In early 1976, my friend Art and I traveled to Peru just to see the Southern Cross and to become the living symbols of capitalistic entrepreneurs, drug smugglers. I believed then, and believe now, that the Law is merely an instrument to sanctify the crimes of the powerful and to suppress the aspirations of the less privileged. All we learned was that smuggling was a sucker's bet. The police do not play fair; they cheat. They imprison the innocent in order to confiscate a camera and to pad the statistics. They extort payment from the criminals to permit them both to remain in the business of bleeding honest citizens to death. Dylan was right, "To live outside the law you must be honest." I might add that to live within the law one must be either a sacker of cities or an impotent victim.
     So I opted to take my chances as a sheep among the wolves. It is better to risk having your heart tore out and devoured than it is to sell it for something as petty as money. I might add that while it is ethically unsupportable to be a rapist and robber baron, poverty is degrading.
     Aside from the cheap education, it was the journey that mattered. We traveled from Los Angeles to the terrors of the Lima slums, to the whores, pimps, narcs, cocaine, fear, bad food, hotel fires and on to the Andes, to Cusco, the fortress of Sacsahuaman, down the river Urubamba to Machu Picchu, the Incas, the stone walls, mountains and condors.
     The Inca empire and its destruction become a metaphor for man as the victim of the cultures he creates and of his momentary escapes. We went higher, onto the Altaplana, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, ancient Tihuanaca, La Paz and to the psychic rape of humanity by governments, police, law, and war. Finally, we returned to Los Angeles.
     Peru is one of those places, like India, where you can find everything at once: urban landscapes, the desert, the sea, the Andes, archaeological ruins, jungle, forest, Indians, dirt paths and jet-liners.
     It is worth it all just to sit on the Malacon in Lima and eat a bowl of Cevice, or to sit on the peak of Machu Picchu and watch the clouds march over the Andes.