1. It is very Spanish and old fashioned, so it reminds me of childhood and “the way things are supposed to be” (I spent a year in Spain during elementary school and got hooked).

2. It is a medium sized Spanish colonial town with a Pacific beach nearby, and in this way it is like Santa Barbara, CA, where I grew up.

3. It is a twentieth, not a twenty-first century town. There are working public phones and although there is plenty of internet, there are no wi-fi cafes and no Starbucks/other chains. Although the suburbs have grown the center is still a functioning business place, not a museum. Etc. etc. There is a movie theatre right on the street, i.e. not in a suburban mall.

P.P.S.

I have figured out that that church now turned into the Cesar Vallejo Auditorium is part of the old university complex (now the university is expanded, modernized and moved), next to the Plaza de Armas. This means that Vallejo only had to walk a few steps from his job to the classes he was taking, and spent his days among these colonial buildings (somewhere there is also a plaque on a house he lived in, but I have not found this yet). (Apparently he and his friends would go out and drink wine by moonlight in the pre-Incan ruins of Chan Chan … he had a good time, I think.)

Also, there is now a cafe – restaurant called the Rincon Vallejo and it has two locations that I have seen.

+ Now headlines say 200 schools will get electricity and water back;

+ Several public hospitals, including one in Cusco, have had their surgical equipment wear out and are not funded to get new equipment, so they are using drills and other items they have bought at hardware stores (I’ll bet it’s Ace Hardware, too, which exists here and is called, in English, the “Home Center”);

+ The treaty of free commerce with the U.S. is supposed to kick in in January and the papers seem to think this is a good thing, but I am not convinced and I could go on at some length about why (but think I should do some research first);

+ the fog lifted in late morning again today – maybe that is the winter pattern here – and I went to the beach at Huanchaco, very nice and extremely relaxing; I am becoming conscious of my identity as a complete fan of northern Peru;

+ if you are in Lima you should go and see this exhibit of textiles at the Museo de la Nacion, which is closing July 31:
http://www.elcomercio.com.pe/edicionimpresa/HTML/2008-07-24/ruraq-maki-exposicion-arte-popular.html