Canta

After curing my scabies, I set off with two Norwegians and one of their Peruvian girlfriend´s into the foothills of the Andes. Being many days (weeks?) past I´m not going to try and accurately recount the beauty there-in other than summarize...being amongst the nubby foothills of the Andes was truly breathtaking (whereas the bus ride there was more of a white-knuckle horror). There was a lot of hiking, some rather uninspiring horseback riding, extremely inexpensive tamale eating, and a lot of card playing. We spent some time wondering around the village, called Canta, that looked like what happens when a place is featured for one year and one year only in the "Lonely Planets Guide to Peru"...a near ghost-town dominated by crumbling, vacant guest-houses boasting, or perhaps haunted by, tales of a flourishing tourist past. It was vastly interesting if not a little depressing. Remaining locals traditionally farmed alfalfa in magnificent tiers up the sides of the mountains and were regularly seen sporting many varieties of the flamboyant, over-sized hats commonly seen in any photo shoot of South America. We managed to find the world most unplayable pool table in Canta´s only "sports bar", which was a decrepit, fluorescent green, one-room wonder with an exposed urinal on one wall and tables full of gambling townies (all men) on the other.

It was a glorious jaunt...tantalizing the senses for the Andes in full effect. The conditions for photos were pretty smug given the rainy season´s constant haze...but check out this amazing roofing job on the building show here!