They go so far as to leap into pictures to which they were not invited. I finally broke down and joined three ladies in a photo op, primarily because I so deeply wanted to cuddle the miniature mammal. Asked the woman on my left whether this was a llama or an alpaca and she replied that it was an alpaca.
She lied.
I learned later that these women carry sheep with them which they pass off as llamas or alpacas to clueless tourists like me who can't tell the difference. Llamas are born too big to carry around, and they refuse to hang limply and let themselves be handled like lambs. Luckily the sheep are completely adorable so I bear no ill will for those scheming, lying ladies.
To escape the constant barrage of sales pitches, we took a walk up to the artsy neighborhood of San Blas, which towers over the city with winding roads and an over-population of while folks with dreadlocks. The views were very nice.
Later, we encountered a school's parade in the honor of Santa Rosa de Lima, whose sanctity is evidenced by such behaviors as cutting her hair and becoming vegetarian. She also helped a great many people, but I find the fact that vegetarianism was considered a punishment a bit off. Being a vegetarian is fun! Unless you really like to eat ribs and bacon, I guess.
A tour took us to Inca ruins outside of Cuzco, which are watched over by a giant Christ sculpture we were informed was a gift to Cuzco from the Palestinian people. Why, exactly, the Palestinian people felt compelled to give Cuzco a giant image of Jesus was never convincingly explained, especially in light of the fact that the most prominent "middle eastern" presence in the city was not Palestinian but Israeli.
There are five restaurants in a row with menus in Hebrew, and across the city random establishments, such as a laundromat near our hotel, feature at least a little of the language on their signs. When I asked the driver of our day trip to the Sacred Valley whether there were a lot of Israelis in town, we got into a nice little discussion about how to say "Jewish" in Spanish, and how that adjective is different from "Israeli."
Then my mother asked the same question of our guide, who spoke perfect English, and we were treated to a nearly ten-minute rant about how awful Israeli tourists are. The worst experience of this guide's life, according to his tirade, was when he had the misfortune to lead a group of Israelis on the Inca trail. Apparently they complained constantly and were very cheap and kept getting things caught on their big, honking noses.
Okay, so I made up that last bit, but that was just about the gist of his speech, the moral of which was something along the lines of: Israelis = bad, Palestinians = good. We dropped the subject after that, and silently enjoyed views like this one, of the sacred valley.
Ollantaytambo is in the Sacred Valley and is very fun to say. This is a lovely little town whose hillsides are spotted with ruins of Inca buildings.
After climbing a great many steps, we visited an altar and learned that the huge stones which make up Inca buildings were not flat in side but were, in fact, perfectly fitted together like Lego's.
This is also true of Machupicchu, where the llamas roam free. The purpose of grazing llamas at this historical site? Tourists like to take pictures of them. In fact, our entire tour consisted of our guide insisting that we pose for various "Classical Pictures" on or near terrifying precipices.
We saw a chinchilla sunning itself. He was so inured to the presence of marauding tourists that he didn't flinch when I photographed him from up close. 
Here is a Classical Picture. Some people climb that towering mountain. I was satisfied just to look at it from the safety of its base and to thus not tumble, screaming, to my death.
Terraces are intended to grow orchids and llama fodder.
Here is a Classical Photograph through a doorway. We had to wait our turn to casually pose here.
Is this picture perhaps a little less Classical than the previous? I can't tell.
The most Classical of all. Peace.
A visit to Macchupichu now under our collective belt, we headed off to Puno, which city abuts the most entertainingly named lake of them all - Titicaca. We took a tourist bus which drove over high mountainous peaks and forced us to visit various important and boring sites. Halfway between the cities, we visited the highest point of our tour, at which road-side even the coat-wearing llamas were chilly.
The most exciting event occurred when our bus blew out one of its back tires and the driver was forced to change the tire in the middle of a two-lane freeway. Several of the men on the bus banded together to help the driver since the entire process proved very difficult (those tires are BIG), and we were on the road again soon enough, managing to make it to Puno only 30 minutes late!
Our tour of Lake Titicaca took us on a real boat (not Donald Duck paddle boat, unfortunately) to a series of reed islands and then to a real island made of real rocks.
Reed islands are just what they sound like - the people who live there take hunks of reeds and pile them on top of each other until they have created enough surface to build several small huts to house their rabbits and themselves. The reeds make for a spongy and disorienting surface upon which it feels necessary to take giant steps and to raise the knees as high as possible. It turns out that this is not in fact required for locomotion, but it was fun to do anyway.
The Uros people have lived on reed islands for hundreds of years (before the coming of the Inca), but not on the same islands - each platform lasts only about a decade and then the intrepid residents are forced to build a new one. I was invited into this woman's house, which was just large enough to hold one big bed. The bed, like the walls and floor, was made of reeds. And the baby with the adorably fat cheeks? His name is Frank.
After half an hour or so on the island during which we were given a demonstration of how the islands are made, were invited to eat the white tips of the reeds (tasted like lake) and then were pressed to purchase handicrafts, my mother and I agreed to take a ride on a reed boat to a neighboring island. To celebrate our trip, three women of the island serenaded us in Amara and Spanish, and then crooned "Hasta la vista, baby!"
Hasta la vista to you, Frank.
The real island is called Taquile. Less than 2000 people live there, and they speak, Quecha. They dress in what our guide called "traditional" clothing which is color coded to signify the wearer's marital status. This is more obvious for men - married men wear a red and white floppy hat, unmarried men wear only red. Women wear black blankets on their heads.
Two little girls were selling bracelets in the town square and they made quite a killing at it - I bought two myself. I then examined the arrow-laden sculpture which indicates in what direction Cairo can be found. I then discovered that Jerusalem was indicated in an opposite direction so I suppose I'd be ill-advised to set my compass to this particular decorative item.
Outside of Puno, we visited a small village whose claim to fame may very well be that it was the location of the most boring tour I have ever experienced. We saw many important items, such as walls and trenches. Vaguely more interesting: this road leads to Bolivia. Apparenly there is drug smuggling between the two countries, but since the smuggling was described as going both ways my mother, for one, was rather confused as to what exactly was the the point.
Later we encountered a science fair in downtown Puno, hosted by several local military schools. We enjoyed the students' descriptions of their displays, even though we didn't really understand them, and I ate jello. True to all science fairs everywhere, there were three volcanos on display.
Our last trip in Puno took us to a site adorned with burial towers. I did not photograph the burial towers because they looked to me like slightly rounded piles of rocks, but our guide assured us that they were in fact on par with the Taj Mahal. More impressive was the lake with its plateau-shaped island. This lake is in fact at a higher elevation than Titicaca, but it is smaller. Lake Titicaca is not, in fact, the world's highest lake. It is rather the biggest highest lake, or the highest biggest lake, or maybe both.
On the way to the airport, we stopped by a small house where our hostess allowed us to pose with her alpacas. The brown alpaca kept up a steady moan-like noise which was explained as his missing his mother. We were then ushered inside and it was here that I ate clay.
The hostess brought out a veritble smorgasboard of local delicacies, such as corn and potatoes and more potatoes, and we were invited to taste. Next to the potatoes was a bowl of suspicious looking material which, I was informed, was the sauce. What is this sauce made of? I wondered. You have probably already guessed - it was made of clay. And what is clay if not dirt. Wet dirt.
It was pretty tasty wet dirt, I must say, but I prefer jello any day.
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