Uh oh... (by Lawrence)

I am the proud and temporary owner of a new bike! New to me that is. I have bought a weather beaten Kona Coiler; a full suspension mountain bike made for jumping off things and going down hill fast. I bought it from Dougie at Gravity Peru and I plan to sell it right back to him when we leave Peru.

The thing is heavy, but its weight is trumped by how much fun it is to ride. I spent some time setting up the cockpit to fit my body last night, and headed off on my first ride this morning at 6:15.

The Andes don't bear much resemblance to coastal Maine. Both places are on planet Earth, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. I began by riding on Tanda Pata, a pedestrian street that contours around the bowl of Cusco. After riding down one staircase and carrying the bike up another, I was on the paved road up to Saksaywaman and the highlands beyond. I climbed up this road, in my granny gear the entire time, for fifty minutes! I estimate I may have been averaging 3 or 4 miles an hour. All this work landed me at the same tiny settlement I had arrived at via truck last week, and there's no denying it, the truck option is a hell of a lot easier.

Now, has excitement and adventure ever gotten the best of you? If so, the next series of events may sound familiar. I took a moment to get off the bike and stretch, lower the seat and take in the view before beginning the great descent I wrote about last week. It was amazingly quiet as I gained some distance from the road. I tried a wee jump on the bike and landed it softly. Yeah! I was feeling great as I entered a small stand of trees exactly 7 minutes into the downhill. That's when I heard the whirring hiss and I knew, I had a flat.

I also knew I had no spare tube. No pump. No patches. No money.

Ride over.

Back in Maine, I would walk back home or maybe hitch a ride if I didn't have my repair kit. But I almost always have my repair kit. In Peru, well I wasn't quite sure how this would work out. I figured the odds of getting a flat on my first trip out were pretty slim. As it turns out, the odds-meter was pegged at 100%.

For just a few seconds, I started to completely lose it. Then (I am not making this up) I put the bike down, stood in Tadasana/Mountain Pose, softened my focus, and returned to my current reality. It worked. I sang one of my favorite songs out loud as I pushed the wounded bike up the hill: "Se me Poncho la Llanta" by The Iguanas (roughly translated as "I got a flat," and totally apropos for the occasion). It took only fifteen minutes to get back to the road and it dawned on me that a flat fifteen or twenty minutes further down the mountain would have been WAY worse.

As I walked along the road toward the tiny gathering of adobe homes, I wasn't quite sure how to handle the situation. There was a group of five or six "combis" filling up with passengers headed for the city. One by one I explained my predicament to them, and each time when I got to the part about me not having any money they literally shut the door in my face. So here I was with my fancy flat-tired bike, in my stupid spandex shorts and my Patagonia Hoodie, surrounded by campesinos in much more practical clothing looking at me like I had dropped out of the sky from a spacecraft. I put my head down and started to trudge.

About five minutes down the road, a tiny Daewoo Tica taxi blew by me. I waved at him (as I had to at least ten previous cars) and amazingly, he stopped! "Por supuesto" he told me, I'll give you a ride. And so he did. I got home just an hour later than planned, changed my clothing and went directly to the bike shop in town to buy patches and tubes. Amen.

Same Difference (by Lawrence, with help from Isabel and Sophia)

Well I can't write in html yet, so here is a gang caption for all the photos you see in order from top to bottom:

The morning view from our dining area

Sophia investigating the veracity of the Coreolis effect in the Plaza de Armas

Ditto

Krista at work in the dining room

Flag of Cusco




Cuties at tea time



Panther lamp post and church



































Musicians

Sunday morning cartoons


Tea time.

Rainbow as seen from the girls' bedroom

Cusco ridgeline at sunset

The view from the long way home




















































































































I am going to take a break from waxing philosophic today. There are some basic differences in everyday life in Peru that I thought you all might find interesting. In no specific order, and accompanied by a few photos I took today, here are some aspects of life that are new to us.

