The Charms of Ayacucho

Walking around the city of Ayacucho, or Humanga as it is traditionally known by its inhabitants, you would hardly imagine it as the centre of the region that originated, and most suffered from, the terrorism of the Sendero Luminoso and the brutal military response in the 1980s and 1990s.

First impressions are of people going busily about their daily affairs, while cheeky, smiling children are everywhere. The city and its surroundings are picturesque -- it has a typical Spanish colonial layout, flower-fringed plazoletas, and cobblestone streets. At face value at least, Catholicism is a dominant presence. As everyone will tell you, there are no less than 33 churches in Ayacucho, in a city with a population of at most 200,000. The Semana Santa (Easter) celebrations are renowned as being the most impressive in Latin America.

With its proximity to the jungle and its cosy location nestled in a shallow valley, the climate is warmer than Cuzco or Arequipa, the air softer and less bone dry The countryside is greener; although it is now starting to dry up, I understand the rains return in December with more regularity and plentitude than further south. The tap water is clean and sweet.

Ayacucho also seems to be overflowing with educational instutions -- schools, technical institutes, academies and universities. This means that the place is still full of young people, and thus doesn't have the abandoned feel of some smaller towns in Peru.

On the downside, issues of transit are even more fraught than elsewhere, even if you just want to walk around the few central city blocks near the plaza. The pavements are extremely narrow, and in the tight and bumpy streets, traffic drives extremely close to the kerb (Hiluxes and Corrollas mix with numerous battered moto-taxis; there are few of the little yellow 'Tico' taxis that dominate in Arequipa).

People seem to have little problem with any of the following: walking very slowlyy two abreast and blocking the footpath; weaving from side to side while talking on a cellphone, making overtaking difficult; walking two abreast and not making space for someone coming the other way; or simply standing still in a group and blocking the entire path.

This means that to make any progress, you often have to step off the sidewalk into the street. At the same time, there is no safe zone in the street, as the moto-taxis -- wth zero suspension and ancient steering -- often brush the gutter. You therefore have to make rapid tactical decisions about stepping on and off the pavement, calculating the proximity and likely speed of traffic and obstacles. With the jammed intersections, crumbling kerbs, and unpredictable human and vehicular traffic, almost every street crossing is a mini-adventure.

I've asked several people what the basis of the economy is here. Given that Ayacucho is in the bottom half of Peruvian departments with respect to poverty, there seems to be a suprising amount of apparent wealth. I've noticed an inordinate number of 4WD Toyota Hiluxes in the streets, on a per capita basis, many more than in much wealthier Arequipa. To be fair, a number of these seem to belong to various government agencies that maintain a notable presence. However, while the first couple of my interlocutors posited "just agriculture really" or "mainly goverment services" in response to my question, others later confirmed my suspicions.

What gives Ayachucho its sheen of dollar wealth is its connection with the coca economy. The lowland regions of the department, known as the VRAE (Valle de los Rios Apurimac y Ene, pronounced like the first syllable of "Bryan") are among the most fertile and productive in the world for growing coca, and according to United Nations reports, production is increasing more rapidly there than anywhere else. It goes without saying that the majority of the coca is not grown for traditional medicinal and cermonial uses. The VRAE is a remote, lawless zone where the presence of the Peruvian state remains shaky and the remnants of the Sendero Luminoso mix with ruthless drug traffickers. Yet it provides an injection of cash into the capital that shows up in the disproportionate number of banks, cars, and well-groomed women in expensive jackets.

Around Ayacucho

On Monday I took a little tour of one of the 'northern circuits' offered by local travel agencies. It was a very pleasant trip in a private vehicle, a middle-aged US-Peruvian couple my only company apart from Leo the guide.

From the city, we wound further downhill into a narrow valley with cactus lining the quebradas, spaghetti-western style. Natural irrigation from the river supported a fertile zone of fruit and vegetable production. We headed back uphill to our first stop, the archeological complex of Wari. The Wari were a 'horizon culture' that dominated the area from the 6th to the 11th century. In their two periods of expansion, they dominated as far north as Trujillo and south to Moquegua (basically three quarters of Peru, excluding the Amazon).

The Wari capital was the first walled city in South America, and their empire prefigured the Incas in important respects, notably in architecture and administration. They also seemed to have an impressive system of stone ducts that formed a subterranean water supply in a similar manner to the Nazca culture.

We walked through the military quarters, public amphitheatre, sacrificial platform (animals and occasionally people), and the royal tomb. The latter (pictured below) was perhaps the most impressive of the sites. It is divided into four sections, in which

Only 10 percent of the archeological complex has been excavated. Work began in the 1960s, and was of course completely abandonded during the 1980s and 90s and only got underway again around 2000. The Insituto Nacional de Cultura oversees archological investigations, but is predictably lacking funds, and any support from international institutes or universities or the private sector would reportedly be very welcome.


Later we continued on to the Pampa de Ayachucho, where the final battle for Peruvian independence was fought on 9 December 1824 and the outnumbered, outgunned 'patriotic' army of Jose Antonio Sucre defeated Royalist forces. The broad, flat windy plain at nearly 3,000 metres above sea level almost seems designed for an old-style cavalry battle -- you can imagine Braveheart being filmed there.

Dominating the landscape was the 44-metre obelisk depicted below. Its construction was commissioned in 1974 to commemorate 150 years of independence (designed, ironically, by a Spanish sculptor). The various levels in the scultpure are supposed to stand for the different geographical zones of Peru.



The final stop of the day was in La Quinua, a strikingly pretty and clean village of tiled roofs and cobblestone streets where almost every family is dedicated to the production of ceramics made from local clay. Most are model churches, campesinos working, or children playing muscial instruments. The photo below shows some of the typical designs. I couldn't resist, and bought a couple of ceramic pieces and a retablo, which, if they survive the journey back to New Zealand, will become presents for some lucky people.



On Wednesday, I caught a kombi to the town of Huanta, just over an hour from Ayacucho. It's another attractive town, nestled in a green valley, with exceptionally well laid out plazas incorporating botanical displays. I think I was a bit over tired by the time I got there, and perhaps coming down with something, so only stayed a few hours before heading back to the capital, without learning too much about the place. But as I learnt later, La Quinua and Huanta probably give a distorted impression of rural Ayacucho.


The above pictures and descriptions should provide a prima facie case for why Ayacucho is overlooked and should probably receive a lot more international tourism. However, it's not all sunshine and flowers, and in a further post I'll try and do a rather more image-light summary of the other things I learned while in the region.

Catching Up and Travelling in Circles

Because I'm so long-winded and becuase there's always a tension between doing and writing, I tend to find that when I'm travelling my blogs are always catching up with one another, and often get out of order.

So it is that although I had started a more narrative-style piece from my time in the Colca, that's only going to get finished if I have time tomorrow, while in the interim I'm dashing off a quick 'planned movements' post.

Right now I'm back in Lima. It was Lizbeth's birthday yesterday, and Hugo had two returning Swiss clients to pick up from the airport, so it was decided to have the celebrations in Lima at the house of Lizbeth's uncle Antonio, attended by numerous members of her labrynthine family.

I've just bought myself a bus ticket to Ayacucho So far on this trip I've travelled Lima-Arequipa-Cuzco-Santa Teresa-Cuzco-Arequipa-Colca-Arequipa-Lima. I'm currently planning on working my way from Ayacucho through Andahuaylas and Abancay (check the map) to Cuzco and from there back to Arequipa. I will have described a big circle.

From there, I plan to head back to the Colca for a few days, and will also try to fit in some trekking and climbing. Hugo has offered to go with me to Ampato, but you can never tell if he's serious, and in any case I insist on doing a 'warm-up' trek or climb. At this stage, a likely possibility is the Salkantay trek in Cuzco, which is a more gruelling and remote alternative to the Inca Trail, with ascents up to 4,600 metres.

