On this Peruvian mountainside
that lays a million years old,
where kids grow up under the sun,
where the best of stories are told.

Of the brave and weary,
of the old and meek,
of characters sad and funny,
of those which from betrayal reak.

A history threaded from a cultural cotton,
where narratives are spun,
with tales all worth passing down
stories of lost soles that have only just begun.

A tree grows up and up,
earning a place among the tilt,
next to them people of the earth
toil among centuries-old silt.

Pineapples, yuka and potato,
sit in rows on rows
a man perched upon his rake
watching as it grows.

His wife inside the house,
prepares the rice and beans,
she boils a soup, a tasty soup
in her husband's eye a gleem.

Here tradition lays frozen in time,
spare the mobile phone,
destroying a way of living slow,
from many decades and millennia ago.

How to survive the blazing sun
and the blistering snow,
all this and more could soon be lost,
with an undetermined cost.

The market every Saturday
is where you'll find this change,
Yankees, limas and Trujio Pilson,
all sold at a range,

"4 soles por un kilo"
shouts a lady behind her sack,
it's filled to the brim with seeds,
a seriously nutritious snack.

Scatter them around the pigs,
and the chickens too,
each pecking at the ground,
bidding the passers-by adew.

Look up from the concrete slabs
you'll see mountains up ahead,
each one taller than the last,
a day of trekking will have you wishing for your bed.

Yet here the old climb narrow paths,
with lungs full of air,
no panting or sweat on their brow
or cramping in their calves.

Strong feet and a straight head atop,
from years of working tough,
a mindset that the west has forgot,
with hands anythint but rough.

Here is where true freedom lies
in the mountains of Peru,
where a family grows with each crop and a hearty stew.