1. There are lots of dogs on the streets, and some of them are vicious. The vicious ones usually respond favorably to rocks thrown at their head, however I have seen one dog catch the projectile, shake it violently until it was "dead," and then proceed with the attack.
2. It is impossible to walk through the city without being solicited to buy something, get your shoes shined, or eat at a restaurant.
3. There are llamas and alpacas roaming the streets led by campesinas in traditional dress.
4. Toilet paper does not go in the toilet! It goes in a trash can (ewwwww!) next to the toilet so the pipes don't get clogged.
5. It is cold here, but there is no central heat in any building.
   
6. Public transportation and taxis are everywhere. It costs between $1 and $2 to go almost anywhere in the city in a cab.
7. Houses here are not visible from the street. They are built behind the walls that are on the street and usually have their own courtyard inside. Our "yard" is a ten-foot square concrete pad. No lawns to mow!
8. Houses are made out of either adobe, concrete, or both.
   
9. All kids wear uniforms to school.
10. There is one large supermarket, but it's not the place to buy vegetables. The vegetables are much better at the outdoor market, and they're cheaper too!
11. The streets here are very narrow! They were built for horses, not cars.
12. There is no running water after 9pm. Luckily our house has a holding tank on the roof that covers the water blackout until 6am when the municipal supply comes back on.
13. You need to turn on the water heater a few hours before showering, and turn it off once you are done. No one leaves the water heater on all the time.
14. You can get a really good, three course meal at a restaurant for 15 soles, or $5.
15. 10 to 15 loud bottle rockets (think m-80s) are launched into the sky above the city every morning starting around 7am. Nobody seems to know why this happens...
16. Our part of the city is considered the "arts district," and has a disproportionate number of pierced, dreadlocked, inked, glassy-eyed street dwellers hawking free-form jewelry and alabaster pot pipes.
17. Furniture is cheap. We bought a big dining room table for 100 soles (around $30), and four matching chairs for 140 soles ($45).
18. Laundry service is AWESOME! We bring a bag of our clothing in to the laundry lady, and she washes/dries/folds it for $1 a kilo! That's about $6 a week. We will all miss this service once we get back...
    
19. Pressure cookers are a good idea at 11,500 feet.
20. The water from the tap is not potable. We have a 20 liter bottle in the kitchen that lasts around four days.
21. We wash all our produce in bleach water before eating it.

That's it for today! We had a lovely Sunday of doing pretty much nothing. Thank goodness. Tomorrow is the start of another busy week.

Bit by Bit (by Lawrence)

Interesting marketing strategy.



















Even MORE interesting marketing strategy.

Let's see. We have been in Cusco just over three weeks and:

• We have a nice apartment
• Sophia is in a bilingual school five days a week
• Isabel is enjoying being home schooled
• We have found both a ballet school and a violin teacher for Isabel
• We have managed to cook all meals at home for the last 6 days
• We have made some nice new friends
• We are all doing pretty well with Spanish
• Krista has been making a lot of contacts for her research
• I went for a mountain bike ride

By my estimation, we're doing OK.

We joined an organization yesterday called the South American Explorer's Club. Krista had heard about it from a friend and had intended to visit the "clubhouse" straight away once we arrived, but we never had the time. Funnily enough it turns out to be located five doors away from our apartment! It is an international organization for English speakers who are traveling through South America. I went to visit looking for good topographical maps of Peru, and found them and a whole lot more. A mini-library with DVDs and good books, a book exchange for the more pulpy reads, volumes of terrific advice written by travelers on places to visit in Peru, and activities ranging from presentations on trekking, to trivia nights, to service projects. I think it will be a great resource for the whole family. On Monday there is a service trip planned to pick up garbage along a popular trekking route in Lares, a three hour drive from here, and I would love to go do it with Isabel... We'll see if time permits.

Garbage? you say, in the vast high- mountain wilderness of Peru? Yes, a lot of it apparently. While this is sad, it doesn't surprise me that much. When I lived in Bolivia I was shocked at the way people living in the campo would toss plastic bags, cans, boxes, toilet paper, and broken gadgets indiscriminately across the landscape. I tried to rationalize their behavior from a class-level perspective. Americans, arguably the protagonists of global culture, are famous for their consumption and its greatest by-product, trash. So why, I thought, should it be a surprise that the rest of the world wants to be like us and consume things and make trash? The Peruvians and Bolivians just lack the infrastructure to gather their garbage and hide it in landfills, or recycle it like we do. Hopefully, as more and more developed countries embrace a lower impact, "greener" lifestyle, the rest of the world will follow suit. But until that time, the intersection of "low impact" and "high impact" living (like trekking past piles of trash in a glorious place like Machu Picchu) will smack us on the face whenever we come across it, like a cold snowball thrown from a blind corner.

