@_lucas_il
THE BRISK morning air comes as a shock after the tourists have recently, regretfully unpacked themselves from their cozy alpaca wool blankets and climate-controlled buses. Watching them is Natividad Sonjo, who has been selling blankets, painted stones and carved bamboo instruments for 15 years on the eastern edge of Sacsayhuamán, an archaeological complex of enormous stone walls and wide lawns just north of Cusco, Peru, the seat of the great Inca empire. The diffuse sunlight of a cloudy morning in March high in the Andes softly illuminates the city. And then, all at once, the sun breaks through, bringing with it a wallop of heat. Soon, any memory of the cool air has evaporated along with the clouds, but Sonjo doesn’t remove the elaborately embroidered wool jacket she put on first thing that day. “The sun used to warm us,” she says, repeating a common refrain among inhabitants of the Peruvian altiplano. “Now it burns us.”
INTO THIN AIR: Their high altitude, proximity to the equator and depleted ozone layer expose Peruvians to dangerous levels of sunlight.
RODRIGO ABD/AP