Cement and Tears

The next day we got a bit of a late start, so all we did was haul cement telephone poles. Ha! All. It took every last one of us to move those things! They literally weighed a ton. As in, 2000 pounds. Okay, so we only moved about...two. And one was only half a ton. Still, it was so hard! We had a rope that we cradled it in so that everyone had a loop they were holding on to, and then we had another rope tied to the uphill end of it that served as our brakes. I cannot tell you how incredibly strong those Peruvians are. After we had taken our pole down to where they needed it, struggling, groaning, and using all of our strength, the Peruvians, about half as many of them as there were of us, told us to put it down and they'd take it the rest of the way--up the huge hill. Its funny, I am using my journal as a sort of guide as to what happened when, but I left so much out! For example, I didn't tell about what we did once we were finished with the poles. We took a very long break in which we explored the coutryside a bit. It was beautiful! There was this one hill that I would have thought was just a hill, but actually, it had a stream going right through it. There was a cool little spot that if you crawled into, you could see the opening of the huge cave that led into the heart of the hill. Once we saw that, of course, we had to climb down to the bottom of the hill and walk through the cave. It was so amazing. Here I was, wandering around the Peruvian countryside, walking through hills and finding secret little picnic places on the other side. I just don't know how to put into words what this experience was for me. It was...ah! It was beautiful. I'm sure my memory flowers up the images a bit, but still, it was something I can't use words to describe, because I've never learned words powerful enough to do it justice. It was a good day. A good two weeks. After we were finished with the poles, they told us we had to walk back to the village because the truck was down in Cusco picking up supplies. It was about a three mile, uphill walk back, and we were all so hungry! The biggest tragedy of the day was that when we got back, lunch wasn't even ready. Fortunately, we survived, but just barely. After lunch, I sat on the swingset that had just recently been built and played with five or six adorable little girls. They would touch my hands and my face and try on my necklace and my rings and jabber at me in Kechuan. One of them, Cassandra, followed me everywhere, holding my hand and laughing at me. I loved the people there so much, and very few days go by that I don't think about them. They were the most tender souls I have ever come across. Which made it all the more difficult to leave the next morning. I thought it would be easy to leave the freezing cold rooms with ten bunk beds crammed inside and go back to a warm, somewhat private hotel room with only two roommates. I thought it would be easy to leave the dirt and mud and sweat for a nice hot shower. I thought it would be easy to leave the back-breaking labor for leisurely touring around. It wasn't. As we sang "God Be With You Til We Meet Again" it sank in that these people I had been serving and coming to know may never cross paths with me again in this life. After we sang, Adrian, the President, spoke to us. He apologized for being unable to provide us with the comfort we are used to and thanked us for making the sacrifice to come to his village. That ripped my heart out and humbled me. I never wanted to complain again! After he spoke, the women of the village gave each of us a handmade belt as a gift of gratitude. They could have sold each belt for at least ten soles, which for them, is a lot of money. Then they all, women and men, gave every single one of us a hug and a "gracias hermana." That's one think I don't think I mentioned. They kept calling me "hermana," and I didn't understand at first what that meant. It means sister, and when I realized that, it struck me just what they were saying. They considered me their sister. Anyway, during our parade of hugs, I lost it. Those people are so incredible. They spend their lives laboring just for survival, yet they are so humble and so grateful and so quick to open their hearts and homes. Unfortunately, after our tearful farewell, our attempt to ride off into the sunset (so to speak) was ruined by a flat tire on the bus. After about half an hour and a much less romantic departure, we were off. Well, sort of. The ride down on this bus, which was much bigger than the other ones we had been taking, was more of an adventure than any theme park ride. There were three instances where we all had to get off the bus so it could make a turn without getting high-centered. That's Peruvian transportation for you in a nutshell.