It's ironic. Most travellers who arrive in Lima are eager to escape the crowds, the pollution, the insecurity, and, in winter, the grey overcast skies. Sunshine, laid back villages, and picturesque landscapes beckon in the Peruvian interior. Yet, after nearly four weeks in the more tourist-favoured regions, coming back to Lima is a relief in a number of ways. Most prominent, surprisingly is the climate. June skies might be unremittingly dull, but the moist air feels like a balm after the rock-bottom humidity and ever present dust of the sierra in the dry season. In Arequipa, I've always got mild nosebleeds and lingering snuffliness, and in the past used to think that smoking was partly to blame, but it's been the same this time and I haven't been smoking. Yet, a couple of hours after arriving in Lima, all my cold-like symptoms had disappeared.

Another nice change in Lima is the food. There's certainly plenty of tasty eating to be had in the sierra, but you have to shop around a bit, and the food can be plain and stodgy at times. Lima is home of comida criolla, the cuisine developed in Peru with strong influences from Andalucia, and it is also where Chinese, Italian African, and Japanese touches have made the greatest impact. Seafood is generally delicious, and while chili, coriander and other spices add zing to most dishes and even in the cheap places, food is normally presented with flair.

Although I'm biased by the fact that questions of traffic and transport are a bit of an obsession of mine, I think I'm on reasonably firm ground on saying that they are among the most important issues facing Lima at the moment. The surge in economic activity over the past few years is a generally good thing, but the greater disposable income has meant more more people on the move, and more vehicles on the road. Traffic in the past was chaotic and dangerous, but usually flowed to some degree. The last couple of nights, we have found ourselves in Hugo's hired 4x4, absolutely stuck in crawling traffic, smoke-belching kombis mixing with the newer vehicles of the aspirational middle class. It is starting to resemble Bangkok.

To be fair, there are a lot of public works projects underway, some of which have already delivered sweeping new freeways and interchanges. Luis Castañeda is making a big legacy push before his term as mayor expires, and a number of projects are to be inaugurated on January 18 2010, including a bus way and the ill-fated electric train that was begun in the 1980s. It will be interesting to see what improvements occur, but Lima remains unique among large South American cities in not having a mass public transit system. If it wants to become a truly world class city, it desparately needs either a proper metro or a fully integrated busway system like Bogotá's Transmilenio.

With its football team at an all-time low, Peru is in need of sporting heroes. Fortunately, it has found one in the impressively-named Kina Malpartida, current women's world heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Last night, almost everyone in Lima was glued to the nearest TV screen watching Kina defend her world title against a Brazilian opponent. There was even a big screen attracting a large crowd in the Plaza Mayor. Kina's defense was comprehensive, totally dominating the fight and unleashing a massive straight right in the third round that convinced the referee to end the bout early. The crowds clapped and cheered wildly. In an ironic twist in this macho society, a tough woman has restored some of the deflated national pride and self-belief.

Images of the Colca

This post is a bit of a cop out given that blogging is supposed to be a primarily written medium and I generally aim to do a reasonable job of narration and description.

However, much of what I've learned and experienced over the past week or so has to go into my 'enthnographic research methods' project, while some things won't show up until my Master's thesis next year. I'm therefore reserving the more writerly tasks for things that I'm going to get graded on, and this post is little more than a series of glorified captions.

So, here are some snaps from my time in the Colca Valley last week.

This is a view over the village of Cabanaconde from near the mirador of Achachuia (a lookout point into the nearby canyon). The mountain in the background is 6,025-metre Hualca Hualca, from whose slopes Cabanaconde has traditionally received most of its water. Unsurprisingly, it is considered the main apu or mountain divinity for the village.



Anyone who has been near Peru, or been subjected to any of my accounts of travels there, has probably seen enough images of the Colca Canyon. But I think this one is worth including anyway. Taken from Achachuia, it gives a reasonable idea of scale, showing the drop from mountaintop to the river. This is not the deepest or most precipitous part of the canyon -- the section near the Cruz del Condor is considerably more spectacular. However, Gelmond assures me that the deepest part of the canyon is actually quite a lot further downstream, when the river has already become the Majes. That's something I'll have to check out some day.

The green strip in the above picture is Sangalle, which was once a verdant orchard, but now offers tourist accommodation, camping, and swimming pools. The area known as the Oasis is owned by Lizbeth's family and currently administered mainly by her younger brother Pablo. Pablo is aiming to convert the accommodation at the Oasis from rustic bamboo bungalows with dirt floors to rooms made of adobe, with tile floors, corrugated-iron and palm thatch roofs, and glass windows. He is building a new kitchen with space for a restaurant, and hopes to install an electric generator in the near future.

The picture shows rows of adobe bricks drying in the sun. They are made of mud poured into a mold, reinforced with wiry ichu grass, and then left to dry for five to six days. After this time, the adobe is rock hard. Although adobe doesn't withstand earthquakes well, it is still the dominant building material in most of the Colca Valley, and would certainly offer improved sleeping conditions for tourists at the Oasis.

The latest addition to Pablo's modernisation drive is a large refrigerator, which will apparently run on gas. Apparently, it took 14 men to bring the fridge down Cabanaconde. If you've ever done the trek down into the Colca Canyon, or something similar, you can appreciate what a monumental task that must have been. As a reward for their effort, Pablo's father put on a burrillada. Translated literally: they ate a donkey.


Cabanaconde's corn is famous as the tastiest and most nutritious in the valley, and perhaps in all of Peru. The harvest ends in May, and at the time of my visit, people were mainly occupied in collecting, deleafing, and drying the corn which had been collected in great heaps in 'corrals' after the harvest. The señora in the photo below kindly agreed to let me watch and learn about the process and take some photos of her and her family at work.


After nearly a week in Cabanaconde and the Oasis, I headed to Yanque, a village about two hours up the valley towards Chivay. There, I was met by Edy, who works at Lizbeth and Hugo's place and is studying gastronomy in Arequipa. He is from the village of Ichupampa, about 30 minutes walk from Yanque, and was back there for a couple of days for his birthday. He had offered to show me his village while I was in the Colca valley.

On the way to Yanque, I discovered that the locality was coming to the end of four days of fiestas. The final flourish was an afternoon of bullfighting at the local ring. On our way towards Ichupampa, Edy and I decided to stay and watch.

This is a view of part of the crowd watching the bullfighting, including the band, which struck up a Mexican-style flourish as the bullfighters entered the ring, and then continued for the rest of the time with variations on the distinctive, swirling local melodies. The mountain at the right is Hualca Hualca (seen from a different side than in Cabanaconde), while the peak poking its head over the horizon, Putin-like, is Sabancaya, the volcano that erupted in 1994, melting the ice cap of nearby Ampato and leading to the discovery of the mummy Juanita.


There were four bullfighters, one each from Puno, Arequipa and Cuzco, and one all the way from Venezuela. Below is an action shot as one of the more boisterous bulls managed to separate the bullfighter from his cape. We stayed to watch four bulls, and left before the toro de muerte, or the bull which is to be killed. I kind of preferred it that way.


Between the bulls was an impressive exhibition of the marinera, a dance of criollo (Spanish colonial) origin and practiced with the greatest attention on the north coast of Peru. The dance follows a pattern whereby the women elegantly dances around waving her handkerchief at the man, who describes tight circles on his horse and occasionally takes off his hat to salute the lady. It was pleasant to watch, and I was particulalry impressed with the performance of the horse, which they call a caballo de paso.


