Daily Archives: March 25, 2010

At last we have found a city we like.  But it’s not in Peru.  It’s La Paz, Bolivia.   And truth be told, we’re actually in love with a barber there.  More about him in a moment.  Right now, I want to tell you about my most traumatic day on the trip so far.

It began happily enough, with us having the entire Inca ruins of Pisac to ourselves for 2 hours on a sunny morning.  That no one else was there is thanks to the bridge between Cusco and Pisac still being closed as a result of the devastating rains that also wrecked the rail lines to Machu Picchu in December. As we needed to head east, and couldn’t take the normal short route through Cusco (Brunhilde didn’t ship with water wings), we were forced into the high country once again. Which is our preference anyway. I had a brief palaver with some bus drivers at the Pisac parking lot, adding some persuasiveness on my part that indeed a road did exist where we wanted to go and, yes, we would be able to manage the curves, before they finally pointed out the road we wanted. For awhile it was a fair romp over the good dirt roads, except we were driving under ever darkening skies. Literally around a bend high in the altiplano we entered a torrential rain storm.  Red rivulets poured down the hills, joining to form pulsing streams and cascades which leapt onto the road, flooding ditches and swamping the byways, gathering force as they raced down the next hill.

Rain like I never want to see again

The road was awash, villagers in plastic ponchos desperately building crude rock diversions to keep water from coursing into their homes.   The only thing running through my head was “This is how landslides start.” Any minute I expected to see earth moving or worse yet, feel it sliding under us, carrying us off the road and down the mountain.   With no sympathy whatsoever, Bernard insisted we stop the car and photograph what the scene looked like (see attached).  Since at the time it was all I could do to keep myself breathing I was unable to open my mouth and protest that we really should drive as fast as possible out of there, photos be damned.

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