Crazy Government, cemetaries, and folklore

The next day was so strange! We had just finished up breakfast and were getting ready to divide into the teams for the day when we were told that we couldn't do any work until after lunch. The reason was that the local government was sending inspectors to the village. Apparently, they really didn't want us helping those people. I still don't really understand why, but I guess it had something to do with "preserving Peruvian culture" and making the people progress on their own. Still, I don't think that losing a child every month to disease is preserving a culture. And supressing those that come to help teach new farming and building techniques, hygiene and food safety and first aid is not allowing for much progression. They've been living like that for so many years, its not like they are going to just come to a knowledge of all the things they need to know to progress without someone teaching it to them. The government tells them they will send people to teach them how to build, to put up electric wires so they can have power and lights, they make all these promises to them and never fulfil them. I can see how it might be offensive to have a group of Americans come in and impose our methods on them, but its not like we were there because we didn't think the Peruvians could do it without us. They told us what projects to do and how to do them; we didn't impose anything on them. Anyway, that was my rant on the government, now back to the story! Instead of working, we had to hurry and put up some volleyball nets, get the soccer ball out, and hide all the tools. We even put signs above our bunk rooms that said "school" in Spanish, and drew the blinds so that the investigators wouldn't look in there and see that we were living with these people. I was disappointed to not be working, since that was the whole reason I came, but it was nice to have a rest. Several of us went on a walk over to the village cemetary, which was only about twenty or thirty years old, since before that they would just bury their dead all over the mountains. Wilfredo, who came with us and told us lots of stories about it, said that the people were hearing the voices of the dead, buried all over the mountains, telling them that they wanted a place where they could be completely at rest. so, they started the cemetary. Salkantay itself is about 100 years old. I loved the myths and stories he told us about the mountains of Salkantay and the cemetary. He told us that the god of the mountain takes a blond wife every seventh year (2007, 2017, 2027, etc.). Thank goodness I'm a brunette. He also told us that people who come to Salkantay with a pure heart and good intentions will feel happy and blessed. If you have a mean heart and bad intentions, the god will lure you into the mountains with illusionary gold until you are lost and disappear. OR, it will haunt you with bad dreams and bad feelings. Thankfully, none of our party was lured into the mountains by illusions of gold. It was an incredible experience--I sat in the Andes mountains outside a kechuan cemetary while a Peruvian told me ancient folklore and local mysteries. Thinking about it during the moment was amazing, but thinking back at it now, its even more incredible. No one has experiences like that! I miss Peru. After we finished with our stories, we took some pictures and headed back to the village. It was a good twenty, twenty-five minute walk. We had lunch, and then I was on dinner duty, so that whole day I didn't do any hard labor. It felt nice, but kind of strange. Having a bit of a breather was good, though; I was feeling a bit sick, especially due to my asthma. Lots of people were getting sick, though. A couple of boys that day stayed in bed until dinner they were so sick. After we ate, we did one of my favorite things of the entire trip. We split into groups and we went caroling to several families in the village. We didn't sing Christmas songs, just hymns like "I Am a Child of God" and "Families Can Be Together Forever." My group went to Adrian, the president of the village's, house. After we sang, his little daughter, Sonia, sang in Kechuan for us. It was honestly, no exaggeration, the most adorable, heartbreakingly precious thing I have ever seen. She was no more than four years old, and while she sang, someone, her uncle or something, played his ten-string guitar to accompany her. She clapped her little hands to keep time. At another house, their twelve or thirteen year old son played his pan pipes for us after we sang. It was so fun to have them return the favor. I wasn't expecting it, but I absolutely loved it. We got to sit in their homes, all of which were very humble. Adrian's was the nicest, not because he was president, but because he worked hard. The others worked hard, too, don't get me wrong, but I have never met a man like Adrian. The other homes had dirt floors, while his had cement. The rooves were made out of sticks and mud, some had adobe shingles, if they were lucky. It was so much fun to go singing, and then to see the Southern night sky, which was so different from the northern. I knew it would look different, but I thought that since there were so many stars, I wouldn't really be able to tell. I could, though. It was so different, so beautiful. I miss Peru.

