We embark on a walking tour of Quito, which begins in the market we went to yesterday, and wrote off as being rather drab compared to the colourful bustle of Bolivia or the beautiful bright artsiness of Peru. It sells, it turns out, precisely what we thought it sold, some fruits and vegetables and a lot of meals and juices. But, as with the country side paintings we saw in Melbourne, it takes on a new character through the eyes of somebody who loves it. We find that the juices are not only safe to drink, using filtered water and 'clean' fruits, but they are imaginative and delicious. I try a 'Mora' with coconut milk, a sort of blackberry, coconutty, paradise which imbues me with much needed energy, and M has a 'Guanábana', also with coconut, a refreshing, clean crisp taste softened by the coconut milk. They cost a couple of dollars.
"Ecuador is so expensive compared to other places" we have been not-quite saying. And not quite adding that it also simply isn't as good.
Our guide shows us fruits and vegetables we haven't seen before, despite an internal monologue I have with myself along the lines of having been in South America for months now and more attuned to the fresh produce than many people, so how could there be anything new in Ecuador?
My rather unsettling and newfound inner cynic is rapidly vanquished. We are introduced to Naranjillos, whose bitter sweet taste I have already drunk in a juice I mistakenly attributed to crisp green apples, only better, a fruit known in English as 'Soursop', the South American answer to my favourite South East Asian Jackfruit, a fruit the size of a papaya, and the shape of a star fruit, which apparently has smooth white flesh and a sweet taste, and Tomatillas, egg shaped tomato like fruits, initially sour, but used to great effect in salsas and stews.
I stand corrected. There is a tendency in both of us to find the first few days in a new country vaguely disappointing, particularly if we have especially loved the last one. Try as we might to resist it, something in us always longs for the last place, and paints it in over the reality of the new one. We can not look at the market without the ghostly images of Bolivian women with babies on the backs, bound in brightly coloured fabrics, passing through it, regretfully. It is, again, that settling instinct. For one month everywhere is 'home'. And 'home', as we know, always tastes the sweetest.
We move on, through roads and squares, many of which ate named after specific dates. Whilst it is confusing, (Avenue 6th December is easily mixed with Avenue 12 October) I am pleased to learn the significance of some of these dates in Ecuadorian history. I have set them out as accurately as I can below:
12 October 1492: the day Christopher's Columbus arrived and the Hispanic heritage of South America began.
6 December 1534: the Spanish foundation of Quito and its establishment as the capital of Ecuador.
10 August 1809: A group of citizens made a bid for independence, following news of the deposition of the King in Spain. They sent a delegation to the president to tell him he was no longer needed and established a new independent government. It was a brace act which lasted only 24 days until October, when the Spanish governers retaliated and, despite a peaceful surrender, threw all the conspirators in jail. Nearly 100 people were arrested and remained in jail nearly a year. On August 2nd 1810, an attempt to liberate the prisoners incensed the guards who killed all the conspirators and any visiting family members or would be liberators in the jail. There is a monument to the bravery of those early conspirators in the main square of Quito
24 May 1822: Independence Day. The day that Ecuador officially gained independence from Spain. Previous attempts to gain independence, most notably in 1809 had lasted only a short time but the two year Battle of Pichincha, begun in 1820 and led by Simón Bolívar, finally defeated the Spanish army and won lasting independence for Ecuador. The main square in Quito is also known as Independence Square and features a series of statues commemorating this, most strikingly the figure of a condor breaking the chains binding it's feet and spreading its wings, and a lion, symbolising Spain, pierced by a golden arrow and defeated.
If this all seems a bit mixed, the celebration of the arrival of the Spanish who were then fought bloodily against subsequently for independence, then I know how you feel. Once again life refuses to be simple. The conquistadors are not wholly ogres, the influence of the Spanish not wholly unwelcome. Viewed other ways, it makes sense. The influx of a richness of culture, new festivals, new colours, new customs, is something which most countries prize through global travel, even as they also claim to be being 'taken over'.
"The immigrants are taking our jobs and ruining everything that is British," say people, tucking into their curry and poppadoms and seeing no irony in this whatsoever.
And there is a big difference between being infiltrated by new cultures and being ruled as part of another country, thousands of miles away from your own, both literally and metaphorically.
This is all rather obvious, bit there is a darker side to this dichotomy, which is the invisibility of indigenous people, particularly in the capital. The richer the surroundings, the more Latinate the faces. I have mentioned before the absence of indigenous profiles in government and media. Models advertising clothes, make up, mobile phones or housing, all have distinctly Latin features.
"This was an important square," says our guide, gesturing towards a smart, paved square surrounded by impressive buildings and palaces, "for the indigineous people, because this was where they settled disputes, traded and made decisions."
Nowadays it is marked by colonial style palaces, built on top of old, destroyed Inca structures, and the only indigineous faces are the shoe shine boys, touting for custom among the high heels and black work shoes of the square's main users.
Moving to rather lighter topics, we walk to a sweet store selling traditional Ecuadorian sweets. Like other countries in South America, Ecuador is marked by a distinctly sweet tooth. We try sugared figs, so sweet they make your teeth tingle, and so nice that it doesn't stop you eating them, sticky sugared nuts and chewy coconut candies, and a crumbly fudge offset by a corresponding bar of a quince jelly like substance, which provides a tang to offset the sugar. Not that anyone here seems to perceive a need to offset it. Even salty snacks contain sugar and do not seem especially salty, and there is a prevelance of grown men in suits eating jelly and cream out of plastic cups on the street.
Turning our minds to more elevated topics, we enter a church and learn that there is more to the art of producing the doll like figures we have seen depicting Jesus and the Saints in so many churches in South America. The eyes, we learn, always piously turned up to heaven, are made of glass for a more "creepy... I mean...realistic effect" (says our guide). The colours, of the skin and then the blood of Christ (on the one we happen to be looking at), are applied one at a time in the correct order, before a special varnish made of animal fat is applied to give a sheen and retain brightness. It's a much more involved process than it looks.
The tour over, we make our way to the basilica, which towers majestically in Gothic grey over the majority of the town, and which is one of the most intricate and interesting cathedrals I have seen. Like many churches of its kind it uses gargoyles to scare away evil spirits, however rather than gurning goblin faces it uses animals of the region. Pumas leap out of the walls to vanquish potential evils, crocodiles bare their teeth, peacocks spread their plumage, condors their wings, monkeys prepare to pounce from above and even aardvarks poke their long noses down towards us. There are, apparently also turtles, but try as we might, we cannot find these. It becomes a bit of a challenge, peering out from windows and towers, or upwards from below, but no turtles reveal themselves to us this visit. Perhaps that is their secret, they hide and spy, alerting the other animals to potential intruders...
...maybe.
Or perhaps I am simply trying to avoid admitting the part where I chickened out of going all the way up to the top of the spires.
Well there were some concrete steps. Which were fine. And then a wooden walkway over the domed roof of the main chapel, which was fine. And a ladder up from there to the outside balcony. Which was mostly fine.
But after that it was ladders in the open, up the side of the towers. And I just couldn't.
I surveyed it. I watched people giggling in fearful hysteria as they climbed. I noted the possibility of plummeting over the side to one's certain death (though admittedly you would have to be being quite careless). I noted several children crying half way up. And half way down. And at the top. And the bottom.
I like to think that when I took my decision to let M go up without me I was simply exercising my adult prerogative to chose not to torture myself doing things which I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't enjoy. Rather than that I have done numerous things to do with heights that have terrified me in the duration of this trip and for some reason didn't rise to the challenge of this one.
"It's an incredible view from up there," says M encouragingly, when he returns.
"It's an amazing view from up here," I say firmly, "oooh look - is that a turtle?"
Friday, 31 July 2015
Thursday, 30 July 2015
Quito: First Impressions
Our first impressions of Quito are of beeping horns, (it seems to be a way of telling pedestrians to jump out of the way, of asking pedestrians if they want a lift or of waking pedestrians in the early hours of the morning with a series of six or seven beeps of a horn at half minute intervals to alert them to...I am not sure what. Something you are selling?), bustle, churches and concentrations of one thing (shoe street, tourist street, stolen watches and phones street, small shops selling anything and everything street, drunk people and take away kebab and hamburgers street.)
In short Quito is disappointingly, but very predictably, like any other capital city. With slightly less regulation when it comes to the taxis. (We watch a man park a yellow 'regulated, safe for tourists') taxi very suddenly on the side of a street, then lurch out of the door, too drunk to walk properly and collapse over the bonnet of his vehicle. His friend screeches to a halt across two lanes of traffic, leaves his cab there, and wanders across the road for a road side hamburger. We resolve not to take a yellow taxi.)
If this sounds damming it isn't really. Can you tell me that the man we saw having a fight with his friend, then heading into a kebab joint to angrily try to overturn the counter might not have been a resident or tourist in London? Can you show me a place other than the more concentrated tourist areas or very posh residential estates, that is not a little grimy, congested or polluted? When I lived in London I heard sirens an average of seven times a day, somewhat more often at night. It's not very different to a blaring horn. And, incidentally, I heard plenty of those too.
Quito is a capital city. As such it has poor areas, run down areas, rich areas and party areas, and is baffling for the uninitiated, who are trying to buy something normal and dull, like soap. (In fact, to be fair to Quito, what we are looking for is shower gel. And we have not found this in Peru either. People don't seem to use it.)
Our first day, predictably, feels a little grey compared to the green mountains and cobbled streets of Cusco. Or the bright markets and indigenous peoples of Cochabamba. It is perhaps our own fault. Our plan today is to get our bearings and make plans, involving the tourist information office, and the supermarket for supplies, having been flummoxed by the most un-Bolivian market selling only some items, and not anything you would want. (In the end we discover Quito's equivalent to the markets of Cochabamba, tiny shops crammed from floor to ceiling with anything and everything. You don't browse, you pretty much just hand the friendly seller your shopping list. This is a rather nice discovery, reminding me of old fashioned English corner shops in the 1950's) but we don't discover it till the end of the day.
Tourist info and supermarkets do not a fascinating first day make, though we do soften the blow for ourselves by visiting a vegetarian cafe for lunch and a brewery on the way home.
Quito does seem a little grey and hard to be in (there is no kettle in our shared kitchen, and only one mug among several rooms full of people plus a bonus mouldy tub of what might once have been butter on the sink where the washing up liquid might normally be. It's quite hard to cook or even make a drink and although we can improvise, and have done so before, it adds to a general sense of ennui.) And eating out in capital cities is expensive.
Even so, what Quito has lacked today it has more than made up for in promise for the future. We found a dance show at the theatre on my birthday for a reasonable price, a festival of music in one of the parks, and numerous opportunities to escape the smog and get out into the rainy but lush green landscapes around the city, and watch for humming birds, pumas, condors and any other wild creature kind enough to let us catch a glimpse of it.
All we have to do is plan some trips, book some tickets, walk to some places and keep our eyes open for all those little quirky corners hiding gems that are so hidden and yet so ubiquitous in capital cities, like compensatory offerings to their smog worn inhabitants.
In short Quito is disappointingly, but very predictably, like any other capital city. With slightly less regulation when it comes to the taxis. (We watch a man park a yellow 'regulated, safe for tourists') taxi very suddenly on the side of a street, then lurch out of the door, too drunk to walk properly and collapse over the bonnet of his vehicle. His friend screeches to a halt across two lanes of traffic, leaves his cab there, and wanders across the road for a road side hamburger. We resolve not to take a yellow taxi.)
If this sounds damming it isn't really. Can you tell me that the man we saw having a fight with his friend, then heading into a kebab joint to angrily try to overturn the counter might not have been a resident or tourist in London? Can you show me a place other than the more concentrated tourist areas or very posh residential estates, that is not a little grimy, congested or polluted? When I lived in London I heard sirens an average of seven times a day, somewhat more often at night. It's not very different to a blaring horn. And, incidentally, I heard plenty of those too.
Quito is a capital city. As such it has poor areas, run down areas, rich areas and party areas, and is baffling for the uninitiated, who are trying to buy something normal and dull, like soap. (In fact, to be fair to Quito, what we are looking for is shower gel. And we have not found this in Peru either. People don't seem to use it.)
Our first day, predictably, feels a little grey compared to the green mountains and cobbled streets of Cusco. Or the bright markets and indigenous peoples of Cochabamba. It is perhaps our own fault. Our plan today is to get our bearings and make plans, involving the tourist information office, and the supermarket for supplies, having been flummoxed by the most un-Bolivian market selling only some items, and not anything you would want. (In the end we discover Quito's equivalent to the markets of Cochabamba, tiny shops crammed from floor to ceiling with anything and everything. You don't browse, you pretty much just hand the friendly seller your shopping list. This is a rather nice discovery, reminding me of old fashioned English corner shops in the 1950's) but we don't discover it till the end of the day.
Tourist info and supermarkets do not a fascinating first day make, though we do soften the blow for ourselves by visiting a vegetarian cafe for lunch and a brewery on the way home.
Quito does seem a little grey and hard to be in (there is no kettle in our shared kitchen, and only one mug among several rooms full of people plus a bonus mouldy tub of what might once have been butter on the sink where the washing up liquid might normally be. It's quite hard to cook or even make a drink and although we can improvise, and have done so before, it adds to a general sense of ennui.) And eating out in capital cities is expensive.
Even so, what Quito has lacked today it has more than made up for in promise for the future. We found a dance show at the theatre on my birthday for a reasonable price, a festival of music in one of the parks, and numerous opportunities to escape the smog and get out into the rainy but lush green landscapes around the city, and watch for humming birds, pumas, condors and any other wild creature kind enough to let us catch a glimpse of it.
All we have to do is plan some trips, book some tickets, walk to some places and keep our eyes open for all those little quirky corners hiding gems that are so hidden and yet so ubiquitous in capital cities, like compensatory offerings to their smog worn inhabitants.
Wednesday, 29 July 2015
Peru: Top Ten Memorable Moments
...are as follows:
1) Our first lunch with our lovely host, Beth, who feeds us the most amazing quinoa soup we have had before or since, made by her smiling house keeper, with much wine and enthusiastic conversation. It was a wonderful welcome, and Beth a wonderful friend.
2) Standing in the court yard of the Planeterra village, watching the ladies turn grubby llama wool into clean threads of a hundred different colours and then weave, knit or embroider into fantastic fabrics, all without the help of a single man made chemical or a spark of electricity.
3) The Santa Ana festival, with its beautiful mixture of festivity and reflection, it's colour and vitality, and the sense of family that pervaded the little Santa Ana square. Not to mention the blatant disregard for the traffic.
4) The art work, especially San Blas, with its artistic vibrancy and beautiful, cobbled streets and little brightly coloured shops. The way that the art work is so genuinely stunning as to be capable of moving me to tears.
5) The daily walk through green lush countryside, mountains in the distance and fields of bright quinoa growing either side, down towards the central vale of Cusco, which we can see in panorama below as we walk and again in twinkling lights below the stars when we make our way back in the evening.
6) Day two of the Inca trip, our first hiking the trail. The scenery, the exercise, the excitement and the company. The subsequent sickness which cut the experience short could not damage or taint my pure happiness at being there that day. One day that hike will be continued.
7) Moray, with its beautiful green terraces, and Moras, just a few miles down the road with it's unworldly salt pools set into the side of the mountain.
8) Cochuasi, with it's small but passionate staff and its rescued animals. I was so pleased that it existed to look after animals which had been so let down by humankind, sad that they had to be there, but so privileged to see animals like pumas, wild cats, parrots and condors so close up.
9) Sitting in the tiny upstairs room of a little cafe watching lively story telling in Spanish with puppets and sparkling eyes, and no concession to tourism.
10) Riding the most unhurried horse in the world through stunning scenery, blue lagoons nestling in green fields, Inca ruins, snow capped mountains in the far distance and frequent snack breaks. (For the horses). The entire absence of any sense of subordination in the horses or necessity to tie them up, or of urgency. "This is English time," says Beth to our horse wrangler, "English time means now." He smiles at her indulgently, chewing a piece of grass and watching the horses strolling towards us in the distance.
"Never mind English time", we reassure him, " we'll get enough of that in England.'
1) Our first lunch with our lovely host, Beth, who feeds us the most amazing quinoa soup we have had before or since, made by her smiling house keeper, with much wine and enthusiastic conversation. It was a wonderful welcome, and Beth a wonderful friend.
2) Standing in the court yard of the Planeterra village, watching the ladies turn grubby llama wool into clean threads of a hundred different colours and then weave, knit or embroider into fantastic fabrics, all without the help of a single man made chemical or a spark of electricity.
3) The Santa Ana festival, with its beautiful mixture of festivity and reflection, it's colour and vitality, and the sense of family that pervaded the little Santa Ana square. Not to mention the blatant disregard for the traffic.
4) The art work, especially San Blas, with its artistic vibrancy and beautiful, cobbled streets and little brightly coloured shops. The way that the art work is so genuinely stunning as to be capable of moving me to tears.
5) The daily walk through green lush countryside, mountains in the distance and fields of bright quinoa growing either side, down towards the central vale of Cusco, which we can see in panorama below as we walk and again in twinkling lights below the stars when we make our way back in the evening.
6) Day two of the Inca trip, our first hiking the trail. The scenery, the exercise, the excitement and the company. The subsequent sickness which cut the experience short could not damage or taint my pure happiness at being there that day. One day that hike will be continued.
7) Moray, with its beautiful green terraces, and Moras, just a few miles down the road with it's unworldly salt pools set into the side of the mountain.
8) Cochuasi, with it's small but passionate staff and its rescued animals. I was so pleased that it existed to look after animals which had been so let down by humankind, sad that they had to be there, but so privileged to see animals like pumas, wild cats, parrots and condors so close up.
9) Sitting in the tiny upstairs room of a little cafe watching lively story telling in Spanish with puppets and sparkling eyes, and no concession to tourism.
10) Riding the most unhurried horse in the world through stunning scenery, blue lagoons nestling in green fields, Inca ruins, snow capped mountains in the far distance and frequent snack breaks. (For the horses). The entire absence of any sense of subordination in the horses or necessity to tie them up, or of urgency. "This is English time," says Beth to our horse wrangler, "English time means now." He smiles at her indulgently, chewing a piece of grass and watching the horses strolling towards us in the distance.
"Never mind English time", we reassure him, " we'll get enough of that in England.'
Sunday, 26 July 2015
Fiesta! 26, 27 and 28 July
There is, in Peru, a festival for what seems like every day of the year. Somehow, through a combination of the Inca trail for a week mid our stay, various trips to doctors for needless medications, or the necessity to stay in for the duration of various sickness bugs, or simply our own schedule of wanting to do everything there is in and around Cusco, we have not, until now, actually been to one. That's OK though, because in these last few days, we go to three.
