The Long and the Short of It

Two days from now, our family will switch gears dramatically.  Wednesday marks the end of our ‘stay in one place‘  phase, and we turn towards a very different way of life that will carry us all over Peru for five weeks of travel.  This change, I predict, will bring with it a new perspective, different standards, and certainly a different flavor of adventure.    

For the past four and a half months, I have been trying to blend into our small-town, Peruvian habitat as we have set up residence in Pisac.  I don’t wear shorts or short skirts.  I cover my skin.  I don’t buy fancy food or clothes or tourist goods.  I eat the daily specials at the local restaurants for $1.25 instead of made-to-order meals at the better restaurants for $8.  I shower when I smell bad, not when my hair is out of place (that means about once a week).  I don’t sit on terraces, drinking martinis and looking over the working populace of the town on market days.  I don’t talk loud.  I don’t wear jewelry or expensive-looking clothes.   In fact, I wear the same, plain clothes most days – one of two pairs of pants and one of three or four blank shirts (no “I heart New York” tees!).  I try to stick to a routine that resembles that of the people around me, except with moderation – they get up at 4 am to start setting up their stalls and merchandise; I get up at 6:30.

I don’t know if anyone even notices or cares about how I act or what I do, but it makes me feel like I am living in closer alignment with the people around me when I don’t draw too much attention (admittedly  difficult at 5’ 10 ½” with two curly haired, rubian daughters...).  My neighbors wear all sorts of crazy American tee shirts (one 15-year old girl wore a shirt that read “Pussy” – I know she wouldn’t have worn it if she knew what it meant!), and traditional skirts that show calves and ankles.  But I try to fly under the radar with my neutral appearance.  I just don’t want to be mistaken for a tourist. 

My Spanish may be marginal, my job requires next to no manual labor, and I don’t have to count my pennies like they do, but people tend to treat me as an equal, saying ‘buenas dias’ and ‘buenas tardes’ politely.  We are charged the same prices as our neighbors (most of the time).  The vendors in the market don’t try to sell to us anymore.  Pisacians seem to recognize us as, if not locals, then a different kind of gringo.

This Wednesday, however, we will heft onto our backs large, fancy traveling backpacks, and somewhat self-consciously parade ourselves down the main pedestrian path towards the bus stop.  This typical tourist indicator - the backpack - may sound a warning bell among the vendors we see daily but who don’t know us by name.  The image of four heavily laden Americans marching away from their town may very well demote us from our special status of ‘gringos who stay’ back to just another group out of the millions of ‘gringos who pass through.’  And rightly so.  Because that is what we are doing.  We are going away.

We will board a bus, embarking on what in the eyes of Pisacians is an extravagant five-week vacation.  We will leave behind us the beginnings of membership in this community:  knowing where to get the best hot bread first thing in the morning; walking just so, without breaking stride, to avoid dog poop in the street; greeting familiar, smiling faces as we cross the square.  Step by step, as our neighbors watch our backpacks grow smaller and smaller, we will transform back into tourists, slipping silently away through the hubbub of the oceanic marketplace, leaving only a minute ripple in our wake.  The ripple will soon be subsumed by the reverberations of ten or twenty other travelers – some who stay and some who don’t - and then it will disappear almost entirely. 

Fitting in is a high priority for me in Pisac.  But it won’t be as we pass through the twenty-odd cities we have mapped out for ourselves over the next month.  We are going to do blatantly touristy activities, eat touristy food and pay touristy prices.  Our ripples will be so small that they will be inconsequential.  On one level this may seem sad – we will have less understanding, less participation.  Relationships will be short and shallow; experiences likewise.  But it also grants a kind of freedom – no more small-town responsibilities, no more soap operas or politics.  No more trying to fit in.   And the breadth of our experience will be dramatically increased.  Peru isn’t Pisac.  It is so much more.  And soon, we will get a glimpse of that truth, day by day, city by city, stepping back and seeing a much bigger picture. 

Our time in Pisac will be imprinted upon our brains like the deep, intense flavor of a rich wine, concentrated at the root of our tongues to be savored and remembered.  This next phase of our adventure will swirl and spin through all of our senses, briefly touching a chord here, causing a shiver there, like a cold splash of water on a hot day.  The long and the short, the deep and the shallow, the near and the far:  we will discover Peru both ways.

Cathy

Upcoming Travels

One phase of our journey is winding down and another is about to begin.  Our stay in Pisac is almost at an end (though we will return for a few days in late August).  Matt has finished his work for DESEA.  Cathy taught her last English class last week and also wrapped up a stint of volunteering with a team of US doctors here.  And Katie and Georgia had their last day of school at Kusi Kawsay on Friday.  Life in Pisac has been both challenging and enriching for us all and leaving will be bittersweet. 