Back In Salkantay

After we finished at Machu Picchu, we spent the rest of the day in the village (after an even more terrifying ride down the ridiculously steep mountain) and left the next morning to head back to Salkantay. The work we did that first day back was, as usual, so hard! It was nice to be back. We kept saying it was nice to be home, then catching ourselves, but then deciding it was true. We weren't living there forever, but Salkantay felt like a home. That day, my group (I don't know if I mentioned that every day we split into groups depending on which project needed how many people) was in charge of loading and unloading 60 pound adobe bricks onto the back of the truck to haul them over to where another group was building a stable. Those bricks were so heavy, and since they were just mud and water dried and carved, I got so dirty! My black pants looked very very brown. My arms, wrists, shoulders, legs, and hips (I didn't have a lifting partner, so my hips got used as support quite a bit :D) were all bruised, cut, and raw from the rough bricks. When we had finished with the last load, we followed the truck over to help unload and carry them over to the stable. That was tricky--lifting the bricks higher than my head so the people on the wall could get them from me. Mostly I had to make Zac, one of the big strong boys, lift them for me once I got them to the wall. When we were done there, we had to drag more eucalyptus logs up the hill. I wasn't very excited to do that. My previous experience with those logs was the hardest labor I had ever done. However, it wasn't as big of a hill, and we had more people helping us, so it wasn't so bad. I wrote in my journal for this day that "Dinner was way good!" I didn't bother to write down what it was, but any kind of sustinance after a hard day's work, whether it actually was good or not, seemed incredible. Being back in Salkantay was a little hard to get used to again because it had been so much warmer in Machu Picchu. It got so cold at night in Salkantay. My hands were ALWAYS cold. It made me very grateful for my home.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu was spectacular. We took the bus down to Cusco and then to a town called Ollantaytambo. It was a very busy little town, and I can't believe our bus fit through those tiny streets. It was so narrow that the people walking on the street had to practically press themselves against the walls of the buildings to avoid getting hit by the bus. Once there, we took a train to Machu Picchu. The ride was a lot of fun; it was neat to watch the landscape change. We passed one mountain that had a beautiful glacier on it. Our elevation was dropping and the land was getting greener as we got closer to Machu Picchu. I didn't realize that there is an actual town called Machu Picchu, its not just the ruins. Silly me. Anyway, once we got there, we found our hotel, which was through a labrynth of a market, and had a little time to freshen up before going out to lunch. We were going to separate, but decided instead to all eat at the same place. It was a lot of fun, and there was a live band performing Peruvian music. If it hadn't been Sunday, I would have bought a cd from them. Also, I'd already spent most of my money on the ladies' market in Salkantay. The food was alright, better than some, but it wasn't exactly filling. I did try it, though. This village was beautiful. It is at the base of several sheer, steep, jagged mountains that are covered in foilage. I have never seen mountains like that before. They were incredible. There is a river that flows right through the middle of town (and consequently gets piped directly into most of the homes and businesses). After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a bit before heading out to go to church. It was just down the way a bit from where we were staying, so we walked, like we did when we went almost everywhere. This little church building was the most humble meeting house I have ever seen. When I say humble, I mean VERY humble. The floors, walls, and ceiling were plain, white-washed cement, there were bugs and cobwebs in the wooden windowsills, and the rooms were seperated by wood walls so thin even I could punch a hole through them. It didn't seem to matter, though. I enjoyed church there even more than I enjoy it at home. The spirit in that hodunk little building was just as strong or stronger than any new, clean, air conditioned chapel in Kaysville. We sang all the hymns in Spanish, and ended up having about five hours of church instead of three. We did priesthood and relief society, had the sacrement, sunday school and all that, but we just didn't really feel like leaving. Also, the missionaries had stopped by and said they'd be having a few members and investigators coming by for their sacrement meeting, so we hung around for a bit to meet them, but they ended up being very late, and I was feeling pretty darn sick and very tired, so I went back to the hotel and went to bed before they got there. The next day was incredible. We took the bus up to the ruins, and I am lucky to be alive. Remember how I talked about the sheer mountains? Steeper than any mountains I've ever seen? Well, we took a bus up the side of one of those mountains. The road was narrow, and if you were going uphill, the only thing between you and the plummet to the bottom of the valley was a few blades of grass and a bush or two. That is, when there was another bus coming downhill. Otherwise, they stayed right in the middle of the road. I mentioned to Amberly, who I was sitting by, that if we rolled, we wouldn't stop til the very bottom, which by now was hard to see in the dim morning light. She didn't appreciate that comment very much. When we finally got to the top and the danger of falling to our deaths was behind us (for now), we walked straight to the trailhead for the hike up Wayna Picchu, a mountain that looks over the entire site. It wasn't a really big mountain, so distance wise, it was a short hike. However, it was ridiculously steep and was almost entirely stairs, most of which were up to my knees. Asthma combined with elevation combined with still being pretty sick made it pretty hard to breathe. It was worth every second, though. The view was spectacular. It looked out over all of Machu Picchu and the surrounding landscape. We could see several waterfalls from up there, and got to explore some ruins that had been built around the same time as Machu Picchu. The history behind that place, at least what I learned of it while I was there, was fascinating. I'd slaughter it if I tried to retell it, so I recommend looking it up. We spent some time up on top, took some pictures, rested, took more pictures, then started the journey down, which was just as difficult as the way up. They only let four hundred people on the trail a day, if I remember right, so by the time we were down, they had already started turning people away, telling them they already reached their limit. Once down, we spent a while exploring the ruins. That place is absolutely remarkable! Its an entire city, plopped on the top of one of these ridiculously steep mountains. They say that if the groomers quit the upkeep on the place, it would be reclaimed by the jungle within the year. It was entirely covered by the forest when it was discovered. It's discovery is a really interesting story also. Again, look it up, I'd ruin it if I tried telling it. Anyway, I loved walking around there, despite the steps. It was beautiful and provoked my imagination like nothing else. I wanted to know what life was like up there, how they lived and socialized and worked. Even the people we were working with in the village live very primitive lives and their buildings, hundreds and hundreds of years later, weren't as intricate and sturdy as these ancient ruins. The week we were there, it had been named on of the wonders of the world. It was a title well earned.

