Well what have I been upto and thinking about? We took a little trip up into the Andes, to a mid sized town called Cajamarka. The trip was unexpected but welcome. Cajamarka is notable as the place where Pizzaro and his 160 fellow conquisidors captured the Inca (the inca emperor) and slaughtered about 7000 to 8000 inca warroirs and others who were unlucky enough to be in that place at that time. Those numbers themselves are quite alarmingly disparate but consider that the Inca had an army of (I guess these are rough estimates) 40 to 80 thousand battle hardened troops stationed around Cajamarka. As a show of confidence he only took 7000 with him to meet Pizzaro, he also decided coming unarmed was a good idea. Sometimes one doesn't get a second chance. Whatever you may think of Pizzaro and his ruthless gold grabbing ways what he pulled off that day was quite extraordinary to say the least. He and his men knew what they were up against and it is recorded that none of them managed to sleep during the night before the big day. Well the rest is history and the mightly Inca empire, the largest in all south america was no more. For the record pre Columbian Peru does not equal the incas, in fact the inca empire was only around for under 100 years. Peru was inhabited by an number of diverse cultures who waned and waxed and generally lasted for more than 100 years. Here in the northern coastal desert of Peru, the major civilisations where the Moche, Sican and Chimu, in that order. These cultures were in the main not at all obliterated by the Incas but they did not survive the Spaniards and all that came after. Well, perhaps, I have only been in Peru a short time and I have not been up in the Andes very much. I expect alot of what happens in the remote parts of Peru is the more or less similar to what has always happened in the remote parts of Peru. Maybe. Of the Peruvians I have met so far, a significant number have talked of the sense of Peruvian national identity or the lack thereof. They mention a lack of unifiying national identity and also a lack of education about their past resulting in most people who don't identify with the spanish identifying with the incas, even though another culture was much more dominant in their area. But I don't really know much about that and anyway it is always a tricky, convoluted issue for any country. I am reading the 'Motorcycle diaries', or rather I was reading it while up in the Andes but I have since finished. Well Kelly read the end to me as I lay in a hot beer and fever induced sweat, but that is another story. It is an interesting book (Che Gueveras memoirs of his south american travelling during his days as a young Argentenian medical student). Two things made me a little apprehensive of meeting the campesinos of Peru, the rural dwellers. One was the way Che described them. I quote 'The somewhat animal-like concept the indigenous people have of modesty and hygiene means that irrespective of gender or age they do their business by the roadside, the women cleaning themselves with their skirts, the men not bothering at all.'
This and the fact that the most shocking scene I had experienced, the life atop the land fill site, was inhabited by people who had come there by choice from the Andes.
So I was apprehensive, fearing of being too far outside my comfort zone. Of course I know it is good to get outside your comfort zone and I want to experience as much as possible the differing realities that people of this world call life. That is the main thing I think I will take away from my travels.
Anyway my fears were as yet unfounded, Cajamarka is quite an afluent town being as it is next to a large and productive (and polluting) gold mine. We did see Camposinos living in a very rudamentry manner but not too shocking. In the town itself there was however a sharp contrast between the Peruvians who wore western/modern clothes and those who wore traditional clothes. There seemed to be nothing inbetween. It made me wonder, is it mearly a matter of wealth, do those two types mix socially. Do people wear jeans and a tshirt one day and then traditional, colourful textiles and a wide brimmed hat the next?
We spent a pleasant few days seeing our first inca sites, enjoying the cool climate and even bathing in the banos del Incas. The very same hot spring baths that the Inca emperor bathed in before going to meet Pizzaro and his fate.
We got to go on a little field trip with a bunch of Peruvian birdwatchers and pratice taking on and off our emergency rain ponchos a lot. We bought these one dollar emergency ponchos in Target before we left the States and at the first sprinkle of rain we wipped them out. Well wipped implies a degree of speed, of course by the time we had the ponchos out the rain had stopped. But as it was the tail end of the rainy season in the Andes it showered on and off all day and we got pretty proficient at wipping out and wipping on the ponchos. They were definately a good buy.
Well, that is all for now, I gotta go study maths now. Yeah I know. Why? I don't know. All I know is the exam is probably going to kick my ass, so I better go nerd out.

Bye

ps. We also got to sit and drink good wine while listening to a father and son band play guitar and sing cuban songs under a big poster of Che illuminated by the warm glow of parafin lamps. Awesome.

pps. there should be a few more pics up on my photo site.