Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Pisac Market and Ruins




Recently, we went to the nearby town of Pisac which hosts a large market on Sundays. Although somewhat touristy, the central square of the market was still largely populated by local women from the surrounding area who had come to sell their wares and buy supplies. They largely wore the traditional Andean dress of bowler hats (either white or brown), large black braids, brightly colored shawls, and skirts. The market fills the plaza outside of the small church which was also very interesting. The inside of the church was covered with murals in shades of purple and blue and yellow and featured various biblical depictions with a Peruvian slant. For instance, instead of holding a baby sheep, Jesus is shown holding a baby llama. Instead of the standard European depictions of biblical characters, these were depicted with more mestizo faces (which is probably closer to what was actually the skin color of the people in the holy land at the time of Jesus).

After the market and a late brunch, we drove up to the ruins. The Incan road, what we would call a hiking path, to the central ruins displayed the ingenuity and skill of Incan road building skills in a short kilometer or so. The trail traversed across buttresses seemingly glued to the side of a cliff, went through a tunnel that had been widened through the cliff itself and went up and down numerous steep stairways and through various defensive constructions. Maya was a bit tired by this time so I carried her on my shoulders which seemed to revive her. Zak loved the hike and although Grandma Carol wouldn’t use the same adjective, she did use the word “exhilarating” once she was back home and was no longer afraid of falling over the side of the cliff. The ruins themselves were quite amazing; incredible Incan stonework with commanding views of the Sacred Valley below. The central area of the ruins featured a Intihuatana, a natural stone pillar sticking up out of a large black rock that served as a “hitching post for the sun”. Given its prominent position, one could almost imagine it serving as just that. After all, aren’t different belief systems just that: a system of beliefs? A hitching post to the sun doesn’t sound that much more farfetched than a young girl impregnated by angels or Mohammed riding to heaven on a horse or Joseph Smith being directed by an angel to gold tablets that were only legible when looked at through a special stone. So, if you believe in those things, why not a hitching post to the sun? After all it still works, the sun has not pulled away from its tether yet.

Although I am a social scientist by trade, I enjoy working with my hands and am somewhat of a frustrated (others might say frustrating) craftsman and I really appreciated the exquisite masonry work of the surrounding buildings, altars, and ceremonial baths; massive stone blocks set together so precisely, and without any grout, that when you run your fingers over them, you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. The areas is fed by springs which continue to flow through the channels and baths carved by the Incas. We pretty much had the place to ourselves – there’s not a lot of that roped off “you can look but not touch” kind of mentality down here – and I considered taking a little dip both because I love water in the outdoors and because I was curious if there wasn’t still a bit of that Incan magic resonating in the pools, but we weren’t completely alone and it was getting late so we decided to head back.

While the word of the day at Tipon was water, here it was terraces. A thousand feet of terraces curved gracefully around the hill below the ceremonial ruins. The terraces were designed to maximize sunlight and facilitate irrigation but, in addition to their functional uses, they appealed to the aesthetic sensibilities of both the Incas and those of us who have come along much later to appreciate their work. The terraces are largely unbroken by steps, which take up agriculture space and promote erosion, instead access to one level or another is gained by flagstone steps set into the walls along a diagonal, as at Tipón. On either side of the mountain, there are two large Incan cemeteries. One can still see a large number of holes pock marking the cliffs which were plundered by grave robbers before they could be examined by archeologists. From the valley below, the terracing system was designed to accentuate the natural features of the mountain so that the entire side of the mountain was made to resemble a giant condor about to take flight. Because of its majestic size, the condor is the largest bird in the world, and because it feeds on carrion and lives at the top of the highest crags, the Andean people believe(d) that the condor was the messenger of the sun and carried the spirits of the dead on to the next world, so perhaps the empty graves aren’t the result of grave robbers after all? I guess it largely depends on what you care to believe in.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Llamas and Chicha


