‘Photo? One sole’

Every picture will cost you, but the cultural peacocks are difficult for any tourist to resist.

Women in colorful Quechua clothing bearing alpaca and llama walk for hours from their rural communities just so you can take a picture for one sole (currently equivalent to about 35 cents).

It’s strange at first to see cities covered in livestock, but easy enough to become accustomed to it. Animals roam the plazas and linger around all of the ruins and even the places on the road where tour buses might pull over to admire the views of the Andes. Some put earrings on their alpaca.

It’s not just them, either; small children will hide in the ruins only to emerge and sing folk songs for money. Men dressed like traditional shamans will play the pan flute for a price.

One woman tells me that she and her alpaca walk two hours every day to reach the ruins of Ollantaytambo. Another tells me it takes him an hour and a half to reach the top of the ruins of Pisac. A little girl boasts how easy it is to run from the guards in the winding Incan farming terraces.

And they do all this so that tourists – mostly from the U.S., Europe, or Argentina – can take their picture. Of course every tourist has his or her camera up and at the ready. They’re hoping for a glimpse of the “real Peru.” Five snaps of a camera are more than a meal in a rural community.

It’s a country where tourism is one of the most common fields of study, where blonde hair might mean haggling for a taxi and where vacation money is a stronghold of the economy.

Peruvian culture is trumpeted for tourists; there is a famous parade and concert called “Day of the Tourists.” It’s set up for everyone’s Travel Channel dreams to come true.

Don’t get me wrong – Peru’s economy is in great shape. The sole is rapidly improving against the dollar, and the bars and discotheques are bursting with Peruvians.

But there are still hundreds of people whose only English is, “photo, one sole.”