Chachapoya Countryside [Peru]

As one rides by in a car, visits a house or two on foot, a few shops in the villages and towns of the Amazonas, whole families walk by with mules and cows, along the roads to these locations: farmers on battered dusty carts, wagons with wooden wheels; no clocks in the city squares, some houses have no glass windows, nor screens: everything’s bare; some horses with no saddles, just a blanket; ploughs-gear old as the houses, a century or two. You can tell by their faces: their ancestors lived here for a thousand years, perhaps still walk the ground far and near. At the end of the road, or the road leading in (at the other end) of each town it seems to have chickens and dogs running around, laying down in the dust for coolness; mules stray.

Here in the Amazonas you wear long rubber boots for mud is unavoidable; women wear derby hats; landslides are like muck pies, thick and troublesome: everywhere, gangs of workmen cut through them: shovel-by-shovel: it’s another world.


Note: #1328 [4/23/06], Lima, Peru, Written at the Author’s home in the evening.