On Saturday, we were invited for lunch by our friends the Del Carpios. They were instrumental in helping the kids get into the Pukllyasunchis school and they wanted to meet my Mom and Dad, who had arrived the day before. Mom, ever the polite Midwesterner, hadn’t yet gotten into the whole tempo of life in Peru so it was hup, hup let’s get going and we arrived at the Del Carpio’s right on time, which is to say a bit early. As lunch wasn’t yet ready, we walked down to the Colegio Pulkyasunchis to check out the school. A stream runs beside the school and the school grounds extend up along a small canyon formed by the stream. We walked upstream along the canyon a bit to see some gardens and came upon a couple of llamas someone had donated to the school in lieu of tuition. Llamas are among the most fascinating looking creatures I have ever seen and these were only about a year old, curious, and somewhat desensitized to the children at the school so we were able to get quite close. Milli Del Carpio said that there was a danger that the llamas could jump on you so I told Zak that they key to the process was to jump on them before they jumped on you. But the game was over once one of the Del Carpio’s dogs, Valentine, grew curious about the llamas and the llamas, in turn, grew curious about the dog and they proceeded to chase one another about the grounds.

While we were at the Del Carpio’s, two young boys, Frank and Elvis, came in. Milli had been telling us that often, on Saturdays, a couple of kids from this family of 12 would stop by and have lunch. The family didn’t have enough food for everyone and, when the Del Carpios used to live near this family, the Del Carpios would feed a couple of the children when they came over. Now the family lives about a two hour walk away and still some of the boys were coming over just to have a warm meal. I asked how I could help and I agreed to help buy school uniforms and supplies for a couple of the kids so that they could fit in better and be more successful in school.

That evening, I noticed that one house, a couple of doors down from Sra. Mendoza’s market near our house had a red plastic bag tied to the end of a pole indicating that they were selling chicha. Chicha is a fermented corn beer that plays an important role in Andean life, particularly those of the working poor and campesinos. It’s a thick, off-white substance that more closely resembles soup than beer and is served at room temperature. Dad was game to check it out so we headed over. We walked in the first dirt-floored room which was sparsely furnished with a few tables each attended to by a few old timers, some of whom looked as though they might have been there drinking for some hours. The effects of chicha seem to have a largely soporific effect. I’ve not seen anyone spoiling for a fight but I have seen more than a couple of people nodding off, although perhaps that is more of an effect of cultural differences. We were ushered through the bottom of a stairwell into another spartan room, which I suppose was essentially a kitchen as there was a small worktable in the corner next to a couple of old kerosene fired burners although the room obviously served as a chicha brewery and barroom during the weekends. The walls of each of the rooms were plastered and painted a bluish-purple, but the adobe mud brick walls and steps of the stairwell remained unadorned. Along the wall opposite the entrance of the room in which we found ourselves were a couple of benches and another table. We were encouraged to sit down and the matron of the house, Bertha, gave us two huge, almost quart size, glasses of dubious cleanliness and filled them halfway which Chicha, as that was the only beverage she served. She filled the glasses, mine was chipped, from a plastic pitcher she dipped out of the large clay chicha pot of about 20 gallons or so which sat in the corner. The pot had the build of a football player: a wide neck with even wider shoulders and a body that then tapered down toward the floor. Dad and I were alone with Bertha for only a short while before others came into the room: Martin and his wife and two daughters, the patron of the house, and soon thereafter another couple, she a gap toothed heavy-set quechuan lady, he a man of similar build who shared the same dentist. The people were not at all standoffish. Again, as the new guys in town, we were the focus of much interest and attention. We learned that Martin was a construction worker and when he learned that my father was also an electrician by trade, he proudly proclaimed that all workers were his friends and bought us another chicha. Apparently, the reason your glass is double the size of a single serving is to facilitate the ability of someone to buy you another. The chicha was very good and Martin bought some refills for us and then I bought a round for the room. Before long Martin and his wife were dancing right there in the middle of the room, much to the delight of their daughters. Martin was quite dashing with his dark hair and clean blue Nike track suit which was probably his nicest set of clothes. I thought the chicha was quite tasty but Dad felt it to be more of an acquired taste which could be improved with a little refrigeration but that didn´t stop him from joining in the festivities. Dad gave some money to Martin’s daughters so they could go buy some sweets at the store next door. We only spent a short time there as we told Grandma we wouldn’t be gone for long but the time we spent there was worth the whole trip itself and when we got up to leave, with much protest from the others who wanted to buy us more chicha, our bill was only 3 sols 20 centimos (about $1). We had a great time.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

What a great party!



