Prospects for ratification of the Peru-United States free trade agreement (FTA) inched forward last week when Peruvian president Alan Garcia met with George W Bush and Democrat and Republican legislators during a trip to Washington DC.
Democrats continue to insist on changes to strengthen the labour and environmental conditions of the agreement. But they look set to reach a compromise with Republicans that will allow the agreement - which has already been approved by Peru's congress - to be debated and passed by the US Congress before its August recess.
Garcia's meeting with Bush was full of hearty cordiality, as they discussed both the trade agreement and measures to counter narcotrafficking. Bush said that Garcia was "a good guy, and he gives good advice" ('escape to Colombia at the end of your presidential term to avoid investigation', perhaps?).
But in a later meeting, Democrat Senate leader Harry Reid continued to press for changes in environmental and labour sections of the FTA, as did congressman Bill Pascrell who said there was still much to be improved in these areas before he would be convinced to support the agreement.
On day two of his visit, Garcia met with Charles Rangel, chairman of the Ways and Means committee, one of the two committees charged with reviewing the trade agreement. Rangel declared that the chances of congress ratifying the agreement were "better than good" but could not specify a timeframe. He stressed the need to continue work through details with the Republicans and the executive branch.
Accompanying Rangel was fellow Democrat Sander Levin, who had previously expressed misgivings about the trade agreement after a four-day fact finding mission to Peru.
While there is general consensus that the FTA will help produce the economic growth needed for Peru's development, critics say that it will hurt small rural producers that will have to compete with imports of subsidized American corn, rice, cotton, sugar and beef. They also worry that stricter enforcement of intellectual property law under the agreement could restrict Peruvian access to modern medicines.
Levin would like to see the US use its influence to support more stable, equitable growth when negotiating trade agreements with developing countries. He has argued that countries should be held to International Labor Organization minimum standards, rather than merely enforce their own laws, which may fall short of ILO standards. He also asserted that "it's necessary to assure access to generic medicines for Peruvians".
Garcia also met with congressional majority leader Nancy Pelosi - who reiterated her conditional support for the agreement - as well as Charles Cresley and Max Baucus from the Senate Finance Committee, the other body required to review the FTA. The Peruvian leader assured the press that he was confident of a way ahead. He stated that "it's a matter of process, rather than of reopening the negotiations".
By the end of the trip, Garcia had met with 43 representatives from the Congress and Senate, and declared that he was "leaving satisfied". Later, Peruvian chancellor José Antonio García Belaunde announced that there were "rumours" in Washington that Democrat and Republican leaders would soon sign a pre-agreement that would allow the agreement to be ratified by Congress before August.
But meanwhile, nationalist members of Peru's congress were planning to travel to the US with the aim of convincing US representatives not to ratify the agreement. They claimed to represent the "98 percent of business people who have been completely excluded from the negotation of this agreement". In an open letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, they argued that the trade agreement as it stands will exacerbate rural poverty and force poor farmers to turn to the illegal cultivation of coca.
(quotes as reported on Peruvian current affairs show 90 Segundos)
Categories: free trade, Latin America, Peru, FTA, TLC
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Jungle Pics
I never quite got around to adding photos to the post on my brief excursion into the Amazon jungle. So here's a follow up post with a few snaps.
Junglecraft 101: the branches of the liana tree act as natural filters, so if you know how to identify the tree, you can always find a source of pure, fresh water in the jungle.
Most palm-type trees have edible larvae or suri in their branches. They have a slight flavour of coconut, though I'm ready to believe that they're tastier when fried.
At night, tarantulas can easily be found on tree trunks in the jungle. Their diet includes small birds. To humans, their venom is not fatal, but will apparently leave you in considerable pain for about eight hours. This was about as close as I wanted to get.
The river was high, and we canoed through the flooded forest looking for birds. Occasionally, we spotted a sloth high in the tree branches.
Under the shade of some mangroves, we managed to catch a few snapping piranhas, while the others stole half a chicken's worth of bait.
Despite it's resemblance to a large goldfish, there's reason for the piranha's fearsome reputation. It's teeth are razor sharp, and are said to be able to take off a finger with a single bite.
On the river, thunderclouds gathered in the afternoon heat.
But it was great to catch a breeze cruising along in the motor canoe.
Back in Iquitos, some Indian girls do a fantastic drum-accompanied tribal dance on the waterfront most evenings. Their party trick to finish off is dancing with a couple of boas that have been slithering around their feets. The snakes seem pretty tame, but I'm not sure I'd want to get as, ah, intimate as they do.
Categories: Peru, Amazon, Iquitos
Junglecraft 101: the branches of the liana tree act as natural filters, so if you know how to identify the tree, you can always find a source of pure, fresh water in the jungle.
Most palm-type trees have edible larvae or suri in their branches. They have a slight flavour of coconut, though I'm ready to believe that they're tastier when fried.
At night, tarantulas can easily be found on tree trunks in the jungle. Their diet includes small birds. To humans, their venom is not fatal, but will apparently leave you in considerable pain for about eight hours. This was about as close as I wanted to get.
The river was high, and we canoed through the flooded forest looking for birds. Occasionally, we spotted a sloth high in the tree branches.
Under the shade of some mangroves, we managed to catch a few snapping piranhas, while the others stole half a chicken's worth of bait.
Despite it's resemblance to a large goldfish, there's reason for the piranha's fearsome reputation. It's teeth are razor sharp, and are said to be able to take off a finger with a single bite.
On the river, thunderclouds gathered in the afternoon heat.
But it was great to catch a breeze cruising along in the motor canoe.
Back in Iquitos, some Indian girls do a fantastic drum-accompanied tribal dance on the waterfront most evenings. Their party trick to finish off is dancing with a couple of boas that have been slithering around their feets. The snakes seem pretty tame, but I'm not sure I'd want to get as, ah, intimate as they do.
Categories: Peru, Amazon, Iquitos
Sunday, April 22, 2007
A Renaissance Writer
Occasional visitors to this blog will note that it's been updated only infrequentlyover the last month or two. One of the reasons is that I've been diversifying my activity. I've recently written several pieces for a site called Journal Peru . My contributions are here, here, here, and here. All but one of these pieces have never appeared on my blog.
Meanwhile, plans are afoot for a new website of my own, with its own domain name, and space for photos and articles as well as a blog. Details coming soon.
I'm also working my way through Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversación en la Catedral, a dauntingly complex yet controlled piece of literary virtuosity.
This is the third novel of Vargas Llosa's that I've read, and I've concluded that he is of at least equal literary stature to Gabriel Garcia Marquez - whom he famously, and with a still-unknown motive, punched in a movie theatre in 1976. Garcia Marquez developed a prose style of mythic proportions that spawned a thousand imitators, and captured something of the essence of the Latin American experience .
But Vargas Llosa's writing is more prolific and stylistically varied, and has greater intellectual curiosity and insight. As a public intellectual and a (nobly failed) politician, he's the kind of Renaissance Man that in the Anglo-Saxon world we don't really expect artists to be.
It's pleasing, therefore, to see him profiled in today's Guardian, which reviews a new collection of essays and musings called Touchstones.
It's interesting to hear him recite his approval for the fragile movement towards a Latin American social democracy, as exemplified by Lula in Brazil, Bachelet in Chile, and - somewhat improbably - perhaps now also Alan Garcia in Peru.
It's also touching to hear that, though a citizen of the world with homes in London, Paris, and Madrid, Vargas Llosa "seems most animated when talking about Peru". He says:
"I feel very attached to my country, family, friends, certain images, and also the language. You know the kind of Spanish that I write is the Peruvian branch of Spanish and to hear this kind of Spanish is for me something very warm."
It's true; one of the great pleasures of reading Vargas Llosa - and fellow outstanding novelist Alfredo Bryce Echenique - is the rich, hearty Peruvian-ness of the language.
His birthplace? Like the man who could be described as his polar opposite - Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman - Vargas Llosa originally hails from the White City of Arequipa.
Meanwhile, plans are afoot for a new website of my own, with its own domain name, and space for photos and articles as well as a blog. Details coming soon.
I'm also working my way through Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversación en la Catedral, a dauntingly complex yet controlled piece of literary virtuosity.
This is the third novel of Vargas Llosa's that I've read, and I've concluded that he is of at least equal literary stature to Gabriel Garcia Marquez - whom he famously, and with a still-unknown motive, punched in a movie theatre in 1976. Garcia Marquez developed a prose style of mythic proportions that spawned a thousand imitators, and captured something of the essence of the Latin American experience .
But Vargas Llosa's writing is more prolific and stylistically varied, and has greater intellectual curiosity and insight. As a public intellectual and a (nobly failed) politician, he's the kind of Renaissance Man that in the Anglo-Saxon world we don't really expect artists to be.
It's pleasing, therefore, to see him profiled in today's Guardian, which reviews a new collection of essays and musings called Touchstones.
It's interesting to hear him recite his approval for the fragile movement towards a Latin American social democracy, as exemplified by Lula in Brazil, Bachelet in Chile, and - somewhat improbably - perhaps now also Alan Garcia in Peru.
It's also touching to hear that, though a citizen of the world with homes in London, Paris, and Madrid, Vargas Llosa "seems most animated when talking about Peru". He says:
"I feel very attached to my country, family, friends, certain images, and also the language. You know the kind of Spanish that I write is the Peruvian branch of Spanish and to hear this kind of Spanish is for me something very warm."
It's true; one of the great pleasures of reading Vargas Llosa - and fellow outstanding novelist Alfredo Bryce Echenique - is the rich, hearty Peruvian-ness of the language.
His birthplace? Like the man who could be described as his polar opposite - Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman - Vargas Llosa originally hails from the White City of Arequipa.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Blood of a Continent
After all this time and four visits to the relevant part of the world, I finally got around to reading Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America. I remember on my very first day in South America, an intense young Spanish political science student explaining to me on a hot hostel terrace in Santiago that I sould read this book if I wanted to understand the continent's tortured history, society and politics.
He was right. I regret to say that in the intervening time, I lazily inherited a view of the book as an "it's all the gringos' fault" polemic that oversimplified the issues facing the different countries. I came to associate it with some of the tub thumping nationalist politics I encountered in Peru and Bolivia, and the view that wealth is something static that you find or steal, rather than create.
There's certainly enough in Open Veins' outrage-flecked prose style to give succour to those who would blame it all on the foreigners. Yet it's also consistent with the view of some local writers that Latin societies are hobbled by self-inflicted woes, including fatalism, lack of a work ethic, unhealthy hero worship, corrupt politicans, weak institutions, and systematic bureaucractic obstacles to entrepreneurs.
You don't by any means have to share all of Galeano's politics to appreicate Open Veins as a compelling story of how Latin America came to be the way it is.
Galeano's thesis is simple. Systematic exploitation and underdevelopment wasn't something that contingently happened to Latin America - it was the continent's colonial raison d'etre. He documents how it became a "source and reserve of...raw materials and food for the rich countries".
These raw materials were initially gold, silver, and copper; later coffee, bananas, sugar, cotton, rubber, nickel, tin, and oil. Their extraction was on the backs of the enforced labour of native populations, replaced or supplemented by the slave traffic from Africa as the former were exhausted.
Colonisation, in the sense of the gradual establishment and building of a new society, was never the point. Rather, the aim was plunder, and to funnel the raw materials out through "veins" that led to the ports or capital cities. Ticket-clipping local elites got rich enough, at the expense of their hinterlands, to be able to buy back some of the finished goods from Europe and later the USA.
While it was the Spanish and Portuguese crowns that undertook the original conquests, by the 17th century they were weak, overstretched and indebted. It was British and Dutch capital that financed the Latin American imperiums, and it was British, Dutch, French, and later American interests that determined the course of the continent's (under) development.
So far, so Marxist, you might say. But once we get past the undeniable horror of the conquests, the encomiendas, and the slave trade, Galeano's historical diagnosis is relatively uncontroversial. The ongoing failure of Latin America is its inability to develop a strong, indigenous capitalism that adds value to raw materials and spreads wealth through the wider society by broadening and deepening the economy.
Galeano explains the systematic protectionism of the northern European countries and the United States as they built their industrial economies, and documents how attempts to follow a similar process in Latin America have been kneecapped politically, often from the outside. The sine qua nons of development - improvements in agricultural productivity, land reform, and strengthened internal markets - have rarely got past first base.
It's a moot point how much this is due to external manipulation, and at what point local weakness and incompetence shares the blame. For Galeano, the underlying causes are the same.
In any case, Galeano has enough evidence that the odds have been sufficiently stacked against Latin American producers as to make modern cries for "free trade" seem hypocritical. In just one example he cites from the 60s, Brazil agreed to tax its own exports of soluble coffee, so as not to undercut US producers (given their handicaps, is it surprising that the wannabe entrepreneurs of Latin America have conspired to develop the one industry where they do have full control of resource extraction, processing, distribution and marketing: cocaine).
In order to appreciate the problem description, you don't have to agree with the solution. Galeano's unabashed cheerleading for Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution slightly embarasses even this pinko leftist. In our world of post-Friedman orthodoxy,his favourable view of the big-government adventures of various nationalist caudillos - including Peron in Argentina - seems almost as radical. But if you factor in the diagnosis, even avowed economic liberals might concede some of his rationale. So weak were local capitalists, argues Galeano, so passively complacent the thin upper-middle classes, that if anyone was going to deepen and diversify the local economy, it had to be the state.
Part II of Open Veins deals with the post-industrial age, where Galeano accounts for the partial development of parts of Latin America. His concept of "poles of development" refers to how the subjugation of Latin America by the West is mirrored locally: through Brazil and Argentina's dominance of their smaller neighbours, and, within countries, the "exploitation by the big cities and ports of their internal sources of food and labour".
He argues that much "foreign investment" actually results in a net outflow for Latin countries. Auto assembly, for example, involves local subsidiaries of large Western companies paying arbitrary prices for parts from their head office, and then remitting most of the profits back to their home country.
There's a lot that could be critiqued by political and economic historians, and indeed I would be interested to see his empirical evidence subjected to scrutiny (rather than simply sweeping it under the carpet and calling him a Marxist).
But part of what is so compelling about the narrative of Open Veins is that it ties together much of what one experiences when getting to know Latin America.
The poor internal transport links and communications between countries and regions; the land sitting idle (parts of Peru had a more comprehensive network of roads and more agricultural land in production during the Incan empire than they do now); the upper class people more likely to have visited Miami than Cuzco. The arbitrariness of wealth, where some people work frantically hard, and other people have money, but there's no discernible connection between the two. The local and central government more likely to hinder citizens' attempts to get ahead than to help them. The prearranged deals which make it easier for politicans and bureaucrats to be corrupt than honest.
In many ways, it's remarkable that this was published in 1973. So much of what we associate with Latin America's contemporary history has happened since. Pinochet's coup in Chile; the Argentinian military dictatorship; financial crises; revolution and war in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala; Peru's Shining Path insurgency; IMF neoliberal makeovers leading up to the "Bolivian gas wars" and Argentina's 2003 financial collapse.
Reading Open Veins makes me eager to hunt down Galeano's more contemporary writings to see what he makes of all these events. In particular, I'd like to know whether he thinks the current state of affairs is an improvement on the dark days of his 1977 epilogue.
Because, perhaps with unreasonable optimism, I believe a corner may finally have been turned in Latin America's long struggle for maturity. Whether you approve more of Evo Morales' nationalisation process, or Chile's incremental social democractic reforms (and reasonable people might concede that both approaches are appropriate for the respective countries in their different situations), it seems that a majority of countries are now electing governments better equipped and prepared to tackle their underlying problems. More are insisting on the right to tackle their own unique challenges in their own way.
There are also signs that the countries of Latin America are, in an intermittent and still bitchy way, putting aside their artificially sustained national rivalries and working towards greater integration and a greater say in world affairs.