All this makes me think of my own life and the choices I make, both here in Peru and at home in the US. Before we owned a house, we could fit most of our life's possessions in one car. We were both used to backpacking and living by the wilderness edict of "Leave No Trace," a practice where you carry out of the woods everything that you brought in. As my life evolved and I became a homeowner and parent, it became more difficult to live so simply. We currently own a very old house (119 years and counting) built out of lumber milled from the very trees that once occupied its footprint. This seems like the essence of low impact to me. Now we are essentially recycling a product that someone put a lot of thought and work into, and we are maintaining and improving it so it will last another 200 years. But it is a really big house. And Maine is a very cold place. It takes over one thousand gallons of oil and who-knows-how-many kilowatt hours of electricity per year to make the house inhabitable by human beings. I have been over every inch of the place with caulk guns, cans of foam, infrared cameras, weather stripping, sheets of foil-backed polystyrene, and storm windows. Still, the structure was not built with energy efficiency in mind, at least not by 2009's standards. I sometimes wonder if the original owners just lived here in the summer and fall and had a "winter house" nearby that was easier to make livable in the cold months? In any case, I am not living in a tent anymore. We create a fair amount of trash and depend on polluting, non-renewable resources for our livelihood. Is this so different from the campesinos chucking bottles and cans down into the ravine outside their home? I think not. My "ravine" is just the air around me, and my "trash" is mainly in the form of carbon dioxide. But my analogy is not pure hyperbole...

All of you who know me are aware that cycling is a big part of my life, and that I am a denizen of the woods around Bath, Maine. One of the best trails in the area follows Whiskeag Creek out to a stunning peninsula known as Thorn Head, which juts majestically out into the waters of Merrymeeting Bay. In one section the trail drops down, right to the waters edge, and is permeated by a foul odor when the wind is coming from the east. That’s because this bit of precious green space shares its acreage with the Municipal Landfill. In fact, until recently, Thorn Head was almost completely cut off from town by the landfill cutting a swath from one end of the peninsula to the other. While it’s sad to think the early residents of my city thought it was a good idea to dump their trash in such a beautiful place, that is what they did. They too were just chucking their bottles and cans down into the ravine outside their homes. But all these years later the landfill is slowly being phased out. The city has instated a “pay-per-bag” garbage program (which has cut trash amounts by 60%), and has done a great deal of outreach to help people see the benefit of recycling and composting. In my lifetime, Thorn Head will return to something resembling its original, natural state.

So the news is not all bad. We can all change the way we live and the choices we make. I am imagining what my "winter home" might look like, and I am also looking forward to being part of the solution on Monday on the trail to Lares, Peru.

High altitude playground.

The Pusher Man

Well, if you want someone to buy a bike from you in Peru because the biking is so amazing, I guess you ought to take them for a ride. So it was with me and Dougie Stewart today. Dougie is the proprietor of Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking Peru, a first rate mountain bike tour company right here in Cusco. After this first taste, I am afraid I am hooked.

Dougie is a Sottish ex-pat with two young children, one of whom is named Sophia and goes to the same school as our Sophia. Dougie suggested I bring our Sophia over to play whilst we go for a ride and I test-ride one of his 70 Kona mountain bikes. I showed up with my child, pedals, shoes and shorts, borrowed a helmet, and boarded the ascent vehicle -- a haggard sky blue SUV with a custom welded rack on top meant to carry six bikes. I must admit I was a bit freaked out by the fact that everyone but me was packing body armor and full face helmets. Hmmm, I wondered, what exactly was I getting myself into?


