Across the Continent to Buenos Aires

Friday. May 6, 2011

Our driver arrived before daybreak to deliver us to the airport for our morning flight from Lima to Buenos Aires, two time zones to the east. LAN Peru again provided an on-time and very smooth experience; their in-flight entertainment is head and shoulders above anything we’ve ever had. Not something we’d usually comment on, but the selection of movies, music, and more really is great.

We arrived in BA in mid-afternoon and took a cab to our apartment in Recoleta, an area of the city that seems much like New York’s Upper East Side. The city is also reminiscent of Paris and we’re looking forward to exploring this combination of two great cities during the course of the next several days.

We’re staying in an apartment here, as we have done in many places in Europe. It is so wonderful to have space to spread out. Even after our fabulous experiences with Peruvian cuisine, we were happy to come “home” after exploring the immediate neighborhood and picking up a few prepared dishes. Sometimes, nothing beats happy hour in our own (temporary) living room, followed by dinner in – unless it’s morning coffee in our pj’s!

In the morning, we’ll begin our assault on Argentina’s capital city, but not before looking back on the past ten days.

Tom’s thoughts about Peru

I was astonished by the beauty, especially of the area around Machu Picchu and by the ruins we saw elsewhere in Peru. It is an amazing and beautiful place to visit but you cannot see this and ignore the poverty that exists there. It is a place where we saw, for example, that there are very few machines for harvesting the crops. You see instead, people working in groups in the fields harvesting the crops by hand. Cutting the corn stalks and then stripping the corn from the stalk. Then you consider the idea of bargaining for lower prices on the handicrafts that people make to support themselves. It is hard to avoid the comparison between what we have and what they have. I thought it was a great journey and one that also brought back some of the reality that our trip to China revealed. The people have been used by their leaders, back to the “discovers of America” and probably before, but things may be improving. We can hope and try to help.

Mel’s random observations about Peru

· Porters carrying enormous loads, bigger than themselves, for trekkers on the Inca Trail

· Unleased dogs, wandering everywhere, in the Sacred Valley and Cusco

· The assault of vendors everywhere, selling everything, their presence an uncomfortable representation of their poverty and our comparative wealth

· Children, very young children, seemingly unattended, in streets, squares, and markets: “The mountains will protect them.”

· Babies and very young children wrapped and carried in colorful woven clothes on their mothers’ or grandmothers’ backs

· Children using crushed two-liter plastic bottles as “sleds” on inclined sidewalks

· Earthquake safety zones marked in hotel rooms and pubic places

· Semi-modern plumbing: toilet paper goes in a wastebasket, not in the toilet

· Rooftop ornaments for good fortune

· Puno as a city full of buildings with rebar extending to the sky to avoid the taxes levied on finished buildings

· Multitasking women spinning wool into yarn while walking

· Portrait of the Holy Family with jaws bulging while they chew coca leaves

· On the menu in Cusco Cathedral’s The Last Supper: guinea pig and chicha (corn beer)

· Everyone seems to be at least bilingual

· Cell phones in places as unlikely as Machu Picchu and the Floating Islands in Lake Titicaca

· Extraordinary beauty as the backdrop for lives of poverty that seem far removed from the 21^st century