Of course, setbacks and failures are still ahead. The greatest challenge will be to empower and unleash the creativity of the masses of people who have long been nothing more than a source of cheap labour. Who knows how long it will take to shake off Latin America's historical legacy and ensure that blood flows heathily through and around its body, nourishing all its members?
Categories: Eduardo Galeano, Latin America, Peru
He was right. I regret to say that in the intervening time, I lazily inherited a view of the book as an "it's all the gringos' fault" polemic that oversimplified the issues facing the different countries. I came to associate it with some of the tub thumping nationalist politics I encountered in Peru and Bolivia, and the view that wealth is something static that you find or steal, rather than create.
There's certainly enough in Open Veins' outrage-flecked prose style to give succour to those who would blame it all on the foreigners. Yet it's also consistent with the view of some local writers that Latin societies are hobbled by self-inflicted woes, including fatalism, lack of a work ethic, unhealthy hero worship, corrupt politicans, weak institutions, and systematic bureaucractic obstacles to entrepreneurs.
You don't by any means have to share all of Galeano's politics to appreicate Open Veins as a compelling story of how Latin America came to be the way it is.
Galeano's thesis is simple. Systematic exploitation and underdevelopment wasn't something that contingently happened to Latin America - it was the continent's colonial raison d'etre. He documents how it became a "source and reserve of...raw materials and food for the rich countries".
These raw materials were initially gold, silver, and copper; later coffee, bananas, sugar, cotton, rubber, nickel, tin, and oil. Their extraction was on the backs of the enforced labour of native populations, replaced or supplemented by the slave traffic from Africa as the former were exhausted.
Colonisation, in the sense of the gradual establishment and building of a new society, was never the point. Rather, the aim was plunder, and to funnel the raw materials out through "veins" that led to the ports or capital cities. Ticket-clipping local elites got rich enough, at the expense of their hinterlands, to be able to buy back some of the finished goods from Europe and later the USA.
While it was the Spanish and Portuguese crowns that undertook the original conquests, by the 17th century they were weak, overstretched and indebted. It was British and Dutch capital that financed the Latin American imperiums, and it was British, Dutch, French, and later American interests that determined the course of the continent's (under) development.
So far, so Marxist, you might say. But once we get past the undeniable horror of the conquests, the encomiendas, and the slave trade, Galeano's historical diagnosis is relatively uncontroversial. The ongoing failure of Latin America is its inability to develop a strong, indigenous capitalism that adds value to raw materials and spreads wealth through the wider society by broadening and deepening the economy.
Galeano explains the systematic protectionism of the northern European countries and the United States as they built their industrial economies, and documents how attempts to follow a similar process in Latin America have been kneecapped politically, often from the outside. The sine qua nons of development - improvements in agricultural productivity, land reform, and strengthened internal markets - have rarely got past first base.
It's a moot point how much this is due to external manipulation, and at what point local weakness and incompetence shares the blame. For Galeano, the underlying causes are the same.
In any case, Galeano has enough evidence that the odds have been sufficiently stacked against Latin American producers as to make modern cries for "free trade" seem hypocritical. In just one example he cites from the 60s, Brazil agreed to tax its own exports of soluble coffee, so as not to undercut US producers (given their handicaps, is it surprising that the wannabe entrepreneurs of Latin America have conspired to develop the one industry where they do have full control of resource extraction, processing, distribution and marketing: cocaine).
In order to appreciate the problem description, you don't have to agree with the solution. Galeano's unabashed cheerleading for Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution slightly embarasses even this pinko leftist. In our world of post-Friedman orthodoxy,his favourable view of the big-government adventures of various nationalist caudillos - including Peron in Argentina - seems almost as radical. But if you factor in the diagnosis, even avowed economic liberals might concede some of his rationale. So weak were local capitalists, argues Galeano, so passively complacent the thin upper-middle classes, that if anyone was going to deepen and diversify the local economy, it had to be the state.
Part II of Open Veins deals with the post-industrial age, where Galeano accounts for the partial development of parts of Latin America. His concept of "poles of development" refers to how the subjugation of Latin America by the West is mirrored locally: through Brazil and Argentina's dominance of their smaller neighbours, and, within countries, the "exploitation by the big cities and ports of their internal sources of food and labour".
He argues that much "foreign investment" actually results in a net outflow for Latin countries. Auto assembly, for example, involves local subsidiaries of large Western companies paying arbitrary prices for parts from their head office, and then remitting most of the profits back to their home country.
There's a lot that could be critiqued by political and economic historians, and indeed I would be interested to see his empirical evidence subjected to scrutiny (rather than simply sweeping it under the carpet and calling him a Marxist).
But part of what is so compelling about the narrative of Open Veins is that it ties together much of what one experiences when getting to know Latin America.
The poor internal transport links and communications between countries and regions; the land sitting idle (parts of Peru had a more comprehensive network of roads and more agricultural land in production during the Incan empire than they do now); the upper class people more likely to have visited Miami than Cuzco. The arbitrariness of wealth, where some people work frantically hard, and other people have money, but there's no discernible connection between the two. The local and central government more likely to hinder citizens' attempts to get ahead than to help them. The prearranged deals which make it easier for politicans and bureaucrats to be corrupt than honest.
In many ways, it's remarkable that this was published in 1973. So much of what we associate with Latin America's contemporary history has happened since. Pinochet's coup in Chile; the Argentinian military dictatorship; financial crises; revolution and war in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala; Peru's Shining Path insurgency; IMF neoliberal makeovers leading up to the "Bolivian gas wars" and Argentina's 2003 financial collapse.
Reading Open Veins makes me eager to hunt down Galeano's more contemporary writings to see what he makes of all these events. In particular, I'd like to know whether he thinks the current state of affairs is an improvement on the dark days of his 1977 epilogue.
Because, perhaps with unreasonable optimism, I believe a corner may finally have been turned in Latin America's long struggle for maturity. Whether you approve more of Evo Morales' nationalisation process, or Chile's incremental social democractic reforms (and reasonable people might concede that both approaches are appropriate for the respective countries in their different situations), it seems that a majority of countries are now electing governments better equipped and prepared to tackle their underlying problems. More are insisting on the right to tackle their own unique challenges in their own way.
There are also signs that the countries of Latin America are, in an intermittent and still bitchy way, putting aside their artificially sustained national rivalries and working towards greater integration and a greater say in world affairs.
Of course, setbacks and failures are still ahead. The greatest challenge will be to empower and unleash the creativity of the masses of people who have long been nothing more than a source of cheap labour. Who knows how long it will take to shake off Latin America's historical legacy and ensure that blood flows heathily through and around its body, nourishing all its members?
Categories: Eduardo Galeano, Latin America, Peru
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Renzo's Story
Eleven-year old Renzo had the cheeky grin and ready patois of a kid from Lima's barrios. He was happy enough when he said goodbye to his parents at the somewhat chaotic Enlaces station, beside the roaring traffic of the avenida Javier Prado, and boarded the bus with Hugo and I.
On the sixteen-hour journey to Arequipa, though, he was sleepless, panicky and intermittently nauseous. By the time we got off blinking in the White City's morning sunlight, Hugo, by nature sympathetic, was getting slightly impatient.
Over the next few days Renzo suffered from severe separation anxiety. He cried quietly in the room he had to share with Gerardo, and when a call was put through to his parents, sobbed down the phone to his mother.
Lizbeth was less than empathetic. "Aunt!" she shouted down the phone, in front of her nephew. "He's been blubbering all day! He misses your teats!" I told her I was taken aback by such vulgarity, and she chortled.
When he forgot his homesickness, Renzo brought out a series of anecdotes of life in the barrio of San Juan de Miraflores. This is one of the "old new" areas of Lima; once a pueblo joven, it gradually built itself up into working class respectability - though is now plagued by the crime and insecurity that spares few parts of Peru's teeming capital.
This time it was Lizbeth who was a bit shocked, as she listened to the tales. "That area's gone downhill", she said, shaking her head. "When I used to stay there as a student, it was tranquilo".
With casual relish, Renzo told us of how he had been attacked in the park where he liked to play football. "One time I was in the park with my bike, and these guys came up and robbed me at gunpoint. I resisted, and tried to get away on my bike, but they ran after me and threw me to the ground. They stole my helmet and left me there".
How old were these guys, I wanted to know. About seventeen, thought Renzo. And they had pulled a gun on him for his cycle helmet? "It was a motorbike helmet", he said, as if that explained everything.
Renzo shrugged that off plegmatically as an isolated incident and said it didn't worry him to go back to the park. "I'm not afraid of anything", he claimed. But playing and wandering on the streets, he'd been witness to at least two other violent crimes.
One time he'd seen a young guy with his girlfriend get attacked by four muggers, who stabbed the young guy in the leg before running off with his possessions. "Blood came spurting out", according to Renzo.
The people of the neighbourhood came out en masse, but the muggers were long gone. The kid was taken to hospital, where a piece of the knife was removed from his thigh.
Another time Renzo saw a man get grabbed by two guys who ordered him to "give us all your money". When the robbery produced little yield, they got angry, shouted "fuck, why don't you have any money?", and hit him in the head with a tyre iron.
Renzo also claimed to have witnessed a gunfight, just a couple of blocks up from his house.
"The U and the Alianza (Alianza Lima and Universitario de Deportes, rival groups of football hooligans) were fighting, and the police came and started to fire in the air. Then everyone started to shoot at each other", he recounted.
Renzo said he watched from a roof, about 6 or 7 metres away through a peephole in a steel wall. Had anyone been hit in the gunfight? "Sure, lots of them were hit - in the leg, in the arm, the chest, the stomach, the face".
Two of the Alianza cohort were killed, said Renzo. The police were greatly outnumbered and retired from the scene. "Later the Alianza went to look for the guys from the U, and killed seven of them. They cut their throats with big knives".
It was hard to know how much of this to believe, as when I pressed for details of the incidents in question they were supplied in exaggerated, improbable, and somewhat inconsistent fashion. But Renzo's world was was starting to sound uncomfortably like City of God.
He was fascinated with the street gangs that wandered through his barrio from even rougher areas like Villa El Slavador and San Juan de Lurigancho, home of Lima's notorious penal facility.
Like a budding social worker, Renzo deconstructed their criminality. "They're people who haven't had any education, their parents have treated them bad, that's why they're like that. It's not their fault; it's the fault of the parents".
So he wasn't afraid of the gangs, I asked a little incredulously. He shook his head.
"They don't do anything to us kids, they just fight amongst themselves. They steal the arms to defend themselves against the other gangs, or the police. Sometimes the commit a crime so they can get taken to jail, then they escape and steal weapons off the police".
So when the gangs were around, was he happy to just play football in the normal places?
Renzo paused. "Well, when they're around, I don't play. I want to watch them". He ruminated a second. "It's ok for me. But I do worry about when my parents go out. I worry that it's not safe for them. I can take a risk, but I don't want them to. I say 'no mamá, don't go out on the street'"
For all the bravado, I wondered if Renzo wouldn't prefer to live somewhere that didn't feature acts of mortal violence as part of life's daily tapestry. He'd grumped that in suburban Arequipa "there's no kids; there's no football on the street", but I asked him if he wouldn't like to be somewhere safer.
He shrugged. "I'd live wherever my parents were".
"Ok, so assuming your parents were with you, where would you prefer to live?", I queried.
"If my parents were in Lima, I'd prefer to live in Lima", he affirmed. "If my parents were in Arequipa, I'd live in Arequipa".
On the sixteen-hour journey to Arequipa, though, he was sleepless, panicky and intermittently nauseous. By the time we got off blinking in the White City's morning sunlight, Hugo, by nature sympathetic, was getting slightly impatient.
Over the next few days Renzo suffered from severe separation anxiety. He cried quietly in the room he had to share with Gerardo, and when a call was put through to his parents, sobbed down the phone to his mother.
Lizbeth was less than empathetic. "Aunt!" she shouted down the phone, in front of her nephew. "He's been blubbering all day! He misses your teats!" I told her I was taken aback by such vulgarity, and she chortled.
When he forgot his homesickness, Renzo brought out a series of anecdotes of life in the barrio of San Juan de Miraflores. This is one of the "old new" areas of Lima; once a pueblo joven, it gradually built itself up into working class respectability - though is now plagued by the crime and insecurity that spares few parts of Peru's teeming capital.
This time it was Lizbeth who was a bit shocked, as she listened to the tales. "That area's gone downhill", she said, shaking her head. "When I used to stay there as a student, it was tranquilo".
With casual relish, Renzo told us of how he had been attacked in the park where he liked to play football. "One time I was in the park with my bike, and these guys came up and robbed me at gunpoint. I resisted, and tried to get away on my bike, but they ran after me and threw me to the ground. They stole my helmet and left me there".
How old were these guys, I wanted to know. About seventeen, thought Renzo. And they had pulled a gun on him for his cycle helmet? "It was a motorbike helmet", he said, as if that explained everything.
Renzo shrugged that off plegmatically as an isolated incident and said it didn't worry him to go back to the park. "I'm not afraid of anything", he claimed. But playing and wandering on the streets, he'd been witness to at least two other violent crimes.
One time he'd seen a young guy with his girlfriend get attacked by four muggers, who stabbed the young guy in the leg before running off with his possessions. "Blood came spurting out", according to Renzo.
The people of the neighbourhood came out en masse, but the muggers were long gone. The kid was taken to hospital, where a piece of the knife was removed from his thigh.
Another time Renzo saw a man get grabbed by two guys who ordered him to "give us all your money". When the robbery produced little yield, they got angry, shouted "fuck, why don't you have any money?", and hit him in the head with a tyre iron.
Renzo also claimed to have witnessed a gunfight, just a couple of blocks up from his house.
"The U and the Alianza (Alianza Lima and Universitario de Deportes, rival groups of football hooligans) were fighting, and the police came and started to fire in the air. Then everyone started to shoot at each other", he recounted.
Renzo said he watched from a roof, about 6 or 7 metres away through a peephole in a steel wall. Had anyone been hit in the gunfight? "Sure, lots of them were hit - in the leg, in the arm, the chest, the stomach, the face".
Two of the Alianza cohort were killed, said Renzo. The police were greatly outnumbered and retired from the scene. "Later the Alianza went to look for the guys from the U, and killed seven of them. They cut their throats with big knives".
It was hard to know how much of this to believe, as when I pressed for details of the incidents in question they were supplied in exaggerated, improbable, and somewhat inconsistent fashion. But Renzo's world was was starting to sound uncomfortably like City of God.
He was fascinated with the street gangs that wandered through his barrio from even rougher areas like Villa El Slavador and San Juan de Lurigancho, home of Lima's notorious penal facility.
Like a budding social worker, Renzo deconstructed their criminality. "They're people who haven't had any education, their parents have treated them bad, that's why they're like that. It's not their fault; it's the fault of the parents".
So he wasn't afraid of the gangs, I asked a little incredulously. He shook his head.
"They don't do anything to us kids, they just fight amongst themselves. They steal the arms to defend themselves against the other gangs, or the police. Sometimes the commit a crime so they can get taken to jail, then they escape and steal weapons off the police".
So when the gangs were around, was he happy to just play football in the normal places?
Renzo paused. "Well, when they're around, I don't play. I want to watch them". He ruminated a second. "It's ok for me. But I do worry about when my parents go out. I worry that it's not safe for them. I can take a risk, but I don't want them to. I say 'no mamá, don't go out on the street'"
For all the bravado, I wondered if Renzo wouldn't prefer to live somewhere that didn't feature acts of mortal violence as part of life's daily tapestry. He'd grumped that in suburban Arequipa "there's no kids; there's no football on the street", but I asked him if he wouldn't like to be somewhere safer.
He shrugged. "I'd live wherever my parents were".
"Ok, so assuming your parents were with you, where would you prefer to live?", I queried.
