Friends, in a few minutes I will begin packing my bags. It is the eve of what I expect to be the highlight of my travels. Tomorrow morning, at 0830 hours, four Australians, one Brit, one Israeli,and I will follow a jungle guide into the rainforest that surrounds the Manu river, for five days and six nights.

   I will return on Wed, re-pack my bags for the treacherous four day Inca trail to the creme de la creme of Peruvian ruins--Machu Picchu. The Inca trail (which is how the Incas traveled from their capital [Cuzco] to their military training camp [Machu Picchu]) goes straight up the Andes to over 4000 meters of altitude. So between the two adventures, for ten days I will be living in tents and purifying my water, and applying mosquito repellent, and swimming with natives and looking through field glasses at various ruins and rivers and mountain peeks and and a place called the Cloud Forest, and rapids and Macaws, and Monkeys and Lions and tigers and bears OH MY. Then, I return to Cuzco on Sunday and re-pack my bags for my flight back to San Diego on Monday morning.

   I'll be bringing a notebook and my camera and will do my best to document this adventure for all your pleasure. I'm happy to do this, since most of these journals have been about bars and cities and that's all fine ,but it's time to touch natives.

   But for the moment I am still inside the city, and the city is still inside of me. So here is the last of the Cuzco journals. I hope you enjoy it. . .

   Peace.

   On the night in question, I finish my tour of the discotecas and am drunkenly wandering Cuzco. I drift down an alley, make a couple of turns, pass an idle fountain with stone pumas drinking from the basin, and I realize I am in unchartered territory. I don’t know what I am looking for, only that I am not ready to turn in.

   Up ahead, I see a quiet light seeping out of a doorway. I approach it. I look into the doorway and see three men playing cards. They look up at me, and quickly return to their game. To their right are two red curtains forming a sort of walkway entrance which leads down two flights of stairs.

   I sense debauchery though I have no proof, and relying on my depravity divining rod, I make the first step into a red-curtained walkway. The three men do not investigate my behavior or my demeanor, which would have been, loopy-if they had bothered.

   The second flight of stairs leads me into a room. Naturally, it is quite dark, darker even than the night I just came in from. The bar is nearly at the foot of the stairs and I, as a matter of habit, make my way to the bar counter.

  There are two women sitting on the far end, a small, young, clean-cut Peruvian male is behind the bar, and a DJ is in the booth, though no music is playing. A medium sized hardwood dance floor was surrounded by mirrors and a pole sticks out of the dance floor like an arrow from a target.

   As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see about six other woman sitting on couches throughout. I am the only customer and this is a brothel.

   Now lets get a couple of things straight. I do not do the brothel thing. I am not a hooker kind of guy. It's just not my brand of detergent. What I am interested in are my limits. I am always curious to find out how far I will go. So, though I had an immediate impulse to bolt right out of there, my debauch divining rod blocked the doorway. So I sat down on a stool and waited to see what Lady Fortuna would bring my way.

   The two women on the far end of the bar eye me and giggle to each other. They motion for me to join them. I do.

  The minute I sit down with them, the bartender, who does not seem to notice me as I sit alone, zips over to us and takes my order. I request a beer and he says, "Tres?" and points at the two woman. Granted, I know I am prey. I know all about this slimy practice; making the patron/john buy the drinks for "the ladies" is older than the automobile. It happens in bars all over the country. I also know, that in order to take this as far as I could, I will have to go along with it. I have 80 Soles on me and I figure I will see which would quits first, my money or my morals.

   "Yes, three beers, for me and the ladies," I respond, and everyone (including me) smiled.

   "15 soles, senor," he says.

   Then we played the language game. They say something (lurid no doubt, because of their lascivious giggles) and I would say, "Como?" and play the translation game. The hooker sitting next to me pulls down her jacket and exposes the top of her breasts. The far one is powering through her beer. She looks at me when her drink is done and tilts the glass to show that it is empty. I nod for the bartender and he fills her up. I give him five Soles more. I keep an eye on her drinking because I know her beer was like a working gauge for my money. As her beer level goes down, so does my money.

   The girl farthest from me says, "You like see dance? She dance for you only."

