Cusco

From Lima, I skipped directly to Cusco, tourist gateway to the famous Incan city on the mountains, Machu Picchu. Because of a connection through my friend, I was staying with a group of 20 farmers from 4 different Peruvian regions who were meeting to learn more about organic and sustainable farming techniques. The participants were about as different from each other as they were from me. Some men from the island paradises in Lake Titicaca were dressed for dinner in NYC, but the women from the Cusco region wore traditional garb of beautifully bright striped patterns, some with toddlers tightly pinned on their back with a cradle of a blanket, all speaking Quechua. The Incan language still preserved in many mountain regions shares little with Spanish and a translator accompanied the group. While they were in meetings for 3 days, I visited more museums, churches, and monuments, seemingly ever climbing the innumberable stairs that descend into the valley city.

The city is full of opposites, rich tourists and begging indigenes, burning days and freezing nights, more intricate balconies overlooking narrow cobblestone passages. Pure is a place for architecture enthusiasts. Generally, the immense, precisely stacked Incan stones form 6-8 feet of foundation from which the bleached Spanish cllay stretches into clean contrast with the deep blue skies. Not a single picture I took of the Incan irrigation systems still in use came out well. They line the roads and run into pools by farms and houses, almost all still made from Incan clay bricks (that, surprisingly flake with light pressure..oops). Picturesque all the way to the drainage system, also a remant of the brilliant engineers. Don't flush that paper!

One day, I accompanied the group on a field trip to medicinal plants production center, where they grow and make teas, oils, creams, lip balm. Apparently an NGO came to this village to inform them how the weeds they pull up to plow potato field are in high demand in the health- and beauty-conscious foreign markets. They showed us how to make lip blam--so much vegetable shortening!--and extract oils in between feeding us copious amounts of mate de menta, grilled (huge) corn kernals and a filling soup of veggies, wheat and a chunk of meat.

The bus ride up the mountains was as impressive as the four man outfit. Wow, getting the huge tour bus up dirt roads for donkeys in the dry season but then the views too, of miles of terraces carved into seemingly unreachable mountain slopes by industrious and apparently patient farmers 8 centuries ago. On the way back to the city, we visited an establishment that raises and sheers the 4 llama cousins native to the area: llamas, guanacos, vicunas and alpacas. You see llamas on the streets all over, but the hair on these guys was incredible. One of the places I actually thought to take a picture.

A bike ride up the mountain and around some of the ruins close to the city was one of the highlights of my week in Cusco. But thinking of Peru, I will always think of food and farming, as they've enriched and scarred the country. The chicken that, you're right Sara, resemble the chicken we eat in the states; the hot chocolate made from grinding dark bars. The countryside a patchwork of variously tilled brown-iron clay with patches of trees like tufts of hair on a burned dog.

Oh, but I suppose I shouldn't forget to mention Machu Picchu.

The site is as beautiful and awesome as you've heard. Something about the immensity just brings me to silence. Incredible. They must have had some pretty rockin concerts up there too because the acoustics at that theater, oo, make you want to yoddle. But I can find nothing to say other than it was a surreal experience and that you should talk to me before you visit because it can be carisimo!

This marked the end of my stay in Peru.. and I travelled hard by bus the next few days to reach Argentina. The people in the bus stations at Chile made me glad I was just passing through. As did the man shouting sermons through the middle of town.