Haute Couture and Landslides (by Lawrs)

It's summer vacation here in Peru, and the kids (especially the one who attends school) were getting pretty bored with chronic viewings of "Little Bear" and "Sponge Bob" on the laptop.  Our friends Dougie and Edilma told us about a class that their Sophia was attending to learn traditional dance and, um, modeling.  I am not talking about the creepy "Southern Belle Pageant," kind of thing, more the creepy "America's Next Top Model" kind of thing.  "What the heck!" said we, and off she went Monday morning to a drab yellow office building just off the main drag, halfway down the valley. Sophia was immediately thrust into the front row for a dance routine she had never seen before.  She is NOT a shy child.  After a couple of mornings she had it down and did a great job in both the dance performance and the runway fashion show.  We bought her new shoes with little heels (as requested by the teacher) which hurt her  feet.  This made her walk a bit like Frankenstein down the red carpet, but she powered through with big smiles to boot.

 One of the girls' favorite treats here in Cuzco are Picarones, sweet potato donuts fried in a vat of boiling oil right before your eyes, and we decided to celebrate with a plateful of them.  We had only been to eat them once before, and it was a memorable experience.  We were invited to join a family from California there one evening, and Sophia was exhausted.  When it comes to anything sweet though, the girl can rally.  We all watched in amazement as she fell asleep with a picaron in her hand, and continued to eat in a trance state, chewing like a recently disinterred zombie.   We placed friendly wagers on whether she would finish her order and those who had faith in the steadfastness of her sweet tooth won.

The light-up sign in the Picaroneria has a design inspired by the theories of Dr. Sigmund Freud, although some might argue that sometimes a Picaron is just a Picaron...

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but it is raining a little bit here.  Actually, it is raining a lot a bit.  It has been pouring every single day, but when there is a rare moment of sunshine we try to capitalize on it.  I got out for a bike ride on Saturday morning and arrived home looking like this.

This after a trip on what is considered to be a "dry" ride during the rainy season.  Not so!  I was hub-deep in creeks and in a controlled skid on mud for much of the descent.  I will say that the rain does make for some amazing scenery though.  The mountains are a brilliant green and there are flowers everywhere.  Sadly, many of the crops that were planted in December are rotting in the ground due to the surplus of rain.  Also notable is the fact that there have been a few sizable landslides along roads and the sidewalk in front of our house has gone mobile.

 

What began as a teachable moment for Isabel on the effects of erosion has turned into a bit of a hazard

as the thin crack has widened and half the dirt that was once a sidewalk has sunk 8 feet as of now.  I am sure it will disappear completely before the end of the rainy season. 

So it looks like we will be making a left turn out the front door for the foreseeable future.  We are all a bit freaked out by the possibility of our house succumbing to a similar fate as the sidewalk, but all the land that is built on here was once terraced by the Inca.  Remember that their agricultural terraces had three distinct layers to encourage excellent drainage, so, at least we've got that going for us.

As I walked over to a friend's house this morning to pick up Isabel after a sleepover(!), I caught a market vendor carrying some fresh goods to her stall.  Her pink plastic poncho and her long pause looking out over the cloud covered ridges of the valley seemed to say it all.  "¡Ya basta con la lluvia!"

 

"Enough with the rain already."