We came from the sacred mountain,
squat on rocks and staring at clouds
boundless, and the Old Mountain hosting
a thousand specks with fifty dollar tickets
gushing at roofless temples
and waterless fountains-
We came from Canada
for novelty passport stamps,
for Inca-trail t-shirts-
climbed for the thoughtless
vertigo of fatigue- and maybe,
in those giddy seconds,
for an unpeopled moment when only
green and white and quietude abounded.
...
Tax on our boarding passes paid; all Puno buses preparing to leave. Through the departure door and gate we pass and settle outside amongst other backpackers, leaning our bags against a concrete pillar. Stray dogs are sleeping on the tarmac warmed by recent engines. When the space is filled they move to an absent one, slinking, with the precision and nonchalance of lifetimes on the streets, impervious to the shouts or rocks hurled by locals, nonchalant between man and machine and other tired dogs. The night is cloudless and cool. I wear a cardigan I bought at an inflated price from one of the selfsame Cusco artesanos, holding her from behind because she refuses to haggle out of anxiety and so remains in none but my long-sleeve thermal and an old leather jacket. Nearby a couple from Spain talk to a couple from Russia in English while a Japanese girl listens tacitly from the shadows.
Luxurious coaches come and go in legions. But ours does not come. Perturbed, we look at the boarding passes given us in haste by a woman who at the time of issue was on the phone and trying to Pacify a furious Peruano man of perhaps eighty years. Not only do they indicate a change in bus company, but also that we have both paid 15 soles less for the seats. Moreover, stapled to the back is another boarding pass, for Copacabana, Bolivia, that we did not purchase. And when at last a big, battered bus bearing the name on our tickets, Libertad, pulls into a different gate than we had been advised, with a cardboard Puno on its massive dash, we have no choice but to get on.
The air vents do not work and the windows have been locked shut- normally trifling problems, except for the small puddle of motor oil by my feet. Impossible to complain now though; locals have made their dash to the dilapidated second storey and shoved their huge colourful bags of goods into the cargo hold. I say a quiet curse to the bus company and feel stupid for having been duped. In context, however, things are not so bad. Splendour or squalour we are on our way. My immense fatigue should permit me some sleep, no matter how high I become in the process. And all the Peruanos, so quick to start snoring around us, are comfort enough that this ramshackle coach will go where we need it to go and that we will see our bags on the other side.
...
But some places, as a consequence of our own state of mind upon entering them, unwittingly, innocently acquire what we like to term bad energy, a bad vibe. This trait is almost always terminal; it cannot be reversed and will ultimately effect a judgment of an entire city or even country based on nothing but our caprices. And, excepting those few to whom a genuine misfortune occurs somewhere that forever associates the name of that place with a set of memories they would rather forget, it is usually the case that when somebody says I dont like that neighbourhood, they will point to dubious, ineffable flaws; strange people, weird energy, bad vibe.
Strange people? Obviously an assertion belonging to the sphere of pure subjectivism. Let that same person make a second judgment after receiving one small act of good faith or kindness in the area where such strange people live: watch how his opinion shifts. The opposite is, of course, true as well. But caprice and misunderstanding - combined with our so often being too quick to judge - can virtually turn paradise into hell.
Other factors, most of them subjective as well, also come into play. Do we find the place physically appealing, beautiful to the eye? Do we like the style of its architecture, the layout of its streets? Are there too many or too few green wedges? What does it smell like? What, broadly, is the ethos on display, and does it comport with our own?
Puno is on the receiving end of some bad press and a hostel too far from the bus station and a fight her and I have in the central market and its unscupulous treatment of the Lake Titicaca foreshore. In spite of its upsides - for there are surely some - it is forever cast in our minds as a place with no touristic appeal, a place as daark as the clouds gathering in the hills behind it on our first afternoon, which, although they soon lighten, turn to that wet season blanket of white that swathes the sky and consigns a whole population to the indoors. Empty streets turned to red mud slicks. Lake stripped of all its beauty. And cow skulls in pothole puddles by the roadside. We leave for Bolivia the next morning.
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