What a great party! Wednesday night was the Grandpa Titto-Villacorta’s 75th birthday. We three were the only ones outside of the family lucky enough to gain invitations to the exclusive event. We arrived fashionably early so we had time to visit the recently excavated Incan ruins just a couple of doors down from casa Titto-Villacorta. Upon arrival, I was served a homemade, and very tasty, alcoholic beverage known as corn chicha fruitillada in one of only two communal glasses in the room. The process, which I of course followed so as to not appear rude, was to drink your chicha (and then later beer, and then later beer with a dash of Kola Real) and then to fill the glass and pass it on to someone else. Although we had only met two of the family members before, we were made to feel incredibly welcome. Other attendees included Aunt Doris, her husband Cleto, and their kids, Camilo, Carolina, and Carlo. The father of the family was also in attendance, he apparently sleeps in another house, either because it is closer to his work or because of space constraints at this house, I was not able to determine. I am honored to, however, announce here publicly that, according to father Titto-Villacorta himself, as a result of some type of artificial insemination (you should have seen me try to figure that out with my limited knowledge of the Spanish language), he is, in fact, the last of the Incas and he extended to us a personal invitation to visit Machu Pichu and Ollantaytambo, and Pisac, which I knew as Incan ruins but he knew as the houses of his grandparents. This house consisted of four small rooms, two above two below. Access from one level to the other was achieved by an outdoor dirt path. The house was plastered but in places one was able to get peep-show glimpses of the sort of hippie-chick sexy earthiness of the mud bricks of which the house was constructed. The kitchen consisted of a stove and a sink outside the back wall of the house and was sheltered by a plastic tarp in case of inclement weather. There was no indoor plumbing. Many windows were covered by plastic sheeting and decorations were minimal, the most prominent of which was an advertisement for cookies which hung from the ceiling and was much admired by Maya. Three generations of Titto-Villacortas lived in the house, ranging in age from two-year-old baby Marcella to 75 year old Grandpa Titto-Villacorta. The lower level consisted of the bedroom of grandpa and grandma and the common room in which the party was conducted. The party room looked as though it may have served as a small store at one time. The older daughter had her own room upstairs. The other upstairs room was furnished with two beds which were shared by: Mama, 19 year old son Percy, daughters Rosia (11), Paola (8) and baby Marcella (2). There was also a mama cat with two kittens in a cardboard box under one of the two beds. However, in spite of (or in part because of?) the meager surroundings, by U.S. standards, this was one of the happiest and closest families I have ever met in my life. As the new ingredient in the old family batter (if Maya was the sugar and Zak the spice, did that mean I was the dough?), we were the focus of much attention and I was the recipient of many glasses of both Chicha and beer as well as many questions by all except Grandma who only spoke Quechua. However, as the evening rolled on and I participated in my share of toasts to Grandpa’s health, I found it more and more difficult to communicate in Spanish, my command of which is pretty minimal to begin with. After a dinner of Mama’s roast cuy (guinea pig), which, according to more than one family member, is the best roast cuy in Cusco, the table and chairs were pushed against the walls, the quechua music was cranked up on the boom box, and we started to dance. Just like that. No hemming and hawing, no “oh, I couldn’t possibly”’s, someone would just grab your hand and you would waltz around the room. Periodically water had to be sprinkled on the cement floor to keep down the dust that was kicked up and we all went to it. I have to admit that Grandma was among my favorite dance partners. As we did not share a common language we were not able to communicate verbally but all 4 ½ feet of here were incredibly charming. She wore her hair in two long braids, Quechua style, and she would often look up and smile but then she would cover her mouth with one of her hands or look down as she seemed to be embarrassed about the condition of her front teeth (missing teeth, gaps between teeth, etc. are not at all uncommon here). This was one of the best parties I have ever been to and not once during the whole evening did anyone acknowledge or compliment another on their fashionable clothes, the attractiveness of the granite countertops, or the size of the stainless steel appliance. I´ve since learned that a fiesta here means dancing and not just drinking which, frankly, adds a really nice touch to the evening. In addition to a beer run to the local market with a horde of kids in tow, I contributed the cake and after it was served the party wound down as the kids had school the next morning. Zak was exhausted but Maya the party girl was, as always, ready for more. On the way to a street busy enough to find a taxi, we admired the incredible view of the lights up and down what is, in my opinion, properly known as The Sacred Valley; what an incredible evening.

