random things about peru: a row of one's own

in peru they seem to organize their business so that similar businesses are all on the same street.  sure they have this to some extent in new york city: the garment district, wall street, the canal street "crap district," that block on bowery that sells all the lighting fixtures, etc.  but i have never seen anything quite to the extent that i have seen it in peru.

we saw puppy row, which of course had been my favorite.  how can you not like walking around and seeing peddlers selling puppies?  there was also shoe shine row, home repair row, wooden home furnishings row, medical office supply row (then another block with stores selling only dentist chairs).  we have seen mattress row, with numerous mattresses and bed frames for sale.  christian relic row, where you can get all your fancy candles and statues of jesus.  cheap hole-in-the-wall eateries row,  etc, etc.  i guess it makes shopping easier, knowing that if you want to get the best price on frankincense all you have to do is look around on this one block.

but then.  oh then, dear blog readers, then we stumbled upon something very intriguing .... Cake Slice Row.  on ONE BLOCK in cusco there were easily 7 to 10 different bakeries, several of them next door to each other (as the blocks are not very long).  these bakeries not only sold seemingly identical cakes, but also offered the option to buy cake by the slice for take-away.  this is a brilliant concept. 

there were typically 5 or 6 varieties of "to-go" cakes, : apple, chocolate, vanilla, black forest, strawberry, some things we couldn't recognize, etc.  you point to a cake (typically a long "log shaped" cake for easy slicing) and for the equivalent of 50 cents, they sliced off a big hunk-o-cake for you and wrapped it in waxed paper for you to eat while strolling the city streets.  genius.

this is especially useful if you've had a rough day.  for instance, maybe you trekked all the way out of town in hopes of getting a yellow fever vaccination so that you will be allowed to cross the border into bolivia, and then you find out that the clinic you were looking for isn't there because your guidebook wasn't as updated as you thought.  these are the days when we need a slice of yellow cake with dulce de leche frosting for the long defeated walk back into town.  (and we did eventually get our vaccinations, so we will not be spreading the amarillo fiebre around)

the power of ten (and puppy row)

i have a deep dark secret, dear blog readers.  and that secret is that i hate the metric system.  that's right!  i lived in England for 6 months and i refused to learn any part of it.  i pride myself on this.  in fact, one day i was bragging to the bolshevik about how instead of learning what my weight was in kilos, i asked my mother to bring over a scale in pounds.  that's right, i made my mother travel across the pond carrying a non-metric scale.  and i will never forgot my amusement when one of my british flatmates weighed himself and was utterly confused when he found out he weighed 145. he didn't even know what that meant because he was brainwashed by the metric system.

needless to say, the bolshevik thinks i'm a bit stubborn and possibly crazy.  but those are just some of my more lovable quirks!

why am i telling you this?  yesterday when we were exploring the city we found ourselves in an area that most likely isn't for tourists.  first, there was an area dedicated solely (no pun intended) to shoes.  not selling shoes, but stall after stall of various shoe repair shops.  there were even sneaker workers, shining up sneakers.

then, and this was my favorite, there was the area that we now refer to as "puppy row."   it was an entire block of people standing on the street selling puppie.  the gentleman above was even "double fisting" it, with a puppy in each hand.  one man even had a sack of puppies.  like santa!  if you look closely at the picture you can see a man in the foreground holding a puppy, with a box o' puppies at his feet, then there's a man to the left holding two puppies, and a woman on the right towards the back also holding a puppy for sale.

and finally, getting to the point, further on in this commercial wonderland there was a woman who had a digital bathroom scale, and for a small fee you could stand on it and find out your weight.  the bolshevik felt that i was the perfect candidate for such a service, since i like to weigh myself daily.  but i scoffed at the idea, explaining that her scale was probably in kilos.  unacceptable!  so now, yet another money making scheme is for me to import my own digital scale in pounds and slowly convert south america to the preferred anti-metric system.