Llegando dolorasa y cansativamente hasta Cusco...

I got sick just before leaving on my trip to Peru and Bolivia... Xiao Ta was taking care of me, with teas and other chinese medicine, that was wonderful and I miss it now.... I got sick, I think, with the stress of graduate school applications and the impending travel, and wanting to spend time with Xiao Ta, I overlooked the date of my flight, and left a day late! Had to reschedule some flights and dar um jeitinho, and a jeitinho was figured out, and I am now in Cusco. But still with a sore throat, and sometimes a little fever... I flew from Brasilia to Sao Paulo, rested some three hours, flew through Campo Grande, landed in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where I went to a hotel (thanks to Aerosur) for four hours, then continued on a flight to La Paz, then finally, to Cusco.

Arrived tired, but I´ve also been taking (western) medicine, and now lots of mate de coca, and joined a Swiss backpacker named Simon to split a cab to downtown, and finding a hostel. After a light lunch, I briefly visited my tour agency where I booked my visit to Machu Picchu hiking the Inca trail, and came back to the hostel, drank more tea and slept the rest of the day... Only went out again for dinner with Simon, at a balcony overlooking the Plaza de Armas, gorgeous at night, with the rain, sparkling and sprinkling on the broad slabby stones of the square. The city lights also climb up the mountain sides all around. The earth colored buildings that seem so plain at night gain a colonial air in the evening, and the mixture of Inca walls and colonial ´superstructure´ (in both the literal architectonic and more abstract sense) make this a truly wondrous place.

Tomorrow I might visit the Inca museum here in town, and meet with Eliza at the bus station in the afternoon (she flew in through Lima and is currenlty taking a bus over here). Afterwards we will go find a couch on which to surf, she may need food and rest, and we will make our plans for visiting the region. There are many ruins all around, small towns with traditional markets, and many other good things to do and see. Hopefully, my illness will soon pass and I will soon get used to the altitude (we are even higher than Boulder, I am quite sure, perhaps as high as Eldora).

As my mind settles and my body heals, I hope to find here, in the very heart of my continent, a peace which has been lacking and a rooting which has been left hanging while I bounced around Brasilia and sought more education down north again...