Reminds me of something I saw with my own eyes when I was in Peru a few years ago. We made the obligatory turista trip to Macchu Picchu since my wife had never seen it before. While we were there, I noticed a guide pointing to a big puddle of water on a landing above a long flight of steps. He was explaining to a couple of gullible-looking yuppies that this was a sacred reflecting pool incorporated by the magically talented architects. The yuppies were lapping it up (the description, not the puddle). The yuppies left, we stayed around for a while and soon saw a maintenance guy come along and mop up the “sacred pool.”
Peru is one of my favorite countries in the world but the place is absolutely infested with new age flakes from Europe and the US who come there to encounter magnetic nodes and harmonic convergences and the like. The locals laugh at them behind their backs.
i’ve been to peru
it’s astonishingly beautiful but as much a tourist trap as, say, the Outer Banks here in NC. what we call “beachie” culture was invented in the eighties by carpetbagging hippies from New Jersey and California who decided to settle on our beaches, like, dude.
the genuine culture of our barrier islands is that of pirates and smugglers. hm. maybe the hippies do fit in.