Matt and his friends decided to go up to the ruins today – via the alternate route that we successfully took before.

I think Turistico Control is onto us local extended-stay visitors to Pisac because Matt and his friends came home unexpectedly early. They were stopped about halfway up the mountain by a ranger with a walkie-talkie who asked them for their tickets. Matt pretended like he didn’t speak Spanish and they simply turned around after repeated questioning by the security officer and came home.

They said they thought it was strange that as they hopped over the Royal Inka’s fence that some Peruvian kids in a car going by on the road screamed, “Busted!!“

I’ve grown to love three sole menu places. And the best part is – they´re yummy and entertaining . . .

Because of past stomach problems, I was very picky about where and what I ate when I first arrived in Peru. I only frequented fancier, more expensive (between 5-10USD) gringo places, where they wash their vegetables with purified water. Then I realized I was missing an important piece of the genuine Peruvian experience. All local people eat from the numerous street vendors and three sole places (1USD). Sometimes the local ex-pats look at me funny when I tell them that I eat at the three sole places all the time. With some common sense and an adventurous outlook it’s completely safe, quite satisfying and even fun to frequent the “menu places.”

Remember that the local water and cleanliness standards are different than the tight restaurant codes of the Western world. Don’t go to these places if the sight of dirty walls, floors or light switches seem scary or offensive. It’s great to embrace local ways, but be a wary consumer. Local people are accustomed to bacteria in the unboiled water of their area, while you may not be. Make sure your food is always served on a dry plate. It’s not uncommon for food to be served on wet, but clean, plates. The problem for gringos is that a wet plate could contain potentially irritating bacteria. These bacteria die without the presence of water. Request a dry plate in a pleasant manner and most of the time the proprietor will be happy to oblige.

Menu places prepare one meal a day. There’s no choice to make, just walk in and you get whatever it is they’ve cooked. The first course of every menu place is a giant bowl of delicious broth-based soup that usually contains a lot of rice or pasta. I call it ‘parts is parts’ soup because most of the time there is at least one piece of something I pick out and save for the dogs – liver, gizzard, chicken foot or the occasional slice of intestine.

Normally there are two choices of meat for the next course, or segundo. The economical portions of the segundo keep the meal affordable. The meat portion is about half the size of a standard American portion, but after the giant bowl of soup, the smaller size is perfect. The meat always sits on a giant mound of rice and comes with a sauce or vegetables of some kind. Its safest to assume that raw vegetable garnishes or salads at a menu place have probably only been washed in unpurified water, so it’s best not to eat them.

Menus often come with extras, too. Desert often is a tiny bowl of warm pineapple or grape-flavored sauce, which I usually skip. Refrescos (kool-aid like drinks) and gelatins are also best avoided, because of the risk of being made from water that’s never been boiled. Sometimes sole menus come with a mug of pre-sweetened hot tea, which I always drink even though usually it’s more sugary than I would prefer.

The best part about a menu place is the atmosphere. Most of the time there are no other gringos around, which can be fun. Menu places are where I get my regular dose of Latin television. The Latin version of “Married With Children” is hilarious. And La Hija Del Mariachi is my favorite evening soap opera – it’s so engaging. Last week the mariachi and his friends got into a giant fistfight with some frat guys. (Of course the mariachis won!)

I am really excited as a US citizen that we are finally acquiring a new administration.

Do I think our problems as a country or as a society or as a . . . ahem . . . global village will be instantaneously eradicated? No.

My outlook on politics is generally fairly dismal. I really do believe that Obama will try as best he can to ‘fix things,’ but his hands are really kind of tied in many ways – first of all, the prior administration did everything possible to make ‘change’ really difficult. Secondly, the bigger problem is that Americans as a whole, I believe, are not truly ready to embrace the kind of change that needs to happen to make any difference anyway. Most of us are just still too comfortable and quite frankly, still very much asleep as far as some gigantic problems are concerned – problems that could very well inhibit our very existence.

Until we wake up and demand true change, status quo will continue it’s relentless march onward, simply re-naming itself on many levels as ‘change.’ We must not forget the power that we have as a people. We showed that power for the first time during the election. In droves, in communities, together as a force, we asked for something different – and we got it with a resounding ‘Yes, we can!’ But it’s imperative that we keep demanding – together – in a determined manner for exactly what we want. Otherwise we will keep allowing those politicians to silently stuff their pockets in the name of change while the planetary conditions continue to deteriorate.

As I said before, in the past, it’s been quite easy for me to fall into the media-made machine of fear and spiral down into realms of hopelessness when I think of things like Monsanto, factory farming, society’s mass acceptance of debt, war and the destruction of our living planet earth, which is the very organism that sustains us. So, I’m not gonna go there and begin harping on all of those depressing things today.

