I was traveling with friends, at this point, on our way to Cuzco. We stopped for a night in Andahuaylas, because we heard that the following day was market day. Andahuaylas has a wonderful market with crafts that I've rarely seen outside the area and never outside Peru. The large, completely embroidered skirts made in this area are special, as are the long alpaca coats.
      While having dinner in the local Chinese Resturant, we had a frighteneing experience, when the military arrived in a personel carrier and came into the resturant with rifles lowered, and to our alarm, took threee people at another table away and into the truck.
      Soon some officers sitting at the next table, who were out of uniform and extremely drunk, revealed to us who they were. They had gotten designs on a woman in our party and told us that they would pay our bill and give us a ride to the next town.
      This did not sound good to me, I happened to be the only Spanish speaker in our group. I sent my friends to pay the bill and leave the Chinese resturant, leaving me alone with the extremely drunk men who now felt insulted. Luckily they were drunk enough so that I could manage a short impromptu speach, an elaborate toast to everything Peruvian, and before their glasses were drained I was out the door.
       That night we took back streets back to our hotel and stayed in, till the dawn bus to Cuzco.
    
ARTIST'S COMMENTARY (continued)

      Once again in the forested hills between Ayacucho and Cuzco, I painted this stepped mountain study. This painting was made on watercolor block paper.

    
"Hills Near Andahuaylas"
Sept., 1988
egg tempera on watercolor block paper
7 x 10 inches
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