The below picture is of Edy with his aunt outside her small 'milk product plant' in Ichupampa. Edy's aunt and uncle have small plots of land which they largely use to graze animals, as do most of the residents of the locality. They received some assistance from an NGO called DESCO to establish the plant and were taught how to make saleable cheeses and yoghurts under appropriate conditions of hygiene. Their daughter was the one who was mainly responsible for the commerical side of the process, and she has now moved to the Majes Valley with her husband, although she is still assisting her parents to an extent. Edy's uncle told me that it is difficult with just the two, but they are struggling on, and that the NGO 'puts pressure' on them to keep the business running.

The milk is pasteruised and flavouring is added to the yoghurt, but not preservative. This means that it only lasts 3 or 4 days, and most is sold locally. We bought a cheese to take with us to Arequipa, and some delicious yoghurt which we consumed in the bus on the way.

That Incan Ruin in the Back Yard

If you've done the rounds of the Incan ruins in Cuzco, the stone work in the photos below should be quickly recognisable. The large, rectangular blocks, smooth surfaces, and uncanny fit, are all hallmarks of the architectural structures to which the Incas accorded importance. The contrast is notable with the rubbly stone work to the right of the picture, while it can be seen that these stones and the Incan blocks have all been glued together with the dried mud used as cement in the traditional adobe constructions of the region.

For various reasons, I didn't get a very good angle on either photo, and you can't quite see that the large, 'Incan' blocks form the left hand side of a doorway, which has been filled in with the rubbly stones. The right hand side of the doorway (out of picture) was also made of large, smooth blocks.

So, is this doorway in some obscure corner of Machu Picchu, or one of the lesser ruins dotted around Cuzco and included in a tourist route? No, in fact it is sitting quietly in the back yard of a private residental property in Cabanaconde in the province of Caylloma, Arequipa. The doorway was apparently part of the palace of a regional Incan governor. Now it's an anomalous structure out the back of someone's little corner shop.

It's things like this which kind of sum up what is so attractively offbeat and incongruous about Peru.

I'm not going to reveal the exact location, so as not to subject the owner of the property to excessive harassment. Yes, I know that I only have about thirty readers, of whom most probably won't be in the region in the near future. But it only takes someone from the Lonley Planet or similar to happen across this post, and the next thing you know the place has become a tourist curiosity, whether or not its owner is ready or willing.

As you'd imagine in the case of a piece of architecture that has presumably sat virtually untouched for over 500 years, there are stories of strange powers attached to the Incan doorway. However, I won't say any more for now -- the details need to be worked into the report for my ethnographic research project.

Radio Silence and the Tragedy in Bagua

Tomorrow I head off to the Colca valley at 2:00 pm in the afternoon. I feel like I've spent a couple of days too many in Arequipa and haven't advanced as much as I'd like with the main purposes of my trip. But it's probably been worth it to get over the various niggling problems and soak up some comfortable living before venturing into harsher conditions. Surely four essentially sleepless journeys of more than 15 hours within two weeks justify some recharging of batteries, especially when combined with jet lag, a cold, mild diarrhea, and a smattering of bites from both bed bugs and mosquitos?

I'll be in the Colca region for anything from 5 or 6 days, to 2 weeks, depending on how much progress I make with my studies, how nice people are to me, and whether I come back to Arequipa between my time in Cabanaconde and my intended visit to the village of Ichupampa. There is internet in Cabanaconde, but it is likely to be slow, and in any case I should be busy with other things than sitting in an internet café. There is therefore likely to be radio silence on this blog for a while, and the posts will continue to come in fits and starts.

In the absence of blog posts, I nevertheless hope to maintain my 'scratch notes', 'field notes proper', log, and transcipts< / obscure academic reference>. Ironically, most of the latter are so far stored, not in my dog-eared notebook, but in an unpublished 'in draft' entry on this website. Google's servers are the new poste restante.

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Ironically, being in Peru I find myself almost less in touch with current events than when I'm in New Zealand. We didn't have any internet at Hugo's Lodge, with the nearest access 4km away in Santa Teresa (although now Hugo has installed a satellite service), and in Santa Teresa it was hard to come by any newspapers, let alone something serious like La Republica. For this reason, I had been rather ignorant of the gathering tension in the northern jungle, in which native communities were blocking major roads and demanding the derogation of legislative decree 1090, which they claim opens their communal lands to easier exploitation by mining and petroleum companies.


I'm therefore just piecing together information about the terrible tragedies that have occurred around the town of Bagua, near the main route to Chachapoyas and Tarapoto, where confrontations between police and native communities have resulted in the death of at least 23 policemen and an unknown number of local community members.

As conflicting reports filter in from the TV and radio, and different groups try to put their side of the story forward in the media, the only thing certain is that there terrible things have occurred, and there is bitter agony all around. It's somewhat reminiscent of the events in Pando in Boliva last September, although worse, in that most of the violence there occurred in a single confused clash, which doesn't seem to have been the case here.


The political drama brushed by obliquely last week, when, as we drove in Hugo's 4WD on the way to Santa Teresa, we passed numerous minivans and trucks laden with "natives" who were returning from having blocked the way to Machu Picchu as part of a national protest. However, Cuzco's ceja de selva is not really a focus of the conflict, and as far as I can tell , almost all of the residents are recent immigrants from elsewhere in Peru, mostly the sierra.


For those who have picked up some news through the international media, they might like to set these shocking occurrences against any impressions I might have given of a warm glow of material development in Peru's main urban centres. They might also note that a number of commentators have quickly made the connection with the wider context set by president Alan Garcia's "Dog in the Manger" discourse, which I criticised a while back. Regardless of the details of exactly what happened and how, when a whole class of people are treated as mere obstacles in the path of progress, outbreaks of conflict and violence are hardly unexpected.

New Inca Trails

If I had got up at 5:00 instead of 6:00 as Gelmond had wanted, we would have had time for breakfast. If we'd had time for breakfast, we would have had something more than three oranges each to sustain ourselves. As it was, when we finally got going on the walk shortly before 6:30, we had to hurry, lest the clouds puffing off the moutainside obscure the views of the snowy peaks and the heat of the day catch up with us in the middle of the trek. To be fair, I hadn't yet figured out that Gelmond's time estimates for "there and back" were more accurate if taken as referring to the outward journey only, so was less worried than I should have been about the lack of breakfast. But once again, the discomfort that intruded on an interesting and spectacular trip was mostly my own fault.

After arriving at Hugo's Lodge, I had been introduced to the local team. Walter, from the village of Ichupampa in the Colca valley, who I already knew from when he worked as a domestic employee at Hugo and Lizbeth's place, was working as a cook. Aquilino, a local guy of indeterminate age but with wiry strength, cleaned, laboured, and helped in the kitchen. Gelmond was Hugo and Lizbeth's favoured guide for their Sudamerica Tour trips. A twenty-eight year old native of Arequipa, he had become a minor expert in architecture, iconography, prehispanic history, Peruvian geography, and cooking. His enthusiasm for guiding had earned him a personal mention in the latest Footprints guide to Peru. He almost never stopped talking.

A week previously, Gelmond had gone with Jaime, a compadre of Hugo who owned the land further up the hill (beyond Hugo's property of five or six hectares, the terrain is communal, until Jaime's land begins above an irrigration canal). Jaime made only occasional visits to his terrain, and most often ascended directly from Santa Teresa. They had taken a mule and worked their way up to the little house inhabited by Santiago, Jaime's caretaker. On the way down they had passed a pretty waterfall and a cave where they found some fragments of ceramic of indeterminate age. Gelmond thought the route would be an attractive one for tourists, given the views, the variety of flora and fauna, and the fact that the pathways were effectively Inca trails. I was keen to do some trekking, so we agreed that the two of us would undertake further reconnaissance.

