-type, where tailors and seamstresses were actually making these beautiful Inca dresses.  And they had a sense of humor.  Take a look at that right shot.  The Inca warrior with droopy drawers seems to have also lost his gear. :-)

In a different part of town, close to a church and a large field that resembled parts of the Forum in Rome (left), I found a jewelry shop with an unusual sales lady (middle left).  Or was it a furry security guard?  :-) You can also see in the right photo what a "hole in the wall" Peruvian restaurant looks like, along with another furry customer at the door.

When I returned to Cusco's main square, the night had long fallen.  So here are now some night time shots of some of the same scenes you had seen before...

Just as I had crossed the street from the church on the right, an Inca woman with a boy of about three or so approached me trying to sell her wares.  During my two-hour walk, I had to have been solicited at least a hundred times.  Each time, I smiled at the souvenir sales person, and politely said "no, thank you," or "no, gracias" (that was evidently in the first three lessons of the Rosetta Stone  :-) ).

once again, I don't know what made this woman different.  Perhaps it was her perseverance and kind demeanor.  Or maybe it was the boy.  Or the fact that she told me that she traveled from a mountain village five hours away by bus to sell her wares here.  Or that she makes her own art.  Who knows...  She made me interested enough in her art that we sat down on the park bench while she explained to me how she painted it.  That Inca calendar, for example, I am holding in my hands in the leftmost shot, took her 15 days to paint.

"How did you know what to do?  Who taught you?" I asked.

"My father.  He learned me."

I smiled at her common misuse of English that I've also heard in many places around the world.  I also remembered my own recent discovery of the Mayan calendar that I had had for almost 40 years without really knowing it (see Mayan Calendar, 2012 Prophecy Reappear).  And I recalled a rug merchant from Bangalore, India, who told me that one family knows how to make only carpet design - the one that had been passed on through generations.  And nobody knows who or when it originated.  The same with this Inca woman-artist's story.

"What is your name?" I asked her.

"Marlene."

"And your son's?"

"Daniel."  She asked the boy in Quechua to tell me his name. He just wrapped his arms around his Mom's skirt, smiling at me shyly.

"I have three babies," she added, beaming ear-to-ear.

Throughout all this, she had been asking me to buy something, and I kept saying that I have no room for anything in my bag (which I still don't have anyway).  I told her I might buy something when I return to Cusco in two weeks' time.

By that stage, a little crowd of other Inca souvenir peddlers had formed around us, like the sardines swarming around a piece of bread in the sea.  Some of them also tried to get in on the conversation edgewise.

But Marlene was as relentless in her sales pitch as I was determined not to buy anything.  Finally, she said, almost tearfully, "I spent all day here and have not shopped anything."

I realized she meant to say that she had not sold anything. I thought of the Inca mountain villages I had seen, and the wonderful people I had met.  Then I looked at her boy and again at her, the artist and a saleswoman and a family breadwinner.  I even considered a possibility that it was all an act. 

"Who cares," I thought.  What she just said was a clincher.  "These are wonderful people.  And even if she were a con artist, at least she is a good one."

"Okay, I'll take this one," I said.  She was beaming ear-to-ear.  And I thought she could teach even some western pros a thing or two about salesmanship.

And now here it is, in a close up - the Inca calendar that my new friend Marlene from the distant Inca village in the mountains had worked on for 15 days.

As I strolled back to my hotel, I spotted an arcade-type shopping area right within that big church in the main square. "Guess since organized religion doesn't sell very well these days, the church is making money by leasing some of its space for commercial purposes," I thought.  The arcade itself would not be worth a mention, except that at the very back of it, I found this interesting "conference room."  It looked as if it could have been in the Middle Ages.  And it was adorned with silk Inca and Peruvian and Cusco flags.  Inti, the Inca Sun God, seemed to be smiling at me from the rainbow flag.

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