Daily Archives: March 7, 2010

Eleven days now that we’ve been driving, and while I haven’t been able to bond with any Peruvian cities, (except a tiny bit with Cusco) the countryside is getting under my skin in a way that in the beginning I couldn’t imagine.    The  landscapes we pass through are immense and impressive,  the scenery an astonishment, so enormous and convoluted it’s as if the slopes are loathe to reveal their secrets.  These days I get depressed when we return to the drab, sprawling towns and cities that are an inevitable part of our route, and can’t wait to return to the mountains.

An ordinary road

Despite the sculpted sheerness, and vast overlapping secret valleys, every slope is densely farmed.   There’s nothing I’ve seen in this world to compare with Peruvians ability to grow things in seemingly inaccessible places.  Yet, traveling with Brunhilde has brought things down to an intimate scale that I don’t think would be available any other way.  The dirt roads are narrow and as twisty as a snake with a stomach ache.  It’s impossible to go fast, thus I have time to look into the eyes of villagers moving their pigs and sheep up the road, to glance into courtyards, to holler “Hola” to kids playing by the roadside, to smell sweet smoke from a household fire.

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