Thursday, March 16, 2006


Here I am with Grandma and Grandpa Villacorta. No, I´m not standing on a box. I´ve had a couple of people comment on how tall Zak and I are but I don´t really notice it until I have to, not infrequently, duck through doorways or when I see other European tourists towering over the locals only to realize that they´re about the same height I am.



A relaxing lunch with an unruly mob.



Here's Zak climbing up one of the Inca stairs at Tipon.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Tipón





On Sunday we went with a local family to the nearby pueblo of Saylla for the afternoon. Many people work six day weeks so Sunday is the big day of relaxation. Accompanying the three Braunwarth were four other children: sibings Carmello (12), Carolina (8), and Carlo (6) and their cousin Paola (8). Shepherding the kids was the mom of the first three and her 20 something neice, Janette, who was a cousin to the others but essentially a generation older. Carmello was a very nice kid and he and Zak accompanied each other on the adventures of the day. Carolina spent a lot of time taking care of Maya and her and Paola amused each other as well. Carlo, or Carlito, was a wild one: nonstop, no boundaries, full-tilt boy. The town of Saylla is not too far outside of Cusco and consists mainly of a number of restaurants all serving Chicharrones to visitors from Cusco. It was nice to get out of Cusco and see some green trees and hills and mountains. We traveled by combi, which is essentially a large van packed with many seats, and many people packed into the seats, and still others packed into the aisles, while any remaining open space was packed with packages, boxes, and bags. All of this packing did little to diminish the wet-dog sour-ish aroma of unwashed bodies wafted up around us but the combi got all nine of us there at what I thought to be a reasonable pace at a price of less than 5 sols (about $1.50). The aunt thoughtfully brought along some ears of Choclo (corn) and cheese for us to eat while we traveled. The corn here has huge kernels which are picked off one at a time and popped into one’s mouth, like the olives at the bottom of an empty martini glass. The corn was not as sweet as the sugary sweet corn of the Midwest summers of my youth and was served sans butter or seasoning but was, nonetheless, satisfying. Lunch was fun, we ate chicharrones, as that was practically the only thing offered in the whole town, at an outdoor café while the kids ran amuck in the garden. I bought a couple of those spring loaded plastic suction cup guns from a vendor so the kids could amuse each other by pretending to shoot each other dead. Carlo, not unsurprisingly, took the game like a wino takes to Gallo and was very reluctant to allow others the opportunity to feign homicide. I bought lunch for the group which was only 48 sols (about $16) for all nine of us. After lunch we hired a taxi to take us to the ruins at Tipón. The taxi, a Toyota corolla wagon, actually accommodated all nine of us in such grand comfort relative to the combi that we hired the drive to take us all they way back to Cusco for a grand total of 25 sols (about $8) including waiting time while we explored the ruins. The route to the ruins passed through the pueblo of Tipón which featured a few small restaurants along the main road, all serving roast cuy. Apparently specialty foods are grouped according to location; can you imagine the aroma wafting over the baked bean town and the smell of the bathrooms in the asparagus town? Behind the commercial strip of Tipón, such as it was, we passed through the residential portion of te farming community which consisted of a few dozen mud brick houses, a small church on a small dirt square and a number of little kids herding cows, horses, and sheep with handheld switches. One could recognize the store selling chicha (corn beer) in town by the blue plastic bag tied to a pole outside the front door and, not un-coincidentally, I did spy one young man passed out drunk on a side street. The scenery on the way back was enlivened by a couple of particularly picturesque girls who had bundles of sticks tied to their backs with brightly colored scarves (a la the cover of Led Zepplin IV). They were apparently bringing the sticks home for use in cooking the family’s dinner. The road to the ruins at Tipón crawled over a small mountain range littered with grazing cows and sheep happily munching roadside grass however we encountered no problems except for when we met another taxi just outside of the ruins. The one-lane road hugged the mountain on one side and dropped off a thousand feet or so on the other to the valley below. The other driver clearly did not want to give way but, after a minor standoff and a few coarse words, the vehicles were able to squeeze past each other.

