Cuzco, Peru, Ancient Inca Capital, Gateway to Machu Pichu!

Waiting for my pal Erin from Australia to meet me here at the infamous Hostel Loki. The header photo above is the view from my room. Not bad, eh? The photo of the large group of people is a bit of sunday afternoon comedic entertainment. A man pretend to taunt a Cholita- the native ladies who wear a most unique-to-Andean-culture, multiple ruffled skirts, knitted sweaters, and bowler hats! But the lady is really a man and was really hamming it up for the crowd, who were in stiches, even the attendant Cholita's themselves!

Cuzco is the ancient capital city of the Incan Empire, and has been a capital city for 900 hundred years. When the spanish sacked the city and murdered the last Inca King they then tore down all the amazing stones they could figure out how to move and constructed the cathedral on top of the ancient temple's, often literally using the old foundations. (Why not right. The massive mortarless stones obviously weren't going anywhere)This was done all throughout the empire and was meant to be a psychological move. "We not only have subdued you savage's but we've replace your temple's with our's. Our way of life even our religion is now totally forced upon you. So there!"

The McDonald's pictured is directly across the main plaza from the Catedral (pictured). The military parade in the photo takes place each Sunday morning. I made the mistake of standing on the nice green grass to snap a picture and then i was whistled at by an angry Peruvian. Like in most other countries besides the State's, grass is for looking at, not sitting or walking on! Shame on me. Felt very much the dumb gringo, with my two back packs on and my camera around my neck.

Last night i finished reading a book i'd started in Rio. "Richer by Asia" by Edmond Taylor. Published in 1947, it is the nonfiction account of his 28 months in wartime Asia, mainly in India and the a bit in Burma, working for the OSS studying how people think, and how to help the British-US allied force there get along and focus on the job of defeating Japan. In the book though, he mainly shares how the 2 years there changed his thinking of the East. After realizing he knew next to nothing about their religions and ways of life, which were then and even more now accounting for more than half the planets population, he began studying Hinduism and Buddhism and finally realized that if ever there was to be a united world, One World as he calls it, then the west would have to come to an understanding and appreciation of a number of the East's so called 'backwards' ways.

It was a fascinating read, especially as it was happening in an incredibly tumultuos period in world history, on the cusp of the violence and chaos of British withdrawal and Indian Partition, the rise of Ghandi's leadership and cultural revolution, the dropping of the first nuclear bombs, america's wrestling with the physical, spiritual/moral fallout from what could be basically considered mass murder on the scale of even our sworn enemies the Nazi's. It made me realize how much i really dont know about even US history, not to mention world history (for instance, i'd never even heard of the OSS).

I better go now. time to unpeel my eye's from my computer screen and say hello to the real world.

Happy Labor Day to all my friends back home,

Cheers!

Nick