"If my parents were in Lima, I'd prefer to live in Lima", he affirmed. "If my parents were in Arequipa, I'd live in Arequipa".
A la Hora Peruana
Have I ever written about "Peruvian time"? Oh yes. Here, here and here.
So it is with considerable amusement that I read in an almost Onion-like article from the Associated Press that the Peruvian government is launching a "plan to combat lateness"
According to the article, "schools, businesses and government institutions will be asked to stop tolerating 'la hora peruana', or 'Peruvian time' - which usually means an hour late". On March 1, it was intended that sirens would sound and church bells ring out, alerting 27 million Peruvians to synchronize their watches.
In part, this appears to be political points-scoring by president Alan Garcia, who likes to contrast his own punctuality with the notorious tardiness of former president Alejandro Toledo.
But to the extent that it's sincere, just synchronising watches and requesting everybody to turn up earlier for work is not going to change Peruvians' deep-seated, fatalistic attitude to time. Rather like life, it's seen as a force that is nebulous, only partly controllable, and prone to unexplained discontinuities.
When someone says that something will happen "ahorita", they are usually indicating that, though they are hopeful that the event will occur soon, they will not be held responsible for designating any specific moment.
"Ahorita vengo", for example, would be literally translated as "I'll be right back", but someone seeking to truly understand the import of the phrase should take it as meaning something like "I may be some time".
There are numerous examples of Peruvians' strange conception of time, of which I only have space to cite a couple. Among the many occasions when my Peruvian ex-girlfriend made we wait an unreasonable amount was an afternoon when had we agreed to meet at 4:00 pm to go to a movie. We decided that she would pick me up after her university classes at the office of Incaventura, where I was explaining trekking and climbing expeditions to groups of tourists.
At 4:15 I got a call to the office; it was Paola. "Hey, it looks like my lecture is going to run over time", she said in an apologetic tone. "He's already kept us here longer to explain something and it'll be another ten minutes before we get out. Sorryyy"
I was puzzled. "But what time was your class supposed to finish?", I asked. "Four o'clock", she said with a hint of impatience, as if I should have known that.
To get from the university to the tour office required her to take two minibuses and then walk several blocks. In the absolutely best combination of circumstances, it was twenty-five minutes away. Exactly which wormhole in the space-time continuum she had ever planned to crawl through to meet me at 4:00 pm, I'll never know.
Lest one take all this personally - and in the case of my ex-girlfriend it was so frequent and exaggerated that I did - it's worth observing that the same approach is routine even for esteemed individuals or for very important events
In my most recent trip to Peru, I attended a wedding in Arequipa, which was scheduled for midday Saturday. Some friends of mine from New Zealand, travelling through the Andean countries, also happened to be in Arequipa at the time, and one of them had experienced some health problems which required a specialist appointment at the local private hospital.
The appointment was for the same Saturday as the wedding, at 9:00 am, and I was to attend as a translator. I went to the hospital on Saturday morning already in my suit, thinking to be on the safe side I would plan to go straight from the hospital to the wedding.
By the time the medical issues were sorted out, it was getting late (the doctor had arrived at the hospital twenty-five minutes after our appointment time). The church where the wedding was to take place was only six blocks up the hill, so at 11:45, when everything seemed to be more or less ok, I left the hospital and hurried up to the church.
Arriving about 11:59, I was the second person there. I introduced myself to the bride's aunt, who was standing outside, and we went into the church. People started to drift in; about 12:10, the bride arrived - surprisingly early, and before the groom - and not long after, the ceremony started.
I can recall looking around and feeling a bit disappointed for Chriss that the beautiful colonial church was only one third full for her wedding. But about fifteen minutes into the ceremony, I turned around again and saw that most of the pews were full. People continued to arrive through the readings and the hymns, and eventually it was packed.
Almost last of all arrived the bridesmaids, who strolled into the church about 12:30, looking only very slightly embarassed, and took their place in one of the front pews.
So the lateness has no real rhyme or reason, and can't even be relied on to be consistent. In at least one case I found myself in an embarassing situation when someone I was relying on to be half an hour late actually arrived twenty minutes early.
It would be easy to assume that this is a result of a relaxed, straw-in-mouth approach to life by people who like to take it easy. But in fact the notable thing about Peruvians is that they often seem to be in a terrible hurry. People bump into each other rushing out of shops. Waiters and shop assistants are frequently harried and impatient. Inter-city buses speed along winding mountain roads, taking the curves with more haste than is necessary.
For people from other cultures, all this can be bewildering and frustrating. But once expectations are adjusted, "la hora peruana" begsin to grow on those of us who also tend to feel that time is a fluid and slippery beast. The amusingly passive Spanish verb constructions beloved in Latin America, like "se me hizo tarde" ("it got late on me") capture this feeling well.
I do have some sympathy with the Peruvian government's attempt to stigmatise chronic lateness, which is part of their general modernising drive to get the country to shake itself up and learn to solve its own problems. And yes, it's partly about respect for others, acknowledging that other people's time is valuable to them.
At the same time, it would be a less idiosyncratic, colorful society that gave itself entirely up to the mechanistic observances of schedules. To maintain an ambivalent, uneasy relationship with time's measures is, in part, to assert that they're not all that matters. The day Peru marches to the beat of the clock, it will have lost some of its unaccountable charm.
Fortunately, I don't think there's much chance of that happening in the near future.
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
So it is with considerable amusement that I read in an almost Onion-like article from the Associated Press that the Peruvian government is launching a "plan to combat lateness"
According to the article, "schools, businesses and government institutions will be asked to stop tolerating 'la hora peruana', or 'Peruvian time' - which usually means an hour late". On March 1, it was intended that sirens would sound and church bells ring out, alerting 27 million Peruvians to synchronize their watches.
In part, this appears to be political points-scoring by president Alan Garcia, who likes to contrast his own punctuality with the notorious tardiness of former president Alejandro Toledo.
But to the extent that it's sincere, just synchronising watches and requesting everybody to turn up earlier for work is not going to change Peruvians' deep-seated, fatalistic attitude to time. Rather like life, it's seen as a force that is nebulous, only partly controllable, and prone to unexplained discontinuities.
Some of this perception is captured by the expression "ahorita", a word used from Mexico through Central America to Peru and Bolivia. As a dimunitive of ahora (now), you could be forgiven for accepting the dictionary translation, which defines it as "right now". But, as anyone who has lived or travelled in these countries will tell you, instead of applying more precision, the dimunitive serves to make the meaning more fuzzy or liquid, spreading out the "now" until its boundaries are no longer discernible.
When someone says that something will happen "ahorita", they are usually indicating that, though they are hopeful that the event will occur soon, they will not be held responsible for designating any specific moment.
"Ahorita vengo", for example, would be literally translated as "I'll be right back", but someone seeking to truly understand the import of the phrase should take it as meaning something like "I may be some time".
There are numerous examples of Peruvians' strange conception of time, of which I only have space to cite a couple. Among the many occasions when my Peruvian ex-girlfriend made we wait an unreasonable amount was an afternoon when had we agreed to meet at 4:00 pm to go to a movie. We decided that she would pick me up after her university classes at the office of Incaventura, where I was explaining trekking and climbing expeditions to groups of tourists.
At 4:15 I got a call to the office; it was Paola. "Hey, it looks like my lecture is going to run over time", she said in an apologetic tone. "He's already kept us here longer to explain something and it'll be another ten minutes before we get out. Sorryyy"
I was puzzled. "But what time was your class supposed to finish?", I asked. "Four o'clock", she said with a hint of impatience, as if I should have known that.
To get from the university to the tour office required her to take two minibuses and then walk several blocks. In the absolutely best combination of circumstances, it was twenty-five minutes away. Exactly which wormhole in the space-time continuum she had ever planned to crawl through to meet me at 4:00 pm, I'll never know.
Lest one take all this personally - and in the case of my ex-girlfriend it was so frequent and exaggerated that I did - it's worth observing that the same approach is routine even for esteemed individuals or for very important events
In my most recent trip to Peru, I attended a wedding in Arequipa, which was scheduled for midday Saturday. Some friends of mine from New Zealand, travelling through the Andean countries, also happened to be in Arequipa at the time, and one of them had experienced some health problems which required a specialist appointment at the local private hospital.
The appointment was for the same Saturday as the wedding, at 9:00 am, and I was to attend as a translator. I went to the hospital on Saturday morning already in my suit, thinking to be on the safe side I would plan to go straight from the hospital to the wedding.
By the time the medical issues were sorted out, it was getting late (the doctor had arrived at the hospital twenty-five minutes after our appointment time). The church where the wedding was to take place was only six blocks up the hill, so at 11:45, when everything seemed to be more or less ok, I left the hospital and hurried up to the church.
Arriving about 11:59, I was the second person there. I introduced myself to the bride's aunt, who was standing outside, and we went into the church. People started to drift in; about 12:10, the bride arrived - surprisingly early, and before the groom - and not long after, the ceremony started.
I can recall looking around and feeling a bit disappointed for Chriss that the beautiful colonial church was only one third full for her wedding. But about fifteen minutes into the ceremony, I turned around again and saw that most of the pews were full. People continued to arrive through the readings and the hymns, and eventually it was packed.
Almost last of all arrived the bridesmaids, who strolled into the church about 12:30, looking only very slightly embarassed, and took their place in one of the front pews.
So the lateness has no real rhyme or reason, and can't even be relied on to be consistent. In at least one case I found myself in an embarassing situation when someone I was relying on to be half an hour late actually arrived twenty minutes early.
It would be easy to assume that this is a result of a relaxed, straw-in-mouth approach to life by people who like to take it easy. But in fact the notable thing about Peruvians is that they often seem to be in a terrible hurry. People bump into each other rushing out of shops. Waiters and shop assistants are frequently harried and impatient. Inter-city buses speed along winding mountain roads, taking the curves with more haste than is necessary.
For people from other cultures, all this can be bewildering and frustrating. But once expectations are adjusted, "la hora peruana" begsin to grow on those of us who also tend to feel that time is a fluid and slippery beast. The amusingly passive Spanish verb constructions beloved in Latin America, like "se me hizo tarde" ("it got late on me") capture this feeling well.
I do have some sympathy with the Peruvian government's attempt to stigmatise chronic lateness, which is part of their general modernising drive to get the country to shake itself up and learn to solve its own problems. And yes, it's partly about respect for others, acknowledging that other people's time is valuable to them.
At the same time, it would be a less idiosyncratic, colorful society that gave itself entirely up to the mechanistic observances of schedules. To maintain an ambivalent, uneasy relationship with time's measures is, in part, to assert that they're not all that matters. The day Peru marches to the beat of the clock, it will have lost some of its unaccountable charm.
Fortunately, I don't think there's much chance of that happening in the near future.
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
Monday, February 19, 2007
Ghost Stories of the Sierra. II: The Mummy Juanita
For any visitor to Arequipa, one of the recommended highlights is a visit to see the famous "Mummy Juanita" in the Catholic University's Museo de Santuarios Andinos, about one block from the Plaza de Armas.
In a temperature-controlled glass case, huddled in richly decorated Incan rugs, Juanita stares out at the visiting tourists. Her skin is showing the effects of 500 years without moisturiser. Her long hair has split ends, and time hasn't been kind to her gums. But she's recognizably, remarkably, the fourteen year-old girl of royal blood who was sacrificed on the icy summit of 6,300 metre Nevado Ampato, five centuries ago.
Juanita was discovered in 1995, when ash and smoke erupting from neighbouring volcano Sabancaya melted part of the ice cap on Ampato, and the seismic activity shook apart her snowy tomb.
The mountain guide who discovered Juanita, along with American archeologist Johann Reinhard, was Mickey Zarate. Though you won't hear anything about him when you watch the National Geographic video that they show at the museum; Reinhard's is the only name mentioned.
These days Mickey has a little hole-in-the-wall office on the calle Santa Catalina - directly opposite Incaventura's office, and next door to Blanca's internet cafe. He's still a mountain guide, but has been completely overshadowed in the business by his brother Carlos, who occupies an entire courtyard a couple of blocks further down Santa Catalina, with a shiny 4WD often parked in the interior.
Mickey is often to be found drowning his sorrows, lamenting his problems with women. He's bitter about the lack of recognition he received in relation to the discovery, and is keen to tell his story to anyone who'll listen.
He had an article written which tells his version of events leading up to the discovery of Juanita
Last time I was in Arequipa he showed me an English translation. He wanted me to check and see if it was alright. There wasn't time on that trip, but when I got back to Arequipa recently Mickey was still waving the translation around, and this time I had a chance to take a look. The translation he'd had done was indeed deeply flawed, so I redid it for him.
The below text is the completed translation. The last sentence is something of a rhetorical flourish, but in an ironic way, it's true that the discovery of Juanita was only the beginning of the story. In a further entry, I'll attempt to relate the tale of the "Curse of the Mummy Juanita".
More Plaudits for Famous Guide Miguel Zarate
At the peak of his guiding career, together with the archeologist Johann Reinhardt, Zarate discovered the tomb of “Juanita” on Nevado Ampato (6,380 metres).
The beginning of the adventure, which culminated in the discovery of the Nevado Ampato mummies, dates from 1989, when Miguel Zarate, heading alone towards the ice cap, came upon a ceremonial plaza at around 5,000 metres above sea level. At that time, the first gassy emanations from the volcano Sabancaya were beginning to melt the ice around the summit of Ampato.
The experienced mountain guide then organized a return expedition with a German group, which opened a new route towards the peak. There they found the “Altar” at about 5,800 metres above sea level, bringing back samples of bone and ceramic fragments.
In 1991, Zárate met up again with his friend and climbing partner Johan Reinhard, whom he had known since 1979, and they spoke about the theme of Andean sanctuaries. The archeologist indicated that he would undertake expeditions to the mountains of Coropuna, Sara Sara, Hualca Hualca, Calches and Huarancante. Ampato wasn’t considered of sufficient importance to be included in the project at that stage.
In Feburary 1992, when Zárate again visited Ampato with a French friend, a storm prevented them from ascending beyond 5,850 metres, where they found scraps of wood and ichu, indicating the construction of a stepped pathway towards the summit.
From 1992, Zárate waited for Johan, to encourage him to ascend the peak. He described his work to many who understood the subject. Some believed him; others no, but for lack of finance and permits, it wasn’t possible to continue with the excavations. Zárate continued patiently waiting.
“I saw a young girl fall, and she called out to me. When I went towards her, I took her in my arms and ran down some stairs, and she said to me: 'Mickey, please, don’t leave me!', and I answered her 'I’m not going to leave you'. 'Promise me!'. 'I promise you'. "
Such was the recurring dream that Zárate had in the days prior to the expedition that discovered the body of Juanita, the “Ice Princess”.
But this surprising discovery wasn’t just based on mere sentiments and dreams – there had been fifteen years of expeditions and previous discoveries which indicated that the 6,380 metre summit of Ampato was the icy home of the sleeping princess.
In September of 1995, Zárate met with Reinhard in the Le Bristol café in Arequipa, and convinced him to travel to Ampato. In 1963 Carlos Zárate Sandoval , Miguel’s father, had led an expedition to Picchu Picchu, where they found the tomb of another Incan princess at 5600 metres, but the body was damaged. In 1994, Miguel’s older brother Carlos returned from Ampato with photographs and a strange braided rope brought from near the summit.
The story began on the morning of the 2nd of September 1995. Miguel Zárate, Johan Reinhard and muleteer Henry Huamani departed from the village of Cabanaconde towards Nevado Ampato. The first results of this expedition were seen at 6,200 metres: on the frozen and pale ground they found scraps of rope, ichu, wood and pieces of ceramic. They were on the right path.
But it was Friday the 8th that was destined for the major discovery. Despite the lack of oxygen and the effort required to work at that altitude, they made it to the summit.