This Wednesday we will begin the next part of our trip – about five and a half weeks of travel in South America, visiting other parts of Peru, as well as Ecuador and Chile.  This will include stops in Arequipa, Colca Canyon, and multiple cities, archeological sites, museums (and beaches) on the coast of Peru.  It also will include travels to Cuenca, Guayaquil and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, plus visits to Santiago and Easter Island in Chile.  We will be traveling between July 13 and August 19 and will have only sporadic access to e-mail during this time.  Our Peruvian cell phones will still work while in Peru (until about Aug 1) but we may or may not use them in Ecuador and Chile. 

We will arrive back in Pisac on August 19 to say our farewells to all our friends here and spend a few last days in our temporary home at the Hospedaje Beho.  On August 25, we head to Lima for a couple of days, before returning to the Portland on August 29/30.  If anyone needs to reach us during that time, e-mail will probably be most effective although we can’t promise a speedy reply.  As always, thank you to all our friends and family for your thoughts and support!

Matt

The Pisac Market

In Pisac, where we live, there’s a big craft market. Every family has their own stall made out of wooden tables, sticks and big white tarps. Most people have to change locations  every day, so they have to set it up and take it down every day. They have to get up really early at four? five o’ clock am and aren’t done taking it down until about six thirty pm. Most people bring all their things home on big tricycles. Others pack it all up in big bags and carry it on their backs. It’s hard work! Some women who have less money have to just set tarps on the ground. But I would recommend buying from them because they actually make their own things.

            Sometimes on Sundays I help my friend Durga at her stall. She sells jewelry. I help translate with English or help model.  The way  I find out how much it costs is I weigh it. Depending on what it is made of , I multiply the weight by a number. For the pure silver I times it by twelve and for the ones with color I multiply it by ten.

But in the market they don’t just sell jewelry (of course!). I have bought or received: a necklace, earrings, a stuffed animal llama, a stuffed animal guinea pig, guinea pig slippers, a water bottle holder, a bird whistle that you put water in, a hat, a scarf, a sweater, a shoulder bag with a llama on the front and lots of friendship bracelets. They also sell rugs, gloves, ponchos for men and women, socks, wall hangings, placemats, coasters, ceramics, stone figures, music CDs, musical instruments (like pan flutes, flute/recorders, drums and little guitars), how-to-play-music books, tablecloths, really weird (at least to me) pants, yarn, rocks, dream catchers, paintings and probably more that I can’t think of right now.

            On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays there’s a food market. Daddy shops there every Sunday because it’s biggest then. Sometimes Katie and I come with him. He gives us money to buy fruits for snacks and he buys  groceries for our meals. Each stand has a specific food group that they sell. The biggest stands are for fruits. Some people just sell veggies and some herbs, like cilantro, oregano, ginger or flowers. Some only sell potatoes and others, spices in little bags. At the chicken and fish places they use big cleavers to cut up the meat and, even better, at the beef and pork places, axes.

I  like to buy slices of watermelon for fifty centimos. I think some fruits here are way better than in Portland, but for some fruits, it’s the other way around. For example,  the watermelons and some of the oranges are nice and juicy and sweet, but other oranges are green and the strawberries are squooshed.

There are also stands for household items, but just on Sundays. They sell just about anything you could need, from laundry detergent to rubber bands. On Sundays for lunch, we go to the food stands. You just sit down wherever there’s room on the benches and tell the lady what you want. I figure out what there is by looking at other people’s plates. My favorite lunch stand is an old woman’s where she sells chicken, fish, really yummy green rice, potato salad and noodle salad. But I like the other ones, too. One woman sells chicken, fried or plain rice, lentils and french fries and yet another sells chicken and noodles. At some places you can pay one more sol to get a stuffed pepper. They’re green or red peppers with potatoes, carrots and beans inside and a batter on the bottom. I think they’re too spicy, but Daddy likes them. They all use big pans with really hot oil and card board around them so that nothing flies into the pan. They don’t even use gloves when they reach in to pull out the frying food!

            Every day there are people in the square selling corn with cheese, cake and fresh orange juice. The people with the corn have big pots with corn on the cob and large hunks of cheese. They give it to you in corn husks. The orange juice ladies have a table with an orange peeler and a squeezer. Sometimes they sell cake, too. They peel the orange, cut it in half and put it in the orange squeezer. Then they push the lever and out comes the orange juice. It usually takes about three orange halves to make a small cup of pure orange juice. They ask if you want sugar, but I like mine without.

            When my aunt and grandma visited, they went crazy at the market. Many do. I don’t blame them. Everything is so cheap! One Sunday, Katie went around the market with them, translating and helping bargain. They came to Durga’s stall and bought maybe four or five things each. When they finally had to leave, they had eight bags instead of five, plus a huge alpaca rug. They had to buy  two extra duffle bags for all their purchases from the market. That was very good business for Durga and her husband.

