To Speak of Motorcycles and Carrots

Note: My pictures from Arequipa are up in the last post now.

So… i have finally experienced a little bit more of the area here… and it still feels like there is so much potential for so much photography and for so much learning. i have decided to take that primarily as a good thing.

Thursday marked my return to human existence… which consisted of a 35 minute walk to the internet café on the outskirts of town… and which obviously included a 35 minute walk back from the internet café on the outskirts of town.

But… my time in the internet cafés of the world usually isn’t much to be too longwinded about. i get the necessary emails and facebook messages sent, get my latest update up, groan inside when i realize that i left some needed pictures back at the house, have people who have never met my parents call them (what a fun game!), linger longer than i need to, and leave.

i would be amiss, though, if i neglected to inform you that the local children decided to hold a pick-up game of volleyball in this particular internet café on Thursday afternoon. Oh yes. i kid you not.

Onward, i suppose…

The real fun started shortly after lunch on Friday. Brian Powlison invited me to join him on a motorcycle ride… which i obviously couldn’t turn down. Our first stop was at one of the churches that the Powlisons had recently been involved in building. He stopped to let me look around the area, and i shot off a few pictures. This is Brian and the motorcycle with the church in the background.



We eventually made our way up to a hill with a great view of the surrounding area, but i decided not to post any pictures from that hill because they are somewhat redundant with other material that i have posted.

After returning home, i decided to see what kind of life i could find nearby to take pictures of. Coming to the point where two roads diverged in a dusty village, i wasn’t very sorry that i could not travel both and be one travel, so stood i not long, nor did i bother to look down one very far, for i already knew that it went into Cusco, but took the other… just as fair? Neither of them seemed to be claiming much of anything, and the one that i chose was more of a back street than the other one, which was the main thoroughfare through the area.

That choice made all the difference, though, because after only a short walk i found that a truck had just dumped a huge load of carrots into a dammed off section of the local irrigation canal. Around 10-15 people were wading almost knee-deep in their new orange swamp—rinsing and bagging the carrots was their task.

And so, of course… i shot a few pictures.



Eventually i found my way over to where some young girls were talking. They were… busying themselves with some other form of plant life that i foolishly neglected to ask about. The soft tones of evening shadows made me optimistic about the possibilities of some portraiture, so i tried my hand. This was probably not my most successful result.



Finally, i walked back towards the Powlison’s for the evening… and as i made it back to the road, a local boy was pulling his pony (or otherwise small horse—i claim not to be an equine expert) along the road. i didn’t have long for the picture, so guessed manually at the focus with the lens set at 18mm and shot from the hip. The exposure was difficult, but i thought it made an alright black and white.



And that is where end i now.

So tune up the bagpipes… May is reaching a conclusion!