“While Johan took notes, I focused on inspecting, checking and cleaning the area - tasks that we always undertook when reviewing the sites that we visited”.
“Then I noticed that there were remains of a structure and I saw a small fan with reddish feathers sticking out of the mountainside. In that moment I let out a whistle, and raising my pick, called out to Johan”.
Zárate and Reihard embraced each other – they had uncovered the sanctuary.
“We also found pieces of wood, gold laminates, three feminine statuettes, silver, and spondillus (sea shells)”, recalls Miguel.
But its structure had collapsed and the body had fallen down the slope of the crater. Ingeniously, the explorers tossed stones wrapped in yellow plastic to observe their trajectory. The stones rolled and stopped 60 metres below. On descending, Miguel saw a bulky object and pointed it out it Johan, but the latter, not being able to see Zárate, stopped at his side where he gestured with his index finger and said jokingly “There it is, don’t you see; what’s got your tongue?”.
Close by the fallen stones, with her face exposed to the weak rays of the afternoon sun, a young Incan girl was seen by human eyes for the first time in 500 years. Juanita had been discovered.
It was 5:15 in the afternoon. They didn’t think twice about it. A precise blow of the ice pick from the mountain guide freed the Incan princess from her icy prison. “Your pack is bigger” indicated Miguel to Johan, who got rid of everything that was in his pack. While Miguel lifted the bulky object of almost 40 kilos in his arms, he remembered his dreams. He secured it in the pack and lifted it on to Johan’s back.
Time was against them; night fell and the temperature plummeted dangerously. They had to leave Juanita at 5,950 metres to shelter in the camp at 5,800 metres. That night they couldn’t sleep. They agreed to separate; Johan would climb up to collect Juanita and bring her back to the camp.
Very early on the 9th of September Miguel descended to base camp at 5,000 metres, carrying all the equipment from Camp One, and returned for Juanita at 5,800 metres. He brought up Humani for assistance, but the muleteer refused to help bring down the mummy, and returned to base camp, fearful of the curse of the sacrificed girl. Reinhard was very angry and threatened him: “If you don’t catch up with Miguel with the donkey; if you don’t help him, I won’t pay you a single cent”. The muleteer reluctantly agreed.
They descended to 4,600 metres, and there made the final camp, as night was rapidly falling. “I was afraid that if we left the princess to the elements she would fall easy prey to some animal or suffer damage from the weather, so I decided to place her inside the tent; by my side, to be precise”, recalls Miguel Zárate. “Henry didn’t sleep at all that night”.
The 10th of September, they arrived in Cabanaconde, from where Zárate left that same night at 11:30 pm, and on Monday the 11th at 6:00 in the morning, he arrived alone with the mummy in the city of Arequipa. There she spent three days in his house, in a new freezer provided by his friend Dante Lucioni. After that, Miguel and Johan decided to present Juanita to the Catholic University of Santa Maria.
The rest of the story began to be known on the 9th of October, when El Correo, a regional newspaper, featured the great discovery and Juanita the “Ice Princess”, the young girl buried in Nevado Ampato, became the world-renowned protagonist of a story that began 500 years ago - a story that is not yet finished.
..."
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
In a temperature-controlled glass case, huddled in richly decorated Incan rugs, Juanita stares out at the visiting tourists. Her skin is showing the effects of 500 years without moisturiser. Her long hair has split ends, and time hasn't been kind to her gums. But she's recognizably, remarkably, the fourteen year-old girl of royal blood who was sacrificed on the icy summit of 6,300 metre Nevado Ampato, five centuries ago.
Juanita was discovered in 1995, when ash and smoke erupting from neighbouring volcano Sabancaya melted part of the ice cap on Ampato, and the seismic activity shook apart her snowy tomb.
The mountain guide who discovered Juanita, along with American archeologist Johann Reinhard, was Mickey Zarate. Though you won't hear anything about him when you watch the National Geographic video that they show at the museum; Reinhard's is the only name mentioned.
These days Mickey has a little hole-in-the-wall office on the calle Santa Catalina - directly opposite Incaventura's office, and next door to Blanca's internet cafe. He's still a mountain guide, but has been completely overshadowed in the business by his brother Carlos, who occupies an entire courtyard a couple of blocks further down Santa Catalina, with a shiny 4WD often parked in the interior.
Mickey is often to be found drowning his sorrows, lamenting his problems with women. He's bitter about the lack of recognition he received in relation to the discovery, and is keen to tell his story to anyone who'll listen.
He had an article written which tells his version of events leading up to the discovery of Juanita
Last time I was in Arequipa he showed me an English translation. He wanted me to check and see if it was alright. There wasn't time on that trip, but when I got back to Arequipa recently Mickey was still waving the translation around, and this time I had a chance to take a look. The translation he'd had done was indeed deeply flawed, so I redid it for him.
The below text is the completed translation. The last sentence is something of a rhetorical flourish, but in an ironic way, it's true that the discovery of Juanita was only the beginning of the story. In a further entry, I'll attempt to relate the tale of the "Curse of the Mummy Juanita".
More Plaudits for Famous Guide Miguel Zarate
At the peak of his guiding career, together with the archeologist Johann Reinhardt, Zarate discovered the tomb of “Juanita” on Nevado Ampato (6,380 metres).
The beginning of the adventure, which culminated in the discovery of the Nevado Ampato mummies, dates from 1989, when Miguel Zarate, heading alone towards the ice cap, came upon a ceremonial plaza at around 5,000 metres above sea level. At that time, the first gassy emanations from the volcano Sabancaya were beginning to melt the ice around the summit of Ampato.
The experienced mountain guide then organized a return expedition with a German group, which opened a new route towards the peak. There they found the “Altar” at about 5,800 metres above sea level, bringing back samples of bone and ceramic fragments.
In 1991, Zárate met up again with his friend and climbing partner Johan Reinhard, whom he had known since 1979, and they spoke about the theme of Andean sanctuaries. The archeologist indicated that he would undertake expeditions to the mountains of Coropuna, Sara Sara, Hualca Hualca, Calches and Huarancante. Ampato wasn’t considered of sufficient importance to be included in the project at that stage.
In Feburary 1992, when Zárate again visited Ampato with a French friend, a storm prevented them from ascending beyond 5,850 metres, where they found scraps of wood and ichu, indicating the construction of a stepped pathway towards the summit.
From 1992, Zárate waited for Johan, to encourage him to ascend the peak. He described his work to many who understood the subject. Some believed him; others no, but for lack of finance and permits, it wasn’t possible to continue with the excavations. Zárate continued patiently waiting.
“I saw a young girl fall, and she called out to me. When I went towards her, I took her in my arms and ran down some stairs, and she said to me: 'Mickey, please, don’t leave me!', and I answered her 'I’m not going to leave you'. 'Promise me!'. 'I promise you'. "
Such was the recurring dream that Zárate had in the days prior to the expedition that discovered the body of Juanita, the “Ice Princess”.
But this surprising discovery wasn’t just based on mere sentiments and dreams – there had been fifteen years of expeditions and previous discoveries which indicated that the 6,380 metre summit of Ampato was the icy home of the sleeping princess.
In September of 1995, Zárate met with Reinhard in the Le Bristol café in Arequipa, and convinced him to travel to Ampato. In 1963 Carlos Zárate Sandoval , Miguel’s father, had led an expedition to Picchu Picchu, where they found the tomb of another Incan princess at 5600 metres, but the body was damaged. In 1994, Miguel’s older brother Carlos returned from Ampato with photographs and a strange braided rope brought from near the summit.
The story began on the morning of the 2nd of September 1995. Miguel Zárate, Johan Reinhard and muleteer Henry Huamani departed from the village of Cabanaconde towards Nevado Ampato. The first results of this expedition were seen at 6,200 metres: on the frozen and pale ground they found scraps of rope, ichu, wood and pieces of ceramic. They were on the right path.
But it was Friday the 8th that was destined for the major discovery. Despite the lack of oxygen and the effort required to work at that altitude, they made it to the summit.
“While Johan took notes, I focused on inspecting, checking and cleaning the area - tasks that we always undertook when reviewing the sites that we visited”.
“Then I noticed that there were remains of a structure and I saw a small fan with reddish feathers sticking out of the mountainside. In that moment I let out a whistle, and raising my pick, called out to Johan”.
Zárate and Reihard embraced each other – they had uncovered the sanctuary.
“We also found pieces of wood, gold laminates, three feminine statuettes, silver, and spondillus (sea shells)”, recalls Miguel.
But its structure had collapsed and the body had fallen down the slope of the crater. Ingeniously, the explorers tossed stones wrapped in yellow plastic to observe their trajectory. The stones rolled and stopped 60 metres below. On descending, Miguel saw a bulky object and pointed it out it Johan, but the latter, not being able to see Zárate, stopped at his side where he gestured with his index finger and said jokingly “There it is, don’t you see; what’s got your tongue?”.
Close by the fallen stones, with her face exposed to the weak rays of the afternoon sun, a young Incan girl was seen by human eyes for the first time in 500 years. Juanita had been discovered.
It was 5:15 in the afternoon. They didn’t think twice about it. A precise blow of the ice pick from the mountain guide freed the Incan princess from her icy prison. “Your pack is bigger” indicated Miguel to Johan, who got rid of everything that was in his pack. While Miguel lifted the bulky object of almost 40 kilos in his arms, he remembered his dreams. He secured it in the pack and lifted it on to Johan’s back.
Time was against them; night fell and the temperature plummeted dangerously. They had to leave Juanita at 5,950 metres to shelter in the camp at 5,800 metres. That night they couldn’t sleep. They agreed to separate; Johan would climb up to collect Juanita and bring her back to the camp.
Very early on the 9th of September Miguel descended to base camp at 5,000 metres, carrying all the equipment from Camp One, and returned for Juanita at 5,800 metres. He brought up Humani for assistance, but the muleteer refused to help bring down the mummy, and returned to base camp, fearful of the curse of the sacrificed girl. Reinhard was very angry and threatened him: “If you don’t catch up with Miguel with the donkey; if you don’t help him, I won’t pay you a single cent”. The muleteer reluctantly agreed.
They descended to 4,600 metres, and there made the final camp, as night was rapidly falling. “I was afraid that if we left the princess to the elements she would fall easy prey to some animal or suffer damage from the weather, so I decided to place her inside the tent; by my side, to be precise”, recalls Miguel Zárate. “Henry didn’t sleep at all that night”.
The 10th of September, they arrived in Cabanaconde, from where Zárate left that same night at 11:30 pm, and on Monday the 11th at 6:00 in the morning, he arrived alone with the mummy in the city of Arequipa. There she spent three days in his house, in a new freezer provided by his friend Dante Lucioni. After that, Miguel and Johan decided to present Juanita to the Catholic University of Santa Maria.
The rest of the story began to be known on the 9th of October, when El Correo, a regional newspaper, featured the great discovery and Juanita the “Ice Princess”, the young girl buried in Nevado Ampato, became the world-renowned protagonist of a story that began 500 years ago - a story that is not yet finished.
..."
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
Sunday, February 11, 2007
In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle
Photos to come
In the broad clearing there were three spacious wooden bungalows raised on stilts, with high roofs of palm thatch. Each bungalow featured a shady porch with room to hang at least two hammocks. Inside were cots hung with clean mosquito nets. The bathroom had a concrete floor, cold running water and a flush toilet. Only a few large ants mooched around the base of the cistern.
Back down towards the river was the dining hut, with a long table of rough wood, a water filter, a thermos with tea and coffee, and a canopy which kept out the sun and the insects.
The jungle refuge offered just my preferred blend of bourgeois adventurism. Wilderness with catering.
It was a different world from the tacky jungle lodges around Iquitos with swimming pools, hot showers and observation towers. But it didn't quite require you to be Tarzan, when you'd been a deskbound bureaucrat only a few weeks previously and were still recovering from your confounded sunburn.
The refuge was a respectable 215 km from the city. We had driven an hour and a half along Iquitos' only highway, to the little port of Nauta, then travelled another two hours by motor canoe. We cruised along the Marañón to its juncture with the Amazon, crossed the great river, then headed an hour up the Yarapa – a tranquil, muddy-coloured tributary – to find the half-hidden entrance to a quiet lagoon.
The refuge belonged to Andres, a local guy who after 20 years guiding tourists had acquired his own business with a little office a block from the waterfront in Iquitos. His younger brother Juan was the chief guide on our trip.
There was a fair menagerie of pets: a tapir, a peccary (wild pig), a coti (racoon-like creature) and a toucan. They were fully tame yet idiosyncratic. The tapir apparently liked to head into the jungle at night time to look for food, returning to the refuge in the day, where it was also fed. Only a year and a half old, it was still on its way to its full-grown size of 300 kilos. The toucan was slightly loopy: the staff at the refuge sometimes had to pick it up and put it on a ledge or a tree at night, because it had the tendency to fall asleep on the ground – a risk to its health and safety.
It would have been a great story if they had all wound up at the camp as orphans, collected by a kindly hunter or villager. But I found out that from the assistant guide Mike that they had been bought. There's a small trade for those who can snatch a young animal and sell it to the lodges as a tourist gimmick.
Our first forest walk was a pleasant enough exercise in Junglecraft 101. We found a termites' nest and crunched on a couple of the supposedly edible insects. Juan pointed out a rubber tree and cut it with his machete to show how the sap flowed out and coagulated. We saw the slash marks on the trunk where the rubber collectors had tapped it last century.
From a palm tree we sampled the larva which nested in the hollow branches. A slight taste of coconut. I managed to quaff a couple, but was ready to believe that they were tastier when fried.
We refreshed ourselves with fresh water from the liana tree, whose branches form a natural filter. We observed the giant ceiba – the Amazon's largest tree – and a fallen mahogany, though we didn't se any that were standing. While I was prepared to believe Juan's statement that this was "primary jungle" - in the sense that it had never been cleared for cultivation - it still wasn't quite what you imagine as pristine rainforest.
A monkey was glimpsed here; a couple of parrots there. But any other wildlife was well and truly scared off by the tapir, which ccompanied us on the walk, frolicking boisterously.
After two hours we were drenched with sweat, bolstered by a tropical shower which had filtered its way through the canopy. Moisture ran off my forehead and into my eyes. Mud squelched and sucked around our shoes. Though my long sleeves and head-to-toe covering of insect repellent were doing the trick (I had stripped naked and smeared myself well with the lotion before leaving the bungalow), the clouds of mosquitos were intense and persistent
I figured I wasn't quite ready to take a day-long trek, let alone form a guerilla army to fade silently into the forest and strike like lightning at the invader. Given a bit more acclimatisation, I thought I might manage a one-night camp.
After sundown we went back into the forest to look for tarantulas. They weren't hard to find: every second tree seemed to have a fat, hairy resident, its eight thick legs grasping the trunk. We crept a little closer, positioning our cameras.
Every metre we moved further away from the clearing, the thicker the mosquitos became. I'm not a spider fan, and had expected to be freaked out by the hairy arachnids that like to feast on small birds. But while I didn't want to get too close, and nervously hovered just long enough by the spider that Juan scooped onto his machete to get a good photo, the tarantulas seemed positively benign and tranquil in comparison to the ever-present mosquitoes, swarming and whining like an angry plague.
Later, we headed out in the canoe to look for caimans. The moon was high and bright, and Juan was sceptical about whether we would see any. “When the moon is high, they can see us coming”, he said.
We silently sailed through the still waters of the lagoon, down the quiet river, and through flooded groves of trees. No caimans, but for the first time I was struck by a thrill, a feeling of the wildness and immensity of the dark jungle.
The night was loud with the chirp of insects and the the bellow of tree toads. Disconcertingly close by came the rumble of a motor - a ferry making its way up the Amazon. I thought I heard people's voices. I asked Juan, who said there was village with a Presbyterian church about five kilometres away; the singing was drifting on the night breeze. It still wasn't quite Heart of Darkness.