Today, I’m just another human being on this great big planet, walking down a muddy dirt road. I’m surrounded  by mamacitas on the street, selling plates of rice and vegetables for US 0.75 cents to passerby. There’s a guy on a bicycle with a home-made platform attached to the front. The wooden platform is overflowing with grapes and electrical equipment. He’s holding a microphone to his mouth. The loudspeaker blares his words, “Uvas! ‘Migas, uvas! Uvas!” Grapes, friends, grapes!

It may seem as though I’m ignoring this great day in history, but it’s the opposite. I’m acutely aware of the transition that’s happening today in my home country. I’m staying far, far away from media and television and internet new sites today. I’m instead focusing on this beautiful moment unfolding in front of me, because really, that’s all I’ve got. And whether you are awake or still dreaming the defunct American dream, that’s all you’ve really got too.

Be aware. Be not one of the cogs in the purposefully generated machine of fear. Wake up. Start really noticing these moments that are all around. Listen to your little voice that whispers inside. That loud one on the outside is doing nothing but propagating fear – exactly what is not needed.

And slowly, slowly, one by one as we wake from the collective nightmare, we can realize our power. Then and only then can true and lasting change transform this crazy world into a better place. Join me in the NEW dream where corporations don’t own the rights to life itself, where the world monetary system will not burden our children’s children, a place where genocide is dead and a time when our planet, our mother who sustains us, is healthy again.

Yes, we truly can – dream a new collective dream, that is.

Daily the “Daime Propina” kids continue their ritual of asking us for a tip while their pants are down around their ankles. Matt had a couple of friends in town visiting for a few weeks. One of them, our friend Hardy, pulled out a two sole coin one day and said, “Today when he jumps out and shakes his thing at me, I’m gonna tell him to come and get his tip.”

But that day was different. As we walked by, we didn’t see the children anywhere at first. Then, we saw the little one, fully clothed, hiding in the bushes, watching us as though he did not want to be seen. Although his eyes were dry, he looked like he’d been crying for quite some time. He saw us and didn’t say a word, not even the customary scream of  “Hola!” He just looked at us with a tear-streaked face and great big eyes.

“Aww,” Hardy said. “He looks really sad.”

And ever since that day, they’ve never spoken the word ‘propina’ again.

There’s a bend in the dirt road that leads to our house, right at the point where a mostly clear little fast-rushing mountain stream merges with the Urubamba River. In this crux where the two rivers meet sits a little mud brick house. Almost all the buildings in Peru are constructed of mud brick, mine included, but this one is a bit more primitive. There are no windows, just flour sacks covering the space where glass might normally be and they have no electricity and most likely no running water. The most modern feature of the place is a wooden front door with a padlock.

The family who lives there raises pigs. They have two cute little boys, who are always smeared with grime. One is about five and the other might be two and can barely talk; I sometimes see him still with a pacifier in his mouth. Both of the kids run around all the time unsupervised. This is normal in Peru, and honestly, I think it’s actually really great that kids are able to roam free in nature and play in this country without the need for constant monitoring. So, these two little kids are always running around in the dirt, playing in the rivers, hiding in the bushes and grasses along the road and sometimes it’s their job to chase down errant pigs. I even see the little one sometimes with a stick, herding pigs bigger than he is back home from their daily grazing.

These kids wear the same clothes every day. The little one can’t seem to keep his pants around his waist; they are always falling down. In fact, a lot of the time, these kids wear no clothing at all. It’s not uncommon to see them running around naked. Even if the kids are nowhere to be seen, they seem to know exactly when we are walking by. They will suddenly pop out from behind a bush, or open the corrugated metal door of the adjacent family pigpen and stick their heads out and scream, “Hola!”

“Hola!” we reply.

“Ho-o-ola!” the little one will yell again.

“Hola!” we reply again.

Then the little one, barely even to say the words properly, began to say something quite perplexing and at first, kind of annoying and even slightly alarming. “Daime propina!” he yelled one day as we walked past.

Daime propina?!  Did I really hear that correctly?

“Did he really just say, ‘Give me a tip?!’” I asked Matt.

We ignored him. But after that first day, he and his older brother too, began to say it every single day as we walked past, whether they were clothed or not. Some days when they are naked down by the river, they will shake their little ding-dongs at us and scream it – “Daime propina!”

We’ve learned to laugh only in private as we don’t want to encourage them. We’ve run the gamut of emotions about this whole phenomenon. At first, we were really annoyed, but now, we’ve learned to just accept it and walk on.

Matt and I and some friends recently made it up to the Pisac Ruins by an alternative – and free – route.

First, I must say that I don’t necessarily think that sneaking into any Peruvian ruins without paying is honorable. However, as I am living here for at least four months, I do believe that paying once is fair and then occasionally going again without paying is fine. That is because I am living here, connecting with the people here and spending my money here.