The festival of Santa Ana is in honour of Jesus' Grandmother, the mother of Mary, who as far as I am aware is not mentioned in the Bible, but perhaps appears in the apocrypha. Certainly she is a key figure in the catholic calendar.
We walk up a gravity defying hill to the small church of Santa Ana, which has a small square outside it, and a beautiful view over Cusco. There is a sense of happy merriment, reminding me of the sort of atmosphere you might get at a wedding, or a large family party for a significant birthday. There are mini football tables, games in which you throw a stone onto a square marked with a certain number, like a sort of blunt flat game of darts but with a chess like dart board, and a small trampoline construct for the children, along with a small roundabout with horses. Lining the square are various foodstuffs, smelling overwhelmingly like a roast chicken dinner, fittingly for Sunday, and consisting of potatoes, small rounds of soufflé, and roasted whole guinea pig, chicken or piglet, and fried sausages. There is also a man carrying a long pole adorned with toffee apples of various flavours and colours. Everyone is drinking Cusqueño beer out of big bottles, and, apart from one particular group of men, people are pleasantly happy, but not overly drunk. The method for drinking beer, seems to be to have one plastic cup and drink out of it in turn, shaking the foam out of the bottom of the cup in between.
We have timed it well, because just as we arrive a matching band strikes up, and we have learned that this signifies something beginning. Sure enough, behind the marching band a group of dancing girls in traditional costume enter the square and swirl and dip, waving their handkerchiefs (in fact more like a pair of pom poms tied together), for all the world as though it wasn't incredibly hot and devoid of shade.
As soon as the dance is over they dissipate and head, as we have, for the square inches of shade afforded by the wall of the church.
Their place is taken by a group of men in traditional dress, wearing white balaclavas which we believe signify a pilgrimage and proceed to perform a dance which we have seen before, at the Centre de Arte de qosco, earlier in our visit. It involves a lot of whip cracking around the legs of the men, pairs of men taking turns to whip or be whipped. We have wondered if this relates to the Spanish arrival, and their regime which involved whipping as a punishment particularly for non Spanish people who failed to 'assimilate'. Perhaps UKIP could incorporate this in their next manifesto.
Either way I note that this dance, with its clowning and whipping and general tomfoolery (one of the masked dancers pulls the mayor into the ring for a turn at the whipping/being whipped contest, which causes much hilarity and during which the mayor, luckily shows great fortitude and good humour) is given rather more time and enthusiasm than any of the other dances.
After this, however, everything turns rather more serious, and I note how seamlessly it is possible here, for something to be both reverent and deeply felt - and hugely exuberant and joyful. I try to think of an example of this seamless mixture in England and cannot. We seem to be rather more ordered in our emotions, the exuberance and symbolism being made to take turns.
Here, the mood is not changed, but simply added to by the appearance of the huge and beautiful, highly ornate statue of Santa Ana herself, surrounded by lillies and mounted on a dense polished wood frame. The frame alone looks heavy but the statue, made, I believe from porcelain, and human hair, like those at the Santa Theresa nunnery in Bolivia, must be heavier still. The lillies are in glass vases. The impact, should anyone drop this, would be enormous even purely from the point of view of its weight and value. When you add the sanctity of it, any mishap would be catastrophic. I watch, awed as the men wrap cloth, similar to that used to carry babies or, in Cusco, lambs, around pillows and tie it to their shoulders to prevent it from rubbing, and then shoulder, with visible effort, the frame on which the Saint is mounted. The band starts up in earnest, another set of dancers in yellow costumes, carrying gourds, start dancing in front of the statue and the procession begins. It is hugely moving. I gaze at the effigy, sunlight glinting off the gold plating of her halo, and at the second statue, made of wood, which follows it. The music swirls, jubilant and the movement of the men carrying the statue is a dance in itself. The statue moves through the square, to process down the road that encircles the church, and which hasn't been closed so passing traffic is simply halted, none of the festivities being rushed or toned down by the presence of a long queue of traffic behind the dancers and another queue next to them, moving upwards. In the wake of the statue are several marching bands, and several different, equally exuberant troops of dancers. There are children in bright dress, twirling handkerchiefs, dancing from side to side across the road, as well as on the spot, not rushing, nor moving away from the traffic. The traffic cones second. This is an important procession. For once the impatient horn blowing ceases. There are troops of men, with ribboned hats and bells on their shoes, who dance and leap in the air waving their hats. There are dancers representing different occupations, someone carries a tool box, someone else a mobile phone. Another person wears surgeons scrubs. Inexplicably, there is also a gorilla.
We stand on the square looking down at the road, and watch until the last bright, twirling dancer, vanishes around the corner. It is a very hot day but I am glad of my sunglasses, not only because of the light, but because my eyes, beneath them, are permanently wet. I simply cannot get over how lucky we are to be here.
"We are in Peru!" I say to M, through a treacherously wobbling lower lip, "watching this! Would you ever have imagined we might get to do this? Would you have thought it?"
The festivities themselves are moving, but it is all of this and more than means I cannot keep a dry eye, neither today, nor the next day. And I am not ashamed. If anything on this trip I have become increasingly incapable of not bursting into tears whenever I see something beautiful, and I am going to gain a reputation for it quickly back home. But I have cried numerous times on this trip, and only twice were the tears for something sad. If I arrive home with overused tear ducts, it is simply because I have realised too often how wonderful life is.
Everywhere.
The second festival is, rather fittingly, San Christobel, Saint Christopher to you and I, the patron saint of travel.
We climb a similarly punishing hill, and arrive at a small square outside the church of San Christabel. The image will not be moved today though. It remains in the church, where people sit in contemplation, as beautifully adorned with lillies as Santa Ana the previous day, and looking just as intricate and heavy. The procession will not take place until 4 August. This is a multi day festival, which seems to be the norm here. I take a seat in the church and say a prayer of thanks. Certainly my little Saint Christopher's icon given to me by my sister, has kept us safe and I am grateful for the protection and for the fantastic time we have had, whether you believe those thanks are attributable to God, to the saint, or to the icon itself. I take my Saint Christopher out of my money belt, where it always travels with me. It is still every bit as battered looking.
"If you have been taking the hits for us," I say to it silently, "it's much appreciated."
We leave the church and survey the rather more beer soaked festivities outside. There are the same games, families crowded laughingly and shouting good naturedly at each other as they play table football, children flinging themselves against the nets encasing a trampoline. There are at least three small tents selling beer and playing music. The music is salsa, regatton and brass band respectively and there is a small stage on which a fourth band is setting up. Everyone is holding a bottle of beer. Most people are not holding their first bottle of beer. Suddenly the band strikes up with purpose, and marches, bombastically, inside the church. Turning to face San Christabel, they proceed to play him Happy Birthday. I am crying again, for many reasons, the exuberance, our luck, that the Saint is for travel, and because it makes me think of my sister, to name but a few.
But there is also much to laugh about. While the band plays, two men wave white San Cristobal flags in time to the music. One, I suspect rather more lubricated than the other, is swinging his flag quite deliberately into people's faces, particularly if they happen to be a photographer, for example, or a member of the band.
Outside, after the band process out, people begin dancing. A man runs into the middle of the dancers, shakes up a big bottle of beer and sprays the dancers with it. Everybody is laughing and drinking. At the food tent a man is asleep on the table. A group of women laugh with abandon, clinking glasses.
It is jubilant, familial, and lots of fun.
The Independence celebrations, which have been going on for several days already, centre on the main square and so are both larger and more sombre oinn nature, though that sense of mixed reflection and partying is still apparent. The effect is slightly dampened because of course the main square of Cusco is much more replete with tourists. There has been plenty of build up. In the last few days we have seen groups of variously aged children performing amazingly polished dances here, cvariousarious street theatre and of course innumerable marching bands. Today, the square is completely silent, but on our way home, through the meandering green paths up the hill, we see no less than two separate celebrations, each with more than one marching band, and accompanying dancers. We are stopped by an earnest and very kind (though possibly a little drunk) older man who tells us, in blurry Spanish, that God exists, despite all logic, and that in our country, (with this he raises his eyes to heaven), He is there too, one God over all the world. He blesses us, in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then releases our hands, which he has been holding all this time, and leaves us with a little bit of his blessing still lingering in our minds.
We retreat home, ready for our five thirty flight out of Cusco, and our goodbye to Peru in the morning. What a fitting ending. We have loved Peru, with its scenery, its art, its people, it's deeply felt beliefs and its sense of life.
Viva la fiesta!
The festival of Santa Ana is in honour of Jesus' Grandmother, the mother of Mary, who as far as I am aware is not mentioned in the Bible, but perhaps appears in the apocrypha. Certainly she is a key figure in the catholic calendar.
We walk up a gravity defying hill to the small church of Santa Ana, which has a small square outside it, and a beautiful view over Cusco. There is a sense of happy merriment, reminding me of the sort of atmosphere you might get at a wedding, or a large family party for a significant birthday. There are mini football tables, games in which you throw a stone onto a square marked with a certain number, like a sort of blunt flat game of darts but with a chess like dart board, and a small trampoline construct for the children, along with a small roundabout with horses. Lining the square are various foodstuffs, smelling overwhelmingly like a roast chicken dinner, fittingly for Sunday, and consisting of potatoes, small rounds of soufflé, and roasted whole guinea pig, chicken or piglet, and fried sausages. There is also a man carrying a long pole adorned with toffee apples of various flavours and colours. Everyone is drinking Cusqueño beer out of big bottles, and, apart from one particular group of men, people are pleasantly happy, but not overly drunk. The method for drinking beer, seems to be to have one plastic cup and drink out of it in turn, shaking the foam out of the bottom of the cup in between.
We have timed it well, because just as we arrive a matching band strikes up, and we have learned that this signifies something beginning. Sure enough, behind the marching band a group of dancing girls in traditional costume enter the square and swirl and dip, waving their handkerchiefs (in fact more like a pair of pom poms tied together), for all the world as though it wasn't incredibly hot and devoid of shade.
As soon as the dance is over they dissipate and head, as we have, for the square inches of shade afforded by the wall of the church.
Their place is taken by a group of men in traditional dress, wearing white balaclavas which we believe signify a pilgrimage and proceed to perform a dance which we have seen before, at the Centre de Arte de qosco, earlier in our visit. It involves a lot of whip cracking around the legs of the men, pairs of men taking turns to whip or be whipped. We have wondered if this relates to the Spanish arrival, and their regime which involved whipping as a punishment particularly for non Spanish people who failed to 'assimilate'. Perhaps UKIP could incorporate this in their next manifesto.
Either way I note that this dance, with its clowning and whipping and general tomfoolery (one of the masked dancers pulls the mayor into the ring for a turn at the whipping/being whipped contest, which causes much hilarity and during which the mayor, luckily shows great fortitude and good humour) is given rather more time and enthusiasm than any of the other dances.
After this, however, everything turns rather more serious, and I note how seamlessly it is possible here, for something to be both reverent and deeply felt - and hugely exuberant and joyful. I try to think of an example of this seamless mixture in England and cannot. We seem to be rather more ordered in our emotions, the exuberance and symbolism being made to take turns.
Here, the mood is not changed, but simply added to by the appearance of the huge and beautiful, highly ornate statue of Santa Ana herself, surrounded by lillies and mounted on a dense polished wood frame. The frame alone looks heavy but the statue, made, I believe from porcelain, and human hair, like those at the Santa Theresa nunnery in Bolivia, must be heavier still. The lillies are in glass vases. The impact, should anyone drop this, would be enormous even purely from the point of view of its weight and value. When you add the sanctity of it, any mishap would be catastrophic. I watch, awed as the men wrap cloth, similar to that used to carry babies or, in Cusco, lambs, around pillows and tie it to their shoulders to prevent it from rubbing, and then shoulder, with visible effort, the frame on which the Saint is mounted. The band starts up in earnest, another set of dancers in yellow costumes, carrying gourds, start dancing in front of the statue and the procession begins. It is hugely moving. I gaze at the effigy, sunlight glinting off the gold plating of her halo, and at the second statue, made of wood, which follows it. The music swirls, jubilant and the movement of the men carrying the statue is a dance in itself. The statue moves through the square, to process down the road that encircles the church, and which hasn't been closed so passing traffic is simply halted, none of the festivities being rushed or toned down by the presence of a long queue of traffic behind the dancers and another queue next to them, moving upwards. In the wake of the statue are several marching bands, and several different, equally exuberant troops of dancers. There are children in bright dress, twirling handkerchiefs, dancing from side to side across the road, as well as on the spot, not rushing, nor moving away from the traffic. The traffic cones second. This is an important procession. For once the impatient horn blowing ceases. There are troops of men, with ribboned hats and bells on their shoes, who dance and leap in the air waving their hats. There are dancers representing different occupations, someone carries a tool box, someone else a mobile phone. Another person wears surgeons scrubs. Inexplicably, there is also a gorilla.
We stand on the square looking down at the road, and watch until the last bright, twirling dancer, vanishes around the corner. It is a very hot day but I am glad of my sunglasses, not only because of the light, but because my eyes, beneath them, are permanently wet. I simply cannot get over how lucky we are to be here.
"We are in Peru!" I say to M, through a treacherously wobbling lower lip, "watching this! Would you ever have imagined we might get to do this? Would you have thought it?"
The festivities themselves are moving, but it is all of this and more than means I cannot keep a dry eye, neither today, nor the next day. And I am not ashamed. If anything on this trip I have become increasingly incapable of not bursting into tears whenever I see something beautiful, and I am going to gain a reputation for it quickly back home. But I have cried numerous times on this trip, and only twice were the tears for something sad. If I arrive home with overused tear ducts, it is simply because I have realised too often how wonderful life is.
Everywhere.
The second festival is, rather fittingly, San Christobel, Saint Christopher to you and I, the patron saint of travel.
We climb a similarly punishing hill, and arrive at a small square outside the church of San Christabel. The image will not be moved today though. It remains in the church, where people sit in contemplation, as beautifully adorned with lillies as Santa Ana the previous day, and looking just as intricate and heavy. The procession will not take place until 4 August. This is a multi day festival, which seems to be the norm here. I take a seat in the church and say a prayer of thanks. Certainly my little Saint Christopher's icon given to me by my sister, has kept us safe and I am grateful for the protection and for the fantastic time we have had, whether you believe those thanks are attributable to God, to the saint, or to the icon itself. I take my Saint Christopher out of my money belt, where it always travels with me. It is still every bit as battered looking.
"If you have been taking the hits for us," I say to it silently, "it's much appreciated."
We leave the church and survey the rather more beer soaked festivities outside. There are the same games, families crowded laughingly and shouting good naturedly at each other as they play table football, children flinging themselves against the nets encasing a trampoline. There are at least three small tents selling beer and playing music. The music is salsa, regatton and brass band respectively and there is a small stage on which a fourth band is setting up. Everyone is holding a bottle of beer. Most people are not holding their first bottle of beer. Suddenly the band strikes up with purpose, and marches, bombastically, inside the church. Turning to face San Christabel, they proceed to play him Happy Birthday. I am crying again, for many reasons, the exuberance, our luck, that the Saint is for travel, and because it makes me think of my sister, to name but a few.
But there is also much to laugh about. While the band plays, two men wave white San Cristobal flags in time to the music. One, I suspect rather more lubricated than the other, is swinging his flag quite deliberately into people's faces, particularly if they happen to be a photographer, for example, or a member of the band.
Outside, after the band process out, people begin dancing. A man runs into the middle of the dancers, shakes up a big bottle of beer and sprays the dancers with it. Everybody is laughing and drinking. At the food tent a man is asleep on the table. A group of women laugh with abandon, clinking glasses.
It is jubilant, familial, and lots of fun.
The Independence celebrations, which have been going on for several days already, centre on the main square and so are both larger and more sombre oinn nature, though that sense of mixed reflection and partying is still apparent. The effect is slightly dampened because of course the main square of Cusco is much more replete with tourists. There has been plenty of build up. In the last few days we have seen groups of variously aged children performing amazingly polished dances here, cvariousarious street theatre and of course innumerable marching bands. Today, the square is completely silent, but on our way home, through the meandering green paths up the hill, we see no less than two separate celebrations, each with more than one marching band, and accompanying dancers. We are stopped by an earnest and very kind (though possibly a little drunk) older man who tells us, in blurry Spanish, that God exists, despite all logic, and that in our country, (with this he raises his eyes to heaven), He is there too, one God over all the world. He blesses us, in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then releases our hands, which he has been holding all this time, and leaves us with a little bit of his blessing still lingering in our minds.
We retreat home, ready for our five thirty flight out of Cusco, and our goodbye to Peru in the morning. What a fitting ending. We have loved Peru, with its scenery, its art, its people, it's deeply felt beliefs and its sense of life.
Viva la fiesta!
Friday, 24 July 2015
The Art of Appreciation: 24th and 25th July
Arts are not something owned by a country, but by individuals. Whether through a family tradition, genetic ability, a cultural norm or a historic recipe, or purely on a single innovation by one person, everybody can do something amazing.
And yet, perhaps because everybody can do something, and therefore talent is somehow commonplace, we just accept this fact, without taking time to really think about how awe inspiring it is that we go through life surrounded by items or performances which have been created through the specific skill of another person.
We spend these two days experiencing a wide variety of different arts in Cusco, and I realise that in fact every day, whatever our plans, we are walking through lives whose paths are lined with amazing things that other people can do.
Perhaps it is because it's the 16th July.
It isn't, of course, but the 16th July signifies 9 years of M and I being together. Marriage wise we are relative babies, only two years old, but it has been a whole 9 years since we first made the decision to be together, and neither of is regrets a thing. Which is certainly amazing, and a thing to celebrate. It just so happens that on the actual 16th July this year I was throwing up violently into a paint pot, and then leaving M on his own to finish the Inca trail. So we have postponed the celebrations.
Perhaps it is this celebration which puts us in mind of appreciating things, and of fighting the urge to take them for granted, but certainly these two days seem filled with different and equally amazing artistic achievements, which we float between, marvelling at. It's a great way to spend a couple of days. Or indeed, a great way to spend your whole life. Appreciating the artworks around you is free. And possible everywhere.
We begin by perusing, with a view to buying, for ourselves or for others, some of the amazing physical works of art available around Cusco.
Toritos
We return to a lady we had chatted with early in our time in Cusco, who owns a small market stall in a courtyard off the cobbled streets of San Blas, where she sells pieces which, for the most part, she has made herself. To our delight, she remembers us.
This lady, (we will call her Ruth), sells a lot of lovely things, but the pieces she specialises in are painted bulls, known as Toritos, (literally, small bulls). It is customary in Peru to place a pair of ceramic toritos on the roof of your house, for luck. In a testament to the power of syncretism, they usually stand either side of a cross. The bulls on the rooves are generally a ceramic brown colour, hollow, and filled, at least when first erected, with Chicha.