In the torch beam we saw the glowing eyes of a scampering monkey; and later a big owl flapped silently from its perch. But the caimans were nowhere to be found.
In the morning the mist was rising slowly, Avalon-like, from the surface of the lagoon, and we went out in the canoes to look for birds. Across the lagoon, along the river, through the reeds and the mangroves, we patiently identified the species: parrots, parakeets, kingfishers, vultures, herons, dotted this and crested that. I only saw the splashes, but two pink river dolphins broke the water twenty metres behind our canoe.
Every now and again Juan or Mike spotted a sloth. We stopped the canoe, while the guides passed around the binoculars and tried to point out to us where it was. “There! Don't you see! Just to the left of that forked branch!” When we finally picked out the stationary sloth, it was by managing to reconceptualise what had appeared a bird's nest or pile of leaves.
After an hour I'd lost all concentration. My ass was sore from sitting in the canoe and I was desperately craving coffee. On our return from breakfast came disappointment: the coffee tin was empty, and I had to make do with cinammon and clove tea.
We took the canoe across the other side of the lagoon, anchored under some shady mangroves, and began to fish for piranha. We had simple wooden rods – whittled tree branches with a line of thin wire and a rough iron hook.
Juan passed around chunks of chiken and beef. It was good bait for carnivourous fish. The problem wasn't attracting them – it was outsmarting them. Time and again I found that my hook was stripped bare, although I had hardly felt any pull on my line. After a while, Juan snagged a small catfish, then a couple of snapping piranha. Then at the third attempt, Tomas – a Swiss tourist - managed to get one as well.
Just when I'd given up hope of ever catching anything, I responded with a jerk to another almost imperceptible tug. I lifted my line out of the water, and this time there was a flash of orange; a wildly thrashing piranha was snared at the end of my line.
I hung the flailing fish above the canoe and let Mike subdue it. As a fishing incompetent, I didn't want to get too close to its powerful jaws which can apparently take off a finger with a single bite.
My success wasn't repeated. Over the next half hour we steadily worked our way through the rest of the bait. Rossmary – a girl from Iquitos – gave up in a sulk and announced she didn't want to catch one anyway. We headed back across the lagoon for lunch.
As we drank tea and compared photos, Mike brought me my piranha, lightly fried in margarine. It was tasty, though the flesh was scarce. For a brief moment I felt like a real hunter-gatherer.
But thank goodness they'd remembered to cook us some chicken.
Categories: Iquitos, Amazon, Peru
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Sweat and Tears
I've had some difficulties with the climate in the jungle. It's been hot, to the extent that even the locals are complaining. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem: I'm an evangelical hot climate convert. But a couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of getting quite badly burnt at the beach in Mollendo (Arequipa), when I didn't spread the sunblock around well enough when we went to play volleyball and football.
By the time I got to Iquitos, I was peeling on my back and chest, and had dried-up blisters. A couple of days and nights of the intense humidity and constant sweating, and I had come out in a rash all over my chest and the lower part of my back. I would wake up from a disturbed sleep scractching furiously. I tried smearing myself with aloe gel, moisturizer, and, following the advice of my local self-appointed nurses, alcohol (not recommended!).
Something had to be done, as I was about to head into the jungle itself for a couple of days, and I didn't want to even contemplate mixing with the mosquitos with my skin in such a state.
So I went down to the pharmacy, described my problem, and the woman there gave me a cream containing ani-inflammatory steroids and antibiotics. By then they were getting sick of the sight of me; in the first couple of days I had started to develop an irritating sore throat, and requested something to relieve that. Later, I returned and demanded their best insect repellent, as I have a history of being sweet meat for mosquitos.
I'm happy to report that the medicines were all cheap and effective. The pills and lozenges they gave me for the sore throat cleared up the irritation nicely, though they couldn't prevent the snuffly cold that developed a couple of days later. After using the entire tube of cream over a couple of days, my skin rash had settled down well too. This was also helped by a decision to sleep under a single sheet with the fan on its lowest setting (still rather strong) blowing directly over me. Part of my problem had been sleeping the first few nights with no sheet and the fan switched off, causing me to wake up with the sensation that somebody had empited a bucket of warm water over me.
And the excellent combined mosquito repellent / suncream prescribed by the woman in the pharmacy really worked! Together with the couple of long-sleeved t-shirts that I bought before heading into the jungle, it helped me to return to the city without a single bite, despite the clouds of voracious insects that accompanied us on the jungle walks (story to come).
I have a tendency to avoid all medication this side of Panadol, and generally go along with the post-Silent Spring distrust of too many chemicals and medicated lifestyles. In the jungle of Peru it's a different story. With the outdoor lifestyle abundance of fresh fruit and fish, chronic Western ailments are not really the problem. What is going to hurt you will hurt you swiftly and without apologies. You need to fight back fast with good drugs. My philosophy for living here has become: when in doubt, medicate, medicate, medicate.
I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford to do that, but that's the flip side of the inherent gringo vulnerabilities that we bring with us and cause us to fray at the seams in a beautiful natural setting where people wander cheerfully round explosing their healthy, bronzed and glowing skin - not something I can ever aspire to.
Categories: Iquitos, Amazon, Peru
By the time I got to Iquitos, I was peeling on my back and chest, and had dried-up blisters. A couple of days and nights of the intense humidity and constant sweating, and I had come out in a rash all over my chest and the lower part of my back. I would wake up from a disturbed sleep scractching furiously. I tried smearing myself with aloe gel, moisturizer, and, following the advice of my local self-appointed nurses, alcohol (not recommended!).
Something had to be done, as I was about to head into the jungle itself for a couple of days, and I didn't want to even contemplate mixing with the mosquitos with my skin in such a state.
So I went down to the pharmacy, described my problem, and the woman there gave me a cream containing ani-inflammatory steroids and antibiotics. By then they were getting sick of the sight of me; in the first couple of days I had started to develop an irritating sore throat, and requested something to relieve that. Later, I returned and demanded their best insect repellent, as I have a history of being sweet meat for mosquitos.
I'm happy to report that the medicines were all cheap and effective. The pills and lozenges they gave me for the sore throat cleared up the irritation nicely, though they couldn't prevent the snuffly cold that developed a couple of days later. After using the entire tube of cream over a couple of days, my skin rash had settled down well too. This was also helped by a decision to sleep under a single sheet with the fan on its lowest setting (still rather strong) blowing directly over me. Part of my problem had been sleeping the first few nights with no sheet and the fan switched off, causing me to wake up with the sensation that somebody had empited a bucket of warm water over me.
And the excellent combined mosquito repellent / suncream prescribed by the woman in the pharmacy really worked! Together with the couple of long-sleeved t-shirts that I bought before heading into the jungle, it helped me to return to the city without a single bite, despite the clouds of voracious insects that accompanied us on the jungle walks (story to come).
I have a tendency to avoid all medication this side of Panadol, and generally go along with the post-Silent Spring distrust of too many chemicals and medicated lifestyles. In the jungle of Peru it's a different story. With the outdoor lifestyle abundance of fresh fruit and fish, chronic Western ailments are not really the problem. What is going to hurt you will hurt you swiftly and without apologies. You need to fight back fast with good drugs. My philosophy for living here has become: when in doubt, medicate, medicate, medicate.
I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford to do that, but that's the flip side of the inherent gringo vulnerabilities that we bring with us and cause us to fray at the seams in a beautiful natural setting where people wander cheerfully round explosing their healthy, bronzed and glowing skin - not something I can ever aspire to.
Categories: Iquitos, Amazon, Peru
Friday, February 02, 2007
Explosión!
Take one January afternoon in Iquitos, 34 degrees celcius with 62% humidity. Location: an old aircraft hangar on the way out of the city. Add approximately 5,000 people packed into the structure, spilling out of the only open side towards a concrete terrace with a few tables and a makeshift bar. To season, let local Iquitos band Explosión! belt out a high-energy mixture of cumbia, merengue and tropical pop, with the odd salsa piece for variety. Simmer at a high temperature for several hours until everything is liquid.
It was a typical Sunday afternoon in Coa, one of the popular (semi) open-air discotheques where weekend concerts start in the late afternoon and continue into the night. The usual protagonists are local acts like Explosión, Kaliente, Sensación, Adrenalina, and so forth. They boast a battery of synthesizers, an extensive percussion section, and at least three or four bikini-and-tassles clad dancers, who sinuously spin and gyrate to the music.
Refreshments are provided by two or three harried people rushing about behind a tiny makeshift bar outside, frenetically opening crates of beer and fishing water and coke out of a bucket which once contained ice, while everyone pushes and shoves, shouts, and waves money.
This particular Sunday was bolstered by the presence of Lima act Los Caribeños, who were supposed to be the highlight. But by the time Explosión had finished their frenetic two-and-a half hour set, with stops only for a couple of crowd competitions (breaks are for wusses), Los Caribeños' brand of tropical ska-funk seemed rather tame and repetitive.
Besides, by then I at least had transferred almost all my body's water content from the inside to the outside. My friend Clayra insisted that she, I, and her friend Blancaflor (they have such pretty names here) work our way as far as possible into the middle and the front of the crowd as possible.
Have I ever sweated more? Has anyone? I made several trips to push and shoulder my way to the front of the bar and bring back beer. Within a couple of minutes, it was like warm tea.
The habit here is when people finish their beer, they simply place it on the concrete floor beside them - with preditable consequences. Clayra did this, and I picked the bottle up, saying: "hey, I'll take them all outside and leave them on a table". "No, it's all right", she said. "Someone comes round and collects them".
This is true - there was a guy with a bag scavenging the bottles. But he didn't always arrive in time, and as the crowd got denser bottle collecting was no longer practical. The previous time I came to Coa, we arrived when the band was already half way through, and the floor of the hall was scattered with broken glass. This time, I was able to see the process in action. It's always going to happen, and with typical Peruvian insousiance, nobody does anything about it.
Carnival is about to start, and groups of the local teenagers were getting in early, covering each other with flour, and randomly spraying around beer. We managed to escape most of the flour, but the beer was unavoidable, and by the time we stumbled out of the hall, three songs into Los Caribeños, I smelt like the University of Canterbury Student Union the morning after Orientation opening night.
Somehow the girls managed to remain relatively dry, and given that we were all in the same place when the beer started spraying, this led me to conclude that the sticky moisture covering from my hair to the knees of my jeans was 90% pure gringo sweat.
Categories: Iquitos, Amazon, Peru
It was a typical Sunday afternoon in Coa, one of the popular (semi) open-air discotheques where weekend concerts start in the late afternoon and continue into the night. The usual protagonists are local acts like Explosión, Kaliente, Sensación, Adrenalina, and so forth. They boast a battery of synthesizers, an extensive percussion section, and at least three or four bikini-and-tassles clad dancers, who sinuously spin and gyrate to the music.
Refreshments are provided by two or three harried people rushing about behind a tiny makeshift bar outside, frenetically opening crates of beer and fishing water and coke out of a bucket which once contained ice, while everyone pushes and shoves, shouts, and waves money.
This particular Sunday was bolstered by the presence of Lima act Los Caribeños, who were supposed to be the highlight. But by the time Explosión had finished their frenetic two-and-a half hour set, with stops only for a couple of crowd competitions (breaks are for wusses), Los Caribeños' brand of tropical ska-funk seemed rather tame and repetitive.
Besides, by then I at least had transferred almost all my body's water content from the inside to the outside. My friend Clayra insisted that she, I, and her friend Blancaflor (they have such pretty names here) work our way as far as possible into the middle and the front of the crowd as possible.
Have I ever sweated more? Has anyone? I made several trips to push and shoulder my way to the front of the bar and bring back beer. Within a couple of minutes, it was like warm tea.
The habit here is when people finish their beer, they simply place it on the concrete floor beside them - with preditable consequences. Clayra did this, and I picked the bottle up, saying: "hey, I'll take them all outside and leave them on a table". "No, it's all right", she said. "Someone comes round and collects them".
This is true - there was a guy with a bag scavenging the bottles. But he didn't always arrive in time, and as the crowd got denser bottle collecting was no longer practical. The previous time I came to Coa, we arrived when the band was already half way through, and the floor of the hall was scattered with broken glass. This time, I was able to see the process in action. It's always going to happen, and with typical Peruvian insousiance, nobody does anything about it.
Carnival is about to start, and groups of the local teenagers were getting in early, covering each other with flour, and randomly spraying around beer. We managed to escape most of the flour, but the beer was unavoidable, and by the time we stumbled out of the hall, three songs into Los Caribeños, I smelt like the University of Canterbury Student Union the morning after Orientation opening night.
Somehow the girls managed to remain relatively dry, and given that we were all in the same place when the beer started spraying, this led me to conclude that the sticky moisture covering from my hair to the knees of my jeans was 90% pure gringo sweat.
Categories: Iquitos, Amazon, Peru
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Crime Pays
After much struggle and hard work, and a bit of family capital, Marcos and Giovana made a success of their business, mainly specializing in buying and selling leather. They were able to save, and gradually expand their space in a crowded gallery amidst the dust and rubbish of a commercial market a couple blocks from the roaring traffic ofLima's Via Express.
One evening heading home in their truck, the traffic was jammed up and they had to take a different route through the Barrios Altos area of central Lima, notorious for robberies and assaults. They were crossing a bridge, when out of nowhere appeared two chorros, or petty thieves, and whoosh! ripped off each of the side mirrors, then scuttled off.
Giovana says she was shaking with fright; despite having been born in Lima and living there all her life, she had never been robbed before or since - a feat which would put her in a virtually unique situation among the citizens of that city.
But Marcos thought quickly. He brought the truck to a halt, poked his head out the window,and shouted after the departing chorros: "Hey, I'll give you twenty soles for those!". "In the cachinas, the markets where they sell stolen goods, they ask up to 150 soles for wing mirrors like those", he explains.
Giovana was trembling, but noticed the chorros hesitate, and heard one say to the other "hey, he's offering us twenty soles". They stopped, and tracked back towards the truck. "Thirty", said one curtly. Giovana, fearful, watched as the chorros craned their necks to peer into the truck's window to see if there was anything else worth nabbing. There was a brief negotiation, and it was agreed that the price would be fifteen soles for each mirror.
The chorros took the cash and went on their way; they had cut out their middle man, while Marcos and Giovana kept their mirrors. A peculiar kind of Peruvian efficiency.
Categories: Lima, South America, Peru
One evening heading home in their truck, the traffic was jammed up and they had to take a different route through the Barrios Altos area of central Lima, notorious for robberies and assaults. They were crossing a bridge, when out of nowhere appeared two chorros, or petty thieves, and whoosh! ripped off each of the side mirrors, then scuttled off.
Giovana says she was shaking with fright; despite having been born in Lima and living there all her life, she had never been robbed before or since - a feat which would put her in a virtually unique situation among the citizens of that city.
But Marcos thought quickly. He brought the truck to a halt, poked his head out the window,and shouted after the departing chorros: "Hey, I'll give you twenty soles for those!". "In the cachinas, the markets where they sell stolen goods, they ask up to 150 soles for wing mirrors like those", he explains.
Giovana was trembling, but noticed the chorros hesitate, and heard one say to the other "hey, he's offering us twenty soles". They stopped, and tracked back towards the truck. "Thirty", said one curtly. Giovana, fearful, watched as the chorros craned their necks to peer into the truck's window to see if there was anything else worth nabbing. There was a brief negotiation, and it was agreed that the price would be fifteen soles for each mirror.
The chorros took the cash and went on their way; they had cut out their middle man, while Marcos and Giovana kept their mirrors. A peculiar kind of Peruvian efficiency.
