The Christmas lights went up in the cafe today.
Everything looks very pretty and for some reason they don´t seem as lethal as previous years.
It´s the Christmas lights that Europe rejects that Cusco thinks is best (or something like that).
I don´t think that the decorations have got any safer, I think I have just got used to their fizzing and cracking noises.
Cable TV was also installed today, which means we have 60 channels of crap to flick through instead of 4.
It does look like some of the British childrens programmes have made it here, so we will be good parents and weld Salvador to the floor in front of the TV for some televisual nutrition.
Speaking of Salvador, our plan of living at 10000ft with not much oxygen to make him more docile has back-fired badly.
He is so busy all the time, I dread to think what he will be like at sea level now he has trained at altitude.
With the tantrum Olympics due next year we had better watch out.
My greenhouse office was also completed today.
Even the corrugated roof has been repaired just as the next storm promised to peel it off.
Abad, the electrician of amazing gap teethed grin and permanent sunny humour, apparently hung like Spiderman over the sheer drop at the back of the house to mend the roof - I´m glad he told us afterwards.
I now have a picture postcard view of Cusco and the Andes beyond.
That is if your picture postcard includes the steel cylinders of the brewery and the football stadium flooodlights.
For the romantic in me though, on a clear day there are beautiful jigsaw puzzle views (deep blue sky, white mountains) of the snow capped peaks of Ausangate a 6000 metre plus , stunningly gorgeous, mountain range (not many clear days at the moment though, so I´ll have to content myself with the brewery).
I can also see Cusco´s version of the Christ the Redeemer statue which overlooks Rio de Janeiro. The scaled down Jesus who stands spotlit over Cusco was a gift from the people of Palestine although I have yet to find out why.
The Cusqueños don´t strike me as the type to be too interested in the Intifada, it´s more Inti Raymi here (sorry crap Inca joke).
Esther being Esther spent ages making sure that the greenhouse/office had crystal sparkling windows for my vista.
Tonight I think I´ll make one of my little pilgrimages up there in the dark.
Below will be the multi-coloured lights of Cusco and above a pitch sky dotted with thousands of diamante stars that has to been seen to be believed.
Beats Chinese Xmas lights any day.
I´ll either do that or see whether the Midsomer Murders dubbed in Spanish is still on cable, such are the tough choices here.