The first stretch of the trek was on a broad, comfortable path along the side of a quebrada that cut into the mountainside at right angles to the rio Urubamba. We were under shade for most of the way, and the only discomfort came from the rapid pace set by Gelmond. Less than twenty minutes uphill from the lodge, there were striking views of the peak of Nevado Salkantay, its snows reflecting the ealry morning sun.



After a bit less than an hour we arrived at an irrigation canal that was being developed by the local campesinos. From there, the way got steeper, and was complicated by the fact that Gelmond couldn't find the path he had taken with Jaime the previous week. He had marked the entrance as being ten steps from the end of the canal, but in the following week the canal had been extended significantly. So it was that instead of working our way up the zig-zag pathway that we eventually found on our way down, we ended up scrambling across the mountainside through thick grass, thorns tearing at our clothes and skin.



Half an hour or so of this and we eventually came to a flatter, clearer stretch by a grove of avocado trees where the path reappeared. There were further spectacular views of Salkantay and back down the valley, until we were immerse in tangled bush. Here, as we were to later repeat to numerous travel agencies in Cuzco, orchids "grew like weeds". It wasn't really the season for orchids, and most were dry or without flowers, but at the right time this would clearly be a paradise for botanists and flower lovers.


After working our way through the bush for around half an hour, we climbed a short rise to find a tidily cultivated plot of vegetables leading up to a tiny shack of wooden stakes with a roof of thick straw, rather giving lie to Gelmond's promise of a casa at the end of our climb. We negotiated geese, hens, and a rather snappy, nervous dog, before the stooped figure of Santiago appeared around the side of the shack.



On the way up, Gelmond had told me Santiago's story. Santiago was one child of a campesino family of six or seven. In the past, it was common for parents to send the elder children out to work as peones for a landowner, which would then support the youngest one or two to progress with their schooling. Santiago had worked on the land for the same family for twenty-five years. But when the owner died, his children decided that they didn't need Santiago any more, and threw him out.

Jaime said he had found Santiago amid some fields near Santa Teresa, weeping. He had been sleeping in a cave, surviving on the moisture that dripped from the roof. Jaime took pity on him and said he could come and live on his property. Gelmond said he only paid him a few soles a month, but brought him substantial provisions including flour, sugar, rice, coffee and cigarettes, which amounted to quite a bit of money.

As we approached the shack, Gelmond said: "now comes the difficult part -- I have to try to speak Quechua". Santiago spoke almost no Spanish, and was also rather hard of hearing. In fact, Gelmond's Quechua amounted to a few phrases, and Santiago seemed to be nearly deaf, so comunication was mostly limited to smiles and hand waving.

After we said hi to Santiago, we dropped down into a little dip with a stream where we collected water and ate some carrots that were growing alongside the brook. By the time we got back, Santiago had prepared us coffee, which we drank sitting on a little bench inside the shack, watching a multitude of little cuys ferreting in the straw under Santiago's bed. The surroundings were definitely rustic, but the obligatory radio broadcasted the familiar plaintive strains of a huayno from Ayacucho, picking up its signal from a station in Santa Teresa.

We then carried down through thick bush along a barely-existent trail for about twenty minutes to the waterfall. A little beyond that was the cave. Gelmond explained that the lining of the interior with sand was another sign, along with the ceramics, that it had been used for shelter at some stage. We hid most of the ceramic in a discreet spot, and took one rounded fragment for testing by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura in Cuzco or Arequipa.

As we struggled back up through the tangled vegetation, I commented that it was a bit like being in Indiana Jones, and we both lamented the terrible job the most recent film had made of its supposed setting in Peru. "I wanted to write a letter of complaint to the production company", said Gelmond.

According to Gelmond, I was probably the first foreigner to walk the route, after himself, as a representative of the "Independent Republic of Arequipa". With my somewhat clumsy gait that led to a couple of slips, and my complaints about being hungry and thirsty, I didn't think I made much of a pioneer. But it wasn't an entirely unreasonable supposition that I was the first gringo to pass that way: despite the proximity to Machu Picchu, some of the places and geographical features of the region don't even appear on Google Maps.

Gelmond's explained his theory that the true home of the Incas, as well as the major cultures before them, had really been the ceja de selva, the fertile fringe between the sierra and jungle that we were in. That explained why so much of the iconography and religious traditions of these cultures were based on warm-climate animals and plants. So why, I asked, had their centres of power all been based in the sierra (Chavin de Huantar near Huaraz, Wari/Tihuanaco in Ayacucho/western Boliva, and the Incas in Cuzco)? Gelmond reasoned that these were strategic sites for dominating the surrounding area, and allowed the preservation of foods that would quickly go off in the warmer lowlands.

We walked back the way we had come. The previous week, Jaime and Gelmond had continued around the mountainside and dropped down directly to Santa Teresa, but this was an extremely steep route, and Gelmond said that for all his trekking experience, he had nearly fallen four times. They had left the mule in a forest grove, as the descent was not safe for it. Given that I was now being overcome with low blood-sugar clumsiness, retracing our steps was definitely the prudent option.

Following the path on the way down, we discovered the gentle zig-zag through the long grass that we had scrambled up a couple of hours earlier. The trail was marked by mule droppings, indicating where Gelmond and Jaime had ascended the week previously. When we finally came in sight of Hugo's Lodge, lunch was about to be served, and we set ourselves on it like famished men. We had taken about six hours. It was a fascinating and spectacular walk -- but the last time I'll knowingly set out without breakfast.

From the Snows to the Jungle

"Abra Malaga" has a romantic, almost mystical ring to it, and it was this vague promise evoked by the name of the pass we were to cross that I set against the concrete forebodings inspired by "Cuzco", "jungle", "road" and "bus".

My premonitions of a painful journey over narrow and potholed byways were mostly misinformed. After the rolling descent from Cuzco to Urubamba and the obligatory detour through the ancient cobblestone streets of Ollantaytambo, a smooth, broad and superbly-engineered road serpentined its way up to 4,316 metres above sea level, bringing to mind the highway that climbs across the Andes from Santiago to Mendoza. The ashphalt then continued most of the way down to the Urubamba river, only losing a little shape after crossing three or four waterfalls, and eventually giving way to a well-maintained and relatively smooth dirt road along the side of the valley for the last hour or so to the town of Santa Maria.

The promise of exotic landscapes, however, was more than fulfilled. As the bus finally ground its way to the top of the pass, tour groups on bicycles with matching jackets were preparing for their descent next to a sign that warned of a "Zone of Mists", which itself was nearly swallowed by swirling, watery cloud.

A couple of s-bends below the pass, the mist parted enough to reveal an enormous glacier on the flank of 5,682-metre Nevado Veronica, its icy teeth seeming almost close enough to touch (more awe-inspiring than suggested by the photo above of the entire peak, taken in clear early morning skies on the return trip).

Further below, the straw grass of the puna rapidly turned to moss-draped cloud forest, while the thinning mist revealed broad swathes of hillside covered in dark greenery sweeping steeply down to the tight serpentines of the Urubamba river, far below. As the altitude lessened, the cloud forest turned to subtropical trees and ferns, and the familar flat leaves of banana plants began to appear.

After the bus dropped onto the dirt road that worked its way down the valley towards Quillabamba, little villages began to appear, bougainvillea brightening the rustic buildings of partially-painted adobe and corrugated iron. Walls were invariably covered with giant upper case letters promoting the candidacy of one candidate or another for the district mayoralty. The roadside was hedged with cultivation, of maize, bananas, papaya, mangoes, mandarins, coffee, and tea. One small village announced that it was the "national capital of tea", and just beyond, people with baskets worked in tidily cultivated plantations that looked straight out of a Dilmah advertisment.