Categories: Lima, South America, Peru
Friday, January 19, 2007
Ghost Stories of the Sierra. I: Teodoro and the Chinchilico
When the Señora Gloria Cabrera Villafuerte needed domestic help, she walked a couple of blocks from her house in suburban Arequipa to a corner where the dilapidated buses that bounce and grind along the dusty gravel road winding down from the sierra make their final stop.
There, she found Alejandro and Teodoro getting off the bus, tired and wide-eyed. “Do you want to work?”, asked the Señora Gloria. Alejandro answered in Quechua: “Arí, mamay” (“yes, ma'am”).
By the time I first arrived in Arequipa a couple of years later, and started helping Gloria's son Hugo with his adventure tourism business, Alejandro and Teodoro spoke fluent enough Spanish, though with a thickish accent. Alejandro had become a competent and patient mountain guide, and accompanied me when I struggled up to the peak of 6,075-metre Nevado Chachani.
Younger brother Teodoro was still frowning over pots in the family kitchen, struggling with lowland ingredients like rice, lamb and coriander. He wanted to be a mountain guide too, and took any possible opportunity to go on climbing expeditions. I bought him some proper boots, to help get him started.
“Thanks”, he said. “Now I just need a decent sleeping bag”.
People from the sierra of Peru are periodically bedeviled by spirits and ghosts that disturb, threaten, or simply irritate. It's not a question of believing or disbelieving; for them the spirit world is just as much a constant, shadowy presence as the monumental peaks of the Andes that hover over their steep, terraced plots of land.
Last year, Teodoro and Alejandro's father was possessed by a gentíl, described as “a spirit, an ancient one, from the times before the Spanish or even the Incas”. The gentíl is said to gradually suck the energy from the person it occupies, to maintain its own life force.
Teodoro made the long trip back up into the mountains, but there was nothing he could do. His father had seen doctors, but they were unable to find either diagnosis or remedy for his wasting illness, and he eventually passed away.
In the months from December to March, which is the low season for mountain guiding, Teodoro now often works in an old, nearly exhausted gold mine near Nazca. The company pays a reasonable wage by Peruvian standards, but one that rapidly disappears in exchange for the inflated food and accommodation costs in that isolated locale. Most of the rest is sent to Teodoro's mother, back up in the sierra.
It’s hard, grinding work, as the miners hack into the earth, breaking up, shifting and dynamiting rock, then sifting through the rubble and dust for the few specks of metal. Chewing coca is compulsory. It fights off hunger, tiredness, and the omnipresent dust. The slog continues day and night.
One night, Teodoro was on the graveyard shift. He and a handful of companions were making slow progress in the dark, advancing no more than a couple of metres over several hours. They stopped for a break and a cigarette.
The men were sitting down, resting silently. Suddenly, before Teodoro appeared a a little man, less than waist high, with a long beard reaching to the ground – a creature that the miners call a chincilico. The chinchilico grabbed the startled Teodoro by the leg and, with surprising strength, dragged him a body-length or more across the ground. Then it disappeared. Roused by the kerfuffle, Teodoro’s companions asked what had happened. They had seen nothing. Shaken, Teodoro simply shrugged and muttered something evasive. But later, another man watched a big rat run past, which no one else saw.
The next day, Teodoro fell sick. His entire body ached and he was laid low. People from the mountains are as strong as oxen, and never stop work frivolously. But he had to go to the company office and ask for three full days off. He couldn’t tell them what had happened – who would believe it? Instead he said that a large stone had fallen on him.
Teodoro says the legend is that if you see a chinchilico in the mine, you must not be afraid. You must not panic but remain completely calm. Politely, you ask the chinchilico to exchange his lantern for yours. If you are not afraid, he will agree. You then request that he also exchange his helmet for your one. When you leave the mine, you find that your new helmet and lantern are made of solid gold.
“So, for this to happen, you have to have absolutely no fear when you meet the chinchilico?”, I asked Teodoro. “That’s right”, he said. “But the thing is, you always get afraid”.
There, she found Alejandro and Teodoro getting off the bus, tired and wide-eyed. “Do you want to work?”, asked the Señora Gloria. Alejandro answered in Quechua: “Arí, mamay” (“yes, ma'am”).
By the time I first arrived in Arequipa a couple of years later, and started helping Gloria's son Hugo with his adventure tourism business, Alejandro and Teodoro spoke fluent enough Spanish, though with a thickish accent. Alejandro had become a competent and patient mountain guide, and accompanied me when I struggled up to the peak of 6,075-metre Nevado Chachani.
Younger brother Teodoro was still frowning over pots in the family kitchen, struggling with lowland ingredients like rice, lamb and coriander. He wanted to be a mountain guide too, and took any possible opportunity to go on climbing expeditions. I bought him some proper boots, to help get him started.
“Thanks”, he said. “Now I just need a decent sleeping bag”.
People from the sierra of Peru are periodically bedeviled by spirits and ghosts that disturb, threaten, or simply irritate. It's not a question of believing or disbelieving; for them the spirit world is just as much a constant, shadowy presence as the monumental peaks of the Andes that hover over their steep, terraced plots of land.
Last year, Teodoro and Alejandro's father was possessed by a gentíl, described as “a spirit, an ancient one, from the times before the Spanish or even the Incas”. The gentíl is said to gradually suck the energy from the person it occupies, to maintain its own life force.
Teodoro made the long trip back up into the mountains, but there was nothing he could do. His father had seen doctors, but they were unable to find either diagnosis or remedy for his wasting illness, and he eventually passed away.
In the months from December to March, which is the low season for mountain guiding, Teodoro now often works in an old, nearly exhausted gold mine near Nazca. The company pays a reasonable wage by Peruvian standards, but one that rapidly disappears in exchange for the inflated food and accommodation costs in that isolated locale. Most of the rest is sent to Teodoro's mother, back up in the sierra.
It’s hard, grinding work, as the miners hack into the earth, breaking up, shifting and dynamiting rock, then sifting through the rubble and dust for the few specks of metal. Chewing coca is compulsory. It fights off hunger, tiredness, and the omnipresent dust. The slog continues day and night.
One night, Teodoro was on the graveyard shift. He and a handful of companions were making slow progress in the dark, advancing no more than a couple of metres over several hours. They stopped for a break and a cigarette.
The men were sitting down, resting silently. Suddenly, before Teodoro appeared a a little man, less than waist high, with a long beard reaching to the ground – a creature that the miners call a chincilico. The chinchilico grabbed the startled Teodoro by the leg and, with surprising strength, dragged him a body-length or more across the ground. Then it disappeared. Roused by the kerfuffle, Teodoro’s companions asked what had happened. They had seen nothing. Shaken, Teodoro simply shrugged and muttered something evasive. But later, another man watched a big rat run past, which no one else saw.
The next day, Teodoro fell sick. His entire body ached and he was laid low. People from the mountains are as strong as oxen, and never stop work frivolously. But he had to go to the company office and ask for three full days off. He couldn’t tell them what had happened – who would believe it? Instead he said that a large stone had fallen on him.
Teodoro says the legend is that if you see a chinchilico in the mine, you must not be afraid. You must not panic but remain completely calm. Politely, you ask the chinchilico to exchange his lantern for yours. If you are not afraid, he will agree. You then request that he also exchange his helmet for your one. When you leave the mine, you find that your new helmet and lantern are made of solid gold.
“So, for this to happen, you have to have absolutely no fear when you meet the chinchilico?”, I asked Teodoro. “That’s right”, he said. “But the thing is, you always get afraid”.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Not Worlds Apart
It’s a provincial, parochial town whose geographical isolation strengthens its insularity. It lays claim to being the country’s second city, a title disputed with a town of similar size further to the north
Surrounded on most sides by mountains, the flip side of the spectacular views is that the city suffers from significant air pollution. The climate is dry; nights are crisp, and sunny days are often quickly cooled by a breeze that springs up in the afternoon. Residents learn to take a sweater with them most of the time.
The centre of the city is dominated by architecture from a specific colonial period, with the outstanding structures belonging to the establishment religion. Locals have a strong regional identity. While they are proud of their distinctiveness and see themselves as well-bred, cultured, and orderly, outsiders who spend time there find the place rather stuffy, snobbish, conservative and gossipy. More self-aware locals, especially those who have lived elsewhere, quietly concur.
A centre of agriculture and commerce, the city was settled with the endorsement of the political and religious authorities of the colonizing nation, who laid down a rigid grid pattern for the city centre, disturbed only by the winding river. The orderly centre, with its pleasant parks, has been extended in recent times by a not particularly attractive urban sprawl, which is eating up the surrounding green belt.
For much of its history, this has been a culturally monolithic, and overwhelmingly white, part of the country. Recent immigration is radically changing the ethnic and cultural face of the city, but integration is stilted. There is some suspicion and hostility towards the new immigrants, and a tendency towards voluntary segregation.
Despite the patrician culture and strong sense of class – or perhaps because of it – the region overwhelmingly votes left in national elections, and has historically been the centre of working-class activism. Radical politicians of all stripes have hailed from the region.
There’s a particular touchiness towards the big city to the north, which locals love to hate. They despise the big city's sprawling messiness and rampant individualism, and what they view as its culture of greed, arrogance and bad manners.
Yes, I’m afraid it’s undeniable. Arequipa is the Christchurch of South America. My sneaking suspicions have been growing the more I listen to both local and outsider assessments of the city that I've adopted as a second home. They were confirmed when I met up with some friends here over New Year who also grew up in Christchurch, and my friend Paul - who has travelled in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and now Peru and Bolivia - said out loud what had started to germinate in my thoughts.
So, have I managed to unwittingly come full circle? In seeking out exotic places to escape from the perceived conservative priggishness of my home town, have I ended up subconsciously choosing a location which subtly mirrors many of its characteristics? Such a tendency is certainly not universal, because my younger sister wound up in Miami - in many ways the direct opposite of Christchurch.
But, plumbing my conscience, I have to admit that part of what appeals to me here is a certain conservatism and reserve, which take the edge off the the craziness of much of the Latin American world, and gives assurance to the timid, Cancerian side of my personality. Perhaps a humbling reminder that, however, far you travel, some things are difficult to escape.
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
Surrounded on most sides by mountains, the flip side of the spectacular views is that the city suffers from significant air pollution. The climate is dry; nights are crisp, and sunny days are often quickly cooled by a breeze that springs up in the afternoon. Residents learn to take a sweater with them most of the time.
The centre of the city is dominated by architecture from a specific colonial period, with the outstanding structures belonging to the establishment religion. Locals have a strong regional identity. While they are proud of their distinctiveness and see themselves as well-bred, cultured, and orderly, outsiders who spend time there find the place rather stuffy, snobbish, conservative and gossipy. More self-aware locals, especially those who have lived elsewhere, quietly concur.
A centre of agriculture and commerce, the city was settled with the endorsement of the political and religious authorities of the colonizing nation, who laid down a rigid grid pattern for the city centre, disturbed only by the winding river. The orderly centre, with its pleasant parks, has been extended in recent times by a not particularly attractive urban sprawl, which is eating up the surrounding green belt.
For much of its history, this has been a culturally monolithic, and overwhelmingly white, part of the country. Recent immigration is radically changing the ethnic and cultural face of the city, but integration is stilted. There is some suspicion and hostility towards the new immigrants, and a tendency towards voluntary segregation.
Despite the patrician culture and strong sense of class – or perhaps because of it – the region overwhelmingly votes left in national elections, and has historically been the centre of working-class activism. Radical politicians of all stripes have hailed from the region.
There’s a particular touchiness towards the big city to the north, which locals love to hate. They despise the big city's sprawling messiness and rampant individualism, and what they view as its culture of greed, arrogance and bad manners.
Yes, I’m afraid it’s undeniable. Arequipa is the Christchurch of South America. My sneaking suspicions have been growing the more I listen to both local and outsider assessments of the city that I've adopted as a second home. They were confirmed when I met up with some friends here over New Year who also grew up in Christchurch, and my friend Paul - who has travelled in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and now Peru and Bolivia - said out loud what had started to germinate in my thoughts.
So, have I managed to unwittingly come full circle? In seeking out exotic places to escape from the perceived conservative priggishness of my home town, have I ended up subconsciously choosing a location which subtly mirrors many of its characteristics? Such a tendency is certainly not universal, because my younger sister wound up in Miami - in many ways the direct opposite of Christchurch.
But, plumbing my conscience, I have to admit that part of what appeals to me here is a certain conservatism and reserve, which take the edge off the the craziness of much of the Latin American world, and gives assurance to the timid, Cancerian side of my personality. Perhaps a humbling reminder that, however, far you travel, some things are difficult to escape.
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Ways of Life
The woman in the chicken stall grasped the whole plucked bird by the neck and deftly chopped it into sections. Whack! Off with the head. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! And we had legs, thighs and breast, just like in the supermarket packets. A few more deft flourishes, and the liver, stomach and feet (minus nails and outer skin) were put in separate bags to use for soup.
After a kilo of eggs, two large wheels of fresh cheese, 500 grams of fresh olives, two kilos of potatoes, a couple of packets of sausage and patty meat, and a sheep's stomach thrown in for good measure, Hugo and I had spent 48 soles (around $16 USD). Lizbeth and the kids were picking up the vegetables; we'd already stocked up on peaches, mangoes, papaya, grapes and pacay from a roadside stall.
We were in one of the slightly pricier of Arequipa's produce markets, which for its premium was clean, orderly, and offered supermarket-style trolleys. According to Lizbeth and Hugo, it costs about 100 soles for the required provisions to feed what is, with the revolving cast of home help, friends and guests, a family of four or five. Adding in things bought during the week such as bread, coffee, takeaways, and other bits and pieces, Lizbeth estimated that they would spend 200 soles a week ($65 USD).
Obviously incomes are a lot lower here. But I couldn't help comparing that favourably with the $12 NZD or so it costs me to buy the ingredients for one meal and some leftovers for the next day - just for one person.
Though the tourist business is precarious, Hugo and Lizbeth also don't have to pay rent, as the rambling house on the Avda. Gutemberg is shared in a complicated way among the family. I'm not really cut out for economics-type stuff, but if someone was to work out a ratio of work required for provision of basics, they might compare favourably with a New Zealand middle class family, even amidst the core struggle of life in Peru.
When I first experienced domestic Peruvian life, I found it hard to deal with the lack of hot running water. Now, Hugo and Lizbeth's part of the house boasts a functioning electric shower head. Though it has unreliable pressure, and seems to battle with the kitchen light for power, with a little patience it produces a perfectly reasonable hot shower.
Either electric head or gas-heated showers are extremely common in Latin America. For the price of a small wait before your water heats, you don't have to pay to keep a large tank constantly heated, and, I would imagine, make a much smaller dent on the national electricity grid.
Dishwashing is also a lower-energy endeavour. Here, it's standard practice to use a cold water with a scrubbing pad and a hard, cold-water soap. Again, I'll give way in the facts to the epidemiologists and environmental engineers, but I would guess that hygiene is maintained just as well, and the overall environmental impact is much smaller, than using hot water and sudsy detergent.
In my gringo ignorance, I also used to silently chortle a little at the house's washing machine, with it's clunky controls, and its single flimsy discharge hose. The machine used to be indoors, and the idea was that the dirty water would be discharged into a drainage hole in the floor. This didn't seem to work well, and a load of washing often ended up flooding the kitchen floor. On one occasion, after some studious work with a stick and a plunger, I improved the flow down the drain by extracting some bundles of lint and a dead mouse.
Now, the washing machine sits outside on the patio. The normal technique is to fill the machine to the level required with the garden hose, run the wash or rinse cycle (less than 5 minutes for each is plenty), then empty the water into one of the large plastic washing tubs and from there into the traditional laundry fixture at the back of the patio.
I now see the practicality of the machine - it's designed for the rambling, informally developed houses of Latin America that don't have comprehensive plumbing. Doing the washing is a nice little 15-minute ritual after breakfast; by the time you've put the clothes through the machine's separate (and very efficient) spin compartment, they only require and hour or two in the sun to fully dry.
