The COLD....

As much as I hate gloves, I've been pretty happy about the alpaca ones with the missing fingertips. I can still type (I'm wearing them now) and play guitar in them but my hands are warm. It gets really cold here at night. On the bus I was grateful that I had bought another sweater (an old half toothless woman who was seeming so desperate to sell- she knocked the price down to about $3.25...I couldn't say no. She just seemed in such need. I can always give it as a present.
The second sweater was a life saver on the bus to Cusco (which arrived 3 hours late). It was so cold that I was wearing a normal shirt, with the alpaca sweater over that and my fleece over that, an alpaca hood, and the fleece hood and then the other sweater was covering my legs (also gloves and my scarf which I put in my hat as a pillow and then covered my entire face with the end of it. The cold is painful with anything less. Any part of me sticking out from under the layers experienced not cold, but pain.

You'd think that after being in winter for so much of the past 2 years, I would have more imagination about how cold cold is. Unfortunately I don't. Here it's bloody cold at night. Many nights in addition to all of the blankets on the bed, I've slept in my silk robe plus all of my sweaters and gloves and my scarf. Then I'm not too cold, just aware of the cold. Nice thing about having a roommate is that if it's too cold, you can always share blankets and body heat.

The Local Women all have blankets in their great bundles which they carry on their backs. At night they wrap the blankets around their waists as they sell their wares or walk around the street. I understand why. Grin. There is no heat anywhere and the nights are all below freezing. Of course the days are lovely and sunny and warm...