Yet, despite how pleasant all this sounds, this oversensitive gringo was in significant discomfort for much of the way, and had to make a considerable mental effort to take in and enjoy the sights.

The previous night I had taken the bus from Arequipa to Cuzco with Lizbeth's sister Karina who was heading back to work at Hugo's Lodge. At just over nine hours, the Arequopa-Cuzco journey is not overly arduous, but I hardly slept a wink as the bus heating was kept on full blast. I watched miserably as the screen at the front of the cabin that showed the time and temperature ticked upwards from a pleasant 22 degrees when we left Arequipa to eventually stall on 28 degrees.

Before the start of the journey, I had insisted that I wanted to do it in stages, since I had already had two trips of over 15 hours in the previous week and was only just getting over the jet lag. We talked of the possibility of staying the night in Cuzco or Ollantaytambo before continuing onwards. However, this suggestion kind of got overridden by Hugo's urgent message that he needed meat for a large group that was arriving at his hotel, and could we please bring him some from Cuzco.

Arrival in Cuzco was scheduled for 5:00 am, but we didn't get in until 6:30. The bus for Santa Maria left at 8:00, so it was a rushed hour and a half to buy the tickets (at a different terminal), grab some breakfast, go to the market to buy some meat, and get back to the terminal in time to load the luggage and get on the bus.

By the time we arrived in Urubamba a little over an hour later, I was still a bit dazed, but starting to appreciate the landscape and the journey. Here I made my great mistake. As luggage and passengers were loaded, many of the Cuzco passengers filed off to use the toilets in back of a local comedor. I decided I couldn't be bothered, owing to some combination of the long line, the distinctly rustic state of the toilets, and not really needing to go.

Around half an hour later, when the bus passed through Ollantaytambo, my long cup of black coffee from breakfast had caught up with me and I felt like I could use a bathroom. In another little while, as the road started to serpentine upwards, this feeling started to gain urgency. When the bus stopped at the last sign of civilization, two thirds of the way up to the pass to fill up with water, I was hoping for a genuine mechanical problem that would allow passengers to get off the bus and relieve themselves. When we reached the top of Abra Malaga, there was little else on my mind. Half way down the other side, I could barely move, and I let out a loud groan when an older guy who had got on at Urubamba estimated that it was "about another hour and a half" to Santa Maria. "I really need to go to the bathroom too", he said.

Some readers might have seen my piece about "bus buskers". On this trip there were two. The second busker, who waited patiently for twenty minutes while a young guy told jokes and did tricks, was selling Chinese herbal remedies, pills with a mixture of ginseng and resihi mushrooms. After the usual long spiel about the terrible state of the Peruvian diet, he moved on to describing specific problems with the liver and kidneys which these remedies could ameliorate, as well as their effectiveness in preventing (for the men) an inflamed prostate and (for the women) vaginal infections.

The bus busker made a particular example of himself. His other job was working as a conductor for rival company Ampay, which did not have a bus running this particular day. He assured us that his frequent journeys between Cuzco and Quillabamba required him to maintain a regular intake of the remedies. "I damage my kidneys every day", he said.

As the bus left the asphalt and wound its way along the valley, I was sure that we would soon be in Santa Maria. Each time the vegetation started to be dotted with banana plants and electric cables appeared overhead, I chanted a little mantra under of breath of "be Santa Maria, please be Santa Maria". But each time, it was only a small settlement with a handful of corrugated iron roofs, and yet more political advertisments.

Finally, there was a shout of "who's getting off in Huyro?" We were about to arrive in the capital of the Huayopata district, and the bus would stop. While a couple of passengers were extracting their luggage, I and the older guy jumped off the bus and sprinted across the road. A woman with a kiosk outside the municipality building answered my urgent query. "Through the building, to the right, and to the right again".

As I finally obtained relief, I noted that the other guy must have been even more disoriented than I. He never appeared in the bathroom whiel I was there, and he only got back on the bus some minutes after I did.

From there I could sit back and enjoy the rest of the journey, which only lasted another twenty or so minutes before we finally got off in Santa Maria, to a warm wash of tropical air, and a hand that pulled at my backpack as we waited to unload the luggage. It was Hugo, playing the clown. His Hyundai 4X4 was parked a few metres away, and after grabbing some lunch in a nearby comedor, we set out on the 45-minute drive along a narrow dirt road above the precipitous river gorge, to the town of Santa Teresa, and down to the fabulous new hot springs complex of Cocalmayo. That was the end of the road, so we parked the truck, and walked the five minutes across the bridge and up the path to my first view of the famous Hugo's Lodge.

Arequipita Linda

In Lima, you almost have to know what you're looking for to notice the effects of the Peru's rapid economic growth over the last few years (it's only since 2005 that the GDP per capita has exceeded that obtained in the 1970s). In Arequipa, the changes are much more obvious.

The calle Mercaderes, which runs east off the main plaza, and is the retail heart of the city for middle class shoppers, has been cleared of traffic along all its five blocks, with the sidewalks turned into flat tiles merging with the street's cobblestones. What used to be a chaotic though vibrant scene, pedestrians tipping off the pavements into the path of the congested traffic, is now an almost European-style mall.

Some of the principal avenues have been repaved with ashphalt and are near enough as smooth as those in a typical Western city, while I'm informed that upgrades for several more are scheduled. Cobblestone alleyways through the historic centre have been opened up and beautified, with the addition of bourgeois touches like flower pots and park benches.

Yet the public development is exceeded by the private. Retail has gone bigger, brighter, and more formalised. Nestled under its 6,000-metre volcanoes, Arequipa now actually has a couple of stores selling mountain gear. On the calle Mercaderes there's a menswear store, while on La Merced heading south from the plaza exotic new shops selling beds, furniture and solar water heating systems have appeared since my last visit. There's a diverse array of new cafes, restaurants, and hotels, while tourist oriented pizzerias, laundromats, alpaca-wear boutiques and, of course, travel agencies have filled in the available space on Santa Catalina, San Francisco and Jerusalen. Tasteful advertising frames most of the new businesses. Local makers of banners and signs rustically carved in wood have clearly enjoyed bonanza years.

Interspersed amongst the ubiquitous yellow 'Tico' taxi bouncing over the cobblestones are a handful of Hyundais and Toyotas and the occasional shiny 4WD. On the streets of the city, as far as I can tell, there are fewer beggars, vendors of random consumer items, or children selling sweets.

Walk from the centre into the inner suburbs and you see repaired walls, painted facades, less rubbish, even the odd private car or pitched roof. In streets such as those leading up to Hugo and Lizbeth's place there are more trees, shrubs and cacti planted along the sidewalks.

What it all adds up to is the significant expansion of that elusive entity, for Latin America, the middle class. If there's something unreflexively thought of as 'development', Arequipa has been seeing some of it. It's not as if there is exaggerated, flashy wealth sprouting up next to complete misery. Rather, the wealth seems to have been spread around moderately well -- perhaps coming down in splashes, instead of a trickle. More people have the means and the confidence to spend, and things to consume are appearing to meet their demand.

Much is still the same: the ancient, dirty kombis, the cracked and crumbling sidewalks, the pollution. But with the rough edges of decay and desperation softened, Arequipa is on its way from being a place of melancholy beauty to becoming a truly spectacular city.

I have to admit that it's surprised me somewhat. I've been used to reading the trenchant criticisms from the likes of Humberto Campodónico and other commentors, of the Peruvian government's unreformed neoliberalism and failure to take advantage of the boom times, the claimed manipulation of poverty statistics, and the lack of progress with economic diversification, health, education, pensions, or improved labour conditions.

