Eighteen days of traveling have passed, and I am now eighteen days from flying home. Just realized that when I sat down to write. I´m in Nazca right now, an oasis that feels pretty much like every smallish city I´ve been in Peru so far, but sunnier. Am writing from an internet cafe that costs one nuevo sol (33 American cents) for an hour. Shakira is staring at me open-mouthed in a white bikini from a poster on the wall. Everyone else in this cafe is a twelve to sixteen-year-old boy playing video games.
Saying goodbye to Ollantaytambo was emotional, but I was ready to go. That day there was a fiesta celebrating the anniversary of San Isidro, the neighboorhood my family lived in. That helped to take the edge off. The day before, I went with Mirian to her mother´s house, where she traded a chicken for a cuy. Her mother -who she calls ¨La Reina, The Queen,¨ without a hint of sarcasm- squatted on the floor in her long skirt for ten or fifteen minutes, feeding the cuy alfalfa while they chirp/squealed, then snatched a white and brown chubby one out of the group, while the others ran for cover. I carried it home in a nylon flour sack. This was her contribution to the feast for the next day.The festival consisted of huge plates of food, chicha, beer, dancing children (they´re always demanding that children dance in this country), and whimsical contests for adults (potato-peeling race, race that involved pushing large round squashes from one end of the court to another, race that involved blindfolded feeding of masa mora from one adult to another, sack race that made me wonder if any of the women here wear bras). I sat with Renee and Susan in the stadium and watched while a cold wind blew and a light rain fell. Valeri and Cusi sat by my sides, hugging me and then forgetting to be sad and running off to play every now and then. It was time to leave, so the whole family walked me to the house and we got my things. Mirian and Ebert made speeches about how I´ll always be part of their family and held in their hearts forever, so of course I cried. They are beautiful. Then we hugged and Mirian walked me and Renee to the square and got us a taxi to Cusco.
Since then, I have been a lot of places and seen many things. Too many to write about in detail right now. So here´s a synopsis:
Quillabamba, a ¨cloud forest¨that borders the jungle nearish to Macchu Picchu. Spent some time at a waterfall in someone´s backyard with seven different tiers and basins, ate fruit, felt what it´s like to be in a place where Renee and I were the only outsiders to be seen. A few children pointed at us in the market. Everyone was very helpful and friendly, and even approached us on the street to ask where we were going and if we needed a taxi. Two thumbs up.
Cusco, again. I love Cusco and would choose to live there out of all the places I´ve seen so far. The buildings are big, beautiful stone colonial structures with arches and carved, wooden balconies. The gritty real-life side is mixed in with the more glamorous and touristy. The market is about 4 blocks from the Plaza de Armas, and we went there every day to buy fruit or eat a cheap, tasty meal. The mountains watch you from afar.
Puno, the town that sits on the edge of Lake Titicaca, which locals pronounce ¨Titichaachaa¨ with a more throaty sounding c. I prefer this... Puno is run-down and graffitied, but the lake is a giant, blue, rippling mirror that could make anywhere appealing. We took a boat one day into the lake and visited the floating islands, which are human made out of reeds that grow in the lake. The people created the islands when the Incas took over, in an attempt to escape. They´re made of dirt from the bottom of the lake covered in eight or nine feet of reeds. All of their houses and boats are made of the reeds, too, and they all have to be replaced every three months or they´ll rot. Talk about ephemerality. Beautiful.
Arequipa, which feels like Europe. It was really strange to arrive there after the semi-ruggedness we´ve been experiencing. The buildings are large and made of white volcanic rock. They have many arches but aren´t decorated otherwise. A highlight of Arequipa was visiting the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, a convent built in the mid-1500´s. It´s enormous (takes up 3 city blocks!) and contains beautiful paintings from the Cusqueñean school, plus much of the original furniture and tools used by the nuns. Another highlight was going to the museum that houses Juanita, the mummy of an Incan girl sacrificed in the mid-1400s to appease the gods and help to stop the earthquakes going on at that time. She and other child sacrifices like her were discovered in the mid 1990´s. Since they had been frozen solid, the bodies are in very good condition, as are the textiles and ceramics that were found with them. So the museums and history there were very interesting, plus we got a taste of the modern life, including fast food and Starbucks (almost didn´t admit that, but it had to be told).
Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. We went on a three day trek there with a group of eight, plus a guide. Our group consisted of 4 Germans, 2 Argentinians, and Renee and me. We didn´t talk much, though the Germans spoke English and our Spanish is getting better. I was feeling a bit timid and reluctant to have a three-day conversation, especially because once I get past my getting to know you Spanish, it´s hard to know what else to talk about. It was much more difficult, physically, than I´d expected. The first day we left at 3 am and the hike was a 3.5 hours straight downhill in the blaring sun into the valley. We spent the night at a tropical-feeling, but rustic, hotel in the valley. Everyone went to bed at 8. The next day we walked a more flat path, and stopped at a house/museum in a village in the valley, where we tasted the owner´s chicha and saw traditional farming tools and clothing. Then we stayed at another small hotel (both were made up of adobe cabins and the eating areas were open air and made of cane and straw) but this one had a pool, which was nice for about an hour and then the sun hid behind the mountains and it was cold. We woke up at 4:30 the next morning, had coca tea and 4 oreos each, and hiked to the summit in the dark, and then in the cool morning sun. We climbed 1200 meters and it took about 3 hours. Mules and Peruvian men in ajotes -sandals made out of tires- pranced up and down the path like they were running from their house to the mailbox or something, listening to radios and smiling contentedly. We sweated, grunted, and grimaced our way to the top. We ate breakfast at a small restaurant in the nearby pueblo, watching Arequipa-style Huayno music videos in the background. I must buy a Huayno dvd for you all to see. It´s describable, but describing it saps it of the beauty.
As I said, I´m in Nazca. The sharp edge of the desk is eating lines into my wrists. Shakira is blowing my mind with her hotness. How is she so pretty but so tiny at the same time? I want to put her on a keychain. I just came in from the plaza, where two seventeen-year-old girls asked me questions about the U.S. for a while until I got uncomfortable and had to leave. They were especially interested in how many stories certain buildings have in New York (Twin Towers, Empire State Building, etc) and what the weather´s like. I ended up feeling inadequate for not knowing the answers to their questions. Don´t have a head for facts. But I was happy to talk to them and again impressed by how genuine they and almost all of the Peruvians I´ve met have been. This morning, Renee and I took a private tour to the towers where you can view the Nazca Lines. They´re giant figures etched into the desert floor by people of the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD. We saw giant hands, a tree, and a family of adorable people with feathers or maybe antennae or dreadlocks. No one really knows what the lines mean, but I liked what our guide said. He believes that the figures are a type of offering that the priests would design, draw, and walk the perimeters of in religious ceremonies to demonstrate their devotion to their gods. Whatever they mean, they´re amazing.
The rest of this trip will follow the Peruvian coast. We go to Ica, the home of many Pisco-making wineries, tomorrow. Then to a national reserve (Paracas), then north to Trujillo and the beaches and more archeological sites around there.
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