After driving up to around 12,500 feet, we disembarked next to a tiny roadside village. The bikes were lowered off the roof of the vehicle, helmets and gloves were donned, and we did a quick spin around the parking lot. I was riding with Dougie, his business partner Paul, and two of their Peruvian guides. The one word of advice I received was to lean back behind the saddle on the big drops. OK, I thought, I can do that. And then we were off, bombing down a rutted ribbon of singletrack winding through a grassy meadow.

I found the first drop somewhat by surprise, and with a slight, involuntary, guttural noise emanating from my throat, made it over. The bike rode like an easy chair. I felt a bit like a kid bouncing in the moonwalk at the county fair. Big air, but soft landings. The terrain was unbelievable. Amazing single track surrounded by sun dappled peaks in every direction. Nerve wracking terraces carved into canyon walls. Barely makeable (or not, in my case) rock gardens of lava-rock and gravel. I made most of the obstacles, but I was concentrating pretty damn hard. I opted not to do the drops with bad (i.e. potentially fatal) run-outs. I also opted not to try the staircase (yes, about 200 yards of stairs...) that everyone else bombed down. At least not until I get a little more used to the bike and figure out what it can and can't do.

I also got the low down on how to get up the hill, and it sounds doable, but a bit lung singeing. From my house to the entrance of the downhill routes sounds like a good 50 minutes of serious climbing. This will take some getting used to at 12,000 feet, but look out when I get back to sea level after 10 months! There was also some mention of kids getting beat up and having their bikes taken, but no gringos or adults yet. I am told it is safest to go in groups or to go in the morning. Both Paul and Dougie ride alone, but perhaps I can connect with them a few days a week both for security, and to learn where I am going!

I look forward to finding some more amazing places on two wheels, and I'll be sure to carry my camera with me to share the view with you.

Settling In

I am sitting here today, thinking about how our little apartment on the top floor of this building resembles a one-room school house. 11 year old Isabel is at her desk in her room doing work on vocabulary words, 4 year old Sophia is outlining and coloring pictures in the living room, and I am running back and forth between them. Sophia is home from school for the third day in a row (fever Friday, diarrhea Monday and today), but will most likely go back tomorrow. She keeps asking, "Can we go back to our yellow house in Maine, right now?"

It's no fun being sick in the best of circumstances, and it's really no fun being sick in a place that is literally quite foreign to you. Thankfully, Isabel and Krista remain healthy, but Sophia and I were both suffering with a little bug in our guts. I, in my state of constant culture shock, had visions of Sophia pooping herself into severe dehydration, but she has been able to keep liquids down and appears to be on the mend.

We located both a ballet school and a music school for Isabel today and they both seem great. The music school also has programs for Sophia which made her very excited (but she still wants to go back to our yellow house, right now!). The folks who told us about these extra-curricular opportunities are a missionary family from Texas. I walked over to their apartment to get directions to the violin school. They live on the fourth floor of an apartment building and instead of walking down the stairs to open the door for us, they dropped a key attached to a long white line, and then hauled it back up once we were in. Too funny. Old school intercom service.

I am planning to go for a mountain bike ride tomorrow which I am SO looking forward to. I haven't touched a bike in three weeks and I'm getting a little twitchy. Dougie is a Scot who runs an operation down here called Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking. He and I will get a ride up some mountain in a truck, and then bomb down on a couple of his full suspension bikes. Fun.

It's time for a nice cup of anise tea and immersion in my warm sleeping bag. It is cold here. A heater of some sort is in our future.

Up Tempo

It's been a busy couple of days down here in Cusco. For starters we reneged on our first apartment. The noise from the street was almost comically loud. I wondered if we were being punked. The fact that it didn't get much light also made it cave-like, even during the day. Oh, and caves are cold too. We asked if we could move upstairs and, well, here we are. I think it was a great move. We have expansive views of the city (see the night shot I took from our bedroom window), and we are much more insulated from the noises of the city. It was a bit demoralizing to be moving again, but I think this apartment will stick.


Sophia has begun riding the bus back from school and LOVES it. It is a tiny little minivan, 9 kids, nobody buckled (I know, I know, but there is so much traffic that nobody goes much faster than 15 mph), with a sweet woman who works as a helper. According to Sophia she got to play with some play-doh for a long time and it was really fun. Sophia is getting pretty attached to school and the "big girlness" of it all. Things like riding a bus, getting homework, walking in parades, and having gym and music class really prop her up. And she is really picking up Spanish quickly!

