I spent Monday and Sunday with Kalen, an American girl who lives at my place, at Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu.



An impressive place, hidden between mountains and jungle. We left at six in the morning to see the ancient empire surface from the veil of morning mist, an abandoned kingdom in the middle of nowhere...



Relaxing in the sun...



Our guide at Machu Picchu, repeating the omnipresent phrase: La hoja de coca no es droga! He also gave us coca leaves to try. They actually taste quite good, just as the tea I have exchanged my coffee addiction for.

My best moment of the weekend, however, had nothing to do with Machu Picchu itself. Kalen and I went to a bar in Aguas Calientes Saturday night, where we run into a Bolivian-American and a Peruvian guy. As the four of us were pretty much the only guests, we eventually started talking and playing darts. While the Bolivian-American tried to impress Kalen with his near-native English, I had my first real non-smalltalk Peruvian conversation with Ramon, who luckily did not speak any English. [I am able to have a conversation going beyond weather or buying groceries in Spanish (well, in presumably bad Spanish, but!!)] Ramon studies history and photography in Cusco, and he told me about how he loves to walk through the city with an old manual camera, trying to catch little moments which matter to someone. He told me about the one rainy day he saw a corpse on the sidewalk, and a woman kneeing before it, crying. About how he came closer, careful not to attract attention, took his black and white picture, and left unseen.