Full Circle
Day 195: On the Camisea and Urubamba River

Shivankoreni is a settlement in transition. The wood frame huts are traditional but the tin roofs are a sign of prosperity. The football match, organized by the younger men with all the earnestness of a club game in England - a team list, distribution of shirts of roughly the same colour - is totally ignored by the village elders who lie about in their plain, sandy-coloured robes, on the stoops of their houses, propped up on one elbow like long-redundant emperors.
The football game, too, is a mixture of ancient and modern. The bow and arrow fisherman we met yesterday has neat skills, a sense of tactics and a pair of football boots, while others play in patched shorts and bare feet. A specially appointed time-keeper keeps the first half to a strict forty-five minutes, but then mysteriously disappears, resulting in an epic second half of almost sixty-three minutes.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 195
- Country/sea: Peru
- Place: Shivankoreni
- Book page no: 265
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