Isabel is pretty intent on keeping the homeschool thing going, which is fine with us, although it is a bit hard to swallow. Ausangate Bilingual School appears to be a great opportunity, but she is just not into it. She is bored to death in the much-too-easy math/English portion of the day, and completely clueless in the Spanish portion of the day. The school community is really welcoming and kind, so I am glad at least one of our children has us connected to it. Isabel will continue with her one-on-one Spanish lessons every weekday from 3:30-5:00.

We marched through the city last night carrying "antorchas" to commemorate the 8th anniversary of the school. It was fun to have tourists taking pictures of US as we paraded around the Plaza de Armas. The procession culminated in a very homespun fireworks display. Let me backtrack for a moment to help you capture the incendiary nature of it all. Antorchas are sculptures (animals, airplanes, faces, etc.) made of tissue paper built around a wire frame, and you put a candle inside them to make them light up. Yes, I said tissue paper, and candles...
Then you hand them to children to try and carry upright for a mile or so. The serene vision of a hundred softly glowing shapes bobbing down the street was occasionally punctuated by a burst of flame as someone's antorcha bit the dust. At the fireworks display we were warned by a veteran to stand a safe distance from the launch zone, and then take twenty steps further away, just to be sure. This, as it turns out was good advice. We watched in alarm as flaming ashes rained down on the spectators in the expensive seats.
After the parade we were invited to a coffee shop for refreshments which turned out to be a sort of "Baptist ice cream social" kind of affair. How ironic to be spending the first night of Rosh Hashonah amongst born again Christian missionaries inviting you to the Sunday night service. Irony aside, they were a really wonderful group of people, one of whom is a physician from Britain who was eager to have us call her if we ever had any need. Krista also made some excellent connections with a variety of people involved in orphanages, something on which she is hoping to conduct research. One of the missionary families (from Corpus Christi Texas) has two daughters ages 8 and 12 who are home schooled. Isabel was PSYCHED to meet the older girl and they seemed to hit it off right away. Perhaps they will spend some time together since they live just a stone's throw from our front door.

Today we ventured up to Saksaywaman, the Inca ruins just above the city. The scale of the place is hard to describe. I still can't imagine how stones, many of them hundreds of tons, were quarried miles away, moved here, and then carved and fit together with such explicit accuracy that 500 years and three high magnitude earthquakes later, they remain today as they were on the day they were created.

While touring the site with our kids, darned if we didn't see another gringo family walking around with their three kids. This is how we met Dennis and Bergite and their three children from Denmark. They are taking two years to travel the world. They shipped their VW camper van to Australia, drove it across the country, took a ferry to New Zealand, drove around there, then shipped it to Quito, Ecuador. As of today they have been traveling together for 455 days. They both have to report back to work in August of 2010. Every parent in Denmark is given one year of paid leave for each child they have. How civilized, no? Dennis and Bergite opted to stockpile their parental leave and use it to travel the world with their kids. Well played! I tried to convince them to head north in their van as their trip draws to a close so they can leave that 1990 VW turbo-diesel 4 wheel drive camper bus in my driveway in time for our return. I'm only half kidding -- this is an amazing vehicle that, as I type this, is causing saliva to build up in my mouth. They actually do want to sell it before they head home, so perhaps we will stay in touch...

Hopefully tomorrow will be a quiet day, un dia de descanso. We are all kind of tuckered out and need a day to just lounge in our new abode.

Straight Up! (by Lawrence)

We're moving again (!?!?!). Just one floor up this time... The noise from the street in our original apartment was astonishingly loud. And that's coming from a guy who has slept through earthquakes and hurricanes. Really.

In the meantime, enjoy some photos from a walk I took with Isabel yesterday. About 800 feet up to one of the ridges that defines the valley in which Cusco sits. Also note the street we came upon, Siete Diablitos (Seven Little Devils), and the frieze stone carving below it. Yin and Yang.