"I realised," says Ruth, "after I finished my studies in Lima, that many people would not be able to put a torito on their roof."
We agree, wholeheartedly, thinking of the practical difficulties of trying to put a ceramic bull on the top of your block of flats, or getting it withstand the rather more changeable weather patterns in England. Even if you managed it, you'd probably get accused of witchcraft.
"So I started to paint toritos for inside," says Ruth.
Ruth's toritos are the best in Cusco. We know this because we have spent quite some time looking at them. Colourful, brightly painted bulls for inside the house are on every market, and in every shop.
"...and no everyone does it" says Ruth with mild bitterness.
We have, in each country, encountered many people who claim to be the original maker of something, or to have had the idea first. The more ubiquitous the thing, the more people claim to have been the original. Some people we believe. Others we know to be untrue. I am willing to believe Ruth started the indoor toritos tradition. For one thing she talks about it with passion, in contrast to other sellers who simply point at them, and tell us the price. For another Ruth's paintings really are the best. Its why we came back.
The bulls usually have a base colour, which, in Peruvian belief, signifies a different type of luck. Purple is for health, red for love, black for prosperity (not in terms of money, but in terms of a happy, healthy family), green for hope, white for peace, blue for knowledge. I like that there is not a colour for money. It's emotional wealth only.
On top of this base colour, the best toritos are painted with swirls, intricate flowers, leaves and gold noses, hooves and saddles. We have seen a lot of painted toritos, and lots of the designs on the base colour are very reminiscent of each other. Ruth's are all unique.
Also, we have spent a lot of time, talking to Ruth, learning the significance of the colours, and we like her.
The torito that we buy, white for peace, will be a prized memory. We have peace already. Our white torito will remind us that we do, and prompt us to rediscover it.
Retablos
We have been transfixed by these since we first saw them. They are intricately made little models depicting typical scenes from Peruvian life. Either revealed inside a small wooden house like structure with doors, or arranged around a mirror, they show mask sellers, corn harvests, Shaman ceremonies, Chicha drinking, festivals, fabric weaving and selling, or, with a touch a meta irony, retablo selling. The small scenes are depicted in tiny, brightly coloured detail, crammed to fill every millimetre of space allowed for the scene, and the clay used for the modelling is made from a mixture of potato, corn and rice, crafted painted and varnished in all their detail by families, typically from Ayacucho, where this particular artistic tradition originated, and sold in Cusco, where it will encounter more in the way of passing trade. We have been fascinated enough with these to have picked out our favourite family, the Jimenez's, who seem to pick out their scenes with a particular delicacy of detail. We are treating ourselves, because retablo are expensive, given the hours put into each scene, and it is, after all, the 16th July. We choose the friendliest store with ever so slightly cheaper prices, and the lady gets chatting with us about Cusco's festival of Independence, which more or less seals the deal. We will do anything for someone who will talk to us. Luckily for our bank balances, not everyone has realised that. We have taken a lot of time choosing our retablo, and have asked for a particular colour, which our lady has called through to ask for from a sister store. When it arrives, in a box, and she opens it up to show us, tears fill my eyes and I clap my hand to my mouth, it's so beautiful.
I think they know, at that moment, that they have made a sale.
If I had ten pounds for every time on this trip that I have found myself in tears, so overwhelmed have I been by the beauty of something, by the awe of something, or by our own sheer luck in being here, I would have enough to buy twenty retablos.
Gourds
Another art you see being sold a lot around Cusco, are painted guords. The hard, light shells are carved slightly with intricate designs, showing llamas, dancers, Incan patterns, condors, birds and lizards and then dyed a brown or red colour, with the design outlined usually in black. Depending on size, they can be anything from a few soles to thirty or forty. They are so ubiquitous and sold so often on the street that it is easy to forget to really consider the artistry of them.
Marching Bands
Preparations and warm up festivities for Cusco's Independence day are underway and in these few days you can barely cross the main square without encountering a marching band or two. Huge and bombastic in sound, they seem often to act as a sort of compere in festivals, announcing the next dance, act or symbolic parade. On one day the square is crowded with school children, in various uniforms, all of them carrying instruments, batons or practising intricate combinations of marching styles. Every school has a band.
Food
Cusco is filled with variously imaginative restaurants, from the Shamanic Raw Food restaurant where everything is organic, vegetarian, vegan and made with love and peace infused into every spoonful, to the Green Point restaurants which aim to prove a point, that you can be vegan and still delicious. At Green Point we can try Ceviche, a delicious lime, mint, basil and raw onion sauce normallt served over fish, in this instance avocado, raw sushi, made with Brazil nuts and almonds in place of rice, creole soup, with seitan instead of the usual shredded beef loin, lomi saltado, sauteed llama (in this case seitan) with vegetables, rice and fried potato and/or banana, and the creamiest, chocolatiest cake and mouse possible to create, even if you were using full fat milk cream, butter and animal fat. It's an art. Its one of our favourite ones. Sometimes, to my chagrin, I find myself looking forward the mist in any given day, to the food I am going to eat in the middle of it. Should I be ashamed, I wonder? I am on the other side of the earth, experiencing an unrecognisably different set of cultural norms - and all the time it is the food I wake up, and go to sleep, thinking about. There was a point where I looked forward to impressing everyone back home with my newly trim figure. Nowadays I have forgotten all that and am eagerly sampling as much, and as many, cultural delicacies as possible. I can diet when I get home. For most British females, dieting seems to be a perpetual reality. There will be far too much money and cultural airtime given to carrot juice and calorie counts in my life back in England. I will be surrounded and consumed by it unless I am very stubborn and entirely self confident. And however much time I travel, entire self confidence is a quality which evades me. So bring on the food artistry. I will sample it with enthusiasm.
The Cusco Symphony Orchestra
We attend a free performance by the Cusco Symphony Orchestra, who play exquisitely and captivatingly, various classical pieces, but the majority of their repertoire is made up of pieces which somehow incorporate the unmistakable tones and colours of Andean music, which uses lilting, trilling patterns, often with pan pipes, but even more often, with a sort of small stringed instrument larger than a ukulele but smaller than a normal wood guitar. This instrument takes centre stage and leads the rest of the orchestra, managing to retain that ethereal, lilting, lightness of tone even accompanied by a full 65 piece orchestra.
Boots
Colourful material boots abound, with unmistakably Peruvian bright inserts of material set into the top and the shin parts. Being Hans made, of is possible to chose your own material, colour, number of buckles and additional features. We order some as a birthday present for me (rather early), and when we return to collect them we find, rather endearingly that he and his whole extended family are crowded into his tiny workshop, celebrating something with beer and laughter.
"Disculpe," says the boot smith, "mañana?"
This little interaction makes me love the boots all the more.
Beer and Chocolate
There is, I suspect to coincide with Independence day festivities, a beer and chocolate tasting evening hosted by the Choco museum of Cusco. We expect it to be a bit of fun, we are interested in beers and the chocolate making is a bit of a tradition here, but we are happily amazed by the quality of both. We progress through various little stations where we taste a different beer, brewed by the Choco Museums' partners 'Neuevo Mundo' ('New World') paired with a certain type of chocolate. We taste a beautiful, coffee chocolate porter, paired with 75% dark chocolate infused with salt from Moras, a butterscotch toffee tasting triple paired with Chile infused 75% chocolate, and a deep, rich barley wine (still a beer, for those nor uses to beer terminology) with 45% milk chocolate with chewy Aguaymanto (like an Andean gooseberry, or a physalis).
It is all so outstandingly good that we are feeling a little, and not just from the alcohol. Our place in the queue had meant we began at point 3 of the five tasting counters, so we wend our way back to the beginning to taste the pale ale, which we are expecting, after the rich, full body of the others, to be a little nondescript. It is beautiful, grapefruit and lemony and refreshing but also packed with flavour. It is paired with a coffee chocolate which we expect not to go but which goes so well we buy a bar to take home. It is nor chocolate with a hint of coffee. This is chocolate with whole, crunchy bitter coffee beans inside. It's amazing. I eat a lot before bed. It keeps me awake. I use the barley wine to reverse it.
There is so much amazing art being created, performed and sold everywhere. We take it for granted that someone can paint well, that someone else can make music, that a third person can blend flavours. But, more than the arts themselves, is it not amazing and beautiful that people can do this? Whether you are buying or not, just notice it sometime, as you walk down the road. The hairdresser who can make a dead thing beautiful, the baker who can make great bread, the designers of the clothes in the shops, the composers of the music you use as background.
Life is full of talent and artistry. It doesn't break the bank just to notice it.
And yet, perhaps because everybody can do something, and therefore talent is somehow commonplace, we just accept this fact, without taking time to really think about how awe inspiring it is that we go through life surrounded by items or performances which have been created through the specific skill of another person.
We spend these two days experiencing a wide variety of different arts in Cusco, and I realise that in fact every day, whatever our plans, we are walking through lives whose paths are lined with amazing things that other people can do.
Perhaps it is because it's the 16th July.
It isn't, of course, but the 16th July signifies 9 years of M and I being together. Marriage wise we are relative babies, only two years old, but it has been a whole 9 years since we first made the decision to be together, and neither of is regrets a thing. Which is certainly amazing, and a thing to celebrate. It just so happens that on the actual 16th July this year I was throwing up violently into a paint pot, and then leaving M on his own to finish the Inca trail. So we have postponed the celebrations.
Perhaps it is this celebration which puts us in mind of appreciating things, and of fighting the urge to take them for granted, but certainly these two days seem filled with different and equally amazing artistic achievements, which we float between, marvelling at. It's a great way to spend a couple of days. Or indeed, a great way to spend your whole life. Appreciating the artworks around you is free. And possible everywhere.
We begin by perusing, with a view to buying, for ourselves or for others, some of the amazing physical works of art available around Cusco.
Toritos
We return to a lady we had chatted with early in our time in Cusco, who owns a small market stall in a courtyard off the cobbled streets of San Blas, where she sells pieces which, for the most part, she has made herself. To our delight, she remembers us.
This lady, (we will call her Ruth), sells a lot of lovely things, but the pieces she specialises in are painted bulls, known as Toritos, (literally, small bulls). It is customary in Peru to place a pair of ceramic toritos on the roof of your house, for luck. In a testament to the power of syncretism, they usually stand either side of a cross. The bulls on the rooves are generally a ceramic brown colour, hollow, and filled, at least when first erected, with Chicha.
"I realised," says Ruth, "after I finished my studies in Lima, that many people would not be able to put a torito on their roof."
We agree, wholeheartedly, thinking of the practical difficulties of trying to put a ceramic bull on the top of your block of flats, or getting it withstand the rather more changeable weather patterns in England. Even if you managed it, you'd probably get accused of witchcraft.
"So I started to paint toritos for inside," says Ruth.
Ruth's toritos are the best in Cusco. We know this because we have spent quite some time looking at them. Colourful, brightly painted bulls for inside the house are on every market, and in every shop.
"...and no everyone does it" says Ruth with mild bitterness.
We have, in each country, encountered many people who claim to be the original maker of something, or to have had the idea first. The more ubiquitous the thing, the more people claim to have been the original. Some people we believe. Others we know to be untrue. I am willing to believe Ruth started the indoor toritos tradition. For one thing she talks about it with passion, in contrast to other sellers who simply point at them, and tell us the price. For another Ruth's paintings really are the best. Its why we came back.
The bulls usually have a base colour, which, in Peruvian belief, signifies a different type of luck. Purple is for health, red for love, black for prosperity (not in terms of money, but in terms of a happy, healthy family), green for hope, white for peace, blue for knowledge. I like that there is not a colour for money. It's emotional wealth only.
On top of this base colour, the best toritos are painted with swirls, intricate flowers, leaves and gold noses, hooves and saddles. We have seen a lot of painted toritos, and lots of the designs on the base colour are very reminiscent of each other. Ruth's are all unique.
Also, we have spent a lot of time, talking to Ruth, learning the significance of the colours, and we like her.
The torito that we buy, white for peace, will be a prized memory. We have peace already. Our white torito will remind us that we do, and prompt us to rediscover it.
Retablos
We have been transfixed by these since we first saw them. They are intricately made little models depicting typical scenes from Peruvian life. Either revealed inside a small wooden house like structure with doors, or arranged around a mirror, they show mask sellers, corn harvests, Shaman ceremonies, Chicha drinking, festivals, fabric weaving and selling, or, with a touch a meta irony, retablo selling. The small scenes are depicted in tiny, brightly coloured detail, crammed to fill every millimetre of space allowed for the scene, and the clay used for the modelling is made from a mixture of potato, corn and rice, crafted painted and varnished in all their detail by families, typically from Ayacucho, where this particular artistic tradition originated, and sold in Cusco, where it will encounter more in the way of passing trade. We have been fascinated enough with these to have picked out our favourite family, the Jimenez's, who seem to pick out their scenes with a particular delicacy of detail. We are treating ourselves, because retablo are expensive, given the hours put into each scene, and it is, after all, the 16th July. We choose the friendliest store with ever so slightly cheaper prices, and the lady gets chatting with us about Cusco's festival of Independence, which more or less seals the deal. We will do anything for someone who will talk to us. Luckily for our bank balances, not everyone has realised that. We have taken a lot of time choosing our retablo, and have asked for a particular colour, which our lady has called through to ask for from a sister store. When it arrives, in a box, and she opens it up to show us, tears fill my eyes and I clap my hand to my mouth, it's so beautiful.
I think they know, at that moment, that they have made a sale.
If I had ten pounds for every time on this trip that I have found myself in tears, so overwhelmed have I been by the beauty of something, by the awe of something, or by our own sheer luck in being here, I would have enough to buy twenty retablos.
Gourds
Another art you see being sold a lot around Cusco, are painted guords. The hard, light shells are carved slightly with intricate designs, showing llamas, dancers, Incan patterns, condors, birds and lizards and then dyed a brown or red colour, with the design outlined usually in black. Depending on size, they can be anything from a few soles to thirty or forty. They are so ubiquitous and sold so often on the street that it is easy to forget to really consider the artistry of them.
Marching Bands
Preparations and warm up festivities for Cusco's Independence day are underway and in these few days you can barely cross the main square without encountering a marching band or two. Huge and bombastic in sound, they seem often to act as a sort of compere in festivals, announcing the next dance, act or symbolic parade. On one day the square is crowded with school children, in various uniforms, all of them carrying instruments, batons or practising intricate combinations of marching styles. Every school has a band.
Food
Cusco is filled with variously imaginative restaurants, from the Shamanic Raw Food restaurant where everything is organic, vegetarian, vegan and made with love and peace infused into every spoonful, to the Green Point restaurants which aim to prove a point, that you can be vegan and still delicious. At Green Point we can try Ceviche, a delicious lime, mint, basil and raw onion sauce normallt served over fish, in this instance avocado, raw sushi, made with Brazil nuts and almonds in place of rice, creole soup, with seitan instead of the usual shredded beef loin, lomi saltado, sauteed llama (in this case seitan) with vegetables, rice and fried potato and/or banana, and the creamiest, chocolatiest cake and mouse possible to create, even if you were using full fat milk cream, butter and animal fat. It's an art. Its one of our favourite ones. Sometimes, to my chagrin, I find myself looking forward the mist in any given day, to the food I am going to eat in the middle of it. Should I be ashamed, I wonder? I am on the other side of the earth, experiencing an unrecognisably different set of cultural norms - and all the time it is the food I wake up, and go to sleep, thinking about. There was a point where I looked forward to impressing everyone back home with my newly trim figure. Nowadays I have forgotten all that and am eagerly sampling as much, and as many, cultural delicacies as possible. I can diet when I get home. For most British females, dieting seems to be a perpetual reality. There will be far too much money and cultural airtime given to carrot juice and calorie counts in my life back in England. I will be surrounded and consumed by it unless I am very stubborn and entirely self confident. And however much time I travel, entire self confidence is a quality which evades me. So bring on the food artistry. I will sample it with enthusiasm.
The Cusco Symphony Orchestra
We attend a free performance by the Cusco Symphony Orchestra, who play exquisitely and captivatingly, various classical pieces, but the majority of their repertoire is made up of pieces which somehow incorporate the unmistakable tones and colours of Andean music, which uses lilting, trilling patterns, often with pan pipes, but even more often, with a sort of small stringed instrument larger than a ukulele but smaller than a normal wood guitar. This instrument takes centre stage and leads the rest of the orchestra, managing to retain that ethereal, lilting, lightness of tone even accompanied by a full 65 piece orchestra.
Boots
Colourful material boots abound, with unmistakably Peruvian bright inserts of material set into the top and the shin parts. Being Hans made, of is possible to chose your own material, colour, number of buckles and additional features. We order some as a birthday present for me (rather early), and when we return to collect them we find, rather endearingly that he and his whole extended family are crowded into his tiny workshop, celebrating something with beer and laughter.
"Disculpe," says the boot smith, "mañana?"
This little interaction makes me love the boots all the more.
Beer and Chocolate
There is, I suspect to coincide with Independence day festivities, a beer and chocolate tasting evening hosted by the Choco museum of Cusco. We expect it to be a bit of fun, we are interested in beers and the chocolate making is a bit of a tradition here, but we are happily amazed by the quality of both. We progress through various little stations where we taste a different beer, brewed by the Choco Museums' partners 'Neuevo Mundo' ('New World') paired with a certain type of chocolate. We taste a beautiful, coffee chocolate porter, paired with 75% dark chocolate infused with salt from Moras, a butterscotch toffee tasting triple paired with Chile infused 75% chocolate, and a deep, rich barley wine (still a beer, for those nor uses to beer terminology) with 45% milk chocolate with chewy Aguaymanto (like an Andean gooseberry, or a physalis).
It is all so outstandingly good that we are feeling a little, and not just from the alcohol. Our place in the queue had meant we began at point 3 of the five tasting counters, so we wend our way back to the beginning to taste the pale ale, which we are expecting, after the rich, full body of the others, to be a little nondescript. It is beautiful, grapefruit and lemony and refreshing but also packed with flavour. It is paired with a coffee chocolate which we expect not to go but which goes so well we buy a bar to take home. It is nor chocolate with a hint of coffee. This is chocolate with whole, crunchy bitter coffee beans inside. It's amazing. I eat a lot before bed. It keeps me awake. I use the barley wine to reverse it.
There is so much amazing art being created, performed and sold everywhere. We take it for granted that someone can paint well, that someone else can make music, that a third person can blend flavours. But, more than the arts themselves, is it not amazing and beautiful that people can do this? Whether you are buying or not, just notice it sometime, as you walk down the road. The hairdresser who can make a dead thing beautiful, the baker who can make great bread, the designers of the clothes in the shops, the composers of the music you use as background.
