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...
No comments:
Post a Comment