Durga isn’t, but some people can be very pushy. If they even catch you looking at their stuff, they start saying “Oh, is alpaca and I have especial price for you! Dey are natural colors!” and keep trying to make you buy it until you’re so tired of saying no, you just buy it. And if you don’t buy it, they get a sad look on their face and you feel sorry you didn’t buy it.

            Some friends of mine – Abel, Magdalena and Monica walk around selling bracelets, bird whistles and things that women here put in their braids and tie them at the end. My aunt and grandma got some and used them for their glasses. Other kids put on traditional Peruvian costumes  and hold lambs. They ask tourists to take their pictures for one sol.

Me and my friend Ana Miley

            When we first came, everyone was trying to sell us stuff, but since we have to walk through the market every day, they’ve recognized us and stopped. I like it that way. Even though the market has some flaws, if you ever come to Peru, I recommend coming to Pisac to see the market.

 Georgia

The Jungle

We left for the Amazon jungle on a Friday evening, going first from Pisac to Cusco, then taking a Palomino night bus from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado, a city on the edge of the rain forest, next to the Madre de Dios (Mother of God) River.  Luckily, we got full-bed seats on the first story of the bus, so I slept pretty well.  The next morning the rest of the family were discussing a mummy movie that I had no memory of.

“What movie?!” I asked. I had fallen asleep before it even started.

We were even served dinner, something unusual for local transportation.  We were the only tourists on the vehicle and shared the first floor with just one other woman.

We arrived in the riverside city Saturday morning.  We exited the bus, stretching and yawning, and took a little moto-taxi into town.  It was astounding that we all squeezed in there!  When our bumpy ride ended at the Plaza de Armas, we went hunting for a local restaurant open for breakfast.  We found the ideal place, a little hole in the wall with chicharones (deep fired pork), and got those and caldo de pata (paw broth) for breakfast, maybe an odd choice in some people’s opinions. 

We walked around town some more, eventually catching another moto-taxi to our jungle lodge’s Puerto Maldonando office, where we got to just sit back, relax, and drink a nice cold cup of fruit juice.

We saw our first animals of the trip in that office, a group of bats hanging from the ceiling, high above us.  As soon as the tourists who were sharing a boat with us got there, we took a bus to a serpentario, or snake place.  There we saw turtles, monkeys, snakes, frogs, fish, a going-blind ocelot and an eel, all in separate enclosures or cages.  After the guides informed us about each type of animal, we got back in the bus and drove to a second river called the Tambopata River, which flows into the Madre de Dios River.  On the way, my mom thought that she saw three monkeys in the trees, but as we later learned, they might have just been big tree-termites’ nests.  There were also massive vultures circling above the trees.  The number and size of them were remarkable.

After our 45-minute bus ride, we took a boat up the Tambopata River.  We saw various turtles with crowds of male butterflies fluttering around their heads.  The male butterflies lick the salt from the turtles’ faces to attract females.  Since side-neck turtles – the kind we were seeing – can’t pull their heads into their shells, there are always countless butterflies around them.  We were also lucky enough to see four groups of capybaras, the biggest rodents in the world.  This is not an exaggeration nor a guess, but an actual fact.  To me, they looked like a mix between cute warthogs without tusks and giant guinea pigs.  After 45 minutes or so on the boat, we dropped off people going to a closer lodge, Posada Amazonas, and continued on to a checkpoint, where we got our passports stamped and saw an ‘88’ butterfly.  After these two stops, most of the rest of the boat ride was uneventful.  Only one of the four groups of capybaras was spotted after dropping off the other tourists, but when we were almost to our lodge, Refugio Amazonas, our guide saw a yellow caiman, an animal similar to an alligator or crocodile.  We got extremely close to it before it jumped into the water and went under.  We could still see its eyes above the surface of the river as we sped away.  At some point in the boat ride, we also saw two or three macaws high in the sky and there were always many other birds.  Macaws have the same mate their entire lives.

When our boat ride came to an end, we walked to the lodge, enjoyed more juice, found our rooms (the beds all had mosquito-net canopies and were really fun to hang out in), and went upstairs to the relaxation area to hang out and read in the hammocks.  We saw some monkeys from the balcony, playing in the trees.  There could have been three or four, swinging, jumping and climbing about.  I watched them until they disappeared.

Our guide finished with another group soon before dinner and talked with my mom and dad about what we wanted to do.  We then went downstairs for the meal (meatballs – my favorite!).  When we finished eating, Georgia and my mom went straight to bed, exhausted from the night bus on Friday.  My dad and I decided to stay up a bit later, having gotten more sleep than them.  I wrote in my journal and we went on a night hike with our guide, borrowing boots from the lodge.  The guide wanted to take us through some water, but I was afraid that my boots wouldn’t be tall enough, so we took a drier route.  We saw a small frog, a colossal wolf spider and some other giant bugs, but that was it.  We might have had more luck going the first way.

