Cusco and its customers
Like Prague or Paris, Cusco is beautiful in a very unfortunate way.
We learned this little factoid about twenty minutes or so into our week-long stay. Everywhere you turn you're offered massages and/or finger puppets; excursions to Machu Picchu and/or shoe shines. It's really exhausting. And yet, while the amount of solicitation is overwhelming, it’s also completely understandable: look down any one of Cusco's streets and you'll find herded upon its squamous stones anglo-aggregates of safari khaki and convertible pants. They move in droves, with their cameras slung like fruit and their faces bathed in SPF 40. The galaxy that separates the local population from these brigades of travelers-born-again, with their bus fortresses and irrigating capital, is obvious on many levels. And if you're anything like me, you inevitably become self-conscious of your similar-ish appearance to the latter; how such an appearance signifies money and a certain inclination for taking (and maybe paying for) photos of one's Alpaca. Inevitably, you tire of repeating the motto No, gracias, No, gracias and begin to avoid all eye-contact, becoming a devout scholar of the ground as you pass on from one mercantile insurgency to another.
But still, Cusco is beautiful, and no form of empire—neither the Spanish nor Old Navy—could have ever made it otherwise. (Pictures to come)
We learned this little factoid about twenty minutes or so into our week-long stay. Everywhere you turn you're offered massages and/or finger puppets; excursions to Machu Picchu and/or shoe shines. It's really exhausting. And yet, while the amount of solicitation is overwhelming, it’s also completely understandable: look down any one of Cusco's streets and you'll find herded upon its squamous stones anglo-aggregates of safari khaki and convertible pants. They move in droves, with their cameras slung like fruit and their faces bathed in SPF 40. The galaxy that separates the local population from these brigades of travelers-born-again, with their bus fortresses and irrigating capital, is obvious on many levels. And if you're anything like me, you inevitably become self-conscious of your similar-ish appearance to the latter; how such an appearance signifies money and a certain inclination for taking (and maybe paying for) photos of one's Alpaca. Inevitably, you tire of repeating the motto No, gracias, No, gracias and begin to avoid all eye-contact, becoming a devout scholar of the ground as you pass on from one mercantile insurgency to another.
But still, Cusco is beautiful, and no form of empire—neither the Spanish nor Old Navy—could have ever made it otherwise. (Pictures to come)
posted by This is borrowed time at 10:10 AM
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