The People

Before I get to Machu Picchu, I want to take another tangent and talk a little about the people of Peru, particularly those in Salkantay. They were so sweet and so warm towards us, and always showed so much gratitude for the work we were doing. Almost none of the adults speak English, and not all that many even speak Spanish. Most of them speak kechuan. The smallest kids also only speak kechuan. It's the school kids that knew Spanish. Even though the language barrier was so vast, a smile is universal, and lots of the time that's all we could do to communicate. The kids were so much fun to play with. Some of them had particular people they attached themselves to, and the rest pretty much followed around whoever they felt like at the moment. Lots of the time, they'd just wander around the village, a big old pack of the littlest ones keeping themselves entertained while their parents and older siblings worked. There were lots of them hanging around outside the rooms that we were staying in (a boys room and a girls room, each packed with bunkbeds), looking a little bored. So, me and a few others started teaching them games like duck duck goose (doo doo goo, rather) and ring around the rosies. They were the ones that didn't know much Spanish, so all the teaching we did was by example and gestures, and the few words in Spanish we all knew. Once they caught on, which was surprisingly fast, they thought we were so silly and that the games were so fun. It was so good to just take a few minutes and interact with these sweet little kids that I probably will never see again, but that for a while I was the coolest person they knew. They'd wrap their arms and legs around my legs, or jump up and insist on me holding them. Sometimes, they'd just sit around me and touch my hair and my necklace and fiddle with my ring. The adults were just as satisfying to work with. The men would joke with us, tease us, tell us girls how "fuerte" (strong) we were. The women generally kept to themselves, but they would tell us we were beautiful and always tell us thank you, often randomly when we weren't even doing anything. The women set up a little market for us while we were there. I bought tons of hats, gloves, dolls, necklaces, earrings, and little trinkets, including finger puppets, all handmade (I mean really handmade--like, straight from their own llama/alpacha to their own dye to their own needles to the tables). We didn't get as good a deal in Salkantay as in Cusco, mostly because none of us had the heart to bargain with them. It was worth it, though. They were so happy, and so sweet. The people in Salkantay were an example to me of what it really means to be happy. These people are living hundreds and hundreds of years behind the kind of life I'm used to. Running water is a novelty, electricity is a treasure. I take those things for granted. Despite their (what we would call) impoverished state, they always had smiles on their faces. They were the hardest working people I have EVER been in contact with. They are up before the sun and aren't finished working til the sun goes down again. Aside from the villagers, we got to work directly with several men that were employed by Eagle Condor, the organization I went with. There was Arturo, Wilfredo, Alex, and several others that we spent a lot of time with. At first glance, some of them seemed a little intimidating, but they all have incredibly huge hearts and fantastic senses of humor. I probably already mentioned that this was the absolute hardest physical labor I have EVER done, but it was an absolute joy. It was challenging and exhausting and sometimes frustrating. I've never been so dirty or so bruised. After a day of carrying adobe bricks around (one of the guys told me he didn't want to work with me any more because I was intimidating him by carrying the huge bricks without help) my arms, wrists, and hands were cut up and bruised from the hardened mud. I barely had the energy to make it back to the community center for dinner every night, and changing into pajamas was often required way more energy than I could muster. Still, I don't think I was ever unhappy in Peru. Cold, yes. Tired, yes. Aching, yes. Desperate for normal food, definately. But never unhappy. I think about those people all the time and miss their warmth and honesty.

Salkantay!