Life is full of talent and artistry. It doesn't break the bank just to notice it.
Thursday, 23 July 2015
The Superior Species
We visit the Cochauasi Animal Sanctuary, just outside of the city it is well worth the effort.
We meet a beautiful green grey tortoise, the size of a medium sized dog, whose owner brought him from his natural Amazonian habitat, then tired of him and literally threw him out with the trash, on the streets of Cusco, far from home. He shares a patch of shade on the grass companiably with a small Andean deer, who looks out at is with a trusting expression rather undeserved given that she has been a victim of unlawful poaching.
Our human host, infectious in his enthusiasm for the animals, though with none of the sense of patronisation so often exhibited by well meaning humans, introduced us next to a selection of llamas, long and short haired, alpacas, young and old, and the elegant vicuñas. The vicuñas, as we already know, fall prey to human greed despite laws to protect them, because their coats are so fine and so sift and fetch an eye watering price in fashionable corners of the world, such as Italy, but when I ask what caused the llamas and alpacas to be here he looks confused.
"They just are." He says. "We like them."
It was a stupid question really. In Peru everybody has a llama.
I am invited, if I like, to feed and pet the little llama family, consisting of mother and two babies. I do like.
"Hola" I say chattily to the llamas, gently stroking their woolly necks and offering my grasses, "how are you?"our guide looks at me strangely.
"They don't speak" he says.
Having learned this curious fact about the silent nature of llamas, we move on. I gasp to note three huge and beautifully, vibrantly coloured parrots, sitting regarding me solemnly from their perch on a wooden frame. They are, to my delight, not chained, caged or otherwise constrained.
"The humans who caught them cut their wings," our guide explains. "They brought them from the jungle. They wanted the feathers."
I watch the stunning creatures sadly. What a way to be treated. I instantly change my mind about the dramatic feather earrings I have been seeing around town, and rather liking. I am not wearing something for which an animal had been plucked and mutilated. The parrots are much more beautiful as whole birds than any human manipulation of their plumage.
We meet a pair of baby Andean cats, orphaned when their mother was killed, and prowling about their cage like miniature leopards. We are careful not to put our fingers through the bars as there is nothing domestic about these cats. Nor should there be. Once they are old enough to look after themselves they will be reintroduced to the wilds that they came from.
There is a family of Pumas, the size of wild dogs, watching us alertly from their spacious enclosure. They were rescued, if you can believe it, from a discothèque, where they were being made to perform tricks. It is too late for the adults but the baby, born in the sanctuary, may be reintroduced to his natural habitat in time.
A discothèque. Performing tricks.
Humans, (there is no two ways about it), are idiots.
Of course the highlight of the sanctuary, apart from the good work it is doing to remedy the surprising depths of irresponsibility to which people are capable of dinking in relation to animals, are the Condors. These stunning and powerful birds are endangered, poached and poisoned by farmers who wrongly, think they are hunters who will kill their livestock (in fact Condors only eat meat which has already been killed by another predator, they are not themselves aggressors). Again, the adults may not ever return to the wild, but there is hope for the babies, barely smaller than the massive adults, but distinguishable by their brown colouring, rather than the distinctive black white and grey of their parents. It is so moving to be so close to these birds, who strut around without minding our presence. When they fly above our heads to land just behind us it is amazing to feel the power in those wings, but also saddening, because those wings are made not to flap but to glide, and at heights well beyond a couple of metres. I hope the babies at least might have a chance of a new life, soaring at dizzying altitudes over mountain ranges, and far from people who look at them and see only money.
This concludes our tour, but we spend some time watching the monkeys, trafficked as pets or cheap entertainment. The babies jump and squeak and chatter, while the larger monkeys move more slowly, one, a round faced, sloth like creature, snoozing his way around his new home, relieved perhaps, to be allowed to be an animal, without clothes, or tightropes or other trappings of the circus.
We leave with a sense of increased respect for the animal kingdom and of disgust for the human one.
Apart from the man and women who run the sanctuary, human kind slightly elevates itself in my eyes when we return to the doctors surgery to ask about my ears, which are still blocked and uncomfortable. We see a bright, efficient female doctor, who takes one look, declares that I simply need syringing, just as I had initially thought. I leave, able to hear and devoid of the increasing dizziness I had been suffering from the longer the situation continued, and half in live with that doctor. I will say nothing about the previous doctor, who had caused me to take ineffective, unnecessary and expensive antibiotics for a fictional 'ear infection'. Bygones.
At least no one is plucking out my feathers so they can wear them to their bosses cocktail party on Saturday.
We meet a beautiful green grey tortoise, the size of a medium sized dog, whose owner brought him from his natural Amazonian habitat, then tired of him and literally threw him out with the trash, on the streets of Cusco, far from home. He shares a patch of shade on the grass companiably with a small Andean deer, who looks out at is with a trusting expression rather undeserved given that she has been a victim of unlawful poaching.
Our human host, infectious in his enthusiasm for the animals, though with none of the sense of patronisation so often exhibited by well meaning humans, introduced us next to a selection of llamas, long and short haired, alpacas, young and old, and the elegant vicuñas. The vicuñas, as we already know, fall prey to human greed despite laws to protect them, because their coats are so fine and so sift and fetch an eye watering price in fashionable corners of the world, such as Italy, but when I ask what caused the llamas and alpacas to be here he looks confused.
"They just are." He says. "We like them."
It was a stupid question really. In Peru everybody has a llama.
I am invited, if I like, to feed and pet the little llama family, consisting of mother and two babies. I do like.
"Hola" I say chattily to the llamas, gently stroking their woolly necks and offering my grasses, "how are you?"our guide looks at me strangely.
"They don't speak" he says.
Having learned this curious fact about the silent nature of llamas, we move on. I gasp to note three huge and beautifully, vibrantly coloured parrots, sitting regarding me solemnly from their perch on a wooden frame. They are, to my delight, not chained, caged or otherwise constrained.
"The humans who caught them cut their wings," our guide explains. "They brought them from the jungle. They wanted the feathers."
I watch the stunning creatures sadly. What a way to be treated. I instantly change my mind about the dramatic feather earrings I have been seeing around town, and rather liking. I am not wearing something for which an animal had been plucked and mutilated. The parrots are much more beautiful as whole birds than any human manipulation of their plumage.
We meet a pair of baby Andean cats, orphaned when their mother was killed, and prowling about their cage like miniature leopards. We are careful not to put our fingers through the bars as there is nothing domestic about these cats. Nor should there be. Once they are old enough to look after themselves they will be reintroduced to the wilds that they came from.
There is a family of Pumas, the size of wild dogs, watching us alertly from their spacious enclosure. They were rescued, if you can believe it, from a discothèque, where they were being made to perform tricks. It is too late for the adults but the baby, born in the sanctuary, may be reintroduced to his natural habitat in time.
A discothèque. Performing tricks.
Humans, (there is no two ways about it), are idiots.
Of course the highlight of the sanctuary, apart from the good work it is doing to remedy the surprising depths of irresponsibility to which people are capable of dinking in relation to animals, are the Condors. These stunning and powerful birds are endangered, poached and poisoned by farmers who wrongly, think they are hunters who will kill their livestock (in fact Condors only eat meat which has already been killed by another predator, they are not themselves aggressors). Again, the adults may not ever return to the wild, but there is hope for the babies, barely smaller than the massive adults, but distinguishable by their brown colouring, rather than the distinctive black white and grey of their parents. It is so moving to be so close to these birds, who strut around without minding our presence. When they fly above our heads to land just behind us it is amazing to feel the power in those wings, but also saddening, because those wings are made not to flap but to glide, and at heights well beyond a couple of metres. I hope the babies at least might have a chance of a new life, soaring at dizzying altitudes over mountain ranges, and far from people who look at them and see only money.
This concludes our tour, but we spend some time watching the monkeys, trafficked as pets or cheap entertainment. The babies jump and squeak and chatter, while the larger monkeys move more slowly, one, a round faced, sloth like creature, snoozing his way around his new home, relieved perhaps, to be allowed to be an animal, without clothes, or tightropes or other trappings of the circus.
We leave with a sense of increased respect for the animal kingdom and of disgust for the human one.
Apart from the man and women who run the sanctuary, human kind slightly elevates itself in my eyes when we return to the doctors surgery to ask about my ears, which are still blocked and uncomfortable. We see a bright, efficient female doctor, who takes one look, declares that I simply need syringing, just as I had initially thought. I leave, able to hear and devoid of the increasing dizziness I had been suffering from the longer the situation continued, and half in live with that doctor. I will say nothing about the previous doctor, who had caused me to take ineffective, unnecessary and expensive antibiotics for a fictional 'ear infection'. Bygones.
At least no one is plucking out my feathers so they can wear them to their bosses cocktail party on Saturday.
Wednesday, 22 July 2015
History is Art
Me being mostly capable of leaving the bathroom by now, we go to the Precolombino Museum today. I wander through it in a bit of a post sickness bug daze, drinking horribly sweet peach juice to try to drum up some energy, and eating crisps for the salt. I look like every soulless traveller I have ever disapproved of.
But through all the light headed aimlessness, something is actually getting through. I am really impressed by the Precolombino Museum.
You may know my feelings on 'pots'. Even before travelling I had been to enough interchangeable museums housing artifacts used by ancient peoples with interchangeable plaques declaring that they, (wherever and whenever 'they' were), used, (shock horror), flints to hunt animals, bowls to drink out of and heavy stones to grind things. 'Pot', say labels, helpfully, beside interchangeable brown pottery, or, in more enlightening moments, 'pot used to drink from'. Faced with such stunning revelations, I need a pot of my own in which to contain my excitement.
I am going to be hunted down and killed by furious archeologists.
But I can't help it. It really leaves me cold.
The Precolombino Museum of Cusco, however, is different. It focuses, not on the usage or simply the existence of artifacts made by the various groups and clans of indigenous people before the rather clamorous advent of Columbus, but on their merit as works of art.
And, given that focus, the artifacts are chosen for their special interest, and the descriptions point out the geometry or the balance of the design on a pot, the peculiar blocky style of wood sculpture in Inca people as opposed to other groups, whose carvings are fine and detailed, rather than stylised. It points out the use of symmetry, and the significance of designs which purposely break it. I am walking through an ancient art gallery and it is captivating.
And the works themselves are genuinely beautiful. There are shell necklaces designed so that the swirl of the shells matches to create an overall swirling impression, almost the way that certain pictures can make wheels look as though they are turning, or horses as though they are moving.
There are delicate wooden pins to hold a woman's shawl together at the front, each one adorned at the head with the delicately portrayed features of a llama, a condor or a puma.
There are vases painted in bright, geometric patterns, still bright today, and varnished to create a beautiful sheen, with one, carefully placed carved head of a condor or a puma, throwing out the symmetry and drawing the eye to it.
These are not just pots. There are things in the displays which take your breath away, which in this day and age might sell for millions, even without their historical value.
Why do we reduce historical artifacts to their basic attributes and uses? Why is it so necessary to ignore the artwork and simply label something by its usage. Would we do that with a Henry Moore sculpture or a Damien Hurst print? Would we caption them 'clay sculpture used in garden decoration' or 'print on canvas probably hung on wall'?
History is fascinating in and of itself. But we so rarely see it portrayed in all its aspects. A pot is a thing to drink from, yes. And it tells us something about a mysterious people. Which is priceless. But it's also a piece of art.
I really enjoy looking at the ancient art displayed in the Precolombino Museum. I believe I learn something about the various groups of indigenous people through the differences in their artistic values. If one prizes geometry above sculpture, one realism above stylism, another prizes representations of the female form, a fourth prefers animals, it tells me as much about them as any historical investigation of what the artifact might have been used for.
Maybe we should be looking differently at pots in museums. Maybe we should be saluting those long ago artists, and admiring their colour and their form.
After all, is there really anyone living who doesn't know that ancient civilisations sometimes drank out of bowls?
But through all the light headed aimlessness, something is actually getting through. I am really impressed by the Precolombino Museum.
You may know my feelings on 'pots'. Even before travelling I had been to enough interchangeable museums housing artifacts used by ancient peoples with interchangeable plaques declaring that they, (wherever and whenever 'they' were), used, (shock horror), flints to hunt animals, bowls to drink out of and heavy stones to grind things. 'Pot', say labels, helpfully, beside interchangeable brown pottery, or, in more enlightening moments, 'pot used to drink from'. Faced with such stunning revelations, I need a pot of my own in which to contain my excitement.
I am going to be hunted down and killed by furious archeologists.
But I can't help it. It really leaves me cold.
The Precolombino Museum of Cusco, however, is different. It focuses, not on the usage or simply the existence of artifacts made by the various groups and clans of indigenous people before the rather clamorous advent of Columbus, but on their merit as works of art.
And, given that focus, the artifacts are chosen for their special interest, and the descriptions point out the geometry or the balance of the design on a pot, the peculiar blocky style of wood sculpture in Inca people as opposed to other groups, whose carvings are fine and detailed, rather than stylised. It points out the use of symmetry, and the significance of designs which purposely break it. I am walking through an ancient art gallery and it is captivating.
And the works themselves are genuinely beautiful. There are shell necklaces designed so that the swirl of the shells matches to create an overall swirling impression, almost the way that certain pictures can make wheels look as though they are turning, or horses as though they are moving.
There are delicate wooden pins to hold a woman's shawl together at the front, each one adorned at the head with the delicately portrayed features of a llama, a condor or a puma.
There are vases painted in bright, geometric patterns, still bright today, and varnished to create a beautiful sheen, with one, carefully placed carved head of a condor or a puma, throwing out the symmetry and drawing the eye to it.
These are not just pots. There are things in the displays which take your breath away, which in this day and age might sell for millions, even without their historical value.
Why do we reduce historical artifacts to their basic attributes and uses? Why is it so necessary to ignore the artwork and simply label something by its usage. Would we do that with a Henry Moore sculpture or a Damien Hurst print? Would we caption them 'clay sculpture used in garden decoration' or 'print on canvas probably hung on wall'?
History is fascinating in and of itself. But we so rarely see it portrayed in all its aspects. A pot is a thing to drink from, yes. And it tells us something about a mysterious people. Which is priceless. But it's also a piece of art.
I really enjoy looking at the ancient art displayed in the Precolombino Museum. I believe I learn something about the various groups of indigenous people through the differences in their artistic values. If one prizes geometry above sculpture, one realism above stylism, another prizes representations of the female form, a fourth prefers animals, it tells me as much about them as any historical investigation of what the artifact might have been used for.
Maybe we should be looking differently at pots in museums. Maybe we should be saluting those long ago artists, and admiring their colour and their form.
After all, is there really anyone living who doesn't know that ancient civilisations sometimes drank out of bowls?
Tuesday, 21 July 2015
Begin Again
I have to admit it. I am sick again.
Of course the difference, this time, is that I am not mid trek in a tent in the middle of nowhere and have the luxury of walls and a sofa and, crucially, a toilet. These things have never seemed so luxurious.
I send M out to enjoy some beers in town, but for my part, our plans are much loser (no pun intended) in Cusco and so we can juggle things around to allow me a day reading books between toilet and sofa without crushing disappointment or missing out.
South America, they say, is the puke and diarrhoea capital of the world, at least as far as travellers are concerned. Thus far I have poo pooed (no pun intended) this notion. Now I am beginning to see a glimmer of truth. But it's a rite of passage as far as travelling goes, and an expected component of the overall experience so I swallow it (no pun intended) with relative cheerfulness.
The only thing is I am a bit worried I might be turning into our Spanish teacher's ex boyfriend.
Our lively, sparky teacher back in Santiago, Chile, told M one day in his conversational Spanish lesson, about a trip she once took to Bolivia. It was great, she said, but she wished she hadn't brought her boyfriend with her. He never wanted to do anything, whinged and clung onto her all the time and, worst of all, he was 'always sick'.
Apologies my husband. I do not mean to be your Spanish teacher's sickly ex boyfriend. But I will not cling, I promise.
Go forth, have fun. I'm OK, I have a book.
And a note to self...maybe the massive slice of chocolate cake should not be eaten quite the second there is a vague suggestion of being well enough to digest it. Perhaps just one more day of soup and herbal tea. Before starting on chocolate cake and pisco....
Of course the difference, this time, is that I am not mid trek in a tent in the middle of nowhere and have the luxury of walls and a sofa and, crucially, a toilet. These things have never seemed so luxurious.
I send M out to enjoy some beers in town, but for my part, our plans are much loser (no pun intended) in Cusco and so we can juggle things around to allow me a day reading books between toilet and sofa without crushing disappointment or missing out.
South America, they say, is the puke and diarrhoea capital of the world, at least as far as travellers are concerned. Thus far I have poo pooed (no pun intended) this notion. Now I am beginning to see a glimmer of truth. But it's a rite of passage as far as travelling goes, and an expected component of the overall experience so I swallow it (no pun intended) with relative cheerfulness.
The only thing is I am a bit worried I might be turning into our Spanish teacher's ex boyfriend.
Our lively, sparky teacher back in Santiago, Chile, told M one day in his conversational Spanish lesson, about a trip she once took to Bolivia. It was great, she said, but she wished she hadn't brought her boyfriend with her. He never wanted to do anything, whinged and clung onto her all the time and, worst of all, he was 'always sick'.
Apologies my husband. I do not mean to be your Spanish teacher's sickly ex boyfriend. But I will not cling, I promise.
Go forth, have fun. I'm OK, I have a book.
And a note to self...maybe the massive slice of chocolate cake should not be eaten quite the second there is a vague suggestion of being well enough to digest it. Perhaps just one more day of soup and herbal tea. Before starting on chocolate cake and pisco....
Sunday, 19 July 2015
Piscos and Pictures: 19th and 20th July
We wake up on Sunday in our hotel, potter to breakfast, swap contact details with our fellow walkers, and station ourselves in a quiet coffee bar for the morning. When it's barely twelve we make our way to a pub in town, much pricier and more western than we normally frequent - and take great pleasure in ordering a huge pizza and an equally huge, and very rich slice of chocolate cake for each. I even have a beer. It's perfect decadence for M, having walked for four days, and for me, having done no such thing but with the niggling memory that I have not, in fact completed the Inca trail, still biting at the back of my mind and requiring chocolate to quash it.
And that's it. It's all we want to do and all we are capable of.
On Monday we are rather more refreshed. We have some errands to do in town, checking routes to go to animal sanctuaries out of town, checking dates and details of various upcoming Peruvian festivals, dropping in at the theatre to find out about the free orchestra performances over the next few days, and buying cheese.
Of course it wasn't really supposed to be cheese.