The ruins themselves were incredible. When Mary and I visited ruins in Greece and Turkey, the ruins were just that, ruined. We would look at a pile of rubble and then look at the artists’ depictions of what the rubble used to look like and we duly appreciated, in an entirely cerebral manner, the importance of these once grand structures. But the ruins at Tipón were entirely different. First, although they were constructed over 500 years ago, they weren’t ruined. They were amazingly well preserved and could easily be put to their original use tomorrow; one was immediately struck by the visceral vitality of the place. The site consisted of a series of level fields built into the head of a small valley. There were roughly a dozen or more larger fields, each about the size of a baseball diamond, and many more smaller ones. The fields were stacked about ten feet above each other and were all terraced with perfectly-fitted, massive blocks of stone. Access to fields was provided by large flat-top stones which stuck out of the walls about a foot or two, each a couple of feet above the other along a diagonal, providing a sort of open air stair from one level to the other. There were dozens of these stairs and they alone were worth the price of admission but the most striking feature of the site was the water. Stone-lined irrigation channels flowed along the side of each field and waterfalls tumbled down, not unlike Jack and Jill after there illicit tryst up by the well, from one level to the next. The tops and basins of the waterfalls were constructed in such a way that essentially no water was lost as it cascaded down. The scale, grandeur, and sheer functionality of the site were very impressive and, apparently, this is one of the lesser sites in the area. My guidebook only gives a couple of sentences about how Tipón is an excellent example of the Inca’s mastery over their environment. The Incan motto for Cusco, which has been retained by the contemporary city, is “the navel of the world.” To me, this connotes a nurturing, maternal centrality which really seems to fit Cusco much in the same way “America’s finest city” fits the more external, plastic attractiveness of San Diego (“Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful!”). Having always been fond of navels (some people’s more than other's) I am looking forward to discovering whatever else this area has to offer.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006


Maya in front of the new house. This is not a typical Cusco house. Most of the houses are of mud brick covered with plaster, a construction method which is still widely used today.

New Friends, a New Home, and a New School

While some might assume it to be a hindrance, traveling as a man with two children, one of whom is Chinese with certain mobility problems, has actually proved to be of some advantage on this trip. We certainly are not inconspicuous; people notice us, they are curious, and they take the time to talk. Consequently, we have met a number of wonderful Peruvians on our trip already. We also have the advantage of time. Because we are here for a longer stay, we don’t have to run from site to site to feel like we’ve seen the highlights; rather we can take the time to just hang out and experience the life of the city. Although it also seems true that people have more time to talk. Making generalizations is always a risky business, but based on the little I’ve seen and the conversations I’ve had, life seem much more laid back here. People, of course, work hard and try to better themselves, but the satisfaction with one’s life seems much less to do with how much stuff one has than with one’s relations with family and friends. On the other hand there are the poor campesinos in the surrounding countryside and those who have migrated to the city who have essentially nothing and are willing to do almost anything to survive. These people are not able to feed, cloth, and shelter their families and until these essential needs are met, higher order goals such as kin and community ties are simply not of great concern. The middle class households that we’ve seen, and we’ve been lucky enough to see a few, are very simple compared with how we live in the U.S., yet their inhabitants are very happy and seem to derive great satisfaction from interaction with their families and with new friends like us. I’m struck by the latter over and over again. We came to town with the names of a few people, all friends of friends of friends and the couple of people we have contacted have gone out of their way to help us, to invite us into their homes and, in turn, to introduce us to their friends and families who again have gone out of their way to help us. We’ve had meals in people’s houses, we have an invitation to attend an acquaintance’s grandfather’s birthday party so we could sample her mother’s world famous, locally known, cuy (guinea pig), restaurant staff have doted on our children and invited us back for “special” meals, etc.. Before we left the states, a friend asked if I knew anyone in Cusco and I told him about the four degrees of separation contacts and we discussed the degree to which we would go out of our way for someone who called out of the blue saying they were a friend of someone who was very good friends with your niece or someone whose mother lived in the same development as their mother. To what degree would you help such a person?

We’ve finally moved into a house and Zak and Maya have finally started school. The house is much better than the little hotel room we were in and is actually quite a bit nicer than the other adobe houses in the neighborhood. The house has a nice view but the best features are the two girls, who are about Maya´s age and younger, and their older brother, who is slightly older than Zak, who live in the house next door and with whom we share a garden. The kids have been having a great time playing together. But we were even more excited about getting the kids enrolled in the Colegio Pukllasunchis which is a Quechuan word that means basically “to play.” In one of those little twists that keeps life interesting, the builder of our house, and our landlord, is the same man who built the school the kids are attending. The school is not that close to our house and instead of a school bus, the kids are going to get picked up and dropped off by a taxi which also transports other kids to the same school. The school is very progressive and is supported largely by donations. Students come from both the wealthiest and the poorest families in the city with the former subsidizing the latter. There are also a number of students from different countries. I considered sending Zak to a more traditionally rigid school so he could get the full cultural immersion but I know that both he and Maya will have a much easier time adjusting at Pukllasunchis.