  "Cuanto cuesta?" I say

   "30 Soles for the dance plus you buy more drinks," she replys.

   "How much for a pitcher of Cuba Libre?" I ask.

   "30, soles," she answers.

   So I argue with them about price and we finally agree on 20 Soles for the pitcher and 20 Soles for the dance.

   I watch the bartender pour the rum in the pitcher. He isn’t exactly letting it flow, but I figure there is enough booze in there to keep my buzz going as I already had a head start. And for where I am, a buzz is something I really need.

   I hand over the 20 Soles and fill our cups from the pitcher of Cuba Libres. The girl sitting farthest, who seems to be acting as the pimp, powers through the drink with the same expedience that she had the beer. I get up and walked over to a couch expecting to get some kind of lap dance. I wait for a long time for the girl to come over and when she does she is accompanied by her pimp.

   Let me say, I am not enjoying this. On the contrary. I feel small, I feel like prey, or that I am the punchline of some horrible joke. But I am determined to see which will give out first-- 80 Soles or my morals. So far the Soles are taking a beating.

   I notice, as the two women sit next to me in the booth, that the bartender, the D.J. (who was not playing music) and all the other hooker woman, and a non-hookerly-dressed, businesswoman--who is the hottest chick in the jernt and must have entered the room sometime after I did--are all very interested in seeing how this all goes down. I’m quite sure the non-hookerly-dressed, business woman, is the proprieter and that the woman who is going to dance is in training and that the "pimp" is her trainer. Much the way we train waitresses in U.S. nightclubs.

   Of course, they want the money up front for the dance. I argue about that for awhile, claiming that I do not want to pay for something that I was not sure what I was paying for. But they were insistent and the non-hookerly-dressed lady is overseeing and she does not have a happy party face on, and I know I am not on my home court so I concede and pay up front.

   I ask if I am going to be allowed to touch the stripper/hooker, not really sure that I would, or where I would touch her, and they say "No problemos, no problemos" which, as I have said before, is a sure sign that there will be some sort of a problemos.

   I also know that there is a great chance that I am just kissing my money goodbye, and that I am being ripped off, which is also OK, since the experiment is to see what will happen and that getting ripped off is as much a story as anything else.

   So there I sit, the only person in the brothel, all eyes on the transaction, wondering what they think of me. Wondering if they know that I am a respectable guy from a respectable family, with a respectable dog, from a respectable town, and that indeed, I do have a mother and that indeed, she did not raise me to act like this.

  The "pimp" argues with the D.J. over what songs they will play and they decide on "Another One Bites the Dust" and two Peruvian songs that all the nightclubs play. Then the dance starts, and she dances like she has a fishook up her ass and someone is yanking on the line like she is a big, fighting, fish and she was losing the fight. In short, she was horrible.

   When the dance is mercifully finished, I go to the bar again. The pitcher is drained. I think to myself that I have made a rookie mistake by leaving the pitcher up there and should have brought it with me to the couch. I debate my next move and have the sense that something is about to happen and probably not good. I have 40 Soles in my pocket. I ponder another pitcher, but I know I will only get one drink out of it. The two woman return to the bar. The stripper is dressed now, though she was exposing the top of her breasts to me again and, this time, a crescent moon on the top of her nipple.

   "Do you want maky love?" she asks.

   "Maky love?" I say. "With you?"

   "Si."

   "Cuanto cuesta?" I ask.

   "20 Soles."

   I am astounded that it costs the same as dancing and that sure seems like a bargain to me if I was so inclined. Though I’m sure, that if I pursue this most uninviting proposition, that there will be"additional costs." Like maybe, another 30 Soles was required for her to be in the room with me, and another 100 Soles for, perhaps, the antidote.

   Before I leave, I lie and tell her yes, I would like to "maky love" and that I would go to the bank and get a lot more money and that we would party and drink and have a great time and when it was over I would "maky love," to her in such a way that of the 79 thousand men she has had, I would be the one that she remembered. I don’t think she understands it all, if any, but I had say it and that is what matters.

   I walk up the stairs, through the red curtain corridor and past the men who are still playing cards. They look up once, are unimpressed, and continue playing.