We were on a late afternoon foray into the city after being sick with altitude sickness all morning. A few blocks before we’d bought a sweet dough on the street and watched a queer friendly melodrama—with a massive crowd— try and get drowned out by a group of church officials singing.
We were exploring streets of the town less filled with tourists when we saw a fight break out.
First to digress a bit, I have no interest in violence. I recently read The Beach and in the book the main character has a list of goals for his gap year, including hearing a gun fired in real life.
As an American that is very anti-guns that’s never been an interest of mine. And as a Brooklynite I’ve walked past shootings while going to the grocery store. I’m familiar with what gun shots sound like.
So no I’m not interested in violence. And as we saw the two men, seemingly very drunk start punching each other it was distressing. There were so many people present and everyone was frozen. Almost as if the surprised crowd thought, “they’ve started this, I guess they’ll figure it out”.
When the fighting got more violent a man did step in and the two were temporarily separated. But then they found each other again and parried each others punches before one of the men got tired with the tameness of it all and ran over to the women he was with and reached into her backpack for something.
As an American I immediately thought he was reaching for a gun and we picked up our pace to get away.
(We had a conversation the other day in Huacachina with a woman from Texas that’s currently teaching in Paraguay. She was giving us tips on Machu Pichu and saying they don’t let you bring your hiking poles in. It’s because they don’t want the ruins destroyed by the spikey ends. But as an American that isn’t where her mind went first, she’d assumed they wouldn’t let the poles in because they could be used as a weapon.)
Back to Cusco, it wasn’t a gun, but a knife. A switchblade.
My dad has a saying that goes something like, “don’t bring your fists to a knife fight”. The crowd of Peruvians seemed to agree and was NOT okay with the knife being added. No more of this, “let em work it out!” People started yelling for police, while more people tried to separate the two.
The man with the knife made about two cuts—mostly surface—before he ditched the knife, ran down the block, and the police grabbed him. The other man grabbed the knife to show the officers and both men were taken away.
This might be a weird why to lead into the last few weeks in Peru. But that’s the thing about this trip, there’s all the random moments that will remain in our head long term. There’s also been the penguins in Paracas, breathlessly hiking to a glacier in Huaraz, strong but delicious Pisco Sours, making new friends in the desert, and celebrating our nine year anniversary.