Gringolandia (by Lawrence)

Green Street, version 2.0 (aka Carmen Alto)

Interpretive dance in the living room/hall/kitchen zone







Well, we're not in Kansas anymore. And we're definitely not in Sucre anymore either. As we continue to try and settle into Cusco, we are feeling a bit like Cusco may not be the kind of place that anyone actually settles into.

The population here appears to be equal parts travelers and Peruvians. The voices lofting up to our second story windows throughout the day and night are just as likely to be speaking German, English, or French as they are to be speaking Spanish or Quechua. Many of the Peruvians selling us food in restaurants or driving us in taxis are more interested in speaking to us in broken English than listening to us speak broken Spanish. Everywhere we walk we are asked to buy artwork by men carrying around leather portfolios, bracelets by women weaving with
tiny looms attached to their feet while they sit in doorways, therapeutic massages by pretty women brandishing shiny little promotional pamphlets, and meals from maitre d's chasing us down while waving menus in our faces as we attempt to cross the Plaza d'Armas. The Cusco that we have experienced is a city that lives, breathes, and eats tourism.

It's funny, but when we lived in Sucre, Bolivia in the mid 1990s we complained about its provinciality. We joked about the backwardness of it all -- the steaming bowl of chicken soup served with a chicken's foot, talons and all, sticking up out of it; the corner store where you could buy toothpaste, blasting caps, condoms, butter, and the newspaper; the dirt roads, so poorly maintained that you expected your bus to careen into oblivion on every corner. We thought Cusco would be a different kind of place for us to spend the year, a place we all might have an easier time becoming accustomed to. Well, it is different... but be careful of what you ask for. This is a more modern city with sophisticated food, reliable electric and phone service, paved roads, running water, and supermarkets, but it is difficult for an outsider to fit in as anything other than a tourist. Assimilation on any level looks pretty unlikely.

However, I don't think it is entirely fair to attribute our experience solely to geography and the tourism driven economy. 2009 is a different era. When I last lived in South America there was no internet. The fact that I am able to "chat" in real time with friends around the world or have video calls with them using skype transforms the experience of living here at the most basic level. Instead of feeling completely isolated from my home culture, I feel more like a sentry who has been sent on a mission to observe another place and report back to my countrymen about it. This also makes assimilation not only less likely, but less desirable. Why try to fit in when you can remain comfortably in your own skin and visit with your friends back home whenever you want? It's easier to remain the cheeky outsider.

Apologies to all the academics watching out there for this laymen's analysis of the conundrum of being a gringo in Cusco.

Later in the day...

Just back from picking Sophia up from school. She had a fun day! She is going to try to take the bus back into the city tomorrow with the other 4 year olds... Hopefully that will go OK. I had a nice chat with some of the other gringo parents picking up their kids. They all acknowledged how hard it is to "just live" in this city as a non-native -- always being seen as a potential customer for some trinket or service.



Me and Isabel discussing the finer points of data landmarks over a bowl of freshly popped corn













Isabel is taking at least this week off from school and homeschooling with me. We are having a good time together and Isabel says she feels like she is learning a lot more working one-on-one with me. She is continuing her Spanish lessons in the afternoon. She may go back to school on Monday, but we're not sure yet. She reports epic boredom while at school, primarily because she doesn't speak Spanish. I think that if she gives it a try, she might actually like it, but she isn't totally sold yet.

Enjoy the pictures of our new place.

Dinner prep

Helluva Day... (by Lawrence)

We are more or less moved out of our temporary residence at the Centru Tinku and into our two-bedroom digs in the San Blas neighborhood. We were busy over the weekend purchasing furniture that would be nice enough for us to enjoy, but not so nice that we would mind leaving it behind when we depart. We were pretty smug with our success buying beds and mattresses, that is until I assembled them and realized the mattresses didn't fit the bed frames we had bought. This calamity was amplified by the fact that my Spanish is useless and we had to carry everything back and forth on the roofs of taxis. In the midst of this I confidently ordered a new tank of gas. The propane tanks (used for all kitchen stoves here) are carried around on the backs of motorcycles, tethered with frayed string, dangling precariously from behind the driver. Amazingly, the gas company operator was able to understand my gibberish over the phone and sent a driver. I sent Isabel back into the house to get her camera so she could come outside and take pictures of this unusual delivery service, but I neglected to tell her to not...shut...the...door... Yep, we were locked out. So the gas man stood around long enough to make sense of the situation, and we, having nothing but some money and the clothes on our backs, headed off to find Krista. We found her, and she had both sets of keys, so at least they weren't locked in the apartment.