However, the development that has occured is still consistent with those criticisms. So much money has flowed into the country, and hence government coffers, that although the adminstration hasn't done anything particularly progressive, in absolute terms it has had greatly increased resources to deploy. Arequipa is a mining region, and has benefited from the Canon Minero, a portion of the taxes paid by mining companies that goes directly to the affected regions. It's also the country's second-biggest, and most orderly, urban area, with an existing civil society and a core of educated, ambitious residents capable of developing an interconnected domestic economy if given the chance. If anywhere is going to take advantage of good times, it's here.

The question is how widepread and durable all this is. My impressions so far are all from walking and driving around the centre of Arequipa city, which has always been among the most middle class places in Peru. What is it like in outskirts and the pueblos jovenes? Have they also seen improvements? What about the rural areas? Have the beggars and street sellers really got jobs or improved their living standards, or have they been shovelled away out of sight by a government wanting to give a good impression to tourists and investors?

There's also the odd fact that for the moment, at least some Peruvians are more optimistic than those elsewhere in the world. Several people have told me that "the world economic crisis isn't really affecting Peru". Perhaps not that much so far. For one thing, at a macro level, Peru's government and major banks (like those of Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia) have managed their accounts with technocratic efficency and didn't do anything stupid during the good times. There are also enough accumulated foreign reserves for the government to be able to apply an economic stimulus (through not to the same extent as Chile, which having squirreled away earnings from its copper exports, is one of the few countries to be able to act as Keynes foresaw and inject funds from its savings rather than borrowings).

At some stage, however, the world situation is going to affect Peru. The downturn of soaring mineral prices that have driven much of the economic growth, lesser demand and lower prices for the 'non-traditional' agricultural and garment exports, and fewer tourists arriving, will mean that the boom will end and export-led growth will likely slow dramatically. That's when it will become apparent just how much progress has been made with important but less visible things like the improvement of education, the recovery of civil society, the establishment of basic infrastucture in rural areas, and the integration of these areas into the wider economy.

In Arequipa, I see the growth in retail and services as being driven by an expanding middle class, rather than being just the rosy flush of a transient mining and tourist boom. But so much is directed at the international tourist that the concerns I outlined in this post still hold. Since I was last here, the number of travel agencies has increased significantly again, while tourist numbers or destinations haven't really changed. What will happen when all those people who have sunk loans or savings into their shiny new offices come up against the reality of fierce competition for dwindling numbers of clients?

Peru has seen booms before, often based around a single raw material, and generally dissolving into thin air leaving little more than social dislocation and a damaged environment. This time, will the development stick? Or will the raised expectations of the last ten years make the come down even harsher and more destabilising?

Voices of the Not So Poor

It wouldn't cost that much more, in international terms, to fly from Lima to Arequipa, but for me it wouldn't be quite right. After arriving, I wanted to work my way into the country by land, as if making its acquaintance again.

On my way to the bus station in Lima, I had a more jovial and conversational taxi driver. Still preoccupied with the theme of security, I asked him which parts of Lima were more or less safe. He thought a second and said: "only really the very centre". He said that things had got no better in the last couple of years. What was worse for citizens was that the very police supposed to protect them were sometimes implicated in the crimes. He cited two cases where police were accused of robbing motorists who had stopped or been pulled over.

My driver acknowledged that some things had been improved in Lima; public works and the modernization of some parts, but that while credit had to be given to Luis Castañeda for gettig things done, "no one holds him to account".

He was particularly critical of public education and health services:

"if it's an emergency and you're dying, you'll get treatment; anything else, they send you off to wait, even though you're sick. Then you get the basic treatment, but they send you off to get a whole range of scans and tests, which of course you have to pay for. Or there's some process to get reimbursed, but you know, those processes...and then you have to pay more for brand medicines, otherwise you only get the generic ones, which aren't effective, and you have to take ten times as much".

We moved on to talking about politics, and my driver reported himself unimpressed with Alan Garcia, who this time around was only doing better because, he had more money:

"Last time things were ok from 1985 to 1987, until the money ran out. It's like, in football, if you've got some skill, you're playing with good team mates, you get on the field, you'll do ok".

Not quite following the analogy, I asked: "So, is Alan a bad player surrounded by good team mates, or a good player surrounded by bad team mates?"

"I think he's a bad player surrounded by bad team mates", said my driver.

His theory on what underlaid Peru's problems was a familar one: "insitutionalized" corruption, at every level. I asked him how he thought that could be changed, and after a moment's thought he replied: "with difficulty...with great difficulty".

At the Ormeño bus terminal on avenida Javier Prado, surgical masks were again ubiquitous. The terminal has been improved, and now has a cafe, nice seats and a TV. However, passengers were scare, and when the Arequipa bus was called only a handful of people hopped on. The announcement for the bus indicated its destinations would include Cañete, Chincha, Ica, Nazca, and Camaná, before arriving in Arequipa. This contradicted the stated "direct" service of the Royal Class buses, but given the paucity of clients, I could forgive them.

On board, I struck up a conversation with practically my only fellow passengers in the front of the bus. Carlos and Claudio were from Ayapata, which they explained to me is reached from Juliaca, first heading southeast to the frigid Andean town of Macusani and later dropping down to around 3,000 metres on the way towards the jungle of Puno.

They explained that the main industry there is gold mining. With the current high prices of gold, it has become worthwhile to work over the tailings of old mines, and business is good. Carlos is a middle man, buying the gold off the prospectors, while Claudio is himself a prospector. He said that on average he could get 2 grams per day, worth around $250 USD, but some days there could be 10 or even 20 grams.

Carlos told me that in their territory, "the state is almost entirely absent", and the government does nothing for them, except for the paved highway from Macusani to Puno, "which in any cse was put in by Fujimori". He also criticised the level of bureaucracy that the central government imposes on the regions, and makes it difficult to get any projects moving. "They make an example out of the Puno regional government for only spending 1 percent of its investment budget, but it's them who made it so hard to do anything".

I asked if the state didn't even provide basic functions like police and health services.

"No, we threw the police out", said Carlos. He said that the police post used to be staffed by unwilling recruits sent from the likes of Lima and Arequipa, who didn't fit into the local culture. He claimed that they abused local women, and hassled local youths by constantly imposing fines on them. Now, security was provided by the ronda campesina, a kind of district-wide, rural neighbourhood watch. If a thief was caught in the community, "we take care of him ourselves".

In their community, Carlos and Claudio had developed a cooperative project to generate hydroelectric power, but wanted to expand it from 100 MW to 400 MW, to be able to supply the whole district with electricity. They had met with similar community groups from Junin who had received loans from NGOs to support them, and they wanted my advice on how to get something similar going. I gave them the names and addresses of some Peruvian NGOs that could possibly help.

According to Carlos, the community was welcoming the development of the Interoceanic Highway between Brazil and Peru, which, if they could get a 13km connecting road built, would greatly improve the ability to get their products to market, including subtropical fruits from the lower part of the territory.

This would be a typical story from the development literature: mariginalized rural, ethnic community, ignored or abused by the central government, working things out for themselves and becoming more empowered in the process. But reality usually has something incongruous to add to the picture.

As Carlos dropped off to sleep, Claudio, who had been pretty quiet, began to tell me about the Chinese herbal medicine for which he was a sales representative. I'll have to find the pamphlet that he gave me for the exact name and description, but it apparently involves different pastes, creams and tonics, which cure a range of ills, and are sent prefabricated from China according to a secret recipe. According to Claudio, this medicine was originally introduced to Peru after some soldiers with lingering ailments from the Peru-Ecuador jungle frontier war found that it was the only thing that worked for them. It was now so popular that a company representative had been received in the government palace by Alejandro Toledo.

