You've been where?

Peru smells of dust and diesel and the leftovers of crops burning in the fields and incense and cedar and good things cooking. I gorge myself on fresh squeezed pineapple juice and say "no" and "no" and "no" to all of the dozens of small children trying to sell me postcards and shine my hiking boots. On the train out of Cusco I marvel at the fact that I can now afford a seat with a view (so unlike that previous anguished trip six years ago, but still containing brief flashes of vivid memory: last time I sat on this side of the train, last time I ate breakfast at this bakery).

I chat with cabdrivers and the women who keep the hotel desks running. I say, "so much new construction!" and they tell me yes, the Lima airport has been privatized and is now run by a German, see the new hotel? Be careful after dark, don't call attention to yourself or buy from street vendors. Enjoy the torn-up, graceful beauty of the slivered, shadowy, squatter-filled mansions in the center of the city and be sure to visit the mall on the edge of the sea - it's amazing. If you like you can take a bus up to the peak and see the city - 10 million and growing - spread out below you.

They ask: Have you been to Cusco? Did you like it? Will you come back? Have you seen the fortress at Ollantaytambo?

I take a photo of three doorways: one Inca, one Spanish, one modern. The doorways are lined up on a street that was first laid out over six hundred years ago by people I can barely imagine, but whose profiles I encounter daily behind a shop counter, above a business suit, mortaring a wall with modern mud. Behind the Inca doorway a dog barks, and I hear the smack of a soccer ball against the wall.

I walk for hours every day.

I am here for a week but it feels longer, and when I return to work I can no longer remember the combination for the cable that secures my laptop computer to my desk.