"I should take things easy," I had announced the previous night after the chocolate fest, "my stomach is still a little bit queasy so it should be soup for me at lunch, not one of the huge cheap lunch menus that involves salad, soup, main and dessert. And in the evening we should maybe have vegetable sticks with avocado, not the usual cheese and bread."
We stroll through the market, where you can buy vegetables.
"Ooooh!" I say, "shall we get sone cheese?"
Then we go to our favourite vegan restaurant to buy bread. And I notice the lunch menu.
We eat soup, salad, vegan chorizo with lentils and banana yogurt dessert, with more bread.
Then we go to have a taster set of Pisco Sours at the Museo De Pisco.
Well this is Peru, home of Pisco. It's a drink of which everyone is hugely proud. How could we not educate ourselves on this drink?
I suspect we are still giving ourselves extra indulgence, milking the Inca trail for all it's worth.
Either way, the Pisco experience genuinely is an education. We learn, from a man who is clearly passionate about his specialism, that pisco is made like brandy, from crushed grapes, then distilled. There are over 500 different pisco makers across Peru, all of them tending to be small and specialised, rather than vast and mechanised.
We try four piscos neat to understand the spirit a traditional pisco sour is made from. The first is a single grape pisco, made with less aromatic grapes. Its a clear liquid which tastes very clean, but also very sharp and alcoholic. It's mostly used in cocktails or to make infusions.
The second is also a single grape, but a more aromatic one. It happens to be my favourite. It is softer and more complex than the first, but doesn't sacrifice that purity of taste. (I know I sound like a wine buff. You can send me the quails eggs and caviar later).
The third is made of a combination of different grapes, and tastes like a thicker, slightly creamier version along the same lines as the second. I like this one too, though the mix of flavours have begun to take away its fire.
The fourth is composed of a mixture of grapes but has been distilled differently, with more residual sugar. Its much thicker and sweeter than the others, but for me has list that defining cleanness, so I am less taken by it. I voice this and our host beams at me. I suspect I may have evinced the correct opinion.
I rather undo my apparent knowledgeable persona by commenting that pisco reminds me of sake. Given that sake is a rice wine and much less strong, it us not an obvious comparator. I try to explain it is the sense of cleanliness and purity which makes me associate the two. I am not sure that my argument convinces anybody.
We round off our small tasters of beat spirit with the famous pisco sour cocktail, pisco mixed with lemon juice and sugar, and with egg white to give it texture and foam. My pisco sour is made with pisco infused with basil, and M's with thyme. They are lovely cocktails. This, as a good friend would say, is certainly 'glampacking'.
We underline this by retiring home to eat cheese.
And that's it. It's all we want to do and all we are capable of.
On Monday we are rather more refreshed. We have some errands to do in town, checking routes to go to animal sanctuaries out of town, checking dates and details of various upcoming Peruvian festivals, dropping in at the theatre to find out about the free orchestra performances over the next few days, and buying cheese.
Of course it wasn't really supposed to be cheese.
"I should take things easy," I had announced the previous night after the chocolate fest, "my stomach is still a little bit queasy so it should be soup for me at lunch, not one of the huge cheap lunch menus that involves salad, soup, main and dessert. And in the evening we should maybe have vegetable sticks with avocado, not the usual cheese and bread."
We stroll through the market, where you can buy vegetables.
"Ooooh!" I say, "shall we get sone cheese?"
Then we go to our favourite vegan restaurant to buy bread. And I notice the lunch menu.
We eat soup, salad, vegan chorizo with lentils and banana yogurt dessert, with more bread.
Then we go to have a taster set of Pisco Sours at the Museo De Pisco.
Well this is Peru, home of Pisco. It's a drink of which everyone is hugely proud. How could we not educate ourselves on this drink?
I suspect we are still giving ourselves extra indulgence, milking the Inca trail for all it's worth.
Either way, the Pisco experience genuinely is an education. We learn, from a man who is clearly passionate about his specialism, that pisco is made like brandy, from crushed grapes, then distilled. There are over 500 different pisco makers across Peru, all of them tending to be small and specialised, rather than vast and mechanised.
We try four piscos neat to understand the spirit a traditional pisco sour is made from. The first is a single grape pisco, made with less aromatic grapes. Its a clear liquid which tastes very clean, but also very sharp and alcoholic. It's mostly used in cocktails or to make infusions.
The second is also a single grape, but a more aromatic one. It happens to be my favourite. It is softer and more complex than the first, but doesn't sacrifice that purity of taste. (I know I sound like a wine buff. You can send me the quails eggs and caviar later).
The third is made of a combination of different grapes, and tastes like a thicker, slightly creamier version along the same lines as the second. I like this one too, though the mix of flavours have begun to take away its fire.
The fourth is composed of a mixture of grapes but has been distilled differently, with more residual sugar. Its much thicker and sweeter than the others, but for me has list that defining cleanness, so I am less taken by it. I voice this and our host beams at me. I suspect I may have evinced the correct opinion.
I rather undo my apparent knowledgeable persona by commenting that pisco reminds me of sake. Given that sake is a rice wine and much less strong, it us not an obvious comparator. I try to explain it is the sense of cleanliness and purity which makes me associate the two. I am not sure that my argument convinces anybody.
We round off our small tasters of beat spirit with the famous pisco sour cocktail, pisco mixed with lemon juice and sugar, and with egg white to give it texture and foam. My pisco sour is made with pisco infused with basil, and M's with thyme. They are lovely cocktails. This, as a good friend would say, is certainly 'glampacking'.
We underline this by retiring home to eat cheese.
Saturday, 18 July 2015
Machu Picchu: By Hook or by Crook
My 'crook', in this case is of course the bus up the mountain, which I rise, excitedly, at five thirty to catch. M is a true pilgrim and walks the final distance to lay his stone in reverence to the mountain in all its terrible beauty and splendour - and joins me as I enter the gates of Machu Picchu, the once lost Inca city itself. He has entered via the sun gate, through which, on 21st June, a single ray of sun shines directly onto a stone in the sun temple at the other side of the complex, casting a triangular shadow. The sun gate is far up on the adjoining mountainside so he has walked a long way down, making his descent into Machu Picchu, long before I blink my way through, and am reconciled in his arms. He hasn't showered or shaved for four days and has been walking since three am, but he has never looked better for it. When you have travelled 100% in each other's company 24 hours of the day for nearly a year, it is quite something to be apart for two days. I wonder, having won through on the challenge presented initially by the overwhelming contact, whether we might be facing a different challenge when we get home. Will we find ourselves temporarily unhinged by the necessity to be apart?
I suspect not, in our nine years together we have been used to being apart for a normal amount of the day for eight. We'll sink back into it fine. But it's an interesting thought. I wonder how much we might have to right an internal urge to turn to the other for guidance in life's smaller challenges. Will I be fighting the urge to call him when I face an urgent deadline at work, or it's raining outside and I forgot my umbrella? These are the level of our daily challenges back home. Most of the people we have met on this journey would laugh at the thought of them.
I am delaying the inevitable. The necessity to attempt to describe Machu Picchu. It is difficult to do it justice, and you will have seen the iconic pictures already, but essentially, what I am looking at, as I pull away from M and focus properly, is a pointed green mountain, sheathed in ribbons of white cloud, which firms the backdrop to what is still, very clearly, a city. The Inca city of Machu Picchu, is built of white grey stone and composed of steps, triangular roofs, and a complex of what were temples, living dwellings, storehouses and royal palaces, and which are surprisingly easy to imagine as they must have been, a hive of activity - and an enormous amount of work. The city ranges up into the side of the mountain we stand on, surrounded by further green jagged mountains, giving it natural protection, and a reason why it could remain undiscovered for so many years.
Machu Picchu was first discovered by a farmer, who stumbled upon it, carved his name in a couple of stones - and went away again. The whole place was completely overgrown. That was early 1900's. It wasn't until some years later, in 1911, that the American Anthropologist, Hiram Bingham, befriended a local indigenous community, and gained their trust enough to be granted sight of this overgrown ruin. At that time there were people living there, scraping a living from the mountainside, keeping llamas and alpacas, and living simply, as many people in Peru still do, washing in a bowl of water each morning, and using two sticks crossed in the open doorway to signify a need for privacy, doors not being something felt necessary in a house. Hiram Bingham, not knowing initially what he had found, gave instructions and paid money for the site to be cleared and the greenery stripped away, and returned later, having done more research. He looked, says our guide, exactly like Indiana Jones and in fact may have inspired the character, right down to his khakis and trade mark hat.
On careful investigation of the site, the predominance of females in the skeletons uncovered, and the existence of ancient chronicles detailing a religious site known for being a centre of female virginity, which was a three day walk from a particular white stone beside waterfall, all of which chimed with the location and layout, Hiram Bingham realised what he had discovered was a place of key importance and religious significance to the Incas.
Indeed the site remains sacred, our guide is very clear on the rules of the site. We must not take 'silly' photos, shout, whistle, use profanities or remove our clothes. Which totally spoils all my plans for the morning.
Joking aside, it rather amazes me that these rules are necessary at all. There is an atmosphere here, a respect due, if not for the Inca religion, for the surrounding landscape.
So Machu Picchu may have been one of the most important religious places for the Incas, but is it the fabled Last Inca City?
Probably not. Writings and research seems to suggest that we haven't yet found the Last Inca City, the final stronghold. Rumoured to be scattered with gold and lost treasure, historians and bounty hunters continue to search.
"It is probably somewhere here," says our guide, gesturing to the vast mountainous countryside, "buried beneath the trees."
I stare out at the landscape, which is quite mysterious enough on its own, without the suggestion of a buried city. Maybe the Last Inca City is buried there, concealed from greedy eyes and from search planes by nature. Maybe there us still an Inca people, living in secret under clever cover of jungle canopy.
I look out at the hordes of people who, despite the size of the site, seem to gather and push into one space, forming queues and crushes, and there is a little part of me rooting for those fictional remaining Incas and hoping they are left in peace.
Being human and therefore capable of enormous double standards I leave these thoughts in order to elbow my way to the front to hear what our guide is saying, as he starts to walk us around the site.
He shows us a section of the walls, where the earth has been dug away to reveal the foundations of the Inca walks. They literally go down some six metres. Bear in mind that this is down into the side of a mountain it is no small feat, and explains how the city could survive for so long.
We see a water mirror, round shapes of stone designed to catch or hold water, and another similar shaping of stone, this time in what is believed to be the half finished shape of a llama, designed to reflect the night sky. In the Inca world view the night sky was crucial, the milky way and accompanying constellations are very clear here, but it was not the stars that the Incas saw creatures and symbols in, it was the dark spaces, forming a serpent, a llama, possibly a condor, and a man.
We walk through what is believed to be the King's Palace. The King had the privilege of private toilet arrangements. Generally, the Incas would use a plate or bowl for their ablutions, similar to a chamber pot, which they would scatter with ash to prevent infection and carry to a hole for the purpose a little way from the main city, bury it. And years later reuse it as fertiliser. But the King had a private room in which to take care of his business, and a handy servant or two to carry it away. I wonder if that servant felt himself honoured to carry the Monarchs poop, or was just as disgusted as the rest of us.
We are told of the Temple of the Condor, made in the shape of a condor, with long flat stones for wings. The condor was believed to be the messenger of the Gods. The Incas would place offerings on those wings and leave them there, for the condor to fly to their heavenly recipients (though in fact it was more complicated than that as the Inca Gods were in and of the nature, and thus not solely situated in one, inaccessible kingdom.) The Incas were famous for believing only what they could see. That was the conquering Spanish's greatest challenge. Inca Gods manifested in rocks and mountains, lightning and animals. Catholicism relies heavily on saints, given reverence through stories unseeable and unprovable, and with a heavenly power not perceivable by man. It is unsurprising that the eventual syncretism that was achieved utilised icons and models of the saints and the trinity, many with a distinctly indigenous look to them. As I have said before, stories are constantly reinterpreted. They must be, or they will lose their power. And what is a story but a means to interpret a deeper truth?
As we have found with so many Inca sites though, Machu Picchu was not solely religious, but incorporated affair amount of trade and commerce. The two things were not considered to be opposing forces, but complementary to each other. We go to see the 'Inca Bridge', a rather boring name for what it is, and Fred (pseudonym), one of our trek companions christened it 'Bridge of the Gods' which stuck. The Inca Bridge is literally a rickety barrow bridge across from one mountain to another, with sheer, uninterrupted drops to the side. Just looking at it makes my stomach twitch. This path was crossed by traders, travellers and pilgrims frequently. I gulp, looking at the crumbling stones and the place where the stones are replaced with a plank of wood, which could be removed to prevent unwanted intruders, abs wonder how many lives were lost there.
Thankfully, it is not open to tourists. Which is lucky because M is itching to try it.
The heat, given the total lack of shade and the necessity to move slowly because of the queues, begins to get the better of both of us and we reluctantly leave, making our way past nonchalant llamas and posing tourists, for lunch, the train and coach journey hone to Cusco, a much needed bath, and bed.
I reflect that, whilst Machu Picchu is amazing, it us really the trek that makes it special. This is an example of a place for which the magic is truly in the journey, and not only the destination. I never got to lay my stone on the mountain or to complete my pilgrimage, but guess what?
In my bag there is still a small piece of pinkish grey stone. It is still with me. It will be with me when I return to England and will take pride of place somewhere in our new home. But only temporarily. One day I'm coming back and I am going to complete the Inca trail. And I will lay my stone, even if it's been years in the journeying, at the top of the mountain.
It will be the longest pilgrimage ever. But I think the mountain will understand.
I suspect not, in our nine years together we have been used to being apart for a normal amount of the day for eight. We'll sink back into it fine. But it's an interesting thought. I wonder how much we might have to right an internal urge to turn to the other for guidance in life's smaller challenges. Will I be fighting the urge to call him when I face an urgent deadline at work, or it's raining outside and I forgot my umbrella? These are the level of our daily challenges back home. Most of the people we have met on this journey would laugh at the thought of them.
I am delaying the inevitable. The necessity to attempt to describe Machu Picchu. It is difficult to do it justice, and you will have seen the iconic pictures already, but essentially, what I am looking at, as I pull away from M and focus properly, is a pointed green mountain, sheathed in ribbons of white cloud, which firms the backdrop to what is still, very clearly, a city. The Inca city of Machu Picchu, is built of white grey stone and composed of steps, triangular roofs, and a complex of what were temples, living dwellings, storehouses and royal palaces, and which are surprisingly easy to imagine as they must have been, a hive of activity - and an enormous amount of work. The city ranges up into the side of the mountain we stand on, surrounded by further green jagged mountains, giving it natural protection, and a reason why it could remain undiscovered for so many years.
Machu Picchu was first discovered by a farmer, who stumbled upon it, carved his name in a couple of stones - and went away again. The whole place was completely overgrown. That was early 1900's. It wasn't until some years later, in 1911, that the American Anthropologist, Hiram Bingham, befriended a local indigenous community, and gained their trust enough to be granted sight of this overgrown ruin. At that time there were people living there, scraping a living from the mountainside, keeping llamas and alpacas, and living simply, as many people in Peru still do, washing in a bowl of water each morning, and using two sticks crossed in the open doorway to signify a need for privacy, doors not being something felt necessary in a house. Hiram Bingham, not knowing initially what he had found, gave instructions and paid money for the site to be cleared and the greenery stripped away, and returned later, having done more research. He looked, says our guide, exactly like Indiana Jones and in fact may have inspired the character, right down to his khakis and trade mark hat.
On careful investigation of the site, the predominance of females in the skeletons uncovered, and the existence of ancient chronicles detailing a religious site known for being a centre of female virginity, which was a three day walk from a particular white stone beside waterfall, all of which chimed with the location and layout, Hiram Bingham realised what he had discovered was a place of key importance and religious significance to the Incas.
Indeed the site remains sacred, our guide is very clear on the rules of the site. We must not take 'silly' photos, shout, whistle, use profanities or remove our clothes. Which totally spoils all my plans for the morning.
Joking aside, it rather amazes me that these rules are necessary at all. There is an atmosphere here, a respect due, if not for the Inca religion, for the surrounding landscape.
So Machu Picchu may have been one of the most important religious places for the Incas, but is it the fabled Last Inca City?
Probably not. Writings and research seems to suggest that we haven't yet found the Last Inca City, the final stronghold. Rumoured to be scattered with gold and lost treasure, historians and bounty hunters continue to search.
"It is probably somewhere here," says our guide, gesturing to the vast mountainous countryside, "buried beneath the trees."
I stare out at the landscape, which is quite mysterious enough on its own, without the suggestion of a buried city. Maybe the Last Inca City is buried there, concealed from greedy eyes and from search planes by nature. Maybe there us still an Inca people, living in secret under clever cover of jungle canopy.
I look out at the hordes of people who, despite the size of the site, seem to gather and push into one space, forming queues and crushes, and there is a little part of me rooting for those fictional remaining Incas and hoping they are left in peace.
Being human and therefore capable of enormous double standards I leave these thoughts in order to elbow my way to the front to hear what our guide is saying, as he starts to walk us around the site.
He shows us a section of the walls, where the earth has been dug away to reveal the foundations of the Inca walks. They literally go down some six metres. Bear in mind that this is down into the side of a mountain it is no small feat, and explains how the city could survive for so long.
We see a water mirror, round shapes of stone designed to catch or hold water, and another similar shaping of stone, this time in what is believed to be the half finished shape of a llama, designed to reflect the night sky. In the Inca world view the night sky was crucial, the milky way and accompanying constellations are very clear here, but it was not the stars that the Incas saw creatures and symbols in, it was the dark spaces, forming a serpent, a llama, possibly a condor, and a man.
We walk through what is believed to be the King's Palace. The King had the privilege of private toilet arrangements. Generally, the Incas would use a plate or bowl for their ablutions, similar to a chamber pot, which they would scatter with ash to prevent infection and carry to a hole for the purpose a little way from the main city, bury it. And years later reuse it as fertiliser. But the King had a private room in which to take care of his business, and a handy servant or two to carry it away. I wonder if that servant felt himself honoured to carry the Monarchs poop, or was just as disgusted as the rest of us.
We are told of the Temple of the Condor, made in the shape of a condor, with long flat stones for wings. The condor was believed to be the messenger of the Gods. The Incas would place offerings on those wings and leave them there, for the condor to fly to their heavenly recipients (though in fact it was more complicated than that as the Inca Gods were in and of the nature, and thus not solely situated in one, inaccessible kingdom.) The Incas were famous for believing only what they could see. That was the conquering Spanish's greatest challenge. Inca Gods manifested in rocks and mountains, lightning and animals. Catholicism relies heavily on saints, given reverence through stories unseeable and unprovable, and with a heavenly power not perceivable by man. It is unsurprising that the eventual syncretism that was achieved utilised icons and models of the saints and the trinity, many with a distinctly indigenous look to them. As I have said before, stories are constantly reinterpreted. They must be, or they will lose their power. And what is a story but a means to interpret a deeper truth?
