Adventure in Peru - Dos

The Peruvians in Cusco are a handsome people and that is not being pejorative to the women. They are rightly proud of their ancestors, the Incas. The Inca construction is magnificent and found as frequently as the ancient dwellings in south western Utah. I was surprised at how young the people you see on the street are, the average age has to be 13. They have construction going on everywhere. Not construction using the same engineering going on at my house but typical third world build a concrete super structure and fill in the blanks with bricks and windows. Peru is moving up in the world if what you see on the street is any indication.

The town of Machu Piccu at the end of the rail line before the bus line to the national park starts reminds me of Park City which reminds me of Jackson, Wyoming which reminds me of Santa Fe. . . These little shops differ only in the variety of trinkets they sell to remind tourists that they had a good time and had an extra $20 in their pockets. One thing that Jackson, Park City and Santa Fe don´t have is the Peruvian national meal, guinea pig. Yep, don´t read this to the kids. They keep them in hordes for pets and eat the plump ones for food. It reminds me of my father in law who gave all his grand daughters bunnies for Easter one year in the mid 70s. When his daughter, their mom, said "no, you keep them" he did. He kept them in a pen in the back yard for the summer until, about memorial day when he had the girls over for a chicken dinner. 35 years later those girls still won´t eat chicken at that house even though he has been dead for ten years.

The guinea pig I had tasted about like chicken but with a lot less meat on it, though it did still have the skin. Deanne sampled it and then returned to safer fare. It reminded me of the comment Bear Gryls makes on Man vs. Wild when he finds and eats some small animal, "it is tasty but it takes more than one to make a meal. Now I see why guinea pig has not caught on in the United States, most families don´t have enough of them to make a mean. (Besides, in Utah they would prosecute you for cruelty to animals.

We went to church in Cusco. We attended a delightful sunday school class on the Book of Ruth. I could make out one word out of fifty from my ninth grade spanish class. Nevertheless, I could tell the teacher was in the top five percent in the church. He had obviously read the lesson but was teaching from the scriptures. He had a lot of members commenting on the lesson and on other members´ comments. He acknowledged comments from the folks who didn´t have anything substantative to say and them moved on to the more meaty portion of the lesson. I was amazed how easy it was to identify a great teacher without any understanding of what he was saying.

Our travel agent took us to the airport. He told us his person had been at the end of the train line looking for us but couldn´t find us. He refunded the 30% of that which he had charged us for Mike & Melissa which he had been able to recoup from his vendors. Nothwithstanding the foulup at the train station I would use him again.