For about 9 months of the year, Arequipa's nightime temperatures drop below 10 degrees celcius, but heating is not really necessary. Almost all buildings are made of thick stone, brick or concrete, which soak up the sun and retain warmth to such an extent that a single sheet is all that's needed for most of the night's sleep.
What's my point here? Simply that there's not just two ways to live: modernity, meaning mile-a minute pace, ever-increasing work hours, isolation from fellow citizens, and burgeoning consumption of energy and other rsources; or backwardness, meaning poverty, ignorance, and lack of technology. With simpler, practical versions of existing technologies suited to a region's geography, and more attention to the value of time, it's possible to have the comforts of the modern world without driving ourselves and the environment into the ground.
With its crippling poverty, pollution and poor infrastructure, Peru might not seem like it has much to teach the western world. But as it slowly drags itself into the next stage of development, I hope it pursues its own idiosyncratic path and retains some of the things which are working just fine now, mixing and matching to suit and not abandoning the Latin obsessions of family, community and quality of life.
After a kilo of eggs, two large wheels of fresh cheese, 500 grams of fresh olives, two kilos of potatoes, a couple of packets of sausage and patty meat, and a sheep's stomach thrown in for good measure, Hugo and I had spent 48 soles (around $16 USD). Lizbeth and the kids were picking up the vegetables; we'd already stocked up on peaches, mangoes, papaya, grapes and pacay from a roadside stall.
We were in one of the slightly pricier of Arequipa's produce markets, which for its premium was clean, orderly, and offered supermarket-style trolleys. According to Lizbeth and Hugo, it costs about 100 soles for the required provisions to feed what is, with the revolving cast of home help, friends and guests, a family of four or five. Adding in things bought during the week such as bread, coffee, takeaways, and other bits and pieces, Lizbeth estimated that they would spend 200 soles a week ($65 USD).
Obviously incomes are a lot lower here. But I couldn't help comparing that favourably with the $12 NZD or so it costs me to buy the ingredients for one meal and some leftovers for the next day - just for one person.
Though the tourist business is precarious, Hugo and Lizbeth also don't have to pay rent, as the rambling house on the Avda. Gutemberg is shared in a complicated way among the family. I'm not really cut out for economics-type stuff, but if someone was to work out a ratio of work required for provision of basics, they might compare favourably with a New Zealand middle class family, even amidst the core struggle of life in Peru.
When I first experienced domestic Peruvian life, I found it hard to deal with the lack of hot running water. Now, Hugo and Lizbeth's part of the house boasts a functioning electric shower head. Though it has unreliable pressure, and seems to battle with the kitchen light for power, with a little patience it produces a perfectly reasonable hot shower.
Either electric head or gas-heated showers are extremely common in Latin America. For the price of a small wait before your water heats, you don't have to pay to keep a large tank constantly heated, and, I would imagine, make a much smaller dent on the national electricity grid.
Dishwashing is also a lower-energy endeavour. Here, it's standard practice to use a cold water with a scrubbing pad and a hard, cold-water soap. Again, I'll give way in the facts to the epidemiologists and environmental engineers, but I would guess that hygiene is maintained just as well, and the overall environmental impact is much smaller, than using hot water and sudsy detergent.
In my gringo ignorance, I also used to silently chortle a little at the house's washing machine, with it's clunky controls, and its single flimsy discharge hose. The machine used to be indoors, and the idea was that the dirty water would be discharged into a drainage hole in the floor. This didn't seem to work well, and a load of washing often ended up flooding the kitchen floor. On one occasion, after some studious work with a stick and a plunger, I improved the flow down the drain by extracting some bundles of lint and a dead mouse.
Now, the washing machine sits outside on the patio. The normal technique is to fill the machine to the level required with the garden hose, run the wash or rinse cycle (less than 5 minutes for each is plenty), then empty the water into one of the large plastic washing tubs and from there into the traditional laundry fixture at the back of the patio.
I now see the practicality of the machine - it's designed for the rambling, informally developed houses of Latin America that don't have comprehensive plumbing. Doing the washing is a nice little 15-minute ritual after breakfast; by the time you've put the clothes through the machine's separate (and very efficient) spin compartment, they only require and hour or two in the sun to fully dry.
For about 9 months of the year, Arequipa's nightime temperatures drop below 10 degrees celcius, but heating is not really necessary. Almost all buildings are made of thick stone, brick or concrete, which soak up the sun and retain warmth to such an extent that a single sheet is all that's needed for most of the night's sleep.
What's my point here? Simply that there's not just two ways to live: modernity, meaning mile-a minute pace, ever-increasing work hours, isolation from fellow citizens, and burgeoning consumption of energy and other rsources; or backwardness, meaning poverty, ignorance, and lack of technology. With simpler, practical versions of existing technologies suited to a region's geography, and more attention to the value of time, it's possible to have the comforts of the modern world without driving ourselves and the environment into the ground.
With its crippling poverty, pollution and poor infrastructure, Peru might not seem like it has much to teach the western world. But as it slowly drags itself into the next stage of development, I hope it pursues its own idiosyncratic path and retains some of the things which are working just fine now, mixing and matching to suit and not abandoning the Latin obsessions of family, community and quality of life.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
South America Bidsta
So here I find myself in South America again. In Santiago de Chile, actually. The jet lag is seriously messing with me for now, so I can't write much.
Suffice it to say that I'm overnighting here and catching my connection to Lima tomorrow. There it looks like I'll meet up with my friend Hugo, who is on a quixotic mission to acquire a visa from the Spanish embassy. Then it should be on to Arequipa, "la ciudada blanca", under whose mountains it seems a part of my heart is permanently ensconced.
I have a wedding to attend on the 6th of January, and after that it's pretty free and loose - perhaps another trip to the jungle, maybe the coast, hopefully material to be gathered for some more stories.
In the meantime, for those who have anything close to my level of fascination for the Latin American world (especially those who managed to get through any of my ruminations on Peruvian politics last year), here's an article worth reading. From the London Review of Books, a reflection on how Chile has changed - and how it hasn't - in the years since Salvador Allende and the Pinochet coup. Warning - contains strong personal and political slant.
For me it's a useful counter balance to the "Chile is doing just wonderfully and is an example to the world" line we see a lot these days. On the other hand, the description of Chile's continuing dark undercurrents could probably be applied to a number of other outwrdly progressiv countries - including New Zealand.
Suffice it to say that I'm overnighting here and catching my connection to Lima tomorrow. There it looks like I'll meet up with my friend Hugo, who is on a quixotic mission to acquire a visa from the Spanish embassy. Then it should be on to Arequipa, "la ciudada blanca", under whose mountains it seems a part of my heart is permanently ensconced.
I have a wedding to attend on the 6th of January, and after that it's pretty free and loose - perhaps another trip to the jungle, maybe the coast, hopefully material to be gathered for some more stories.
In the meantime, for those who have anything close to my level of fascination for the Latin American world (especially those who managed to get through any of my ruminations on Peruvian politics last year), here's an article worth reading. From the London Review of Books, a reflection on how Chile has changed - and how it hasn't - in the years since Salvador Allende and the Pinochet coup. Warning - contains strong personal and political slant.
For me it's a useful counter balance to the "Chile is doing just wonderfully and is an example to the world" line we see a lot these days. On the other hand, the description of Chile's continuing dark undercurrents could probably be applied to a number of other outwrdly progressiv countries - including New Zealand.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Back from Nature
At Lauder in Central Otago, less a town than the scattering of buildings around the old sheep station homestead, you can now get a pretty fine flat white coffee from a roadside trailer in the form of a locomotive engine. The coffee stand has been recently established by a cheerful local woman, and on days with less inhospitable weather than when we stopped, apparently does steady business.
At around 350 metres above sea level, Lauder is one of the landmarks on the Central Otago Rail Trail, a bike and walking track which runs along the route of the old railway line from Dunedin to Clyde. It's an example of a style of tourism in which New Zealand is a world leader - for want of better description, let's call it "bourgeois adventurism".
This combines two Kiwi traits. The wilderness-braving pioneer ruggedness that we once relied on and love to mythologise. And the recently-acquired obsession with the finer things in life that typifies our now highly urbanised consumer society. New Zealand's smallness and unique geography lends itself to this combination. Within minutes of slogging through a genuinely harsh and wild landscape, you can be served by someone with a cultured apprecation of how to treat a fine roast bean.
When I agreed to go on the trip, it was because I thought it would tend more to the bourgeois end. A rail trail, with lots of interesting plaques describing colonial history; it sounded distinctly gentle and middle-aged. Potentially, if you follow the advice, of the guide book to cycle the trail in "3 to 5 days", that's how it is.
Due to time constraints, however, we had to do it in two days. My two sisters are cycling enthusiasts; I hadn't been on a bicycle for about 2 years. So you can imagine what 180 km, off-road, within 48 hours, ended up doing to various parts of my anatomy.
Then there was the weather. Global warming or no, ever-fickle New Zealand is on track for its coldest ever December. In a region where in the last two summers temperatures have flirted with the 40 degree mark, for much of our ride it was in single figures - with a howling southerly to boot.
As we climbed from Alexandra into the high country, sheep shivered as grey woolly clouds slid down hills covered in snow. It looked and felt more like an October cold snap than a week out from New Year.
But on day two, after a brisk morning climb to the high point of the journey at 618 metres, and gradual progress through rocky river gorges into the Maniatoto Valley, we arrived at the settlement of Hyde.
There, we could warm up, apply moisturiser, text message, and enjoy muffins and more coffee, while we contemplated the relief map which seemed to show a gentle downhill 25km to the finish of the trail in Middlemarch.
We'd reckoned without the screaming wind. Along bumpy farm tracks, we crawled along at 10 km/h, no downhill incline perceptible. When we finally got to Middlemarch, it wasn't even the end; we'd planned to cycle another 20 km to meet up with the Taieri Gorge excursion train from Dunedin. Assuming that this would be tarseal all the way, we found that the last 12 km was off-road again, a series of rises and dips, and then a steep, curving uphill into a windswept badlands of eroded rock.
Non-cyclist that I am, I was at breaking point as I pumped the pedals in the lowest possible gear. Blood sugar levels collapsing and legs refusing, I dragged my bike up one last rise, desperately hoping we were finally at the train station.
There was a small wooden station house huddled on the plateau under some macrocapas, looking like a Rita Angus painting. We'd arrived just five minutes before the train.
Back in chilly Dunedin, we found a warm upstairs pizzeria with polished hardwood and a vaulted ceiling. A chatty girl from Northern England served us menus written in Italian while at the next table four anemic-looking French students discussed something intellectual or drole.
Scoffing my pizza and drinking Scicilian wine, I felt the swathes of sunburn on my legs, my windburnt face and chapped lips, and looked around sceptically at the comfort-loving townies. For a brief moment, I savoured being a rugged Southern man.
At around 350 metres above sea level, Lauder is one of the landmarks on the Central Otago Rail Trail, a bike and walking track which runs along the route of the old railway line from Dunedin to Clyde. It's an example of a style of tourism in which New Zealand is a world leader - for want of better description, let's call it "bourgeois adventurism".
This combines two Kiwi traits. The wilderness-braving pioneer ruggedness that we once relied on and love to mythologise. And the recently-acquired obsession with the finer things in life that typifies our now highly urbanised consumer society. New Zealand's smallness and unique geography lends itself to this combination. Within minutes of slogging through a genuinely harsh and wild landscape, you can be served by someone with a cultured apprecation of how to treat a fine roast bean.
When I agreed to go on the trip, it was because I thought it would tend more to the bourgeois end. A rail trail, with lots of interesting plaques describing colonial history; it sounded distinctly gentle and middle-aged. Potentially, if you follow the advice, of the guide book to cycle the trail in "3 to 5 days", that's how it is.
Due to time constraints, however, we had to do it in two days. My two sisters are cycling enthusiasts; I hadn't been on a bicycle for about 2 years. So you can imagine what 180 km, off-road, within 48 hours, ended up doing to various parts of my anatomy.
Then there was the weather. Global warming or no, ever-fickle New Zealand is on track for its coldest ever December. In a region where in the last two summers temperatures have flirted with the 40 degree mark, for much of our ride it was in single figures - with a howling southerly to boot.
As we climbed from Alexandra into the high country, sheep shivered as grey woolly clouds slid down hills covered in snow. It looked and felt more like an October cold snap than a week out from New Year.But on day two, after a brisk morning climb to the high point of the journey at 618 metres, and gradual progress through rocky river gorges into the Maniatoto Valley, we arrived at the settlement of Hyde.
There, we could warm up, apply moisturiser, text message, and enjoy muffins and more coffee, while we contemplated the relief map which seemed to show a gentle downhill 25km to the finish of the trail in Middlemarch.
We'd reckoned without the screaming wind. Along bumpy farm tracks, we crawled along at 10 km/h, no downhill incline perceptible. When we finally got to Middlemarch, it wasn't even the end; we'd planned to cycle another 20 km to meet up with the Taieri Gorge excursion train from Dunedin. Assuming that this would be tarseal all the way, we found that the last 12 km was off-road again, a series of rises and dips, and then a steep, curving uphill into a windswept badlands of eroded rock.
Non-cyclist that I am, I was at breaking point as I pumped the pedals in the lowest possible gear. Blood sugar levels collapsing and legs refusing, I dragged my bike up one last rise, desperately hoping we were finally at the train station.
There was a small wooden station house huddled on the plateau under some macrocapas, looking like a Rita Angus painting. We'd arrived just five minutes before the train.
Back in chilly Dunedin, we found a warm upstairs pizzeria with polished hardwood and a vaulted ceiling. A chatty girl from Northern England served us menus written in Italian while at the next table four anemic-looking French students discussed something intellectual or drole.
Scoffing my pizza and drinking Scicilian wine, I felt the swathes of sunburn on my legs, my windburnt face and chapped lips, and looked around sceptically at the comfort-loving townies. For a brief moment, I savoured being a rugged Southern man.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Free to Comment
Here's a couple of recommended picks from the Guardian's Comment is Free section. A while back I was a bit despairing about what appeared to be the lost potential of blogs as a vehicle for intelligent debate. Even on what you'd expect to be a place for measured discussion, every comment thread, almost regardless of the topic, seemed to degenerate within ten posts into a vicious circle of name calling: "Right wing neocon!". "Saddam-loving surrender monkey!". And so on, ad infinitum.
But happily, the standard seems to have improved, at least in some of the threads. There's lots of interesting ones there. As a matter of taste, these two particularly appeal to my brand of geekiness.
If you're a follower of the British gallery of pundits and columnists, this one is like a star-studded grudge match for a sports fan. Rising star Zoe Williams goes into bat for the much maligned Polly Toynbee, who's been pilloried by the big names across the right wing spectrum - libertarian (Boris Johnson), frothing neocon (Melanie Phillips) and grumpy paleocon (Peter Hitchens) - on charges of hypocrisy and chardonnay socialism.
The comments thread turns out to be excellent - a searching examination of the issues at hand: can you really advocate for the poor when you yourself are wealthy; and is sending your children to a private school hypocritical when you argue for more support for public education? The involvement of the various personalities adds colour. But more importantly, the debate remains polite and articulate for the most part.
This one is even more punchy. Muslim academic Ziauddin Sardar attacks Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie for pushing a "neoconservative" agenda in their punditry and (less plausibly) their novels. About 80 percent of the comments disagree, but almost all are politely worded enough, and many add something distinct to the discussion. I came away from both enlightened and with a more nuanced personal view.
Is all this just hot air that make no difference? Middle class guardianista intellectuals sipping tea and splitting hairs, while outside the world continues to rage? Perhaps. But the way I see it, you can have some intelligent debate, or no intelligent debate at all. Given that there are a range of different views expressed here, by people from what appear to be at least be a few diverse backgrounds, it's not just blabbing amongst the converted.