Disturbed that Claudio was turning quacky on me, I said ¨what about the gold mining?". "Oh, I do both", he said. He explained that the medicine was sold through a system of "affiliation", and offered to get me the affilitation papers out of his suitcase. I politely declined, and adjusted my conceptual settings to recognize the possibility of a Chinese-origin Amway scheme operating out of remote Quechua communities.

The jet lag was still messing with me, and by the time we got to Ica, I was practically the only one still awake. A young guy occupied the seat behind me, and I apologised for the angle my seat was pushed back at. He introduced himself as Abraham, and said he was originally from Chumbivilca, a remote pueblito about halfway between Arequipa and Cuzco. He was an operator of heavy machinery, and had been working on construction projects in the area affected by the 2007 earthquake. He said that he earned about 1,500 soles monthly for working "at least" 10 hours a day, six days a week.

This, readers, is now up to what would count as a "decent" salary in Peru. Even as the sole income for a family of four or five, it would still leave them miles above the poverty line. But take into account the conditions and the hours of work, and you'll admit that what amounts to $125 USD per week is nothing to get excited about.

I asked Abraham how the reconstruction of the earthquake-affected zone was going and he said it was more or less on schedule. I recalled that he would mainly be working on the highways. What about the planned rebuilding of people's houses, I asked?

"Ahh, well, that's going a bit slower", he said.

Planned Movements

On my first morning back in Arequipa, Hugo rang from his jungle lodge near Santa Teresa and insisted that I come and visit him there as soon as possible. He would meet me in Cuzco, from where we would travel together to the lodge, spend 4--5 days and then return to Arequipa. Hugo said he wouldn't be returning to the lodge for a while after that, so it was best that I come now. I said ok, but I would travel on Wednesday the 28th, rather Monday or Tuesday as Hugo had suggested. I needed a couple of days to recover from travelling, and run some errands in Arequipa.

Later I spoke to Lizbeth's brother Pablo about wanting to spend some time in the Colca valley talking to people for my ethnography project, doing some reconnaissance for next year's thesis research, and just experiencing a little of campesino life. He said I should come up to Cabanaconde for 10--15 days after returning from Santa Teresa.

So if I do manage to do the intended mountain climbing it will be a bit later, which is not a bad thing, as it gives me time to adjust to the altitude and get over the minor irritants like the cold I seem to be coming down with and the handful of bed-bug bites I picked up in Lima. Throw in a possible visit to my new acquaintances in Ayapata (see previous entry) and the planned trip to Ayacucho, and that just about uses up my entire time here. Too much to do, etc.

Snapshots of Lima

Even when winter is arriving and the sun is slowly losing its battle with the coat of hazy fog that encroaches from the Pacific, Lima's air has a tactile thickness that makes you feel as if it's working its way into your pores. I also reckon it takes on different qualities during the day, evolving from a ripe flavour of decaying vegetables early in the morning to a heady odor of used cooking oil by the evening; always underlaid with a rich base of dust and exhaust fumes.

Over the last 10--15 years, the governance of Peru's capital has been somewhat better than that of the nation as a whole. This has probably been aided by the fact that it's problems are at least tangible and geographically concentrated, and that, despite the chaos, this is where most of the country's money flows through.

In recent times, Lima's municipal government has taken the approach of carving out small, public oases of order and calm, of which the most notable has been the resoration of the historic centre of the city since the mid-1990s. The grand colonial architecture has been restored and security for locals and tourists alike is assured by the armed, paramilitary-style serenazgos, like those pictured below, who literally have a squad on every second corner within the few designated central city blocks.





While this approach is open to the normal criticisms of elitism and authoritarianism, it's hard to disagree with entirely. When social problems are so massive that they can't be tackled all at once, and many of them are inter-generational, you have to start somewhere. Security, some green space, and well-maintained public facilities benefit everyone and have a direct effect on the quality of life. The alternative is to give the city up to complete chaos and let the rich wall themselves off in private compounds. It would just be nice if the same objectives could be achieved without quite so many guns.

Next to its headquarters on the west side of the Plaza Mayor, the municipality had an exhibition showing the changes that have occurred through various building projects that are part of the Construyendo Peru programme. It was quite impressive, and represented a welcome effort by government to communicate with citizens about the fruits of their taxes.

A noticeable feature, however, was how often the name of the mayor, Luis Castañeda Lossio, appeared on the posters and exhibits. To me it looked rather like a case of using the state to promote the politician. The same day, I saw an article in La Republica confirming this view. Congress is drafting a law that will prevent local government advertising particular politicians or parties as part of public information campaigns. One of Lima's district mayors was complaining that the law was 'discriminatory', as it should also apply to central and regional government, public ministries, and so forth.

In the pedestrian walkway next to the municipality was another exhibition, of photos by evangelical Christian photographer Graham Gordon. The exhibition was titled Rostros Diversos, los Mismos Derechos ("Diverse Faces, the Same Rights"), and featured images of Peruvians from all backgrounds, organized around eight groupings of universal human rights. The municipality of Lima was a key sponsor, while, among others, the European Union had added its endorsement.

It's hard to know how much to take from the motherhood-and-apple pie tone of the exhibition, but some of the commentary offered a mild rebuke to Alan Garcia's administration, only metres away across the plaza in the Palacio del Gobierno. Garcia and the likes of former Prime Minister Jorge Castillo have famously argued that development will only come through large-scale investment involving privatization of resources and the breakup of communal property; those who oppose such moves are "dogs in the manger" impeding progress. However, the text next to the photos under the "right to territory" declared that:

...these rights are being jeopardised by the priority that is being given to mining, petroleum and logging companies over communal territories. Priority needs to be given to the development of indigenous peoples, based on the protection and sustainable use of natural resources, and respect for their cultures and the lands that they have traditionally occupied.

For evidence that the central city restoration project is limited, and in some ways merely symbolic, you just need to walk a few blocks east to the avenida Abancay, where the city resdiscovers its edgy, grimy, chaotic character. It's all but impossible to capture this in a photo, which will always miss the noise, the smoke, the odors, the constant movement and the vague sense of physical threat that only partly comes from the worried urgings of hoteliers, officials and taxi drivers to be a good tourist and not walk down the avenida Abancay. But for some idea of the change in a few blocks, I offer the contrast between the following two photos.




On day two in Lima, I had already booked a ticket to Arequipa, keen to get on with the main purposes of my trip. Before leaving, I wanted to at least see something new, so I decided to cross the Rimac river to visit the bullring at the plaza de Acho. There's a long, impressionistic passage in Alfredo Bryce Echenique's Un Mundo para Julius that describes a family outing to a bullfight. The book is set in the 1960s, and from my own experience of Lima I couldn't really imagine the scene, so I thought I would walk by and take a look.


Things have certainly changed from Julius' world; crossing the Rimac towards the bullring, the view is dominated by the pueblos jovenes sprawling up the Cerro San Cristobal (above). On the other side, nestled between the grimy bridge underside and the dust and chaos of the avenue, I lunched at a restaurant specialising in Arequipan food, with a bright and spotless interior and run by a softly-spoken woman from the village of Yanqui. This reminded me that the oases of cleanliness and order in Peru are not just those created by a patrician municipality, but more often are carved out in individual homes and businesses by people determined to make the best of their lives and surroundings.

I found the plaza de Acho, a faded and sad-looking coliseum, smaller than I had imagined. The entrance way led to a 'taurine musuem' that didn't appear to have any visitors. I didn't have time to go inside, so contented myself with walking around the outside. The most poignant image was this door, presumably once a prestigous entranceway, judging by the sign which announces that entrance is restricted to "officials, bullfighters , police, journalists, invited guests and children".





