Coming back to Cusco is a bit like returning to see a well known play, the setting is the same and so are the main characters, but some of the cast has changed and the crowd scenes are played by ever changing troupes of travelling players that always contain the same stock characters. There are serious Hikers with sturdy boots, walking poles and large rucksacks. ´Lads´in Bermuda shorts and Heavy Metal Band T shirts, people who look as if they never stopped travelling since the Hippie Trail, or Glastonbury Festival. It´s a wonderful show.
I watch from a window seat of my favourite coffee shop. Life unfolds around me. Sitting propped against a pillar nearby a woman is knitting something on 4 needles. It has a complicated pattern and she knits tirelessly without seeming to glance at her work as it slowly lengthens, round by round. Propped against the church wall a very old man in ragged poncho plays the flute and hopes for the odd coin. His wife sits beside him and the grandchildren they are watching run and play around them. People come and go on the benches opposite -- a man sits to read a newspaper, a girl waits for her boyfriend, a woman stops to tidy her daughter´s hair -- and so it goes on and I am surprised at how much time I have spent simply watching the show.
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