February 28, 2004
Cusco, Peru

when i woke this morning in chincheros, and opened my bedroom door.. which opened right onto the street, i found a skinny white momma dog curled in jesse's passenger seat. she cocked her ears and stared me down with a sidelong grrrr when i reached my paw in to test the waters. the lady that ran the hospedaje came out just then. 'ahh... es mi perrito!' she said... she had been worried about people messing with my car, so she had her dog camp out in the scout all night. she said her dog moved around from the back seat to the front seat but stayed there faithfully all night.  as soon as she snapped her fingers ms. perrito jumped up, posed for a second and then scampered out, tail wagging and all. i noticed that my faithful guardian had taken the liberty of marking my front tire, just so's the other dogs understood who was in charge of things.  nothing like old-fashioned time-tested security techniques.

the drive from chincheros was spectacular. an incredible dirt road that loped through the valleys and edged along the mountain slopes and sheer drops, narrowing in places to just enough for both front tires to fit side by side. jesse's heart was verily bursting with joy as she romped in this perfect playground all day, her strong low-geared engine purring up the hills and her new tires nimbly dancing down the twisty backsides. we carried all kinds of passengers today: an old quichua women with fresh, soft cheese for the market, a young boy and his father with 50 pounds of potatoes and a load of wood for town, and a heavy equipment operator going to his next job two valleys over.

there is such a difference in the tempo of a dirt road. life engulfs and incorporates a dirt road. the lines are blurred between field, home, village and road. you can never really say where one starts and another stops. but when the concrete comes in things get well defined in a hurry. field: you mind your business and stay over there.  house: your front yard is here and that's all you get... the rest belongs to mr. road. the straight crisp cartoon lines of the cement road dictate the paint-by-numbers plan and all the players better get in line. a dirt road is like a Monet, a cement road is like ... well... a cement road.   and then of course there are the cars... so much faster on a cement road.  everything takes a step back to let them rush on through.

the land here is farmed by hand the same way it has been for a thousand years. and the people i'm sure are much the same. they live in the same mud and straw adobe huts, work the same land, and do the same backbreaking work day in and day out on the steep slopes of the peruvian sierra. they are simple people, and their faces and clothes are dark and often dirty. in this kind of life one simply doesn't bother much with washing.. there's not much point in it.

since this is the week of carnaval, nearly every town had a gang of kids armed with water balloons and water pistols (they have all the latest super squirters here) waiting for unsuspecting prey to drive through town. by noon i was forced to pull over at the nearest little supply store and plunk down 15 soles for a top-of-the-line model myself. those kids were sure surprised when the gringo in the truck squirted them right back. i got loads of respect for that.