The next morning, we all loaded into a bus and headed up the road to Salkantay. The drive took about an hour. I believe I mentioned this road in an earlier post, but the ride was ridiculously suicidal. Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but it definately was alarming. I wouldn't take my car on this road. Maybe a four-wheeler. Maybe. We took a thirty-passenger bus up it! The first of many adventures. It was such a good feeling driving into that tiny village. They weren't expecting us yet. Because of the strike and our disrupted schedule, we were there a couple days early. The people all lined up and gave us each a hug, one by one. It was the most heart warming thing I've ever seen. The women were all dressed up in traditional, very colorful clothing. I was surprised at how small they were! We visited for a little while, got settled, then got to work. Oh my heavens, I have never worked so hard in my life as I worked that day. I was assigned to the group that helped a man haul eucalyptus logs up from the bottom of a valley to his house on the top of the rather large hill. Those logs were so heavy! They are incredibly dense, and since they were lying in the stream, they were waterlogged. These things honestly were hundreds of pounds. It took our entire group to get them up the very steep hill. I fell over when I tried to pick one up and it landed on top of me, which was quite the experience! It was so hard, but there wasn't ever a time that I wanted to give up and find an easier job. The work was worth it, and the smile on the man's face when he saw that the chore was all done was more than any paycheck. Not that we got a paycheck. We got dinner. We also helped put some windows in an adobe home. All the homes were adobe. We hammered the wood window frame right into the clay bricks and sealed it up with mud. It was so primitive, but it was just life there. It felt so good to just sit and eat, even if the food wasn't spectacular and it was freezing cold. Me and Haley decided it would be a lot warmer to share one of the twin-sized bunk beds than sleep on our own, so we combined blankets and body warmth and actually had a rather comfortable night! Lots of people woke up feeling not so good due to lack of sleep due to being too cold. Not us! The next day my group leader was Arturo. He's Peruvian, of course, and was so much fun to work with. I think he was 26, and he had such a goofy sense of humor. We helped put several doors in the only two-story house I saw in the entire village. It was hard because we had to get it just right. We also hauled 60 pound adobe bricks up the ladder to the second level to fill in the windows that the owner couldn't afford to keep open. Again, it was tough work. Not as hard as the logs, but still hard. I used some power tools as well as some picks and hammers and such, which isn't entirely new to me, but it kinda funny to me that my primitive skills were plenty sufficient. The next day, our work was a lot of fun, but again, so hard! My hands were covered with blisters and bruises to the point that I had to wrap them in bandages to keep them from splitting and hurting even more. My group, led by Arturo again, named ourselves "The Strippers" that day. I'm pausing for effect and imagining the expressions on your faces before I explain............alright, I've had my fun. Our job was to strip the bark off of eucalyptus logs so they could be used for construction. We loosened the bark by hitting it over and over with a hammer (hence the blisters) then peeling it off. The wood underneath was beautiful! We only worked half a day because we were leaving after lunch to head to Maccu Pichu, which is going to be a different post! Before I get to that, though, there were somethings we did every day while we were in Salkantay that I want to mention. One is that after lunch, for half an hour or an hour before we went back out to work, there would be a soccer game going on between us and the villagers. The altitude was making my asthma not so fun to deal with, so I mostly watched, but it was quite the sight. Most of the time it was the little kids that played against us, but sometimes the Peruvian group leaders would play, like Arturo and Wildfredo and Alex. They were all very good! One day, the women even played. They get to play only once a year because of how many chores they have to do every day to keep their families alive, and they chose to play with us. It was such a neat feeling. Another thing we did every day, and not just the days we were in Salkantay, was have a devotional to start the day. We all took turns giving a thought and choosing a song to sing. All the hymns we sang, we sang in Spanish. It was fun to try and pretend like I could pronounce the words. One thing that did NOT happen every day was shower! I don't know if I mentioned how awful our hotel in Cusco looked when we got there. It wouldn't have passed code here in America. However, after seeing what kinds of bathrooms and showers Salkantay had to offer, and the beds and just about everything else, the Royal Inn in Cusco seemed absolutely luxurious. Even though it was the hardest place to be physically, Salkantay was my favorite place we went.

