A rocky return and a reconciliation

At last it was time to say goodbye to La Víspera and Samaipata and return to the big city.

I woke early and climbed back up to El Trono to try to take more panoramic photos. I’ll have to stitch those together when I get back to St. Louis.

We ate the rest of our bread, cleaned up the cabin, and prepared to get a taxi.

The thing with taxis is that no matter how clearly you explain that you want something, such as an express taxi straight to Santa Cruz with no stops to pick up passengers, the drivers always seem to be unaware of the arrangement you made in the phone. One side of me thinks this is innocent; another side can’t shake the feeling it’s a ploy to charge higher fares, since it’s happened to us three times so far.

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We walked 10 miles

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We had a great sleep in our little cabin/suite, called “La Sweet” at La Víspera.

Early in the morning before anyone else was stirring, I went to the café to see if I could connect to the Internet. La Víspera offers WiFi, but it is glacially slow. There is even a sign which asks guests not to watch YouTube or download videos. Given that it often took as much as ten minutes to check my email or refresh Facebook notifications, I’m not sure the sign was necessary.

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More pics than you can shake a stick at

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I was able to borrow a USB cable Saturday and worked on our trip photos later in the evening.

I had originally planned to update my previous blog entries with the photos that matched the stories. However it has taken too long to work on these photos (my Pismo PowerBook G3 is getting long in the tooth), so I’m just dumping them all into one big, new blog entry. I hope you enjoy.

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The kettle is whistling

Wednesday I was the first one awake in the morning. I went outside to look at the Traudi grounds, since all had been dark when we arrived the evening before.

Things were pretty much the same as they had been a few years ago when we were here for our friend Corina’s wedding. Jadzia was just a toddler that time.

I talked briefly with one of the worker ladies and asked if there was any breakfast. She said they could make some, and asked for how many. I told her for five, but that my family was still sleeping I thought she told me that when we would come over they would prepare something.

Anyway, after a while I got everyone up and we began to get dressed and what not. I asked Yoli to check with those ladies to make sure everything was kosher.

As it turned out, the breakfast was going to be pricey — and it was already set out for us. Oops.

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The road to Samaipata goes ever on

To follow up on our posting about Monday, we had a really fun time at Yoli’s parents’ house. We visited with three of Yoli’s sisters and their children. Jadzia and Ludi and Josie played well with their cousins, and Don Hector delighted in showing off his cable television channels to me. Much _mate_ and many little breads were consumed. Yoli also brought some springerle cookies for her family to try.

Tuesday we spent the morning eating breakfast and later Yoli ran some shopping errands while I watched the girls at El Jord{a’}n.

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Winding roads, spectacular mountains, weathered ruins, and coffee

Sunday was by far the most beautiful day I’ve had since I’ve been here.

It started with a shower — a rain shower, mind you. Well, perhaps it would be better described as a torrent. As I sleep with my windows open (to let cool air in), it woke me up around 5 am. It wasn’t the rain the woke me up, really. It was the roar of a cascading waterfall. The rain was coming so hard that the gutter over the roof perpendicular to my building had temporarily failed, and all the water was flowing off of it, down into a brick-border garden below. I was hopeful that the rain would last a while and bring a cool day with it, but then I remembered that this was the day we were going to Samaipata, and we needed good conditions to get there.

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