Life in the Wet Lane (by Lawr)

La Temporada de Lluvia (the season of rain) is here, and there's no denying it.  We have seen it all -- deafening hail storms that clog the gutters with ice; water coursing under the front door and filling our kitchen; hundred pound manhole covers being lifted off the ground by fountains of murky storm runoff.  The storms here have been extreme, and in contrast to sunny Sucre, the weather here is kind of a downer.  The upside is that the surrounding countryside when not obscured by clouds or torrential downpours is turning a lovely shade of green.  An unexpected downside can be seen below.  We found five or six of these fellows in the house after leaving it vacant for three weeks.  Yes, they are as big as they look in this photo.

 

Despite the arachnid inhabitation, Isabel and Sophia slept like angels once we got home from our long trip to Bolivia.  

 

 

On Sunday morning Isabel and I went for a hike right from our house.  The sun was shining for the first time in days and we hopped right to it.  The streets and walkways in our neighborhood are hundreds of years old and as I often joke with taxi drivers, were made neither for cars nor horses.  They are incredibly narrow, cobbled paths that navigate the steep terrain of Cuzco with equal amounts of grace and purpose.  It's easy to imagine trains of llamas, laden with hand-woven mantas,  marching up and down these "roads" on their way to the city or the jungle to trade goods.  The Inca road that we were taking this day is the road that connects Cuzco to the Jungle, or "Antis."  It is called the "Antisuyu," jungle region in Quechua.

 

 

 

 

Our objective was to get up to the plateau above the city and visit the Templo del Mono (Temple of the Monkey) and Templo de la Luna (Temple of the Moon).  Walking along the Inca road was, well, lovely.  It's the Wimbledon of sidewalks, covered with lush manicured grass and bordered by stone walls on both sides.  The path leads past the Templo del Mono first, and as you can see, it is not a temple in the same sense as, say, the Parthenon or the Taj Mahal.   

These "temples" were already in place as natural landforms.  Their shape and position gave them significance.  They were not so much built as molded and carved by the Inca.  Below is the Temple of the Moon from the Antisuyu.

It looks like your garden variety rock outcropping until you get close to it and begin to notice the intricate carvings on all sides.

 

 

 

Isabel pointed out to me that the women of the Inca empire were heavily involved with astronomy, and so this temple must have had great significance for all things celestial.  As we made our way around the back of the temple we found two deep clefts in the surface of the rock.  One of them went clear through the temple and the other, pictured below, stopped after a hundred feet or so.  The photograph is taken from halfway in, looking out at Isabel who dared not venture further than the entrance.

 

We could see the clouds building as we headed back down the Inca road to our house.  We had enjoyed an uncharacteristic two hours without precipitation and our time was apparently up.  We ran between the hailstones to our front door and got inside just in time to gain shelter from the deafening projectiles cascading off the sheets of corrugated plastic roofing all around us.  So it is in this time of rain in Cuzco. 

I purchased my official Peruvian Traffic Police Rain Poncho yesterday and have already worn it twice.  I am pretty sure that before long we will all have one.