The last time I was in Peru, in 2005, I visited the Pisac ruins. And I learned then that they are very serious about tourists paying for the priveledge to view the ruins. A friend told me the price for visiting the ruins and said, “Make sure you don’t pay more than that – sometimes they try to gouge tourists at the control center.” So, when I got to the control center and the lady at the gate in the road quoted me a much higher price, I refused to pay it and proceeded to try to walk past the gate and on up the road to the mountain.

She didn’t like that very much. She put the arm of the gate down and called security. Then she and I got into a bit of a screaming match over the price. Thankfully, a taxi driver I knew from Cusco just happened to pull up right then and he helped straighten out the ‘misunderstanding.’ It was explained to me that my friend must be wrong and that her price was the correct one. I paid it and went on. That was then . . .

So, this time, when my friends suggested an alternate route, I was skeptical, but willing to go for it anyway. We walked toward the Royal Inka and found the path at the bottom of the mountain – and climbed straight up for about an hour and a half. We had to stop quite alot. The altitude here (9,800 feet) can really kick one’s ass. My friends were concerned that I might pass out and fall off the mountain at one point because they said my cheeks were ‘bright, bright red.’

We finally made it up and enjoyed a day at the top of the mountain, checking out the ruins. I was surprised that we didn’t get caught, to be honest.

Disposing of garbage here in Pisac is a unique experience in observation and an opportunity to learn that refuse doesn’t just magically disappear. There is no faraway, out of sight and out of mind dump. We’re all on our own in this matter as there is no garbage man. To have to deal on my own with every bit of waste that’s generated in our household is a humbling and ultimately, a very mindful, experience.

Surprisingly, it’s really not that difficult, nor time consuming to deal with the trash – it just means cultivating some new habits. First, realize that every single little item that we bring into the house eventually must leave by our own hands in the most efficient and sustainable method possible – that includes dish sponges, plastic bags, containers of all types, kitchen scraps and used toilet paper.

Our trash area, not including the bathrooms, is separated into three small buckets. We don’t have the need to purchase trash bags because we simply use the multitude of plastic bags we acquire from daily living. We do try to carry groceries home in our backpacks and elect to not carry things in bags whenever possible. Most of the time I remember to carry a little Tupperware container when dining out for after dinner scraps and to-go food. We try to be mindful and use as few plastic bottles as possible. Glass bottles are either recyclable or in some cases, you leave a deposit for them at the store and when you  bring the bottle back, the store gives your deposit back and returns the bottle to the factory. That’s how it was when I was a kid in the states, too bad it’s no longer that way.

We separate our waste as it’s generated into a compost bucket, a paper bucket and a tiny trash bin in the kitchen. Leftovers, bones and meat we don’t eat is saved for the dogs. Every bathroom in our house as well as the rest of Peru has another tiny trash bin. The sewer systems here cannot handle paper; you must put all used paper in the trash bin.

The rest is pretty easy. There’s a hole in the backyard for the compost. I know there is an art to composting – that oil, spoiled dairy products and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting about isn’t supposed to go in the compost hole, but we really don’t worry about that out here. Nature takes care of all that – there are numerous dogs who continually visit and clean out much of what goes into the hole. The paper gets burned either as kindling in the fireplace or the outdoor fire pit.

We keep a three liter plastic bottle in the kitchen with a wooden stick next to it. We press small, clean plastic bags into the large bottle with the stick. (We learned through trial and error that dirty plastic bags will turn the bottle into a moldy maggot factory.) Once the bottle is full and solid with compressed bags, we put the cap back on and give it to a local builder who will use it as building material. Anything else that is leftover that cannot be disposed of in any of the aforementioned ways goes in the tiny trash bin. Once a week, along with our ‘doody-paper’ trash, we bundle it all up and take it down to the dump. The dump itself is an eye-opening experience.

The Pisac dump is located on the river and adjacent riverbank, just beyond our line of sight behind the curve of the nearest mountain, only about 1/4 of a kilometer past our house. The free-roaming pigs love it! There are always about ten of them happily rooting around. The wind whips up the scattered trash and carries plastic bags up to the vegetation in the mountain and the surrounding fences, where they get stuck. I was completely disgusted the first time my friend Jeff took me to the dump.

“The plastic bags!” I said, horrified, wanting to cry.

“Ah,” Jeff sighed. “I’ve learned to view them as infinite little prayer flags, whipping around in the wind.”

So, that’s what I do.

The Urubamba River is wide and fast as it runs alongside the dirt road to my house. This river is sacred to the people of Peru. It flows from Cusco, through the village of Pisac, onward past Machu Picchu and eventually to the Amazon and then ultimately to the Atlantic Ocean.

