Two Stops on the Way to Cabanaconde

Early the next morning we piled into and onto the police vehicle, loading it beyond what anyone would think it could take: eight people, suitcases, the school supplies and computers we had bought. The plan was to reach the lookout point, Cruz del Condor, by eight-thirty, so we'd have a chance of spotting the famous Colca Canyon condors.
Along the way we stopped in the village of Yanque, which has a vast central square and a monumental church, with beautiful stonework. We got out and walked around there, but we didn't have time to go into the church.
The unpaved road grew narrower as we drove along the edge of the canyon, seeing terraces that were probably built long before the Spanish arrived in Peru. We were taking the route that Asher took on the last day of his life, seeing the sights he saw, trying to imagine his response the landscape while responding to it ourselves.
Cruz del Condor, despite its remoteness, attracts hundreds of tourists every morning, busloads full of groups from all over the world, tourists hoping to catch a sight of the majestic birds. We got there almost too late to glimpse any condors, but, luckily, three or four of them did show up, as well as a couple of eagles.
Even if the condors don't oblige by soaring into view, the sight from Cruz del Condor into the Colca Canyon is majestic. We spent a lot of time there, just looking down at the river, a kilometer below us, around at the cliff faces and up at the vast sky.
We also looked over the merchandise exhibited by women in local costume, some of their own handicrafts and other thngs evidently provided by suppliers.
The drop is very steep from around Cruz del Condor, and it was possible that Asher might have fallen from there. We were aware that we were drawing closer and closer to the place where he died.
We continued on in the direction of Cabanaconde, the village from which hikers head down into the canyon. The main dirt road into the village was closed, so we had to take an even rougher back road that led behind the village's fields. After a few minutes, the left rear tire of the pickup truck burst, and there was no spare tire.
Why wasn't there any spare tire? I never found out.
Some of Robert's men were already in Cabanaconde. He telephoned them and told them to buy a spare tire. Meanwhile, we started to walk into the village, heading across the fields. All of us were glad of the excercise. The weather was sunny but cool, the setting was idyllic - small plots of land, down with corn and other crops, and even a pair of oxen plowing one of the fields, to make the scene more bucolic.
No one seems to be particularly upset by the flat tire. Robert and another rescue policeman walk with us, and Cabezon, the driver, waits with another man for a new tire to show up. It was only mid-morning. There was plenty of time.