Progress in Cusco

We entered Cusco relatively late in the afternoon and as we approached the city center, we were initially chocked by the traffic congestions and chaos as we arrived from the rural Peruvian plateau. Anyway, after struggling for a while to find our way out of the afternoon rush-traffic (neither Google maps nor the GPS were of much help at this time), in the dark we finally arrived at an overlanding campground with a nice view of Cusco.    

Interestingly, the “overlanding” camping is full of vehicles – just looking around from where I am writing I see registration-plates from England, Germany, Luxembourg, France, USA and of course a few campers from Peru. And talking to people, some are on their way north like us – some even with Alaska as final destination – and others are winter “parked” and others are simply like us taking a rest.  Hearing about their experiences and their travel plans make you think, gets you inspired and leaves you asking, “what if”?

The campground here is at 3416 m above sea level. We were in Cusco also in 2012, and we are really impressed and borderline chocked by the changes we see – much more houses, much more tourism (Cusco being the gateway to Machu Pichu). Economic development, growth both in population and housing, are symptoms of economic progress – but nevertheless sometimes when crossing through more dense urban areas we can’t help but ask ourselves if our current criteria and indicators of a “good or better life” (progress) and our intrinsic preference for an urban lifestyle always are the right ones. And of course, the trend towards increased urbanization in large parts of South America is systemic and long lasting. Thus, maybe our questioning and reflections along the way are both politically wrong and unjust – it’s just the price of progress silly, it’s the way it is and don’t waste too much time wondering if all economic growth and development mean progress? Progress for whom?

Anyway, the contrast between the peace, calm and beauty of nature and the noise and buzz of the urban scenes are at times shocking – particularly when we suddenly enter urban centers after longer stints on the open road. Sometimes the contrasts are painful.