On Sunday, we got up while it was still dark outside and hiked through the trees to Refugio Amazonas’ 105-foot tall observation platform just in time to see the sunrise. Although we didn’t spy many animals, the sight of the mist-covered treetops with light from the early sun spilling across them was glorious and captivating.  At around 5:30 a.m., another group came up, their mere footfalls making an astonishing amount of noise and rocking the tower.  As soon as they finished ascending, we had to head back for breakfast.  Going down the skinny metal tower stairs terrified me even more than going up. 

After we ate, our guide led us to an oxbow lake near the lodge, and on the way pointed out a tree-termites’ nest.  When we reached the lake, we rowed to the other side to see some gigantic trees.  They start out as vines, setting roots and winding around a larger tree again and again before starting to grow out.  The new growth eventually kills the older plant.  We got to go inside one of the trees to where the original tree used to be.  We also got to climb one of the vines on the first tree.  My dad got really high and said that he could have gone farther, but he thought he better not.  While we were walking back to the lake, the guide showed us an herb with a purplish-reddish juice and painted my face with the natural dye.  When we were back on the water, the guide threw breadcrumbs for the piranhas and sardines that live in the lake.  Immediately the tiny fish attacked the bread, flitting about just under the surface and one or two maybe even semi-jumping.  Luckily, none went after my fingers when I absentmindedly trailed them in the water later in the canoe ride, for which I am grateful.  Next, our guide took us to an uprooted tree or bent log sticking out of the water, with a bunch of miniature bats hanging from it.  He splashed water at them and they flew into the air, scattering, but most returned to the log.  We also saw three macaws flying through the sky and on the path back to the lodge, there were two monkeys.  However, I only saw one of them, swinging and jumping from tree to tree.

Both before and after lunch, we had some time to rest before going to a mammal clay lick.  As many butterflies gathered on the wooden walkway to our room as had alighted on the side-neck turtles’ faces.  A few landed on me.  We also saw dozens of half-green, half-brown lizards in the grass and leaves; a tiny mud-colored lizard on the walkway; a capybara (or maybe an aguti, a giant squirrel-like rodent but without a squirrel’s fluffy tail); and a laughing frog or toad in our bathroom.

I was taking every chance I could to write in my journal on this trip so that I wouldn’t forget anything, but eventually my dad and I got bored.  To pass the time, we went for a short walk down a seldom-used path with good views of the Tambopata River, which also led to an equipment building and a pulley for bringing carts of goods up a steep hill from the river.  We also passed a woman sitting on a bench and practicing the violin, an odd thing to see and hear in the Peruvian jungle.  Near the pulley, my dad saw an animal run across the path, possibly a monkey, but more likely a Peruvian jungle raccoon or some other large ground animal.  Unfortunately, I was keeping an eye to the jungle floor so that I wouldn’t trip and didn’t see it as clearly.  Then we took another side trail to an immense tree that people can climb if they’re willing to pay extra.

At 3:30 p.m., shortly after our quick hike, our guide Jose’ Luis took us to a mammal clay lick, where large animals sometimes gather.  My dad spotted a falcon as we walked, and an unseen monkey growled at us from the bushes for at least five minutes of the trek, maybe even ten.  After arriving at the viewing building and seeing nothing for a while, Jose’ Luis left to try to locate some animals for us.  He found a huge elegant white harpy eagle perched high in a towering tree.  It took me a while to spot the bird, but was definitely worth the time once I could see it.  It was a marvelous creature.  Eventually, we also noticed the mating bats in the dark building, hanging upside-down from the ceiling right above our heads.  Soon after, we returned to the lodge for dinner, my mom not wanting to walk back in the dark.

Right after dinner, we headed to the river for a caiman search.  We were supposed to have gone the night before, but the river had been too high and dangerous.  We saw five caiman plus another huge group of five to ten.  Unfortunately, the big group was in water that was too shallow for the boat, so we couldn’t get very close and I didn’t see any of them.  However, I saw the other five very clearly.  The first was tiny and looked dead, lying on its side halfway in the water with its mouth wide open.  Even when it slipped into the river, it kept its jaws gaping.  Another was so massive that it looked like a log until it started crawling towards the bank.  The rest were all more normal-sized with closed mouths, but pale and ghost-like, just like the others.  On our walk back to the lodge from the river, we saw some giant scorpions without tails that looked like spiders, as well as some glowworms.

