Last Sunday was the last day of my six-week adventure in La Paz, Bolivia. Early Sunday morning, two of my friends and I left Bolivia to continue our Latin American adventures in Quito, Ecuador. Since we had an entire week to get to Quito, we stopped in Cusco, Peru in order to visit the famous ruins of Machu Picchu.
We arrived in Cusco around 10 a.m. and, after partaking a cup of the customary coca tea, took a long nap to compensate for celebrating our last night in La Paz by staying out until the wee hours of the morning. We slept most of the day away; in the evening, we walked around the main square (which boasts amazing colonial cathedrals) and had dinner at a pizza shop.
The next day we woke up early in order to buy our entrance tickets to Machu Picchu ($40) and our bus tickets to Quito ($155 for a 3-day bus ride). After accomplishing our mission for the day, we rewarded ourselves with a tour of Cusco city. The tour was bilingual – our guide spoke in Spanish at first and then translated his lecture into English for the tourists who did not speak Castellano (another word for Spanish language). We visited the famous Koricancha in the heart of Cusco – an enormous temple to the Incan Sun God that was converted into a Christian church around the time of the Spanish conquest. Then, we explored the Sacsayhuaman archaeological complex, an Incan fortress that was built from gigantic stones weighing between 90 and 130 tons each. The site was an important ceremonial center of Cusco and is the still the scene of the Inti Raymi, the Incan sun celebration held the 24th of June. We visited several other picturesque places on the tour and headed back to the center of Cusco around 7:00 p.m. Since we had to wake up at 5:00 a.m. the next morning to catch a train to Machu Picchu, we decided to go to bed early.
The next morning, we stuffed our luggage and ourselves into a small cab, and we were off to the train station. As we drove further and further away from the center of Cusco, the impressive colonial architecture changed into broken shacks, which probably had no electricity or running water. Despite the early hour, the outskirts of the city were bustling with activity as indigenous men and women dragged heavy packages to the market. Accustomed to such vistas by a six-week stay in Bolivia, I uninterestedly scanned the graffiti-covered walls and tired people who were going to work. Suddenly, I saw a little boy helping his mother carry the goods to sell in the market; the picture of this incredible poverty hit me in the face as I realized that this kind of life is probably all that this little boy will ever have. From Switzerland to Madagascar, poverty exists in all parts of the world. However, the degree of poverty greatly varies from place to place. For example, the standards of poor in the Latin American countries are not comparable to the standards of poor in the United States or Europe. We can know the facts about the poverty level of a country; however, knowing and realizing are not the same. We can see the poverty out of the window of a warm and comfortable salon of a taxi; however, seeing and believing are not the same. Even though we can change little about the way the world works, we need to realize that many of the things we take for granted are luxuries in other places.