I had a minor temper tantrum which had Isabel in tears and Krista proclaiming that I had hit the wall of culture shock. I left Isabel with Krista and went off to buy a tape measure so I could provide the mattress store with exact dimensions of our bed frames. I also called the gas man back again only to have him arrive and tell me that the tank he had brought didn't fit the valve on my stove. He left and said he'd be back in 10 minutes. Forty minutes later (and no gas man yet) I left to take a cab down the valley to pick up Sophia from school. We got back to our new apartment and had a terrible scare.

Sophia is TOTALLY FINE, but she fell into the tank of propane we had sitting in our living room (since it was the wrong size and had to go back anyway), slamming her chest into the edge of it and knocking the wind out of herself. Watching your four year old daughter pass out in her mother's arms is something you never want to see. It was at the moment when she went limp that we realized dialing 911 in Peru probably doesn't do much. We were all quite shaken up by her spill, but she was back to doing interpretive dance and sassing her sister within 10 minutes. We will find out ASAP who to call in case of an emergency, but I also noticed a large medical clinic less than a block away from us. My hunch is we would be better served to carry any patients right to the clinic ourselves.

We went out for a healing lunch at Jack's, and then Krista helped me bring the mattresses back to the store. We traded them for ones that would fit our beds and chose some comforters too. I went back to the apartment and unloaded the mattresses from the taxi. I paid the driver and five minutes later realized that the comforters that we had agonized over (and Sophia had grown quite attached to) were still in the back of the cab. Long gone. Damn it.

So the girls and Krista are sleeping under our two sleeping bags and I am going to punish myself by sleeping in my down jacket and long underwear. Bonehead that I am.

Tomorrow is a new day, and I hope it is less eventful.

massage, anyone? by Isabel

Cusco is an amazing place... everywhere you turn there are people offering massages , jewelry , pictures with alpacas , even CDs !! There is delicious food, and much more! Sadly there are also lots of stray dogs. We are all having lots of fun exploring plazas and different neigborhoods . Sophia and I have been trying a bilingual school and are meeting some kids. Spanish lessons are loads of fun and I feel like I've learned more in 5 days than in 3 years of french class. Sophia seems fine but slightly crazy ( as usual). One of the non-stray dogs who we've met is Quori , who belongs to a man who works at Centro Tinku.(where we're living). We miss Oliver, so it helps to have Quori around. We're moving into a larger apartment soon , but I will still have my lessons at Centro Tinku.

El Mundo Pequenito (by Lawrence)

Pre-haircut...

Post haircut, with choclo

While walking through the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima a week ago, I passed a person who I thought I recognized. But, no, I thought to myself, that couldn't be my friend Randy Richards. Randy and I worked together as instructors on Outward Bound courses in the early 1990s. Krista told me to go back and see if it was him. I declined. We had two hungry girls to feed and there was no chance it was Randy.

On a lark I googled Randy a week later and found the organization he has created, Mountain Spirit Institute. Sure enough, he was in Peru on the day I thought I saw him! I shot him an email to confirm the sighting and he confirmed it. He was still in Peru, but in the mountain town of Huaraz, far far away. He gave me his cell phone number and between hoots of laughter we spent 45 minutes reconnecting. Now for the weird part: Randy and his wife just moved out of the very apartment in Cusco that we are moving into on Sunday. They were actually in the apartment one floor up from ours, but really, isn't that kind of cosmic? I was so glad to reconnect with Randy and I look forward to staying connected with him this time, he's a really wonderful person.

So yes, we have found a place to call home while here in Cusco. I can't wait to post pictures, but we are not there yet. It is located right in the heart of colonial Cusco and is surrounded by great restaurants, Spanish/Inca ruins, and the main plazas of the city. It is a twenty minute cab ride from the school that we are trying out, but we think the benefit of living in the historical center outweighs the convenience of living closer to the school in what is, essentially, Peruvian urban sprawl.