Monday morning, we got up around 7 a.m. to pack and eat breakfast.  A woman who came to Refugio with us spotted an aguti next to one of the lodge’s walkways before we left.  We went back to Puerto Maldonado with the same people with whom we had come to Refugio.  During the boat ride back with them, we saw two macaws and some turtles and butterflies, but nothing else.  However, back at the Puerto Maldonado office, we saw three spider monkeys right above our heads, cavorting in the trees.  The two bravest black monkeys came right down to us and one touched my hand, tugging lightly on my bracelet.  One of them almost went into the bathroom (it tried to climb over the wall).  I got to touch the monkeys twice.  The white monkey was shyer and stayed up in the trees, watching us from above.  That was one of my favorite parts of our visit to the Amazon jungle.

After we pulled ourselves away from the monkeys, the Amazonas bus drove us to another bus terminal and we bought some tickets for a night bus back to Cusco.  We found some lunch and ice cream as we strolled to the plaza, where Georgia and my mom stopped to rest.  My dad and I went on towards the Madre de Dios River, only a block or two further.  There we saw a huge bridge being built, the last step in a road from Cusco to Brazil.  We also encountered a nice shady area to hang out in, with hammocks, dogs, chickens, a swing set, a parrot and a nice view of the river and bridge.  We brought Georgia and my mom there and played with the puppies and swung in the hammocks.  The parrot was chewing on a plastic cup but dropped it.  Whenever I tried to give it back to him, he threw it up in the air!  He was a funny bird.  He screeched at his reflection, tried to bite his owner’s fingers and ate messily.  He knew how to say “hola” (hello) and supposedly could say other words too, but we didn’t get to hear them.

After spending an hour or hour and a half in the shady yard, we walked back to the plaza, got some snacks for the bus and some drinks, and went to the bus station to catch our night bus.  In a less comfortable normal seat, I definitely got less sleep on the ride back to Cusco than on the way to Puerto Maldonado.  We arrived in the city early Tuesday morning (about 5 a.m.) and took a local bus back to Pisac, catching another hour or so of sleep before school started.  Our trip to the jungle had come to an end.

-Katie Hastie

Peruvian Snowstorm

Cathy and I headed off to the town of Lares this past weekend for a little rest and relaxation.  Lares is well known locally for its hot springs (which are still hot, unlike many other advertised “hot” springs nearby).  It also has a nice hostal on the grounds of the hot springs for quick and easy access to the soaking tubs.  We left the girls behind at the home of our friends Sandy and Sandra and their kids Niall and Tarn and looked forward to some good long soaks, some alone time, a leisurely hike or two, and the chance to see another part of Peru.

However, things got off to a rocky start from the get-go.  Even before our alarm went off (set for 4 a.m.), we were awakened to the sound of fireworks at about 3:45 in the morning, followed by the nearby church bells clanging away just before 4.  We also walked out of our room to find a steady rain falling (an unusual event for the dry season).  Why such an early alarm, you might ask?  Well, the road to Lares is under construction and only open between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m.  Like many other roads in this area, the road winds up a steep valley, climbing several thousand feet before topping a mountain pass and then descending several more thousand feet to Lares.  To ensure that buses are on the road before it closes for the day, boarding time is 5:30 a.m. in Calca, about a 30 minute drive from our current hometown of Pisac.

So after a quick breakfast of cold leftovers and warm coffee, we walked to the Pisac bus stop, arriving at about 4:30 a.m.  Several high schoolers were already waiting for a bus.  While I haven’t had much luck catching a bus out of Pisac before 5:30, the kids at the bus stop assured us that the first buses arrive before 5.  About 10 minutes after getting to the bus stop, all the lights in town suddenly went out, leaving all of us in the pitch black, rainy morning where we waited until almost 5 before finally seeing a bus approach.  We stuck out our arms to flag the bus, the standard Peruvian custom, especially since we were a block or so away from the official bus stop (which has no shelter).  However, for reasons we couldn’t fathom, the bus barely slowed and didn’t stop for us.  Maybe it didn’t see us in the near-pitch black of the lightless road.  We chased it for a block or so to no avail.  Now we started to worry that we would miss our bus from Calca to Lares and after all the ominous signs, almost headed back home to bed.  But I had paid for the bus tickets the day before and not wanting to lose our precious 14 soles (about $5), we waited for another vehicle to shuttle us to Calca.  

Our patience was rewarded when a collective taxi showed up about 10 minutes later on its way to Calca.  We gratefully hopped in, happy to pay the extra two soles for a faster ride.  As we headed down the road, we discovered that power was out all through the Sacred Valley and each town we passed was surreally dark.  We arrived at the darkened bus terminal at 5:30 where we climbed aboard waited on our bus for about 30 minutes before it departed.  Our first stop was the Calca market where the bus typically takes on more passengers before heading to Lares.  Women selling food also board the bus at this point, giving us a chance to buy some much needed warm tamales.