Yes, they're mostly educated and middle class, but educated middle class people have also been known to blow things up. Even the best blogs won't save the world, but they do show that civilized disagreement is still possible.
But happily, the standard seems to have improved, at least in some of the threads. There's lots of interesting ones there. As a matter of taste, these two particularly appeal to my brand of geekiness.
If you're a follower of the British gallery of pundits and columnists, this one is like a star-studded grudge match for a sports fan. Rising star Zoe Williams goes into bat for the much maligned Polly Toynbee, who's been pilloried by the big names across the right wing spectrum - libertarian (Boris Johnson), frothing neocon (Melanie Phillips) and grumpy paleocon (Peter Hitchens) - on charges of hypocrisy and chardonnay socialism.
The comments thread turns out to be excellent - a searching examination of the issues at hand: can you really advocate for the poor when you yourself are wealthy; and is sending your children to a private school hypocritical when you argue for more support for public education? The involvement of the various personalities adds colour. But more importantly, the debate remains polite and articulate for the most part.
This one is even more punchy. Muslim academic Ziauddin Sardar attacks Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie for pushing a "neoconservative" agenda in their punditry and (less plausibly) their novels. About 80 percent of the comments disagree, but almost all are politely worded enough, and many add something distinct to the discussion. I came away from both enlightened and with a more nuanced personal view.
Is all this just hot air that make no difference? Middle class guardianista intellectuals sipping tea and splitting hairs, while outside the world continues to rage? Perhaps. But the way I see it, you can have some intelligent debate, or no intelligent debate at all. Given that there are a range of different views expressed here, by people from what appear to be at least be a few diverse backgrounds, it's not just blabbing amongst the converted.
Yes, they're mostly educated and middle class, but educated middle class people have also been known to blow things up. Even the best blogs won't save the world, but they do show that civilized disagreement is still possible.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Adventure in Andagua....
OK. I'm trekked out. Done with adventuring. Through with the Andes. In addition to the cracked lips, burnt skin, dust-ravaged sinuses, mosquito bites and blisters, I'm suffering from advanced desert-mountain-canyon fatigue. I think my next trip will be to Peru's north coast. I want seafood and cold beer, soft, humid air, palm trees swaying in the moonlight, modern vehicles roaring along long, straight highways. If I want to get in shape I'm going to the gym. If I've a hankering for spectacular landscape I'll take a scenic train trip or something.
Which is not to say that the Cabanaconde-Andagua trek was not a mind-blowing, unforgettable experience. It flirted with my physical limits, and took me across an entire piece of geography, from subtropical valley, canyon riverbed and terraced hillside to high-altitude desert, mountain basin, mineral-rich peaks and high passes, eventually arriving in an arid valley full of exctinct volcanoes. We visited improbably remote villages and stumbled across a rich variety of plant, animal and bird life without even looking for it. This trek should be mouth-watering for the botanist, anthropologist, historian, geologist, volcanologist and bird-watcher. Forget the Inca Trail - this ought to be one of Peru's, and perhaps the world's, great walks.
You know those movies where are our fugitive or stranded heroes have to walk out of the wilderness to safety/civilisation? We see them marching along looking determined, taking a break by a mountain stream, then cut to a high pass where they're trudging through snow drifts with exhausted looks on their faces, only to arrive at the glorious vista of a fertile valley below. Well, this trek was like that, only without the cinematic cuts.
There's a lot to tell, so I'm going to serialize it more or less in chronological order.
Day One - Murder of the Feet:
After the mandatory sleepless overnight bus ride from Arequipa, we enjoyed Karina's famous banana pancakes at the Valle de Fuego hostel in Cabanaconde and met the guide and donkey acquired for us by Lizbeth's father. From Cabanaconde it's a good 9 hours walk to the village of Choco - and there's no half measures, since there's literally no water on the way. Our guide Toño, a native of Cabanaconde, estimated that it's a distance of 35km. While he sometimes varied and corrected himself on his altitude estimates, his facts and figures were generally trustworthy, and I'll give him this one. Which makes it almost the entire Inca Trail in one day.
After passing through the deceptive green of the irrigated agricultural terraces around Cabanaconde we headed south-west, following the course of a road that's being built to (theoretically) link Cabanaconde with Choco. We cut across the many serpentines of the road, plodding downhill as the vegetation disappeared and the sun beat down with unrelenting fury. The track was through and across scree of shattered rock; this is the hardest surface of all to go downhill on, and only sand is harder uphill. After the first three hours my feet were already burning inside my boots.
By the time we reached the "corte" or where the road ends in a heap of shattered rock above the Colca river the landscape was resembling, if not quite the infierno, then definitely the Land of Nod to the East of Eden. Cecilia is fond of describing her work as "the rockpile", in an oblique reference to the myth of Sisyphus (or is it Prometheus? tell me someone??). You could hardly find a workplace where this more closely approximates a literal description than the tail end of the in-progress Cabanconde-Choco road. Down towards the river, the whole hillside is a rockpile of sharp, chunky scree. The workers are engaged in clearing a path wide enough for a vehicle through this rubble and piling up the rocks to form retaining walls which will theoretically prevent the road from being re-devoured by the mountainside.
Given the penchant of the Andes to unleash huaycos, or large landslides which obliterate everything in their path, and the notoriously uncertain nature of publicly-funded projects in Peru, there's more than a suggestion of the Sisyphean about the rock-piling process. But given that their only company was clouds of choking dust, the road workers we passed seemed inordinately cheerful. "Going to Andagua?" they called, guessing correctly the destination of the two gringos with guide and donkey. We nodded. "Looong way" they laughed. Well, at least they have a job.
I suspect there's also something of a pipe dream about the road. Leaving the corte and heading along the trail towards Choco, I couldn't see where a road could possibly go. Later in Arequipa, several people who knew the area smiled sadly and shared my assessment. We worked our away across a blasted heap of scree to join an excruciatingly narrow trail clinging to the canyon wall above the river, passing a small cross and memorial to two local children who had tragically tumbled off the edge.
Below, on the other side of the river appeared a small, startlingly green oasis of alfalfa plots and fruit trees. To me, with a dry throat relieved only occasionally by my rationed water, it seemed impossibly beautiful; I wanted to fly over there and bury my head in the cool green. In a landscape of such harsh contrast and drama, it's impossible not to think in mythic or Biblical terms, of Gardens, Promised Lands and Wildernesses. Good-fertile, Evil-arid makes perfect sense to a dehydrated brain.
Adding flashes of colour to the cliffs along the trail were huanarpo, small bushes of deadwood-seeming branches terminating in bright scarlet flowers. Apparently tea made from its bark is a powerful aphrodisiac - or so I interpret from Toño's comment that "men shouldn't take too much of it - it makes them very excited"
Another hour and the trail finally dropped to the river and the swing bridge to the other side. This stretch of the canyon is not the deepest - there's not the towering 5,600-metre peaks which face Cabanaconde - but it is one of the steepest. By the bridge, however, there was a cleft with a more gradual gradient and natural irrigation from above. In a wash of green, tuna cactuses, apple trees and palms tumbled down the canyon wall to the river. Toño said he had some land in these parts where he cultivated maize and fruits. Apart from guiding, which he does whenever he can, he's a "professional agriculturalist" At the age of 37 he has his work cut out supporting his six kids - one of whom is now studying systems engineering at an institute in Arequipa.
We crossed the bridge and relaxed for ten glorious minutes in the scant half-shade under the rocks. Toño pointed out a waterfall high up on the canyon side. There, about six hours scrambling climb up from his plots of land, is a pool where condors gather to bathe in the evening.
From the river it was another three hours up and along the pathway etched into the hillside, begging for the sun to drop behind the mountains.
Choco sounds like the Quechua equivalent of Grimsby, but its name doesn't do it justice - after a nine-hour march it seemed like a lost paradise. Tidy terraces following the curves of the opposite hill were the first signs of civilization. Then another curve brought us into a dramatically green valley, hemmed in by improbably steep mountains - think Ash and Anjuli's lost valley in The Far Pavilions. The path ascended through terraces of eagerly sprouting maize, overflowing with fruit trees. At 2,300 metres, Choco has a balmy microclimate, and seems to be blessed with very fertile soil. Here they cultivate avocados, figs, chirimoya, guayaba, apples, peaches, even mangoes!
The promise of unlimited fresh water dragged me up the final twisting path to the village of Choco itself, strategically elevated on a knoll above the river. For an isolated village (contact with the outside world requires the 4-5 hour walk to the corte to catch the kombi to Cabanaconde), it's surprisingly urbane and self-sufficient. They have their own electricity supply, generated by a water-driven turbine upstream and powering the village's streetlights. They also have a small trout farm. There was pure, running water from the tap and an outside toilet in a corral shared with a large white mule. As we crashed in a tidy little room of the village hospedaje the owner practiced the saxophone while his family watched videos next door.
OK. I'm trekked out. Done with adventuring. Through with the Andes. In addition to the cracked lips, burnt skin, dust-ravaged sinuses, mosquito bites and blisters, I'm suffering from advanced desert-mountain-canyon fatigue. I think my next trip will be to Peru's north coast. I want seafood and cold beer, soft, humid air, palm trees swaying in the moonlight, modern vehicles roaring along long, straight highways. If I want to get in shape I'm going to the gym. If I've a hankering for spectacular landscape I'll take a scenic train trip or something.
Which is not to say that the Cabanaconde-Andagua trek was not a mind-blowing, unforgettable experience. It flirted with my physical limits, and took me across an entire piece of geography, from subtropical valley, canyon riverbed and terraced hillside to high-altitude desert, mountain basin, mineral-rich peaks and high passes, eventually arriving in an arid valley full of exctinct volcanoes. We visited improbably remote villages and stumbled across a rich variety of plant, animal and bird life without even looking for it. This trek should be mouth-watering for the botanist, anthropologist, historian, geologist, volcanologist and bird-watcher. Forget the Inca Trail - this ought to be one of Peru's, and perhaps the world's, great walks.
You know those movies where are our fugitive or stranded heroes have to walk out of the wilderness to safety/civilisation? We see them marching along looking determined, taking a break by a mountain stream, then cut to a high pass where they're trudging through snow drifts with exhausted looks on their faces, only to arrive at the glorious vista of a fertile valley below. Well, this trek was like that, only without the cinematic cuts.
There's a lot to tell, so I'm going to serialize it more or less in chronological order.
Day One - Murder of the Feet:
After the mandatory sleepless overnight bus ride from Arequipa, we enjoyed Karina's famous banana pancakes at the Valle de Fuego hostel in Cabanaconde and met the guide and donkey acquired for us by Lizbeth's father. From Cabanaconde it's a good 9 hours walk to the village of Choco - and there's no half measures, since there's literally no water on the way. Our guide Toño, a native of Cabanaconde, estimated that it's a distance of 35km. While he sometimes varied and corrected himself on his altitude estimates, his facts and figures were generally trustworthy, and I'll give him this one. Which makes it almost the entire Inca Trail in one day.
After passing through the deceptive green of the irrigated agricultural terraces around Cabanaconde we headed south-west, following the course of a road that's being built to (theoretically) link Cabanaconde with Choco. We cut across the many serpentines of the road, plodding downhill as the vegetation disappeared and the sun beat down with unrelenting fury. The track was through and across scree of shattered rock; this is the hardest surface of all to go downhill on, and only sand is harder uphill. After the first three hours my feet were already burning inside my boots.
By the time we reached the "corte" or where the road ends in a heap of shattered rock above the Colca river the landscape was resembling, if not quite the infierno, then definitely the Land of Nod to the East of Eden. Cecilia is fond of describing her work as "the rockpile", in an oblique reference to the myth of Sisyphus (or is it Prometheus? tell me someone??). You could hardly find a workplace where this more closely approximates a literal description than the tail end of the in-progress Cabanconde-Choco road. Down towards the river, the whole hillside is a rockpile of sharp, chunky scree. The workers are engaged in clearing a path wide enough for a vehicle through this rubble and piling up the rocks to form retaining walls which will theoretically prevent the road from being re-devoured by the mountainside.
Given the penchant of the Andes to unleash huaycos, or large landslides which obliterate everything in their path, and the notoriously uncertain nature of publicly-funded projects in Peru, there's more than a suggestion of the Sisyphean about the rock-piling process. But given that their only company was clouds of choking dust, the road workers we passed seemed inordinately cheerful. "Going to Andagua?" they called, guessing correctly the destination of the two gringos with guide and donkey. We nodded. "Looong way" they laughed. Well, at least they have a job.
I suspect there's also something of a pipe dream about the road. Leaving the corte and heading along the trail towards Choco, I couldn't see where a road could possibly go. Later in Arequipa, several people who knew the area smiled sadly and shared my assessment. We worked our away across a blasted heap of scree to join an excruciatingly narrow trail clinging to the canyon wall above the river, passing a small cross and memorial to two local children who had tragically tumbled off the edge.
Below, on the other side of the river appeared a small, startlingly green oasis of alfalfa plots and fruit trees. To me, with a dry throat relieved only occasionally by my rationed water, it seemed impossibly beautiful; I wanted to fly over there and bury my head in the cool green. In a landscape of such harsh contrast and drama, it's impossible not to think in mythic or Biblical terms, of Gardens, Promised Lands and Wildernesses. Good-fertile, Evil-arid makes perfect sense to a dehydrated brain.
Adding flashes of colour to the cliffs along the trail were huanarpo, small bushes of deadwood-seeming branches terminating in bright scarlet flowers. Apparently tea made from its bark is a powerful aphrodisiac - or so I interpret from Toño's comment that "men shouldn't take too much of it - it makes them very excited"
Another hour and the trail finally dropped to the river and the swing bridge to the other side. This stretch of the canyon is not the deepest - there's not the towering 5,600-metre peaks which face Cabanaconde - but it is one of the steepest. By the bridge, however, there was a cleft with a more gradual gradient and natural irrigation from above. In a wash of green, tuna cactuses, apple trees and palms tumbled down the canyon wall to the river. Toño said he had some land in these parts where he cultivated maize and fruits. Apart from guiding, which he does whenever he can, he's a "professional agriculturalist" At the age of 37 he has his work cut out supporting his six kids - one of whom is now studying systems engineering at an institute in Arequipa.
We crossed the bridge and relaxed for ten glorious minutes in the scant half-shade under the rocks. Toño pointed out a waterfall high up on the canyon side. There, about six hours scrambling climb up from his plots of land, is a pool where condors gather to bathe in the evening.
From the river it was another three hours up and along the pathway etched into the hillside, begging for the sun to drop behind the mountains.
Choco sounds like the Quechua equivalent of Grimsby, but its name doesn't do it justice - after a nine-hour march it seemed like a lost paradise. Tidy terraces following the curves of the opposite hill were the first signs of civilization. Then another curve brought us into a dramatically green valley, hemmed in by improbably steep mountains - think Ash and Anjuli's lost valley in The Far Pavilions. The path ascended through terraces of eagerly sprouting maize, overflowing with fruit trees. At 2,300 metres, Choco has a balmy microclimate, and seems to be blessed with very fertile soil. Here they cultivate avocados, figs, chirimoya, guayaba, apples, peaches, even mangoes!
The promise of unlimited fresh water dragged me up the final twisting path to the village of Choco itself, strategically elevated on a knoll above the river. For an isolated village (contact with the outside world requires the 4-5 hour walk to the corte to catch the kombi to Cabanaconde), it's surprisingly urbane and self-sufficient. They have their own electricity supply, generated by a water-driven turbine upstream and powering the village's streetlights. They also have a small trout farm. There was pure, running water from the tap and an outside toilet in a corral shared with a large white mule. As we crashed in a tidy little room of the village hospedaje the owner practiced the saxophone while his family watched videos next door.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)