As we have found with so many Inca sites though, Machu Picchu was not solely religious, but incorporated affair amount of trade and commerce. The two things were not considered to be opposing forces, but complementary to each other. We go to see the 'Inca Bridge', a rather boring name for what it is, and Fred (pseudonym), one of our trek companions christened it 'Bridge of the Gods' which stuck. The Inca Bridge is literally a rickety barrow bridge across from one mountain to another, with sheer, uninterrupted drops to the side. Just looking at it makes my stomach twitch. This path was crossed by traders, travellers and pilgrims frequently. I gulp, looking at the crumbling stones and the place where the stones are replaced with a plank of wood, which could be removed to prevent unwanted intruders, abs wonder how many lives were lost there.
Thankfully, it is not open to tourists. Which is lucky because M is itching to try it.
The heat, given the total lack of shade and the necessity to move slowly because of the queues, begins to get the better of both of us and we reluctantly leave, making our way past nonchalant llamas and posing tourists, for lunch, the train and coach journey hone to Cusco, a much needed bath, and bed.
I reflect that, whilst Machu Picchu is amazing, it us really the trek that makes it special. This is an example of a place for which the magic is truly in the journey, and not only the destination. I never got to lay my stone on the mountain or to complete my pilgrimage, but guess what?
In my bag there is still a small piece of pinkish grey stone. It is still with me. It will be with me when I return to England and will take pride of place somewhere in our new home. But only temporarily. One day I'm coming back and I am going to complete the Inca trail. And I will lay my stone, even if it's been years in the journeying, at the top of the mountain.
It will be the longest pilgrimage ever. But I think the mountain will understand.
Thursday, 16 July 2015
An Alternative Adventure: 16th and 17th July
"The thing about sickness bugs," said Peter, somewhat presciently, yesterday, "is that they are over quickly, but while you are having them, you feel like you are going to die."
And how right he was.
Predictably enough, I spend the entire night expelling what feels like all the food I have ever consumed in Peru or anywhere else in the world, violently from alternate openings. I don't sleep at all.
Ironically, it happens to be the worst example of a sickness bug, or food poisoning, whichever it is that I ever remember suffering from.
Have you ever tried having uncontrollable sickness and diarrhoea in a tent, right next door to the tents of the eleven other people you have just begun to bond with, and another twenty two porters plus chef and guides? Let's just say your dignity is the first thing to be violently ejected, and the bonding is rather forceably sped up. I end up doing my various business in a large paint pot positioned just outside the inner opening to my tent, but inside the outer 'porch' area. The concerned guides find me in my pants throwing up into it at least twice and a lucky porter manages to walk in on me perched in flagrante on top of it. I more or less sleep either on or over that paint pot, which contains, by the morning, a potent mixture which I am terrified of knocking over. There are clothes which I simply throw away, there being so little chance of cleaning them in time to salvage them and so much in the way of soilage.
"How are you?" Ask my fellow travellers when I stagger, lime green coloured, to breakfast.
"Oh OK." I say with an attempt at breeziness, "although I was a bit ill in the night."
"We heard." They say.
The guides are wonderful, both in the night and in the morning, magicking up herbal concoctions to settle my stomach, giving me special liquid which you pour on your cupped hands, rub in and then breathe deeply. It is used, they tell me, by mothers who have sick babies and want to calm them enough to send them to sleep. I want, more than anything in the world, to be a sleeping baby.
But really, sickness simply is what it is, takes its own sweet time to resolve and however clever and concerned the guides are, there is little they can do.
"I am going to do this trek," I announce determinedly, trying to make myself eat a half forkful of breakfast and instantly losing it. I make jokes and laugh. I talk about how pleased the mountain will be with my pilgrimage.
"You have such a great attitude," say the guides admiringly, "you would barely know you were ill."
I blush and preen in this glamorous portraiture, becoming ever more obsessed with being brave and cheerful.
I feel absolutely awful. Moving in any way makes me dizzy. My stomach is churning. I am running to the toilet at five minute intervals. Even sips of water are forceably ejected almost instantaneously.
"Probably just altitude" I say brightly, "I should drink some coca tea. I will be fine."
We are camping at a lower altitude than I have been sleeping for the last three weeks. And the coca tea barely touches my tongue before it is removed indignantly by my internal organs. I have a resting heart rate of 110.
"What do you want to do?" Asks our guide, gently.
"Carry on." I say.
Predictably, this isn't possible. The second hiking day of the full Machu Picchu trail is by far the hardest. It involves at least four hours of hard, constant uphill climb, at times with steep steps, at other times on narrow paths with steep drops, climbing to an altitude of 4,215 metres. Everybody struggles.
"I will give it a go." I say after I have walked a few metres uphill, on the easiest part, barely leaving our camp, and then passed out on the ground.
"OK," says our guide.
"You can do it," says M, I think unable to bear the disappointment he knows I will feel if I have to turn back.
I walk a few more paces, repeat the performance.
On the third try my positive attitude is waning.
"I don't think I can do this," I say, lower lip wobbling.
It's a horrible decision. I have been looking forward to this trip for literally years. I have been ecstatically happy doing it. I have barely stopped remarking to myself on how great it is, what a memorable experience, how beautiful, how much it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Later, at the end I will be presented with a candid photo taken of myself on the first day of hiking. I look like an advert for the tour, I am so clearly choc full of happiness to be doing it.
Now I am making a decision which is, realistically, barely a decision at all. I will have to turn back.
Of course, having made this decision I have imagined, aside from the crushing disappointment and a sense of personal failure which I cannot quite shake, being more or less scooped up and placed in a bed, in a hotel room with an adjoining toilet. More or less immediately. I am not sure what deity or fairy I am imagining is going to achieve this for me.
It is at least a five hour trek back to the nearest town. At normal, healthy, human speed. Half an hour in to my slow, painful, stagger back, punctuated by dashes into the bushes and using a pair of hiking poles someone has loaned me like a zimmer frame, the sun starts to beat down on the shadeless path and I lose anything resembling a positive attitude.
It is a miserable journey. I am staggering on a gentle downhill slope. The five hour walk takes me all of the day (we began at barely seven), and I am tortured by the idea that perhaps I made the wrong decision. If I still have to walk this far, I reason, couldn't I have walked the uphill path with the others, coaxed on and buoyed up by them, awed by the scenery?
The answer, as M later tells me, having walked the path himself, is 'no'. It was tough even for him. I would not have made it.
But as I toil my way back, resting dejectedly when told to by the second guide, who has the fun job of escorting me back, drinking rehydration drinks and energy drinks and only just keeping them down, I don't know this. It all seems a terrible decision or a cruel mistake. I keep thinking I might wake up any moment and remark on what a horrible dream I had.
"Come on Katti," says my guide, sympathetically, in the manner of a farmer talking to his favourite horse, labouring it's way uphill, and squeezing my shoulder, "come on chica."
The poor man. The fact is, it is really not the end of the world and I know it. I am travelling, in ridiculous privilege compared to two thirds of the world's population, and I will not die from this. There are people in this world who will, and who do die, daily, from something similar, already so weak and so under nourished that they will literally face death from diorrea. And they will be walking at least this distance in hotter sun, on a daily basis, and in worse physical condition.
I know all of this. It doesn't make me any happier.
I fight my way back, 'fighting' here being used in the losest possible sense of the word, somehow manage not to puke on a local bus once I reach the outskirts of town, just about manage to accompany my guide to buy a train ticket which will take me to Aguas Caliente, the town at the foot of the Machu Picchu mountain tomorrow, in the hope of being well enough to take the 'wuss' bus to the top to join M and the rest of my group on Saturday, and then collapse in my hotel room and burst into tears.
I have, as I may have mentioned previously, some really, really good friends. I send them a message, and they respond immediately and say all the right things.
"It's fine really," I say through tears which rather give the lie to this statement, talking to one of them over a dodgy internet connection, "its still an adventure. Just not the one I imagined I would be having."
Or maybe she says that and I repeat it like a mantra over the next couple of days.
Either way it is this that sustains me. I calm down and get on with it. My life remains fantastic. The world has not ended. I have been looked after wonderfully, my guide takes me out to make sure I eat something that evening, ordering a clear soup for me. Which I manage to keep down. In the morning he meets me, makes sure I eat lunch in a similar vein, forces more dehydration drinks down me and is basically like a stand in Mum. Who, incidentally, is also fantastic, and sends me a lovely sympathetic email almost instantly she receives my plaintive one. I collect sympathy, get stronger, and move on Friday to Aguas Caliente, ready to meet M again in Machu Picchu. The guides even arrange a phone call with M when he has reception on Friday, using their satellite connection, and I am relieved to speak to him then rather than in my more tearful stage on Thursday. He had to be forced to carry on the trek and not to come back with me. I insisted. It made no sense for us both to miss out. And I need photos. I reassure him, tell him I love him (eliciting a burst of school boy giggles from my guide!) And prepare to wrap up this rather dejected tale with a Machu Picchu reunion and a suitable happy ending tomorrow.
After all, every experience is worth something. Even the bad ones are a story to tell. Just consider how much I have enjoyed relaying the drama of it all in this blog.
This, I tell myself, falling asleep on Friday night, is going to provide me with pub anecdotes for decades.
And how right he was.
Predictably enough, I spend the entire night expelling what feels like all the food I have ever consumed in Peru or anywhere else in the world, violently from alternate openings. I don't sleep at all.
Ironically, it happens to be the worst example of a sickness bug, or food poisoning, whichever it is that I ever remember suffering from.
Have you ever tried having uncontrollable sickness and diarrhoea in a tent, right next door to the tents of the eleven other people you have just begun to bond with, and another twenty two porters plus chef and guides? Let's just say your dignity is the first thing to be violently ejected, and the bonding is rather forceably sped up. I end up doing my various business in a large paint pot positioned just outside the inner opening to my tent, but inside the outer 'porch' area. The concerned guides find me in my pants throwing up into it at least twice and a lucky porter manages to walk in on me perched in flagrante on top of it. I more or less sleep either on or over that paint pot, which contains, by the morning, a potent mixture which I am terrified of knocking over. There are clothes which I simply throw away, there being so little chance of cleaning them in time to salvage them and so much in the way of soilage.
"How are you?" Ask my fellow travellers when I stagger, lime green coloured, to breakfast.
"Oh OK." I say with an attempt at breeziness, "although I was a bit ill in the night."
"We heard." They say.
The guides are wonderful, both in the night and in the morning, magicking up herbal concoctions to settle my stomach, giving me special liquid which you pour on your cupped hands, rub in and then breathe deeply. It is used, they tell me, by mothers who have sick babies and want to calm them enough to send them to sleep. I want, more than anything in the world, to be a sleeping baby.
But really, sickness simply is what it is, takes its own sweet time to resolve and however clever and concerned the guides are, there is little they can do.
"I am going to do this trek," I announce determinedly, trying to make myself eat a half forkful of breakfast and instantly losing it. I make jokes and laugh. I talk about how pleased the mountain will be with my pilgrimage.
"You have such a great attitude," say the guides admiringly, "you would barely know you were ill."
I blush and preen in this glamorous portraiture, becoming ever more obsessed with being brave and cheerful.
I feel absolutely awful. Moving in any way makes me dizzy. My stomach is churning. I am running to the toilet at five minute intervals. Even sips of water are forceably ejected almost instantaneously.
"Probably just altitude" I say brightly, "I should drink some coca tea. I will be fine."
We are camping at a lower altitude than I have been sleeping for the last three weeks. And the coca tea barely touches my tongue before it is removed indignantly by my internal organs. I have a resting heart rate of 110.
"What do you want to do?" Asks our guide, gently.
"Carry on." I say.
Predictably, this isn't possible. The second hiking day of the full Machu Picchu trail is by far the hardest. It involves at least four hours of hard, constant uphill climb, at times with steep steps, at other times on narrow paths with steep drops, climbing to an altitude of 4,215 metres. Everybody struggles.
"I will give it a go." I say after I have walked a few metres uphill, on the easiest part, barely leaving our camp, and then passed out on the ground.
"OK," says our guide.
"You can do it," says M, I think unable to bear the disappointment he knows I will feel if I have to turn back.
I walk a few more paces, repeat the performance.
On the third try my positive attitude is waning.
"I don't think I can do this," I say, lower lip wobbling.
It's a horrible decision. I have been looking forward to this trip for literally years. I have been ecstatically happy doing it. I have barely stopped remarking to myself on how great it is, what a memorable experience, how beautiful, how much it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Later, at the end I will be presented with a candid photo taken of myself on the first day of hiking. I look like an advert for the tour, I am so clearly choc full of happiness to be doing it.
Now I am making a decision which is, realistically, barely a decision at all. I will have to turn back.
Of course, having made this decision I have imagined, aside from the crushing disappointment and a sense of personal failure which I cannot quite shake, being more or less scooped up and placed in a bed, in a hotel room with an adjoining toilet. More or less immediately. I am not sure what deity or fairy I am imagining is going to achieve this for me.
It is at least a five hour trek back to the nearest town. At normal, healthy, human speed. Half an hour in to my slow, painful, stagger back, punctuated by dashes into the bushes and using a pair of hiking poles someone has loaned me like a zimmer frame, the sun starts to beat down on the shadeless path and I lose anything resembling a positive attitude.
It is a miserable journey. I am staggering on a gentle downhill slope. The five hour walk takes me all of the day (we began at barely seven), and I am tortured by the idea that perhaps I made the wrong decision. If I still have to walk this far, I reason, couldn't I have walked the uphill path with the others, coaxed on and buoyed up by them, awed by the scenery?
The answer, as M later tells me, having walked the path himself, is 'no'. It was tough even for him. I would not have made it.
But as I toil my way back, resting dejectedly when told to by the second guide, who has the fun job of escorting me back, drinking rehydration drinks and energy drinks and only just keeping them down, I don't know this. It all seems a terrible decision or a cruel mistake. I keep thinking I might wake up any moment and remark on what a horrible dream I had.
"Come on Katti," says my guide, sympathetically, in the manner of a farmer talking to his favourite horse, labouring it's way uphill, and squeezing my shoulder, "come on chica."
The poor man. The fact is, it is really not the end of the world and I know it. I am travelling, in ridiculous privilege compared to two thirds of the world's population, and I will not die from this. There are people in this world who will, and who do die, daily, from something similar, already so weak and so under nourished that they will literally face death from diorrea. And they will be walking at least this distance in hotter sun, on a daily basis, and in worse physical condition.
I know all of this. It doesn't make me any happier.
I fight my way back, 'fighting' here being used in the losest possible sense of the word, somehow manage not to puke on a local bus once I reach the outskirts of town, just about manage to accompany my guide to buy a train ticket which will take me to Aguas Caliente, the town at the foot of the Machu Picchu mountain tomorrow, in the hope of being well enough to take the 'wuss' bus to the top to join M and the rest of my group on Saturday, and then collapse in my hotel room and burst into tears.
I have, as I may have mentioned previously, some really, really good friends. I send them a message, and they respond immediately and say all the right things.
"It's fine really," I say through tears which rather give the lie to this statement, talking to one of them over a dodgy internet connection, "its still an adventure. Just not the one I imagined I would be having."
Or maybe she says that and I repeat it like a mantra over the next couple of days.
Either way it is this that sustains me. I calm down and get on with it. My life remains fantastic. The world has not ended. I have been looked after wonderfully, my guide takes me out to make sure I eat something that evening, ordering a clear soup for me. Which I manage to keep down. In the morning he meets me, makes sure I eat lunch in a similar vein, forces more dehydration drinks down me and is basically like a stand in Mum. Who, incidentally, is also fantastic, and sends me a lovely sympathetic email almost instantly she receives my plaintive one. I collect sympathy, get stronger, and move on Friday to Aguas Caliente, ready to meet M again in Machu Picchu. The guides even arrange a phone call with M when he has reception on Friday, using their satellite connection, and I am relieved to speak to him then rather than in my more tearful stage on Thursday. He had to be forced to carry on the trek and not to come back with me. I insisted. It made no sense for us both to miss out. And I need photos. I reassure him, tell him I love him (eliciting a burst of school boy giggles from my guide!) And prepare to wrap up this rather dejected tale with a Machu Picchu reunion and a suitable happy ending tomorrow.
After all, every experience is worth something. Even the bad ones are a story to tell. Just consider how much I have enjoyed relaying the drama of it all in this blog.
This, I tell myself, falling asleep on Friday night, is going to provide me with pub anecdotes for decades.
Wednesday, 15 July 2015
Amazing Incas, Superhuman Porters and Hallucinogenic Cacti
We wake, bright and early for a seven o clock breakfast, with a palpable buzz of excitement because today we will begin our trek properly. There is some good humoured grumbling about cold showers and noise levels in our basic hotel.
"You will have a lovely sleep," said our guide the night before, "this is a quiet place, not like Cusco."
We are serenaded, at various points throughout the night by dogs, cats, ducks, tourists, locals shouting to each other as they load their wheelbarrows and open their street stalls in the wee hours, and a brass band which begins to play, with much in the way of pomp and bombastics and a certain enthusiastic overuse of the drums, at approximately five thirty.
Quiet, it is not.
Joined at the start point by a few others from a different group, we are now twelve. Aside from M, I, the indomitable and already much loved Scott, and the impossibly glamorous and athletic Norwegians (they continue to wear full faces of perfect make up throughout the entire hike despite the absence of mirrors or showers, and barely break a sweat, despite carrying day packs at least four times the size and weight of anybody else's. I salute them. I barely remember to brush my hair), we are now joined by a pharmacist (Helen, pseudonym) who manages to be both immensely solid and practical, and really interesting, a lively therapist working with disabled children, (Sally, pseudonym) who lives and laughs with great enthusiasm and abandon and who I see echoes of myself in - and like it, a ridiculously mature and intelligent 19 year old (Gareth, pseudonym) who can slide a witty comment into any situation with his silken tongue, and who is about as far from me at 19 as you can get, and rather more mature and well informed than I am now at 35, a quiet but impressively multi lingual Swiss student (Terry, pseudonym) and an earnest but fun Australian named Peter (pseudonym) who travels for a couple of months every year.
My concerns that we might not bond with our group across the, then largely Norwegian/English language barrier, evaporate quickly. As we begin to walk everybody pairs off with different members of the group, appears fascinated by them, and by the time we take our first full rest stop, we are a giggling bundle of exuberance, in fits of childish laughter because our guide has tried to say, "I smell skunk" but mispronounced it as "skank".