Sophia is doing really well at school and is very happy to have something to do. Isabel, on the other hand, is bored during the English portion of the day (she is the only native speaker) and completely clueless during the Spanish portion of the day (she barely speaks a word yet). She has attended the school for two days, but is not too keen to return on Monday. I am sure she is learning Spanish through osmosis, but to her it feels like she is doing nothing. So we will have to see what happens. Isabel has proposed focusing on Spanish lessons and homeschooling for the next four months, and then trying the school again for the start of the school year (March 2nd here in Peru). Not a bad plan, so we'll see what we all decide.

I went out and got a haircut today (see photos), and then ventured to the market to shop for lunch. The produce here in Cusco is exquisite. While we are constricted to preparing more-or-less boiled meals, we still have our favorite foods. Choclo is the native Andean corn that you see above with enormous kernels. It is tastiest when eaten with fresh cheese on the side --a nibble of corn, a nibble of cheese. This is called "Choclo Completo." We all also love fresh fava beans which cost around 80 cents for 2 and 1/2 pounds! The avocados and apples are also delicious. The fruits and vegetables here have so much more flavor than what we get in our typical Maine produce section -- it is wonderful.



A pot full of favas













Later in the day I took Sophia for a walk around town and found this outrageously steep street named Calle Matoq. Look at the steps on the left to gauge the steepness of the street. Sophia was a trooper and made it up this high on her own steam.






Work the brakes!!!

One of the many not-stray but stray-looking dogs of Cusco.

Tomorrow morning we shop for some furniture and equipment for the apartment. We'll need two beds, two mattresses, pots/pans/plates/cutlery, a couple of tables and some chairs. It's a lot of stuff but the rent is cheaper than we had expected, so we can rationalize the purchase. It is going to feel quite grounding to get our belongings out of suitcases and into drawers. This bouncing stone may be getting closer to finding its angle of repose here in Cusco(thank you Wallace Stegner) .

Flexibility, Faith, and Cheeseburgers (by Lawrence)

"My manta kanki?" Krista and the girls with a campesina and her alpacita.


























The party never stops!













Our life in Cusco continues to change moment to moment. I think we all feel a bit like a rock bouncing down a hill. Sometimes we are launched into the air and can see opportunities that were not apparent before, sometimes we are sent in new directions, and sometimes we are stopped in our tracks until something comes and gives us another push.

We marched around our new soon-to-be neighborhood in search of a wonderful preschool we had been told about. Sadly, the school has moved 15 minutes away, so the dream of Sophia having something fun to do around the corner evaporated. However, we had been in contact with the highly recommended bilingual school, La Escuela Ausangate, even further from the center of town. They called our cell phone while we stood outside the gate of what used to be the preschool around the corner. They originally told me they had space for Isabel but none for Sophia. As it turns out they misunderstood Sophia's age and did indeed have space for both girls and invited us to tour the school in the afternoon. We killed a little time walking around the neighborhood with our mouths hanging open. The colonial and precolonial architecture and stonework is breathtaking. We ended up at the playground of a derelict school where Krista and I demonstrated a seesaw for the girls and Sophia and Isabel got to swing on real swings for the first time in weeks.

Descending from this high point we landed at the city's most famous gringo eatery, Jack's Cafe. The food was really good and reminded everyone of home. We realized that we had found the cure for any food homesickness and vowed to come eat at Jack's at least once a month, or more often as needed...

We spent a long time at the school and all liked it a lot. Both girls are going to give it a try tomorrow and see how it feels. Sophia is positively ecstatic about going to school with Isabel. Krista got them both to bed early and started to put together their backpacks for tomorrow. If they end up going to Ausangate I will probably be looking for some work. One of the directors of the school is a great resource and led me to believe I could easily find a job teaching English if I so desire.

So, homeschool schmomeschool perhaps. We'll have to see how it goes tomorrow.

Enjoy the photos of the ubiquitous parades of Cusco and my gorgeous girls with two new friends.