Across the street from the plaza, and near the base of one of Luis Castañeda's advertised accomplishments, a rather steep footbridge across the avenue, I took an obligatory couple of photos of the bullring's exterior. I was beckoned across by a group of people sitting around a cebiche stand. While I acceded to topping myself up with a plate of cebiche and canchita, a voluminous woman called Marta subjected me to a lecture, wanting to know what was I thinking, a tourist, in coming to this spot by myself. "As long as you're with me no one will touch you; I'm from the barrio", she told me. Then, when I had paid the cebiche stand woman, Marta demanded a tip for being so helpful and protecting me. I gave her two soles, "for the conversation".

Dispatches in Transit

When it was my turn to step forward to the Peruvian immigration desk, the official was pulling the surgical mask far enough away her face to be able to speak into a cellphone. She was talking to her daughter. It seemed that a particular tradesman was supposed to turn up at their house by 8 pm that evening but had never arrived. There was now a new appointment, for around 10am the next morning. "Don't worry, mi hijita", she said. Your papá will be there as well". Back in Peru, I thought, grinning as the official stamped my passport. "Have a good trip", she said. "Thanks for waiting".

My taxi driver to the centre of Lima also had a surgical mask on. As we drove away from the aiport he pulled it off with a grunt of annoyance. "Can't stand wearing this thing", he told me. "The muncipality makes us, or we get fined".

Earlier in the day, at Santiago airport where I stopped over for 7 hours before the connecting flight to Lima, there were also official precautions against the H1N1 influenza. Everyone who got off the plane, whether entering Chile or in transit, was redirected into a little side room where they had to fill out a form giving contact details and declaring any flu-like symptoms, and then join a rapidly growing line to have a photo taken by a single masked official. The official repeated the same mantra over and over: Permanezca inmovil. Mire directamente a la cámara. Gracias. Puede continuar. ("Stay still. Look directly at the camera. Thank you. You can continue"). After the first twenty or thirty photos everything became more efficient, and the official had to cut himself off: Permanezca inmovil. Mir--Gracias!

I couldn't help wondering what the Chilean authorities were going to do with all that data (starting with around 300 passengers on just one full Airbus). With the forms being handed out and collected separately, it just required a couple to get out of order to frustrate any matching process with the photos. As for contact details, the only useful thing on my form was my email, which I think was probably illegible.

Peru was less counter-productively obsessive. All passengers getting off had to fill out a form about symptoms, and there were two nurses from the Callao health service waiting bashfully by the plane door to offer "advice or assistance", but no compulsory photo session. The masks, however, were just as ubiquitous.

My taxi driver from the aiport was friendly enough, but not very talkative. I told him it was first time in Peru for over two years; I imagined quite a bit had changed. He laughed briefly. "Nothing much has changed", he said. " You'll see". He looked dead tired, and said he had been working since 7 am, and would continue until dawn."Why do they make you work such long hours?", I asked. "I requested it", he said. He told me that he earned a fixed rate of 950 soles per month, around $300 USD. The extra hours would get a bonus, but according to my driver, shaking his head sadly, "it's not enough".

You Wanna See My Positionality?

An interesting little exercise in my Ethnographic Research class on Tuesday. This week's student seminar was on reflexivity, summed up as the careful and deliberate examination of the relationship between a work of ethnography, its producer, and the process by which it is produced. In any other science, you might just call this 'being transparent about one's methods'.

My classmate who was giving the seminar asked us to write down ten things about ourselves -- personal, political, demographic, academic or philosophical, that give an idea of who we are and where we come from, and that could influence how we carry out our research.

I found it surprisingly easy to scribble things down, and had filled up an A4 page within four or five minutes. A couple of my classmates who read out their jottings focused on things that would directly affect the particular research project they had planned. But it seems I interpreted it as a chance to come clean about my what drives me in general. I wrote it down quickly, in what was pretty close to a stream of consciousness. Apart from a couple of grammatical tidy-ups, the below is almost exactly what I jotted down on the sheet of paper.

1. I'm very analytic but also like to see connections or analogies between things and put them into a system.

2. I'm generally shy and introverted, but sometimes switch over to another side of my personality and become domineering. I have to have my say, and can be a poor listener.

3. I tend to become very obsessed with particular topics, and have to know all the details about them.

4. I have a background in philosophy (itself driven by the personality traits above). I've since moved on to a more empirical interest in human affairs, but the philosophy always finds a way back in.

5. I love stories -- anything is better when told as a narrative, especially written, but also filmed. My driving ambition is to be a good writer myself.

6. I'm male, European, hetrosexual and middle class, but have always felt detached from the supposed position of power that puts me in (being clumsy, nervous and geekish always seemed to easily override any inherent social advantage). It's only as I've got older that I've noticed the subtle ways in which my path is smoothed.

7. I was brought up as a Catholic, but with a Kantian / humanist morality that emphasized principles, responsibility, and treating people as ends in themselves.

8. I'm very interested in Latin America for reasons I can't fully explain. Although I have quite a bit of experience there, my connections are overwhelmingly with the mestizo middle class, which could lead me to overestimate my insight.

9. I love the outdoors, but am also very attached to certain comforts, notably hot showers, coffee, and a good night's sleep.

10. Politically, I'm a social democrat by default, with flirtatious leanings toward left-libertarianism. I'm prevented from crossing over fully by a suspicion that oppressive systems don't come close to explaining the sum total of human nastiness. In that sense, I'm also probably hiding a streak of 'small c' conservatism.

OK, so there you go. Readers, how about a similar contribution? You don't have to do ten; five or even three would be a good start...

Andean Participant Observer

Next week, after two years and slightly more than three months absence, I'm returning to South America. On Thursday 21 May, I'll fly out of Auckland. The flight arrives in Santiago at the slightly spooky-feeling time of five hours before it leaves; then I have a few hours layover before catching a connecting flight to Lima and arriving around midnight.

I have the reasonable span of eight weeks, which should be enough time to recover from the jet lag and make the most of being there.

Fortune, weather, personal discipline and people's kindness permitting, I aim to do at least the following:

--make some enquiries and prepare the ground for possible research in 2010 towards my development studies thesis, which at this stage I'm keen to do in the Arequipa region

--collect a wider and more in-depth selection of 'ghost stories of the sierra', which I will in some way work into a report for my ethnographic research class

--visit my friend Hugo's 'lodge', which he is constructing near the town of Santa Teresa in the jungle of Cuzco, close to an alternative route to Machu Picchu (I put 'lodge' in inverted commas because, based on past experience, I really don't know what it will be like).

--do plenty of trekking and climbing, with the ultimate aim of scaling either of Nevado Ampato or Nevado Coropuna, both around 6,400 metres, and both a step up in terms of height, cold, snowiness and general drama from my previous ascents of Misti and Chachani.

--at some stage manage to visit a part of Peru (or even Bolivia) that I haven't been to before. At this stage I'm favouring the region of Ayacucho.

A lot of these things are going to require regular, discplined writing, variously of the jotting, recording and narrating varieties. That's good news for this blog: I hope it will become a lot more regular, dynamic and interesting than it has been for for some time.

Tackling Cults and the Corporation

I have to put in a plug for my new favourite personal blog, Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog: Free-Market Anti Capitalism. The site originally raised my interest because of arguments rather similar to my own about the hypocrisy of right-wing attacks on 'big government', and criticisms of the vulgar libertarianism of 'pot-smoking Republicans'.

An important area where he takes vulgar libertarians to task is in their blinkered obsession with 'state' power that systematically ignores the abuses of power in the private world, especially in large corporations.

From there I hit on Carson's deconstruction and withering attacks on that bible of corporate enforced conformity, Who Moved My Cheese, and something called Fish! Philosophy which as far as I'm aware hasn't made it to New Zealand yet, but sounds truly terrifying and shudder-inducing.

It's worth reading all the collection of posts and comments linked to from this page.