Finally, the main part of the journey began.  Although the construction project on the road to Lares is a massive one, we saw relatively few workers along the road.  In fact, our taxi driver had told us that the rain had caused most of them to have the day off.  As we ascended I started to see a sprinkling of snow on the upper slopes of the mountains we would need to cross, an unusual sight for this part of Peru in the dry season.  As we passed the town of Totora at about 3,600 meters (12,000 feet) we could see snow falling through the air and a sprinkling of it on the ground.  As we continued to climb, the snow became heavier and we saw more and more accumulating on the road.  Knowing we had close to 2,000 more feet to climb before the pass, we started to worry a bit about our ability to get to Lares.  By the time we passed above the town of Chaipa just above 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet), we could see at least 6-8 inches of snow on the ground and the pace of the vehicles began to slow, not a bad thing itself on a snow-covered gravel road with precipitous drop-offs everywhere you looked. 

View from the bus window

However, we soon actually stopped, discovering that one of the cars ahead was stuck.  We waited for several minutes while the driver and passengers dug the vehicle out enough to continue, but we found this was just the first of several such stops.  Eventually we got to a point where multiple vehicles ahead of us were stuck.  Several people from our bus got out to help, while others stepped off the bus to collect snowball souvenirs.  One woman put a snowball on her head (under her hat), maybe as some kind of good luck charm.  At this point things looked fairly bleak.  At least two vans and one bus ahead of us were stuck.  Collectively, they had only one shovel among them to dig with.  We were boxed in both in front and behind by other vehicles.  The road was so narrow that there was no place for us or anyone else to turn around.  We still had several hundred feet to climb to reach the pass and plenty of miles of snowy road on the other side to negotiate even if we made it that far.  Visibility was near zero and the snow seemed to falling even harder, with 8-10 inches already on the road.   And we were in a place where people rarely have to deal with snow and generally aren’t equipped to handle that much of it. 

As the wait dragged on, Cathy and I started talking about leaving the bus and hiking back to Calca.  Although we weren't all that excited about a long trek in the snow, we also didn’t relish more waiting in the bus and we strongly suspected that the bus would never make it over the pass.  And even if we did make it to Lares, we worried that we could be stranded there (with our kids back in Pisac) for several days if the weather and road conditions didn’t improve.  We knew that heading back on foot was a bit risky and would be a long walk.  However, we also knew there were houses and villages along the way and plenty of places to take refuge if needed.  And we knew the area since it’s one of the places I’ve been working to install water filters.  Finally, after about 1 ½ hours of waiting in the bus, we decided to head out and take our chances.  We gave a couple of people on the bus our names and contact info just in case someone needed to look for us or call our friends or kids at some point if we didn’t arrive back on schedule.

Heading down the road on foot

We walked and jogged about 1 ½ miles down the snow covered road to the last road junction.  There we were greeted with our first bit of good luck of the day – a truckload of highway workers getting ready to head back down towards Calca.  There was also a van that serves as a local taxi or mini-bus there.  But since the workers were offering us a free ride, we hopped in the back of their pickup.  They also graciously offered us long raincoats to keep as dry as we could as we bumped down the road.  The snow covered hills and valleys we passed were quite beautiful and probably a once-in-a-lifetime sight for us in this part of Peru.

Herding llamas and alpacas in the snow

As the truck descended, the workers stopped frequently to take pictures of snow-covered machinery something they might never see again in their lives.  One of the workers told us they don’t see a snowstorm like this more than once a year, if that.  We also had to stop occasionally to go around shepherds and their herds of llama and/or sheep.  The shepherds were typically wearing hard hats, plastic ponchos and sandals (the only kind of footwear I’ve ever seen people who live in these remote villages wearing).  As we arrived at one more snow-covered equipment spot, one of the workers said something about a “muñeca” (or doll) and the workers began to build a snow-man.  They were like little kids in the first snowfall of the year in the US and I happily joined in the construction project while Cathy took pictures.  Soon another truckload of workers approached, saw what we were doing and stopped to join in the fun.  Ultimately, the workers created one of the best snow-men I’ve seen.  Actually they turned this one into a snow woman, complete with hard hat, walkie-talkie, whistle and scarf.  Cameras emerged from several pockets and everyone went into picture-taking mode, punctuated by the occasional snowball skirmish.  Each time we thought they were done taking pictures, someone shouted “un otra posa” (another pose) and a whole other series began. 

Building the "muñeca"

The proud creators with their finished snow-woman

Eventually we all climbed back into our respective trucks and continued the descent.  By the time we reached Calca, we were pretty wet and cold (one and a half hours driving through the snow and rain in the back of a pickup will do that).  However, we were also incredibly grateful to the workers and quite happy to be back in the valley.  Had we not run into them, we could have been faced with a 10-15 mile walk, much of it in the snow.  We thanked the driver and other workers profusely, returned the raincoats and walked the rest of the way into town.  Once there we splurged for a nicer lunch than we would normally get, including hot soup, chicharones (fried pork) and extra mate (tea).  While not the most comfortable of events, this was quite an unforgettable experience for us and we felt like it easily made up for our aborted trip to the hot springs.  

