Final Thoughts from Cusco

Thankfully El Balcon, the hotel where Dianne and I have stayed in Cusco, is very comfortable and quaint. Thus it was a very nice place to spend our last day in Cusco, just hanging out in the room. Dianne became quite ill last night after dinner (actually she said her stomach had been upset most of the day) resulting in a night of nausea and vomiting, with little sleep, and great discomfort. She has spent all day in bed trying to feel better, drinking a little tea and trying to slowly eat some food to keep it down. Several of the Cusco residents seem to think she is suffering from the altitude which can affect your digestive system in bad ways.

Having visited Cusco at the start of the week, seen most of the sights, and then gone on to Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu, a day of rest was very welcome and we really don't feel we are missing all that much. We did visit two museums yesterday which had nice collections of pre-Columbian art and artifacts, including quite a few Inca pieces. They were a nice completion of our tour of Incan lands and history.

We are both ready to leave Cusco. It is a beautiful little city, very quaint and antique-looking. A lot of the architecture is still a strong mixture of Incan and Spanish colonial which is quite striking, interesting, and beautiful. The main plaza and the several little plazoletas that we visited were quite lovely. But what detracts from the beauty of the city is the poverty. We have learned from several Peruvians that work is very difficult to find in Peru. That is quite evident from what you encounter on the street as a tourist. Evidently we stand out like sore thumbs and thus are constantly accosted. You literally cannot walk half a block without being asked if you want your shoes shined, do you want to buy a painting from my portfolio, would you like some of these finger puppets, or other handcraft items, do you want some coca leaves candy, postcards, etc. Anything you can imagine they try to sell to you and it is a constant gauntlet you must pass through on the street. It is worst around the plazas, and if you dare to eat at an outside table enjoying the sun and the beautiful plaza views, they walk the sidewalk and accost you at your table! It is quite annoying. It becomes very difficult to maintain an attitude of compassion for people in such dire straits that they must resort to this type of begging to survive. And it does seem to be only a small step up from outright begging, especially by those who are very aggressive and persistent in their approach.

Beyond this atmosphere in the tourist areas, the few times we have driven beyond the main tourist areas what we have seen indicates a country in extreme poverty and extreme economic difficulty. All the housing seems very poor, even the "new" construction (still mostly of adobe bricks dug from the ground.) We have not seen any area that appears "middle" class let alone an upper class neighborhood. That may change in Lima, but in the highlands around Cusco, that is our experience. Even so, the people are lovely, (with the exceptions of the street vendors, and even the few of them we have actually dealt with in purchasing anything [I did buy a work of art for my office] turned out to be quite personable) and they seem to maintain a spirit of hope and joy in life. They offer quite a testimony to those of us, like myself, who have so much more and for whom life truly is so much easier, and yet find myself many times complaining, whining, and taking so much of my life for granted. Somehow it seems they find the joy in the very fact of being alive and find blessings to count and hope to which to cling. There is a lesson here for me in my life when I return to Miami.

Tomorrow we board a plane for Lima. We have reservations at a lovely little Bed & Breakfast in the Miraflores neighborhood, two blocks from the Pacific Ocean. We plan to mostly spend our time there, relaxing, do a little touring and shopping, but mostly rest up and prepare to return to life and work in Miami. We fly home on Saturday. Dianne returns to work on Monday and I have one more week of Sabbatical before it is over and I return to work November 1. I can hardly believe that this time has arrived.