This river is sacred because of it’s life-sustaining power to the people of this region. Glaciers from the surrounding mountains drain into it, feeding it’s swift flow. This is the source of water for Cusco and the entire Sacred Valley. It irrigates the crops and nourishes the people and animals who live here. Quite literally, without this river, there would be no life, no valley and no crops here.

This river over the years has also become the basis for the sanitation system of the area – the place where people go to dump their garbage. It’s shores are lined with plastic bottles, ripped up bags of garbage and Styrofoam. It’s not uncommon to see plastic buckets or soccer balls rushing past at a faster clip than a human’s pace. Depending on the day or the amount of rainfall, the river’s color may be anywhere from light brown to army green.

One day, Javier and I were walking home and I looked sadly at the river and said with disgust, “Hrmpf. The sacred river isn’t so sacred anymore. It’s so polluted.”

“Anna,” Javier replied, “you must not judge the river, either.”

He and I had been talking about the power of letting go of all judgements. At first, I really didn’t understand his comment. Then, I began to realize that while the state of the river may very well be alarming, that my judgement of it is not helpful in any way. Judging something does not make it better, it just condemns, which only adds to the problem.

The work crew shows up six days a week just after the crack of dawn. There’s a lot of work to be done – refinishing the adobe on the house, constructing a network of stone pathways and building raised flowerbeds and a gazebo. Like any construction site, it can get noisy. Most of the noise around here comes from the workers as they break, by hand,  giant rocks that are about the size of car tires into the more useful size approximating that of a dinner plate.

They used to start early. Very early. Too freaking early. That is, until one day, when a bleary-eyed Javier went outside around 7 AM, clad in only his underwear and said in the kindest way possible to the work crew, “Please don’t break rocks until at least 8 o’clock in the morning . . .”

. . and bowel movements in general while traveling in Latin America, or for that matter, any country that is foreign to the body. It seems as though when traveling in a foreign country, a lot of the talk begins to center around bowel movements . . . and for good reason.
A foreign place has foreign bacteria and when the body encounters it, often the result is traveler’s diarrhea, or what the medical establishment has within the past few years began to label as “TD.” I read an article that was tacked up on the bulletin board of the local café here in Pisac that talks about using antibiotics to cure TD. Oh the dreaded TD!

Well, I did get some TD my first few days here while I was getting used to the altitude and the food and the water. I took precautions such as only using boiled, filtered water and using safe and proper food preparation methods. I didn’t eat any raw food. I peeled my own fruits, etc, but I still got the dreaded TD. Altitude can cause it. Bacteria can cause it. And eating differently can cause it – for example, the typical American diet is full of preservatives and chemicals, which aren’t as common in other countries. When your body encounters something different than what it is accustomed to, then it’s going to react, and often the reaction is noticeable in it’s excrement.

I’m going to go ahead and say it, even at risk of offending some – TD, like shit, happens. Did I take antibiotics for it? No. Hell no. Did my stomach cramp up? Yes. Was it uncomfortable? Very. But, to take an antibiotic when your own body can stave off the intruder on it’s own, is, in my belief, very dangerous. The over-prescription of antibiotics by the Western medical establishment is well documented and  is becoming an epidemic that is becoming harder and harder to overcome.

So, if you encounter TD out there in the big, wide world, all that will happen is that your stomach will be in an uproar and you’ll shit rice water for a couple of days. Big deal. A helpful remedy, and a supplement that should be in any traveler’s pack, is a bottle of charcoal tablets. Charcoal will suck up the bad stuff in the gut and help the body get rid of it quickly. Avoid alcohol, dairy products and refined foods. Drink plenty of water, with a little sugar and salt added to help balance your electrolytes. Get some rest. You’ll be feeling fine in about a day and will bounce back more quickly too.

The problem is that Western medicine wants to sell some drugs. And frankly, most Westerners have been bred to want the quick fix that the drug companies have made so readily available through unscrupulous doctors, who get kickbacks from the drug companies and through the media who’ll gladly take their money for advertisements on your TV. But, what the drug companies and the unscrupulous doctors won’t tell you is that there are repercussions to these quick fixes – like throwing the delicate balance of your body off-kilter, encouraging the growth of super-bacteria that are immune to antibiotics and weakening your own body’s very capable immune defenses.

If you do get TD it’s usually gone in three days. Be worried if it is accompanied with bloody stools, if your extremities become numb or if the symptoms last 10 or more days. In any of those cases, then you should absolutely seek the help of doctors and antibiotics, because whatever is inside of you is growing and not going to go away easily on it’s own. I’ve endured that before, and while I never want to have another creepy crawly growing inside of me, I certainly am not scared of a little TD.