Matt

Odd Things in Peru (at least to me)

One thing about living in another culture and country is that I experience seemingly strange things on an almost daily basis.  At least they seem strange to me.  But they are often everyday occurrences for people here, who don’t give them a second thought.  Here are a few examples (many of which are related to animals):

-          Pig in a bag.  People here often transport pigs in large plastic/vinyl bags, the same types of bags they use for potatoes and other produce, as well as sand and gravel.  So I guess it’s not uncommon to see a pig in a bag even though I had been here for a couple of months before I caught sight of one.  The other day, as I walked up the street, I noticed one of these bags in the street – not right in the middle of the road but sort of to the side.  And as I looked, it began to wiggle and squeal a bit, making the bag slighting roll and quiver.  The owner was nowhere in sight.

-          Dog on a bus.  As I sat on the bus recently, I looked up to see a woman escorting a medium-sized dog off the bus by the scruff of his neck.  After being ejected, the dog tried repeatedly to reboard the bus and a man standing near the front had to kick him off several more times before we departed.

-          Sheep on the roof.  Another recent bus incident involved sheep.  Peruvians transport many things on the local bus, as well as on the roofs of their cars, including their animals.  Though I have now regularly seen various types of animals in containers either within or on the tops of vehicles (kittens, chickens and guinea pigs come to mind), the sheep were a first for me.  As I sat on a bus in the town of Calca the other day, waiting for the bus to leave, I noticed two things.  The first was a woman boarding the bus with a lamb in her arms.  The second was another woman attempting to hoist one of her sheep into the air so that it could be carried up a ladder onto the roof of the bus.  Unfortunately for her (but maybe not for the sheep), her sheep was not very cooperative (nor was its companion sheep tied to the same rope) and the woman ultimately was not able to wrangle either sheep onto the bus before it departed.

-          Young shepherds and other working kids.  As I walk to or from my volunteer job just outside the main part of the town of Lamay, I regularly pass very young children shepherding animals up the road towards their pastures or homes.  I see two pairs of kids frequently.  One includes a boy of maybe 10 or 11 with his sister of possibly 4 or 5 years old.  This boy is in charge of his younger sibling as well as about a dozen cows and several sheep.  The other shepherds are a pair of sisters, the older one about 11 years old and the younger one closer to 3 or 4.  These girls are generally tending a group of 8-12 goats, along with 2-3 cows and sometimes some sheep as well.  Another recent example of kids working is the 12 or 13 year old girl who cut my hair last week.  She takes overflow customers in her dad’s barber shop and wields not only scissors and an electric razor, but also a straight razor.  And last is the 11 or 12 year old kid (my best guess) working the grinding wheel at the machine shop I visited this week.  The level of responsibility (and freedom) that very young kids here have is astounding to me and very different from what I think most of us are used to seeing in urban areas of the U.S.

-          Dog gauntlet.  Recently, a dog in Lamay took to following me to and/or from my bus stop to the place where I volunteer.  Maybe he was looking for a new master.  He followed me to the bus stop and laid down near my feet while I waited for the bus a couple of times and also followed me from the bus stop up to my workplace in Lamay – a distance of almost ¾ mile.  On that trip, he was forced to walk the gauntlet of other town dogs strung out along the main road through Lamay.  Almost every dog along this street (maybe 8-10 of them on a typical day) challenged him in some way – growling, barking or making some other threatening, territorial gesture.  He generally held his ground or just continued walking, sometimes giving a teeth-bared snarl or growl in return or pausing to pee on a wall to tell them he had just as much right to be there as they did.  He was quite disappointed when we arrived at our destination and I left him outside the gate.  He looked in at me somewhat mournfully as I continued on.  This experience is a classic example of that fact that there is often no human filter between the interactions of dogs in Peru – no owner anxiously restraining their beloved pet on a leash to prevent a conflict with another dog.  Here, the dogs need to work things out on their own in whatever manner they see fit and as you can imagine, it isn’t always pretty.

Getting to experience these little day-to-day examples of cultural differences between my home in Portland and my temporary home here is one of my favorite things about life in Peru.

Matt

Deeper into the Onion

The longer we stay in one place, the more of our new world reveals itself to us.  Each day is yet another layer of skin off of the onion.