Yes. It hasn't taken much to melt our prim exteriors. I feel rather sorry for our guide, whose English is basically impeccable, especially as this particular moment sticks, and when we are asked to come up with a name for our group, " the Skansters" is all that anyone can come up with.
Our guide, who has the knowledge that we don't yet have, that the name we choose will be iced as a surprise onto a cake magically produced from scratch in the middle of nowhere on the third day of the hike by our incredible chefs, cannot bring himself to say (or ice) this name. He tries, without much success, to make us take a more sensible name, and in the end forceably rechristens us 'the survivors, S. K. S. T. R', the letters being an abbreviation of our oft repeated, much cackled over, chosen name.
They are rather long suffering, these guides.
Apart from happy conversation (we do talk about something other than 'skanksters', including politics, travel, poverty, stupid things we've done, work life balance, the importance of positive attitudes and food, to name but a few), our walk is peppered with information from our guide, who reveals himself as a born story teller.
He shows us the small parasites which cover the cactus plants, that we saw being used as dyes yesterday, which appear as a sort of white fur on the plant. Encasing themselves in a protective white shell, which our guide crushes casually between his fingers, to reveal their effectiveness as a purple ink. I suspect those parasites have some evolving to do to create a rather more effective protection.
He also points out the Saint Peter's Cactus, a tall thin, phallic looking plant growing nonchalantly at the side of the mountain we are gradually winding our way up. This cactus has hallucinogenic properties, but specifically, makes you remember everything from birth to the present day with absolute clarity. It is used by Shamans and those seeking spiritual enlightenment, perhaps to recall truths they once knew as a child but have forgotten through the inevitable crowding in of life experiences, and also, (ironically) as a therapy for drug addicts, making them remember with brutal clarity both the mess and indignities they may have forgotten as the drug wears off, and how happy and healthy they were before they got hooked.
I can certainly see the benefit there, but I find myself wondering if there is actually anything I particularly want to remember. Happy, key or defining moments I have a tendency to remember with great clarity and colour (albeit potentially some of it is added in over time), and bad experiences I would be perfectly happy to forget, thank you very much. I am reasonably confident I have learned enough from the bad points in my life not to need to recall them. Perhaps that's how everybody feels, how the addicts themselves might feel, initially. But I decide not to break off a bit of cactus and chew it, meditatively, on the way up. I don't think I need it. Except, perhaps to remember the word for that thing I can't remember, that is on the tip of my tongue, or to recall the name of that bloke who was in that film about thingummies...
Animals, we are told, that inhabit this landscape, include a humming bird the size of an inch, known as the 'mosquito' humming bird, actual mosquitoes, reminding me vividly, of South East Asia, a bear which is 80% vegetarian, and a small, cat like creature with a long bushy tail and a long nose, known as a Coati.
We stop frequently, to learn these snippets, and to gaze at the view, green mountainsides and cold, jagged, ice covered peaks beneath a yellow and blue sky. It's actually, at this stage, slightly easier going than M and I have found on walks of our own. We never allow ourselves quite so much slack, and tend not to pause or rest on the way.
"This is nice," we say to each other, selecting another packet of chocolate biscuits from the bulging snack pack with which we have been provided, "we should walk like this more often."
We stop at another Inca ruin and marvel at the length of time that the existence and whereabouts of Machu Picchu had been kept secret from the conquering Spanish, with Inca men and women never breathing a word of it, even those who had married with Spanish partners. A feat of integrity it was (I could not do it), but considering the destruction generally wreaked by the Spanish over Incan settlements, particularly those with religious significance, the melting down of gold statues and erection of churches on top of what remained, I can't say I am actually all that surprised.
Our guide tells us that there are two ways to Machu Picchu. The easy way, down through a pass between two mountains, and the hard way, up and over the imposing mountain currently towering over us far in the distance. The ancient people travelled to their religious centre only by one way, the mountain. It was a pilgrimage, a sacrificing of self and comfort in honour of the mountain, which was considered a sacred being to the Incas, a manifestation of God. It was important to suffer, to subjugate oneself to the majesty and power embodied by that mountain, and to do so, the people would carry large rocks to enhance the difficulty of the path they were choosing. It is a metaphor made physical, and it makes a lot of sense. Many world religions, including Christianity, include an image of a narrow, versus a wide path, the former being the only true way to their God.
"This is your moment," says our guide, "to choose your stone. Find one that speaks to you, and we will carry it with us and lay it at the top of the mountain, as part of our pilgrimage to the sacred city."
I spend some time choosing my stone. Eventually I find one, a largish reddish, uneven form with white flecks, which is smooth and warm in my hand.
"This one," I say, "it feels right. It just feels like my stone. I think it's the one I was meant to have."
M is equally earnest, holding reverently a huge pinkish rock the size of a brick.
"It chose me." He says.
We realise suddenly that everyone else, having chosen the smallest pebbles they could, is looking at us with some incredulity.
I have a practising faith, and am familiar and comfortable with the metaphors of sacrifice and reverence, of effort as worship, of the mountain as a work of fine art by my God. I don't know what M's excuse is.
We put our stones carefully into our bags and continue our walk, breaking for a delicious and freshly cooked lunch, before finally reaching our camp for the night.
We have been walking on relatively gently inclined paths for a total of six hours. It's been fairly easy. The views have been beautiful, and remain beautiful from our camp. Tomorrow will be a tougher climb, only four hours walking but up steep and narrow paths to over four thousand metres above sea level. Tomorrow we will earn our status as pilgrims, and our stones will seem significantly heavier.
Before bed though, it's time to meet the porters.
We have twenty two porters, roughly two per hiker. They carry twenty five kilogrammes each on their backs, composed of gas cylinders, food and cooking equipment, eating tents, sleeping tents and our individual luggage which is capped at 6 kilogrammes per person. They carry this load, which is bulky and uncomfortable, all the way through the hike, and they do it at a speed which ensures they arrive at camp or at our lunch venues before we do, whereupon they proceed to set up tents, help the two chefs to cook lunch, boil water and then take it all down again when we are finished with it. It is a gargantuan and seemingly superhuman effort, requiring a fitness, especially up hill and at altitude, which I am amazed at any normal person possessing. Our guide tells us that every year there is a marathon, composed of this track which was won, last year, by a former porter. If anyone is suffering for the mountain, it is the porters. Even M's stone seems puny in comparison. Half way through the day the porters pause once, to drink Chicha. Normally far more alcoholic than this, because it ferments for longer, the Chicha drunk by the porters on the Inca trail is only 4% alcohol, but is required for its sugar content.
Now, already amazed and humbled by the work undertaken by these slight looking men, (who, unbelievably, clap US as we enter camp), we learn each porters name, age and occupation (nearly all are farmers, who do this work in the months when they are not needed to carry out seasonal work on their land.) We introduce ourselves to them, those of us that can, in Spanish, and then fall like comparatively undeserving vultures, on our dinner.
I float towards a suitable bit of foliage in which to brush my teeth before bed, under a beautiful clear, starlit sky, loving this trip, this trek, this landscape and wondering at how lucky I am to experience it.
And then I stop suddenly, give a little squeak of surprise - and throw up violently all over the grass.
"You will have a lovely sleep," said our guide the night before, "this is a quiet place, not like Cusco."
We are serenaded, at various points throughout the night by dogs, cats, ducks, tourists, locals shouting to each other as they load their wheelbarrows and open their street stalls in the wee hours, and a brass band which begins to play, with much in the way of pomp and bombastics and a certain enthusiastic overuse of the drums, at approximately five thirty.
Quiet, it is not.
Joined at the start point by a few others from a different group, we are now twelve. Aside from M, I, the indomitable and already much loved Scott, and the impossibly glamorous and athletic Norwegians (they continue to wear full faces of perfect make up throughout the entire hike despite the absence of mirrors or showers, and barely break a sweat, despite carrying day packs at least four times the size and weight of anybody else's. I salute them. I barely remember to brush my hair), we are now joined by a pharmacist (Helen, pseudonym) who manages to be both immensely solid and practical, and really interesting, a lively therapist working with disabled children, (Sally, pseudonym) who lives and laughs with great enthusiasm and abandon and who I see echoes of myself in - and like it, a ridiculously mature and intelligent 19 year old (Gareth, pseudonym) who can slide a witty comment into any situation with his silken tongue, and who is about as far from me at 19 as you can get, and rather more mature and well informed than I am now at 35, a quiet but impressively multi lingual Swiss student (Terry, pseudonym) and an earnest but fun Australian named Peter (pseudonym) who travels for a couple of months every year.
My concerns that we might not bond with our group across the, then largely Norwegian/English language barrier, evaporate quickly. As we begin to walk everybody pairs off with different members of the group, appears fascinated by them, and by the time we take our first full rest stop, we are a giggling bundle of exuberance, in fits of childish laughter because our guide has tried to say, "I smell skunk" but mispronounced it as "skank".
Yes. It hasn't taken much to melt our prim exteriors. I feel rather sorry for our guide, whose English is basically impeccable, especially as this particular moment sticks, and when we are asked to come up with a name for our group, " the Skansters" is all that anyone can come up with.
Our guide, who has the knowledge that we don't yet have, that the name we choose will be iced as a surprise onto a cake magically produced from scratch in the middle of nowhere on the third day of the hike by our incredible chefs, cannot bring himself to say (or ice) this name. He tries, without much success, to make us take a more sensible name, and in the end forceably rechristens us 'the survivors, S. K. S. T. R', the letters being an abbreviation of our oft repeated, much cackled over, chosen name.
They are rather long suffering, these guides.
Apart from happy conversation (we do talk about something other than 'skanksters', including politics, travel, poverty, stupid things we've done, work life balance, the importance of positive attitudes and food, to name but a few), our walk is peppered with information from our guide, who reveals himself as a born story teller.
He shows us the small parasites which cover the cactus plants, that we saw being used as dyes yesterday, which appear as a sort of white fur on the plant. Encasing themselves in a protective white shell, which our guide crushes casually between his fingers, to reveal their effectiveness as a purple ink. I suspect those parasites have some evolving to do to create a rather more effective protection.
He also points out the Saint Peter's Cactus, a tall thin, phallic looking plant growing nonchalantly at the side of the mountain we are gradually winding our way up. This cactus has hallucinogenic properties, but specifically, makes you remember everything from birth to the present day with absolute clarity. It is used by Shamans and those seeking spiritual enlightenment, perhaps to recall truths they once knew as a child but have forgotten through the inevitable crowding in of life experiences, and also, (ironically) as a therapy for drug addicts, making them remember with brutal clarity both the mess and indignities they may have forgotten as the drug wears off, and how happy and healthy they were before they got hooked.
I can certainly see the benefit there, but I find myself wondering if there is actually anything I particularly want to remember. Happy, key or defining moments I have a tendency to remember with great clarity and colour (albeit potentially some of it is added in over time), and bad experiences I would be perfectly happy to forget, thank you very much. I am reasonably confident I have learned enough from the bad points in my life not to need to recall them. Perhaps that's how everybody feels, how the addicts themselves might feel, initially. But I decide not to break off a bit of cactus and chew it, meditatively, on the way up. I don't think I need it. Except, perhaps to remember the word for that thing I can't remember, that is on the tip of my tongue, or to recall the name of that bloke who was in that film about thingummies...
Animals, we are told, that inhabit this landscape, include a humming bird the size of an inch, known as the 'mosquito' humming bird, actual mosquitoes, reminding me vividly, of South East Asia, a bear which is 80% vegetarian, and a small, cat like creature with a long bushy tail and a long nose, known as a Coati.
We stop frequently, to learn these snippets, and to gaze at the view, green mountainsides and cold, jagged, ice covered peaks beneath a yellow and blue sky. It's actually, at this stage, slightly easier going than M and I have found on walks of our own. We never allow ourselves quite so much slack, and tend not to pause or rest on the way.
"This is nice," we say to each other, selecting another packet of chocolate biscuits from the bulging snack pack with which we have been provided, "we should walk like this more often."
We stop at another Inca ruin and marvel at the length of time that the existence and whereabouts of Machu Picchu had been kept secret from the conquering Spanish, with Inca men and women never breathing a word of it, even those who had married with Spanish partners. A feat of integrity it was (I could not do it), but considering the destruction generally wreaked by the Spanish over Incan settlements, particularly those with religious significance, the melting down of gold statues and erection of churches on top of what remained, I can't say I am actually all that surprised.
Our guide tells us that there are two ways to Machu Picchu. The easy way, down through a pass between two mountains, and the hard way, up and over the imposing mountain currently towering over us far in the distance. The ancient people travelled to their religious centre only by one way, the mountain. It was a pilgrimage, a sacrificing of self and comfort in honour of the mountain, which was considered a sacred being to the Incas, a manifestation of God. It was important to suffer, to subjugate oneself to the majesty and power embodied by that mountain, and to do so, the people would carry large rocks to enhance the difficulty of the path they were choosing. It is a metaphor made physical, and it makes a lot of sense. Many world religions, including Christianity, include an image of a narrow, versus a wide path, the former being the only true way to their God.
"This is your moment," says our guide, "to choose your stone. Find one that speaks to you, and we will carry it with us and lay it at the top of the mountain, as part of our pilgrimage to the sacred city."
I spend some time choosing my stone. Eventually I find one, a largish reddish, uneven form with white flecks, which is smooth and warm in my hand.
"This one," I say, "it feels right. It just feels like my stone. I think it's the one I was meant to have."
M is equally earnest, holding reverently a huge pinkish rock the size of a brick.
"It chose me." He says.
We realise suddenly that everyone else, having chosen the smallest pebbles they could, is looking at us with some incredulity.
I have a practising faith, and am familiar and comfortable with the metaphors of sacrifice and reverence, of effort as worship, of the mountain as a work of fine art by my God. I don't know what M's excuse is.
We put our stones carefully into our bags and continue our walk, breaking for a delicious and freshly cooked lunch, before finally reaching our camp for the night.
We have been walking on relatively gently inclined paths for a total of six hours. It's been fairly easy. The views have been beautiful, and remain beautiful from our camp. Tomorrow will be a tougher climb, only four hours walking but up steep and narrow paths to over four thousand metres above sea level. Tomorrow we will earn our status as pilgrims, and our stones will seem significantly heavier.
Before bed though, it's time to meet the porters.
We have twenty two porters, roughly two per hiker. They carry twenty five kilogrammes each on their backs, composed of gas cylinders, food and cooking equipment, eating tents, sleeping tents and our individual luggage which is capped at 6 kilogrammes per person. They carry this load, which is bulky and uncomfortable, all the way through the hike, and they do it at a speed which ensures they arrive at camp or at our lunch venues before we do, whereupon they proceed to set up tents, help the two chefs to cook lunch, boil water and then take it all down again when we are finished with it. It is a gargantuan and seemingly superhuman effort, requiring a fitness, especially up hill and at altitude, which I am amazed at any normal person possessing. Our guide tells us that every year there is a marathon, composed of this track which was won, last year, by a former porter. If anyone is suffering for the mountain, it is the porters. Even M's stone seems puny in comparison. Half way through the day the porters pause once, to drink Chicha. Normally far more alcoholic than this, because it ferments for longer, the Chicha drunk by the porters on the Inca trail is only 4% alcohol, but is required for its sugar content.
Now, already amazed and humbled by the work undertaken by these slight looking men, (who, unbelievably, clap US as we enter camp), we learn each porters name, age and occupation (nearly all are farmers, who do this work in the months when they are not needed to carry out seasonal work on their land.) We introduce ourselves to them, those of us that can, in Spanish, and then fall like comparatively undeserving vultures, on our dinner.
I float towards a suitable bit of foliage in which to brush my teeth before bed, under a beautiful clear, starlit sky, loving this trip, this trek, this landscape and wondering at how lucky I am to experience it.
And then I stop suddenly, give a little squeak of surprise - and throw up violently all over the grass.
Tuesday, 14 July 2015
Where there's a will, there's a way
We launch our Inca Trail experience today, though it is a rather gentle first day, without much actual hiking, the true hiking on the famous trail starting the next morning. We manage to get talking a little to our Norwegian colleagues, who mostly chat to each other, but all of us benefit immensely from the addition of Scott, a beaming and immensely loveable English Animal Behaviourist student from England, who instantly warms everyone up and establishes himself as the unwitting 'glue' to bond our group. He is here having made a research trip to the Amazon with his course, studying mating behaviours of birds, and had the sort of gumption neither his compatriots, nor myself at his stage of life, had, to extend his trip and do this, and the Galapagos islands at the same time. I am find of him instantly. We all are. He's just one of those people.
Our first stop is to Planeterra, a project funded and set up by G Adventures, our ultra ethical tour company, working with the women in a small village community which, shortly before the project was set up, had suffered a catastrophic mud slide, killing part of its population and destroying its buildings. The women are immensely skilled with textiles, from the caring for the llamas, sheep and alpacas who provide the wool, to the spinning, dyeing, weaving and knitting of it. G Adventures helped build a small 'factory', (more like a town hall), and installed some pedal driven weaving machines there, though many of the women still hand weave, attaching the half weaved threads with separating wood blocks to the trees outside, and sitting beneath them, weaving in their lap. Part of the fee for the trail with G Adventures goes towards this project, and all of the tour groups are brought here, partly to buy the crafts at a fair price from the source, and partly because it is an undeniably interesting and humbling experience.
Our guide translates for us as a lady from the village tells us, in her native Quechua language, about her home and her culture. We learn that in this community it is possible to tell whether a woman is married, not by her wedding ring, but by the way she wears her hat. The hats are red with embroidery on the centre, and a widish brim. A married lady wears her hat with the brim turned down, a single lady with the brim turned up.
We learn that weaving is a language of its own, lifestyles literally woven into the designs of the work. A girl is not considered a woman, or good wife material, until she can leave a square of a particular design, a rather intricate pattern. Certain corner designs denote either that the weaver is single, or in love, two frogs signify the rain, two llamas prosperity.
A lady working at one of the pedal weaving machines let's me have a go. It's a lot harder than it looks. I hand her back the spindle of wool I have been rather awkwardly trying to pass through the vertical threads, with some relief. If you ruin someone's work I am not sure if you might be expected to pay for it - and this is to be a large poncho in baby alpaca wool, a very expensive garment.
We move into the small courtyard of the tiny village, where llamas, alpacas and baby alpacas stare at us imperiously from behind mouthfuls of grass and leaves. A lady shows us how the WO, once sheared,bus washed, using a magic roots which can be grated into water to produce foam and soap. Amazed, I watch as, without much effort, a dirty lump of llama wool is rinsed and scrubbed briefly in this water, and removed again, pure white. I look again at the llamas. None of them look as though could ever have been white.
"Llamas are not clean animals," says our guide, as if reading my thoughts.
