Continued...

Words of the day are on holiday, and will return shortly

Shortly after eating lunch at Pisac last Sunday, with my nausea under somewhat better control after swallowing some magic anti-nausea tablet generously donated by Catherine, we caught a taxi for the ruins of Pisac. The ruins lie far above the town of Pisac. It is theoretically possible to walk up a long, long, long path of inclined earth and stairs to get there, but if the arduousness of the descent was any indication, climbing would probably take ultramarathon levels of fitness. In my youth!

The taxi cost 25 soles, which is fairly pricy for a taxi in Peru. An error in translation lead us to believe that the trip would be 15 soles. "Veintecinco," or 25, was the driver's initial offer. Game, we replied "cincuenta," which we transiently believed to be 15, but which in actuality means 50. Naturally, finding himself to be among seasoned and hard-nosed hagglers, the driver grudgingly accepted our offer. Funnily enough, expert traveler Daniel wanted to move on initially, believing we could get a better price than 15. I think one of the markers of the professional nomad is an instinctive objection to paying more for something than one otherwise needs to. Fortunately, when we reached the top of the long, long, long and winding road that leads to the ruins of Pisac, the driver held us to 25 soles rather than our offered 50.

Like the ruins of Sacsaywaman, the ruins of Pisac rely bely description. They're built almost into the face of the mountain; also like the ruins of Sacsaywaman, one can't help but be amazed by the sheer manpower that must have been necessary to build such structures in pre-crane and pre-bulldozer times. There were many things of note at the site, and I have some pictures up on my flickr page. Two things to remark upon: first, the Incan inhabitants of the site buried at least some of their dead in the face of the mountain wall. After the Spanish arrived, a large number of these graves were plundered, leaving the mountain wall with an almost honeycomb appearance. Second, the Incans are well known for their ingenuity at terracing, in order to facilitate different sorts of agriculture in what is otherwise a less-than-forgiving climate. Pisac had amazing terracing, extending up and down the slanted earth on either side and beneath the ruins. A book I brought along suggests that, taken together, the shape of the ruins and the terracing, when seen from afar, is reminiscent of a condor. I'm unsure if I buy it, but the Incans are also known for building settlements and other sorts of structures in the shapes of significant animals, so I wouldn't put it past them. The terracing looks like massive sets of stairs, and they have held up extraordinarily well over the last 500 years, especially given the amount of rain this part of Peru gets in certain parts of the year.

We spent three or four hours wandering the ruins, at least an hour of which was spent slowly making our way down. It's amazing to me, the various lifeways people have adopted over the centuries. I could never live on the side of a mountain, I think, especially one as steep as the one the Pisac ruins lay upon. But people did it, for hundreds of years.

At the end of the day we sat on a second story balcony overlooking the market at Pisac. After that, we made our way back to Cusco; the return ride was much more forgiving than the ride there, for some reason.

Regarding Daniel's philosophy in the previous post, I definitely agree that many careers exist that are generally in line with the personalities and values of those who pursue them, and which require minimal to no compromise by those personalities and in those values. I guess what I found most compelling and, for me, relevant, is the fact that, particularly in the developed world, there aren't really any viable ideas or paths children and adolescents are encouraged to pursue other than that of a career. It's just sort of assumed and expected that you will pursue a career of some sort as a means to success or happiness. It's not so much that the idea is wrong for everyone, or even wrong for most people; rather, it's presented as this sort of self-evident path to follow. You aren't really encouraged to examine it, or even to ask for whom or for what you're pursuing a particular career.

If you're fortunate and mindful, and you spend time working out what you want to do and achieve and see and experience, and, for that matter, who you want to meet and know and learn from, you're likely to find yourself on a path that suits and satisfies and invigorates you. However, I suspect there are a significant number of people out there who never had the chance to really look deeply at those sorts of questions, or who were never encouraged to do so by those who had influence over them. And I think in a lot of ways the system as a whole does not encourage that sort of questioning.

In any case, thanks for reading. I have a flickr account for those who are interested, and I'll post the website as soon as I can log in to it, which flickr is not letting me do at the moment.

Be well, everyone!