At first glance, Peru is an awe-inspiring natural wonder, with mountains steeply rising meters away from our front door and a crystal blue sky framing both the landscape and the human activities bustling and hustling below us.  This image retains its potency, but as time passes, we look up to admire it less and less often.  We focus on the issue of the hour, or the goal for the day, forgetting the beauty that drew us here, that continues to beckon to millions of visitors every year.  The natural beauty and grandeur of Pachamama is like a deep, clean breath, helping us to refocus on the things that are important. 

I need a deep blue lungful right now.  Because as I unknowingly trod across the delicate garden of this culture, I learn more and more about the individuals, the families, the groups, and the country itself.  And not all of it is roses.  First-hand cultural education is necessarily full of tripping hazards.  The more involved we are with the people around us – one of our main goals in this experience - the more we learn, and not always the easy way. 

I, like many extraneros, came to Pisac wanting to do some good for someone other than myself.  I wanted to volunteer my skills and time and give to a group that needed what I had to offer.  I am so much more fortunate than so many people here.  And so I taught ceramics to high school kids and English to elementary and high school kids.  I offered after school lunch-and-learn English sessions.  I ferried delicate kiln-loads of student projects back and forth between school and the local potter’s studio across town.  I made a hot lunch (a daunting task for me!) for kids so they wouldn’t have to walk 45 minutes to their homes and 45 minutes back again just to participate in class. 

I paid for school supplies and transported heavy boxes of donated books from Cusco on a crowded bus.  I searched high and low for glaze for the ceramics students.  In short, I did what any parent would do for their kids’ school in the US.  The big difference is that I did all of this in a foreign language of which I can only claim about 25% proficiency, in a new culture whose customs and systems are strange and obscure to me, in a foreign land where I do not know my way around.  Hence, I misstepped and made mistakes.  I stepped on the proverbial prize-winning rose, resulting in bloody scratches from the invisible thorns of Peruvian manners.

As my big, fat American foot came crashing down, I did not see a valuable garden full of significant blooms and healing leaves, but a weed-choked patch of rocky soil.  It was only after I mangled a few plants that I was told that they are beautiful to their owners.  Now, I look again and try to see it.  I understand the idea, but it is still difficult to truly recognize the nurtured buds from the despised prickle bushes.  And so it is with human emotions and the border between individuality and group cohesion.  As I go about my daily business, trying to fulfill goals and achieve some form of success, I find that I am, in the end, working for myself, evaluating my work by the standards that I brought with me from home.  I am selfishly building my own castle, regardless of whether it truly benefits the people I am here, supposedly, to help.  I forget to look up at the grand beauty of the place, forget to remember where I am and why.  The garden is not mine. 

But even as I acknowledge these things to myself, I grapple with the fact that I personally do not agree with some of the values and ideas widely held in my new community.  Some of the purported ‘flowers’ remain weeds to me.  Where does ‘working for people who need help’ stop and ‘working against my own standards’ begin?  Although I support part of the vision and message disseminated by the different groups I work with, there are some finer points that I find unrealistic and even self-defeating.  Sometimes the grand plan, as gorgeous and well-intentioned as it may be, needs to make room for the realities of modern life in an impoverished country.  Of course the same can be said in reverse.  In the end, these two extremes both are needed to further a stronger, healthier, more stable world. 

The fact that I am able to perceive and participate in these conflicts at all is proof that I have penetrated past the surface, through a few of the top-most layers of life in Pisac, the symbolic onion.  Through my gaffes, I discover weak spots, the edge between courtesy and real emotion.  My errors introduce me to the personal quirks and sensitivities of individuals and I start to understand, slowly and reluctantly sometimes, more about these people I am here to assist and learn from.  The deeper I am integrated into this small community, the more opportunity I have to screw up – and to do more meaningful work.  In one sense, mistakes offend, but they also mean that something is happening.  

Conflicts arise like tectonic plates coming together - the big picture ramming up against the details.  Either the plates grind together, turning both sides into dust, or one passes over the other, taking its turn in the superior position this time.  Meaningful conflict shines a light on a side of people unknown to the passer-by.  For a foreigner, it is a privilege to see, even though at times it may appear ugly.  The people in question might find those facets of themselves attractive.  Which causes pause.  If what we call a blemish, they exalt, perhaps what we ourselves pride, they consider a fault.  There is no universal truth.  This realization allows us to re-examine our belief systems and decide, now that we see that there is a choice, how we want to perceive character traits, in ourselves, in others and in groups and communities. 

Above all, being aware at a level where we can participate, even in unpleasant conflicts, is a reward in and of itself.  It is an opportunity that informs us.  It broadens our awareness and allows us to experience life differently than we normally would.  It is proof that we are more than just a stranger passing through.  We are making a difference.  The question remains, however, a difference for whom?  Is it me that is changed by this new understanding, or the others?  Or do we both grow closer to that wide, calm, middle-ground that is acceptance and understanding?  That is my goal.

Cathy