Apparently the ladies use the same root for shampoo for their hair. I look enviously at their shiny black plaits and wonder how possible it might be to smuggle this root back to England.
The wool, once washed, is spun, using an old fashioned wooden spindle, and then spun a second time to create a two gild thread for strength. The ladies, our guide tells us, are always spinning. They spin while they tend llamas out on the hillside, while they watch their children, while they boil the threads of pre spun wool to dye it.
The dyeing process is as astonishingly natural and inventive as the magic root. Small black parasites, found on cactus plants, are crushed with stones, to create a deep purple dye. Mix that purple with lime, and it creates a yellowish colour, mix it with salt, or with sulphur, and it produces a different colour altogether. These, and many more natural combinations are used, alongside more straightforward plant based dyes, (eucalyptus for a green green, leaves for a deeper green, orange flowers for the yellow/red hues), to create deep, vibrant colours, which, if the wool is boiled for at least 45 minutes, will remain so indefinitely, without running in the wash.
Once the wool is created and coloured, the ladies weave or knit it with expert hands. The weaving in particular is hugely intricate, and the threads, attached to the tree in the centre of the courtyard, are picked apart and then tightened using a llama femur, until they are pulled so closely together the fabric is actually naturally waterproof.
"You know what else a llama femur is used for?" asks our guide, with what may or may not be a wry twinkle, (he is a rather inscrutable man, with a dry, deadpan humour, and easy to be misled by, something I think he cheekily rather enjoys.)
We do not know what else a llama femur is used for.
"By the shaman," he replies, as though it is obvious, "in healing ceremonies in the country. He uses it to blow tobacco."
I know little about shamanic ceremonies, and find it hard to find out about, everyone here taking it sinpky as part of life, and therefore unable to properly articulate it to a novice, but I suspect there is sine snorting, as well as blowing, and that it isn't always just tobacco.
We buy a couple of things, presents or souvineers, and then make our way back onto the coach for Pisaq, wondering what enterprising soul first invented the art of weaving, the spindle, or discovered the colours you can get out of a beetle.
Pisaq is a famous Inca ruin in what is known as the 'sacred valley' and it is here that our guide solves for us the mystery of how exactly the Incas managed to move the enormous boulders and rocks which make up some of their structures. It's all a matter of educated guess work, obviously, the time machine not yet having been successfully invented (that we know of - though it does explain those alien shaped heads in both Egyptian and South American civilisations, miles apart from each other and with no possibility of contact). But the belief is that the stones were moved by laying down down on gravel or scree, laid out in a path specifically for the purpose, and then pushing the stones along it, using the natural movement of the smaller stones to gain traction. They were so clever, so resourceful, and I wonder, not for the first time, whether we might now have entirely lost that. Perhaps not. Perhaps computers, hoovers, washing machines and aeroplanes are our modern day stone shifters. Perhaps progress is clever, whatever it creates. The trouble of course, is defining 'progress'. Is a bomb, for example, a step forward into world mastery, or a step nearer to self imposed extinction? Maybe progress is any step in the direction mankind is already pointing, whatever the relative merits of the potential end point, should we continue on that path.
Our guide also points us towards the adjoining hillside, which we can see from our vantage point on the ruins, which is peppered with small holes about the size of a human head and shoulders. It's an Incan cemetery, though the holes, less mysteriously, have been made by looters, trying to seal the precious metals and special artefacts buried with the deceased. Its proximity to the natural stream may have been deliberate. Once a person had died their clothes would be washed ceremonially, to help them pass on to the next life. The Incas used to bring the mummies of their dead out at least twice a year, believing them, at least in some sense, to still be alive. The people in certain parts of Peru still follow this belief, at least in part, and on a certain day of the year a feast of roast Cuy (Guinea Pig) is prepared and left outside the graves of the dead for their enjoyment. However hungry or desperate, no living person ever eats this feast, and if it is gone by morning it is the work of the dead. Or the stray dogs.
After this mouthwatering image, we move on for a slap up lunch. The restaurant venue for this is another of G Adventure's projects, this time a small village with no passing trade or natural assets, but a wealth of determination and drive, who were trained as chefs, waiters, waitresses and helped to build a cozy building to house the eatery, and which is now an absolutely delicious restaurant, full of smiling busy staff. We eat a huge four course lunch.
"They had a real passion to work and to make things better for themselves" says our guide, "we look for that when we are choosing communities to invest in, or to establish a fairly traded collective. If the people are nor willing to engage or to learn, it doesn't work and the enterprise will fail. Thus restaurant turns a profit of its own now, daily. Even without investment from G Adventures.
Finally, snoozing a little in the coach after our rich food, we find ourselves in the small town near 'Kilometre 82', where the Inca trail begins, and where we will spend our last night for a while in relative civilisation. Ollantytambu is the oldest working town in Cusco, with still glowing Inca crafted drainage systems, water and channels. We climb up to the impressive ruins which overlook the town, and find ourselves gazing back at the mountain opposite, in which it is possible, without too much stretching of our overfed imaginations, to perceive a large face, gazing down with an unreadable expression, at the small ants which are the human inhabitants of Ollantytambu.
There are two stories about this mysterious visage. One involves a mischievous God with a taste for human vices, who had been indulging rather naughtily in human wine and women, named Tanupa. Caught in the act by the other, more sober Gods, he attempted to escape their wrath by tunnelling into the ground, but was turned into a mountain as a punishment.
The other story is rather different. The God, Wiracocha, taking pity on the humans below him, who were starving and living like unhappy savages, came down to visit them, carrying on his back seeds and plants, to teach them to farm. He carved his benevolent image into the mountain as a reminder. I prefer the second story, and certainly, viewed from the right perspective, it does appear that the face is carrying a bundle on its shoulders.
Intriguingly, our guide goes on to tell us, there is another face visible slightly further around the side if the mountain, and on the 21st June at the winter solstice, the sun rises in such a position as to cast a single ray seemingly from the eye of the figure, right into the doorway of the part of the ruins believed to have been known as the Temple of the Sun. It's incredible, literally. But as Alice in Wonderland would tell us, after this trip I can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Especially where it comes to the Incas. If there was ever a people who could create an image in a mountain exactly positioned to cast a ray into a temple, well it would be them. If they wanted to do it, they found a way.
The construction of the ruins are a case in point. The walls are built so that they lean slightly, have indentations to absorb earthquake impact and deep foundations to withstand natural disasters. The small protuberances from the larger stones were probably carved there temporarily in order to attach ropes for hauling, and the whole thing was carved using a small black stone, essentially a meteorite, which was the only thing harder than the rocks themselves. It must have taken decades.
That small black stone, if our guide us to be believed, is of more use than just carving. People in the countryside still brew a 'stone soup', with the stone, and swear it prevents heart attacks.
"Believe what you like," says our guide, "but you never hear of anyone in those communities dying from heart defects."
Maybe. Six impossible things, remember?
The town of Ollantytambu got its name due to a dispute between the great ninth Inca, Pachacuteq, and a warrior named Ollanta, who tried to insist that he be given Pachacuteq's daughter as his wife. Pachacuteq thought otherwise, Ollanta waged war, which was a fearsome prospect because he was a famously good warrior. Pachacuteq had a quiet word with Ollanta's best friend, shared some hallucinogenics with him and showed him a vision of the bloody future, full of innocent death should the war go ahead. The friend saw the truth of this and betrayed Ollanta, (the turncoat), and so the city was saved. No one seems to know or care what Pachacuteq's daughter actually thought of all this. Maybe she quite liked old Ollanta. Ah well, I guess it wasn't to be...
Once the Incas had finished fighting, or preventing fights amongst themselves, they had a bigger problem, the Spanish. To draw the inquisatadors away, they pretended to flee, opened the dams and flooded the town, confident enough in their construction that it would not be destroyed.
And it wasn't. This was Inca workmanship.
Walking down, by this time in a deluge in pouring rain, the like of which we will, thankfully, not see again on this journey, our guide and I marvel at the mysteries of the connections between Egyptian and Incan peoples. I talk about the deformed heads, he talks about pyramid formations, found in both sets of early constructions, and of a mysterious Egyptian mummy, found not only buried surrounded by coca leaves, but with evidence of long term usage of them in her body.
Coca leaves do nor grow in Egypt.
Time travel? Teleportation devices?
I am willing to believe it. I am willing to believe anything of these ancient peoples, once they put their mind to it...
Our first stop is to Planeterra, a project funded and set up by G Adventures, our ultra ethical tour company, working with the women in a small village community which, shortly before the project was set up, had suffered a catastrophic mud slide, killing part of its population and destroying its buildings. The women are immensely skilled with textiles, from the caring for the llamas, sheep and alpacas who provide the wool, to the spinning, dyeing, weaving and knitting of it. G Adventures helped build a small 'factory', (more like a town hall), and installed some pedal driven weaving machines there, though many of the women still hand weave, attaching the half weaved threads with separating wood blocks to the trees outside, and sitting beneath them, weaving in their lap. Part of the fee for the trail with G Adventures goes towards this project, and all of the tour groups are brought here, partly to buy the crafts at a fair price from the source, and partly because it is an undeniably interesting and humbling experience.
Our guide translates for us as a lady from the village tells us, in her native Quechua language, about her home and her culture. We learn that in this community it is possible to tell whether a woman is married, not by her wedding ring, but by the way she wears her hat. The hats are red with embroidery on the centre, and a widish brim. A married lady wears her hat with the brim turned down, a single lady with the brim turned up.
We learn that weaving is a language of its own, lifestyles literally woven into the designs of the work. A girl is not considered a woman, or good wife material, until she can leave a square of a particular design, a rather intricate pattern. Certain corner designs denote either that the weaver is single, or in love, two frogs signify the rain, two llamas prosperity.
A lady working at one of the pedal weaving machines let's me have a go. It's a lot harder than it looks. I hand her back the spindle of wool I have been rather awkwardly trying to pass through the vertical threads, with some relief. If you ruin someone's work I am not sure if you might be expected to pay for it - and this is to be a large poncho in baby alpaca wool, a very expensive garment.
We move into the small courtyard of the tiny village, where llamas, alpacas and baby alpacas stare at us imperiously from behind mouthfuls of grass and leaves. A lady shows us how the WO, once sheared,bus washed, using a magic roots which can be grated into water to produce foam and soap. Amazed, I watch as, without much effort, a dirty lump of llama wool is rinsed and scrubbed briefly in this water, and removed again, pure white. I look again at the llamas. None of them look as though could ever have been white.
"Llamas are not clean animals," says our guide, as if reading my thoughts.
Apparently the ladies use the same root for shampoo for their hair. I look enviously at their shiny black plaits and wonder how possible it might be to smuggle this root back to England.
The wool, once washed, is spun, using an old fashioned wooden spindle, and then spun a second time to create a two gild thread for strength. The ladies, our guide tells us, are always spinning. They spin while they tend llamas out on the hillside, while they watch their children, while they boil the threads of pre spun wool to dye it.
The dyeing process is as astonishingly natural and inventive as the magic root. Small black parasites, found on cactus plants, are crushed with stones, to create a deep purple dye. Mix that purple with lime, and it creates a yellowish colour, mix it with salt, or with sulphur, and it produces a different colour altogether. These, and many more natural combinations are used, alongside more straightforward plant based dyes, (eucalyptus for a green green, leaves for a deeper green, orange flowers for the yellow/red hues), to create deep, vibrant colours, which, if the wool is boiled for at least 45 minutes, will remain so indefinitely, without running in the wash.
Once the wool is created and coloured, the ladies weave or knit it with expert hands. The weaving in particular is hugely intricate, and the threads, attached to the tree in the centre of the courtyard, are picked apart and then tightened using a llama femur, until they are pulled so closely together the fabric is actually naturally waterproof.
"You know what else a llama femur is used for?" asks our guide, with what may or may not be a wry twinkle, (he is a rather inscrutable man, with a dry, deadpan humour, and easy to be misled by, something I think he cheekily rather enjoys.)
We do not know what else a llama femur is used for.
"By the shaman," he replies, as though it is obvious, "in healing ceremonies in the country. He uses it to blow tobacco."
I know little about shamanic ceremonies, and find it hard to find out about, everyone here taking it sinpky as part of life, and therefore unable to properly articulate it to a novice, but I suspect there is sine snorting, as well as blowing, and that it isn't always just tobacco.
We buy a couple of things, presents or souvineers, and then make our way back onto the coach for Pisaq, wondering what enterprising soul first invented the art of weaving, the spindle, or discovered the colours you can get out of a beetle.
Pisaq is a famous Inca ruin in what is known as the 'sacred valley' and it is here that our guide solves for us the mystery of how exactly the Incas managed to move the enormous boulders and rocks which make up some of their structures. It's all a matter of educated guess work, obviously, the time machine not yet having been successfully invented (that we know of - though it does explain those alien shaped heads in both Egyptian and South American civilisations, miles apart from each other and with no possibility of contact). But the belief is that the stones were moved by laying down down on gravel or scree, laid out in a path specifically for the purpose, and then pushing the stones along it, using the natural movement of the smaller stones to gain traction. They were so clever, so resourceful, and I wonder, not for the first time, whether we might now have entirely lost that. Perhaps not. Perhaps computers, hoovers, washing machines and aeroplanes are our modern day stone shifters. Perhaps progress is clever, whatever it creates. The trouble of course, is defining 'progress'. Is a bomb, for example, a step forward into world mastery, or a step nearer to self imposed extinction? Maybe progress is any step in the direction mankind is already pointing, whatever the relative merits of the potential end point, should we continue on that path.
Our guide also points us towards the adjoining hillside, which we can see from our vantage point on the ruins, which is peppered with small holes about the size of a human head and shoulders. It's an Incan cemetery, though the holes, less mysteriously, have been made by looters, trying to seal the precious metals and special artefacts buried with the deceased. Its proximity to the natural stream may have been deliberate. Once a person had died their clothes would be washed ceremonially, to help them pass on to the next life. The Incas used to bring the mummies of their dead out at least twice a year, believing them, at least in some sense, to still be alive. The people in certain parts of Peru still follow this belief, at least in part, and on a certain day of the year a feast of roast Cuy (Guinea Pig) is prepared and left outside the graves of the dead for their enjoyment. However hungry or desperate, no living person ever eats this feast, and if it is gone by morning it is the work of the dead. Or the stray dogs.
After this mouthwatering image, we move on for a slap up lunch. The restaurant venue for this is another of G Adventure's projects, this time a small village with no passing trade or natural assets, but a wealth of determination and drive, who were trained as chefs, waiters, waitresses and helped to build a cozy building to house the eatery, and which is now an absolutely delicious restaurant, full of smiling busy staff. We eat a huge four course lunch.
"They had a real passion to work and to make things better for themselves" says our guide, "we look for that when we are choosing communities to invest in, or to establish a fairly traded collective. If the people are nor willing to engage or to learn, it doesn't work and the enterprise will fail. Thus restaurant turns a profit of its own now, daily. Even without investment from G Adventures.
Finally, snoozing a little in the coach after our rich food, we find ourselves in the small town near 'Kilometre 82', where the Inca trail begins, and where we will spend our last night for a while in relative civilisation. Ollantytambu is the oldest working town in Cusco, with still glowing Inca crafted drainage systems, water and channels. We climb up to the impressive ruins which overlook the town, and find ourselves gazing back at the mountain opposite, in which it is possible, without too much stretching of our overfed imaginations, to perceive a large face, gazing down with an unreadable expression, at the small ants which are the human inhabitants of Ollantytambu.
There are two stories about this mysterious visage. One involves a mischievous God with a taste for human vices, who had been indulging rather naughtily in human wine and women, named Tanupa. Caught in the act by the other, more sober Gods, he attempted to escape their wrath by tunnelling into the ground, but was turned into a mountain as a punishment.
The other story is rather different. The God, Wiracocha, taking pity on the humans below him, who were starving and living like unhappy savages, came down to visit them, carrying on his back seeds and plants, to teach them to farm. He carved his benevolent image into the mountain as a reminder. I prefer the second story, and certainly, viewed from the right perspective, it does appear that the face is carrying a bundle on its shoulders.
Intriguingly, our guide goes on to tell us, there is another face visible slightly further around the side if the mountain, and on the 21st June at the winter solstice, the sun rises in such a position as to cast a single ray seemingly from the eye of the figure, right into the doorway of the part of the ruins believed to have been known as the Temple of the Sun. It's incredible, literally. But as Alice in Wonderland would tell us, after this trip I can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Especially where it comes to the Incas. If there was ever a people who could create an image in a mountain exactly positioned to cast a ray into a temple, well it would be them. If they wanted to do it, they found a way.
The construction of the ruins are a case in point. The walls are built so that they lean slightly, have indentations to absorb earthquake impact and deep foundations to withstand natural disasters. The small protuberances from the larger stones were probably carved there temporarily in order to attach ropes for hauling, and the whole thing was carved using a small black stone, essentially a meteorite, which was the only thing harder than the rocks themselves. It must have taken decades.
That small black stone, if our guide us to be believed, is of more use than just carving. People in the countryside still brew a 'stone soup', with the stone, and swear it prevents heart attacks.
"Believe what you like," says our guide, "but you never hear of anyone in those communities dying from heart defects."
Maybe. Six impossible things, remember?
The town of Ollantytambu got its name due to a dispute between the great ninth Inca, Pachacuteq, and a warrior named Ollanta, who tried to insist that he be given Pachacuteq's daughter as his wife. Pachacuteq thought otherwise, Ollanta waged war, which was a fearsome prospect because he was a famously good warrior. Pachacuteq had a quiet word with Ollanta's best friend, shared some hallucinogenics with him and showed him a vision of the bloody future, full of innocent death should the war go ahead. The friend saw the truth of this and betrayed Ollanta, (the turncoat), and so the city was saved. No one seems to know or care what Pachacuteq's daughter actually thought of all this. Maybe she quite liked old Ollanta. Ah well, I guess it wasn't to be...
Once the Incas had finished fighting, or preventing fights amongst themselves, they had a bigger problem, the Spanish. To draw the inquisatadors away, they pretended to flee, opened the dams and flooded the town, confident enough in their construction that it would not be destroyed.
And it wasn't. This was Inca workmanship.
Walking down, by this time in a deluge in pouring rain, the like of which we will, thankfully, not see again on this journey, our guide and I marvel at the mysteries of the connections between Egyptian and Incan peoples. I talk about the deformed heads, he talks about pyramid formations, found in both sets of early constructions, and of a mysterious Egyptian mummy, found not only buried surrounded by coca leaves, but with evidence of long term usage of them in her body.
Coca leaves do nor grow in Egypt.
Time travel? Teleportation devices?
I am willing to believe it. I am willing to believe anything of these ancient peoples, once they put their mind to it...
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