Maya with her new "dream journal" and the cooks at a local restaurant. Note the cuy or guinea pig skin tacked to the wall in the background. Posted by Picasa


Zak and Maya's new school; NOT a typical peruvian school Posted by Picasa


A woman selling coca leaves at a local market Posted by Picasa

We found some grazing llamas in the hills above town the other day. Zak stalked one until he was able to touch it and that night we all ate alpaca meat which was, in retrospect, an additional way of demonstrating mans dominance over nature, for better or worse. By the way, alpaca doesn’t taste like chicken, rather it is a very lean but flavorful dark meat, I’d recommend picking up a pound or two at Von’s. We have not yet had the opportunity to eat Cuy or guinea pig (a local delicacy), but we have found a couple of guinea pig skins tacked to the walls of local restaurants. I was also lucky enough to eat at a local restaurant which specialized in el chicharrón. These are nothing like the fried pork crackling chicharrones one finds in Mexico but consisted of hunks of succulent pork that had been fried in pork fat. They were served with boiled potatoes, huge kernels of corn, raw onions, yerba buena leaves, and a fantastic green picante sauce. I was the only gringo in the place but I will definitely go back.

Many mornings this week we’ve been awakened to the sound of fireworks celebrating various holy days relating to the beginning of lent. Zachary and I were able to go to the Cathedral (which is on the left of the picture of the Plaza de Armas in an earlier posting) on the morning they were celebrating a mass commemorating the day Jesus Christ was sentenced to die. The mass was quite different than those of my youth back at St. Joseph in Waconia, Minnesota. First, only about half of the congregants were paying attention to the Priest. Many others were praying at side altars, the most popular that morning was one gilded in gold and silver and devoted to Jesus although another devoted to Mary came in a first second. Other people were moving about the cathedral to one point of prayer or another. The cathedral itself was beautiful. It never ceases to amaze me the degree to which religion can be used to harness the energy and wealth of a locale. The large main altar was entirely gilded in gold and silver and faced a massive choir of incredibly intricately carved wood. There were many paintings around the church dating from the colonial era and one of the highlights for us was a local adaptation of the Last Supper. The men were recognizable as typical apostolic figures although with mestizo overtones. Rather than seated along one side of along table, wedding party style, these men were seated around a round table, King Arthur style. But what really set the painting apart was the supper itself. Rather than wine and bread, a little roast cuy, or guinea pig, was prominently displayed in the middle of the table with its little roasted legs stuck up in the air. The same day we also visited some fascinating Incan ruins at a place called Qorikancha which I understand roughly translates into place of gold in Quechua (a language spoke by a significant portion of the population here); the ruins are also known as the Temple of the Sun. This was, apparently, the most religious site of the Incan empire and many of the walls and other surfaces were literally covered in gold. The Spanish, of course, plundered the place and then plopped down a church on top of the Incan walls and the part of the structure used during Incan times to house the “chosen women” of the sun was transformed into the convent of Santo Domingo. This is ironic as the role and practices of the latter inhabitants were apparently diametrically opposite those of the former.

Last Sunday was carnival, which is essentially one big celebration before the asceticism of Lent, so we returned to the central plaza to watch the festivities. First there was a parade or really more of a procession of local civic groups and representatives of various schools and universities as well as various military regiments including a group with lightning bolts painted across their black faces. The groups clearly took their roles very seriously and all were well groomed and in dark suits as local dignitaries gave speeches, etc. However a little of the old Wahoo was interjected into the proceedings by local youths who launched barrages of water balloons and sprayed foam from handheld cans at various groups as they finished the procession and gathered in the local square. Everyone was very good natured about the attacks, clearly such behavior was condoned on this day only. The youths clearly relished their role as pranksters and who can blame them as such behavior would clearly not be condoned at any other time of the year. Added to the proceedings were dance groups representing the cultural customs and dress of various indigenous peoples including one group who performed rather strenuous dances accompanied by oddly droning music performed on a recorder, fiddle, and two drums. They wore ornate clown-like attire with rather bizarre masks that scared Maya, especially one of the figures who had the mask and attire evocative of some old crone out of one of those Disney fairy tales that have no redeeming adult female roles. We managed to get ourselves involved in a couple of water balloon skirmishes and I suffered a massive foam attack much to the delight of the Zak and Maya.