Miscellaneous Peruvianisms

Well, there are lots of things about the trip that don't exactly fit into any specific stories. So, here are a few! Inca-cola, my new favorite soft drink, was quite the experience the first time I had it. Its sort of a bubble gum and cream soda mixed flavor, and it is VERY carbonated, which took me for a bit of a surprise since I don't drink a ton of that stuff. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, but after the papya juice and the sugarless hot chocolate, I learned quickly to love it. Also, our water supply was limited since drinking anything but bottled, purified water was asking to be sick as a dog. Another thing about Peru, which reminded me a lot of China, is that those cute little kids just don't wear underwear. I figured that out when one little girl wearing a cute white (and very dirty) dress had a nice breeze lift it up a bit. I had a good giggle and kept playing with her. It's so interesting to me how different cultures are. I mean, she was at the oldest two, so it wasn't that big of a deal, but it might have come as quite a shock to some. As would women nursing their babies right there in public, no problem! I felt bad for the boys in the group, because man, when the baby was hungry, out came the food! Also, most of the Peruvians didn't have the luxury most of us have of a washing machine and dryer. The people, especially the kids, wore the same thing almost every day, also. It would have been sad to me, except that they really didn't seem to mind. It was life, and it was what they knew. They probably thought it was strange that we all wore something different every day. Another thing about Peru that

reminded me a lot of China was that transportation wasn't exactly regulated. Things that bus drivers or taxi drivers or any kind of driver here would get thrown in jail for and have their license revoked for life were just kind of every day things there. The picture doesn't nearly do justice to just how bad the road was and how ridiculous the turns were that we rode a bus up to get to our village. There's one turn, this might be it, called somethingsomething Diablo. That means DEVIL. Very appropriate, especially after having been in a thirty-person bus trying to take it. Lots of times they had us just get out because the bus was riding too low to be able to make it. Needless to say, there was a lot of reflection on that bus ride. Thoughts such as, "At least I told everyone I loved them before I left," "Now I don't have to worry about getting everything ready to go to college," "No more homework," "Please forgive me, I promise it was an accident!" ran through my head as we made the trek up the mountains to an elevation of almost 15,000 feet. We took that ride about six more times and it was just as scary every time. It was nothing compared to the ride up to Machu Picchu, but I'll get to that later.

Cusco

I LOVED Cusco. It was big compared to what I'm used to, and very cold, but it was absolutely charming. There is a lot of myth and legend about Cusco's history, and as one of the centers of the Incan empire, there is a very rich cultural element to it. After getting to our hotel, we spent the rest of the day there. We got a much needed nap, then went for a bit of an explore and also to dinner--the first of countless chicken meals. Being the cultural center that it is, Cusco is also a tourist center, so the mix of the two was fun to observe. There was coca-cola advertisments all over the place, along with statues and monuments to Peruvian leaders and heros. There was even this tiny little amusement park, which looked little better than a death trap, but nonetheless fun to look at. Like I mentioned earlier, the city was eerily quiet due to the strike, but the people that were out were enjoying themselves for the most part--especially the kids, who had several games of soccer going on in the streets. The food at the restaurant we went to wasn't the best food I've ever had. I came to appreciate it, however, later in the trip when my options were even less appetizing. It was just different--nothing was really bad tasting, it was just not really all that good tasting either. One thing that surprised me was how many dogs there were! They were absolutely everywhere. There was one in every doorway, plus the ones roaming the streets and getting into the garbage. I asked Arturo, one of the people we worked with, if they are wild or if they are pets and he said most of them are actually pets. I think that's true in the villages, but it just seemed impossible in the city. They really were everywhere, and they were all so different. No purebreds, that's for sure! It was kind of fun to see them all over. It's very different than America. VERY. I'm hoping I can write all this in order; its been several months, so we'll see! After dinner, if I'm remembering right, we hurried over to a place called Q'orikancha. It was originally an Incan temple, but when the Spanish came, they turned it into a Spanish fortress, which gave it a very interesting blend in architecture. There was also a small cathedral there, which was beautiful and I was so disappointed when they told me I couldn't take pictures. I understood, of course, but MAN! Outside the fortress there were several little girls dressed up in traditional clothes and carrying around baby goats. They were so adorable and said, "Miss, money for picture?" in their little accents. I took a picture but I had only gotten one sol out of my pocket before the police chased them off. After Q'orikancha we set out on our first shopping experience of the trip. It was so much fun to bargain again. I learned how from Leslie and Kimball (my sister and brother-in-law to those who don't know) when we were in China, but I hadn't been able to use them since. It's such a thrill! My favorite is the people who say things like, "for anyone else, this I sell for twenty soles. For you, because you are my friend--eighteen soles." The people were so friendly for the most part and so warm. One girl had a cute little shop and I bought lots from her because she was so sweet. Granted, probably to help my parting with my money a little easier, but I didn't really care about that. She needed it more than I did. I fell in love with the people of Peru on day one.