Hot showers all day

Words of the day:

ducha: shower
contexto: context

In Cusco there´s this huge open air market, the Mercado San Pedro, where practically every type of food that one could possibly buy in Peru is available, sometimes with the heads still attached. It´s a true festival of sights and smells, and, as I spent only about 20 minutes there, I´m definitely planning on heading back. Fruits, vegetables, textiles, shoes, jewelry, clothing, and trinkets of various kinds are to be had for only a few soles. It´s kind of like a Super Walmart without the surveillance cameras and air conditioning and blue vests and greeters and OSHA inspectors and a bunch of other things, but with much more charm and probably much less exploitation of the workers. I´ll get pictures the next time I go. Anyway, I mention it partly because it also had a public bath, proudly advertising ¨Duches calientes todo el día," or, of course, hot showers all day. Hot showers are not so easy to come by here, at least if you´re a native. The hostels all advertise the availability of hot showers to potential guests. My host family has an electric water heater, that heats the water enough to provide about one hot shower per day. I know it's electric because this evening, when I touched the metal framing of the faucet, I felt a sudden and unpleasant buzzing in my finger. Then I thought to myself, so THAT´s why they have masking tape wrapped around the faucet itself.

I also managed to find a tourist agency today that made some tantalizing promises about hiking the Inca trail to Macchu Picchu. The government issues a set number of individual permits for the Inca trail, 500 per day I think, and they tend to go fast as various travel agencies sweep them up. They issue them at least a month or two in advance. Then, of course, would-be hikers fill the available slots pretty quickly. The fellow I talked to at the travel agency compared it to black Friday in America, which I thought was pretty astute, though if one had to hike four days in order to get your hands on the newest flat screen at Best Buy, black Friday would probably be less successful. At any rate, there seems to be a lot of availability in early March, so that´s what I´m planning on signing up for. They needed my passport ID number before they could book me, and of course I didn´t have it, so back I go tomorrow, when there will hopefully be at least one slot left.

One of my favorite things about Cusco so far is the random appropriation of celebrity images and insignia and other cultural artifacts of America. For example, today I saw Barney on a street corner, entertaining some kids. I´m sure he or she was trying to sell something, but I was too distracted to identify exactly what. Also, it is profoundly disconcerting to see things like a North Face store - there is one here - established inside a building that most likely easily exceeds two hundred years of age. Of course it has to be that way - razing the Spanish architecture to the ground to build a brand-spanking new building is not feasible, for lots of reasons. But I guess I´m just so used to the ultra-modern and somewhat sterile newness of things in America that doing it any other way is ultra-striking. Travel is broadening, I guess:)

Be well, everyone.