Urabamba Province, Peru, Fall 2009

Along the bank of the Urabamba River, in south eastern Peru is a small town called Aguas Calientes.  It is the town that is at the base of the mountain upon which you find Machu Picchu.  It is a place accessible only by a five hour train ride or a five day walk.  It is where I met these two little girls, playing in the tourist's market.

The tourist market is packed with every kind of trinket that you can imagine that bears the name and image of the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu.  In the Quechua language, Machupicchu means "The Old Mountain"  The city carved there by the ancient ones is truly one of the great marvels of the world.  It is a place that should be on everyone's bucket list.

Working in booth after booth are the descendants of those ancient ones, the local Indios who are now a mostly modern people, but who descend from the great Incan people who ruled that part of the world for hundreds of years prior to the Spaniards conquering everything in the name of the church and destroying cultures and people in the process.

Sorry, this never started out to be an anti-western European polemic...  I will write one of those later.

In the market are all of these booths with all of these women working.  They almost all have children, and the children play in the market.  These two girls were playing and laughing as they splashed dirty water around from that soap pail.  It really struck me, how little it takes to make a person happy.  These girls had clothes on their backs, a loving parent right near by, and they were as happy as could possibly be just splashing dirty water around in a plastic pail. 

I plan to remember this at Christmas this year and try to be just a little less commercial.  Just a little, hoping that in the process I can steer my children towards what brings them real, lasting happiness instead of a short time of pleasure.