Dancers celebrating Carnival Posted by Picasa


Just before Zak was savagely attacked by a llama Posted by Picasa

Friday, March 03, 2006

We've arrived!


I guess the question of why we decided to go to Cusco Peru deserves a little attention. I originally wanted to go to Nepal but politically it is a bit unstable and with the kids this young, there are distinct advantages to being somewhere with more of a tourist infrastructure. Mary also pointed out that if I’m going to pull the kids out of school it should be for something for which they will benefit. As we live on the frontier of Latin American, travel frequently in Mexico and interact regularly with Spanish speakers, we think it is important to learn Spanish. Since the people of California are so xenophobic they refuse to teach Spanish in the schools, we decided to center the trip on the goal of learning Spanish so we narrowed our target country to the Americas. Cusco sounded exciting and exotic while still retaining the tourist infrastructure which would accommodate any problems I might have with the kids. Besides, I figure all paths lead to the same great party so rather than worry about following the right one I might as well follow the one that I like.

Well we are now here and I have to say that I think we made a perfect choice. The city is both beautiful and vibrant and the touch of Inca architecture and culture add a pinch of the fantastic to the mix. All of the streets are cobbled and many of the buildings in the central part of the city are built around the old Inca stonework, so you’ll be shopping in a market or eating at a restaurant and the wall next to you will consist of huge stones precisely fitted together from a time before the Europeans arrived. I find it somewhat interesting that the Europeans tore down a number of Inca structures and used the building materials to build there churches and other modern buildings only to have those buildings succumb to earthquakes and the test of time while the Inca structures have remained largely intact. There’s a lesson in there somewhere but I’ll leave you to divine it according to your own predilections. The center of the city is the Plaza de Armas. It is flanked by beautiful Spanish churches and other buildings of adobe over a base of Inca stonework. There are lots of restaurants and other tourist accommodations but many locals use the Plaza for just sitting and hanging out. Outside of Cusco there seems to be a lot of other interesting areas of interest as well but that oyster remains closed to us at the moment.

I think Zak is most interested in the local softdrink, Inca Kola. It’s a carbonated yellowish-green beverage evocative of cream soda with some fruity overtones. It’s pretty good but the sugar and caffeine get Zak a bit wired. As most of you know, I lead a pretty ascetic life but I do allow myself the one vice of coffee and I like the local café con leche. Basically they bring a big mug of warm milk to your table and a small jug of coffee that has been cooked down to almost a syrup and is served at room temperature. You poor the coffee in the milk, add a bit of sugar and voila, coffee candy! The other interesting concoction worth mentioning is coca tea. It’s simply hot water poured over coca leaves and it is supposed to help with the altitude. You don’t get high from it but it is mildly invigorating. In the mornings in the hallway outside of our hotel room, there is a plate of coca leaves, a thermos of hot water and some cups so the guests can maker their own. Very interesting.

We’ve already made a number of good karma connections in town. We were met at the airport by an incredible man named Jim Rogers. We had never met him before, he is really a friend of a friend but he drove an hour in his ten passenger 4wd Toyota Hi Ace van he calls “Blue Tunder” on rough roads from his bed and breakfast in Ollantambayo just to help us get settled. Jim introduced us to some other friends, one of which has a beautiful house to rent not too far from the center of town. The house is not yet furnished but the owners are supposedly working on that now. We also met Miriam Salazar, a widow with grown children, who was interested in helping me take care of the kids. She turned out to be a godsend as Maya ended up having a bit of altitude sickness and Miriam was a great help to Maya and gave Zak and I the opportunity to get out for some food and fresh air. Maya is feeling much better now and seems to be back to her normal self.


The local favorite! Posted by Picasa


the Plaza de Armas in central Cusco from the restaurant above our hotel Posted by Picasa