One afternoon, determined to be helpful, I cooked lunch with my mom. It was just the two of us. Her older daughters, Estefani and Vanessa were away at university in Cusco, Sabino, her husband, was driving a group of tourists to Lake Titicaca, and the younger kids hadn’t come home from school yet. I had bought way too much fruit the day before, and had a pineapple left over. I’d placed it on the kitchen table with a note scribbled on a square of toilet paper and skewered onto the spiky crown, Para mi familia, un beso, Susana. Feliciana got the hint. Something else about Ollantaytambo that is different from my home in huge, desert-y Utah: tropical fruit is dirt cheap here, and most of it is grown less than 100 miles from Ollanta. But despite the cheap fruit, Andean cuisine consists of starch, protein, more starch, and few vegetables. Potato soup with rice, chicken, and shredded carrots. Fried potatoes with rice, fried eggs, and two slices of tomato. Boiled potatoes with pasta, ground beef, and onions. On this day, we used my pineapple to make a fruit salad, adding apple, papaya, and banana, then pouring fresh-squeezed orange juice over the fruit as an extra sweetener. Heavenly, sweet, and fibrous! Feliciana also made a squash-based vegetable soup (with chicken and potatoes, of course). Feliciana ran out to buy dishwashing soap, herbs, and vegetables, and I sat on the tiny, rectangular stool in the corner of the kitchen and pared the skin away from white and yellow potato flesh with a keen, home-sharpened knife. Dropped the dirt-encrusted half moons and spirals into the brown wastewater, dug the tip of the knife into the odd divots, flicked away the eyes and spots of rot.

Feliciana came bustling through the door. Peruvian women bustle differently than women from the United States. US women sweep through their hurry, rushing with long, efficient movements. Peruvian women scurry, taking smaller steps the bigger a hurry they’re in, holding their body close to themselves as they rush. Like mice. And they smile while they do it, as if amused by their tardiness, excited to get where they’re going, or embarrassed, smiling to let the world know that they’re appropriately abashed and are moving quickly to make amends. Bustling through the door, Feliciana smiled at me, down on the floor. She said something I didn’t catch. “Como?” She paused. “Susana, you can do things! Rebecca” (Rebecca was the family’s very first – and most favorite – homestay volunteer) “couldn’t do anything. You can wash your clothes, you can help cook. Rebecca always said, ‘Oh, I’d love to help, oh, but I can’t.’ She just didn’t know how to work.” This may be the best compliment I’ve ever received.  Scooping the peeled potatoes from my bowl with rough brown hands, she dropped them quickly into the water boiling on the stove. “It goes so much faster with the two of us!”

The floors in Feliciana’s house are painted concrete. Stone and mud mortar make up the bottom two thirds of the walls; the upper third is adobe brick covered in plaster. Trying to be helpful one morning, I swept the kitchen floor, then the dining room floor, then the hall, then my downstairs bedroom. I ran the broom over the rafters to break loose a few cobwebs I’d seen. I poked at the plastered bricks near the ceiling, and then swept the stone walls. Chunks of dried mud crumbled and fell, and brown flowers of dirt dust bloomed. Ah, I thought. Don’t sweep walls made of dirt. The ceiling is wooden and doubles as the floor of the upstairs rooms: round eucalyptus trunks support simple two by six planks. There is no insulation. Heels clicked and tromped over my head as I wrote in my journal at night. Jeans with change in the pockets thumped onto the floor. Light dripped through the cracks. Pillow fights made the bed creak and the kids shriek. Feliciana and Sabino have four children and three bedrooms (including the one I used), but only use the two upstairs, even when their volunteer room is unoccupied. The kids (aged 6 to 24) sleep three or four to a bed and often climb in with their parents, well beyond the age when American parents strictly establish the importance of personal space. During a visit to the Awamaki weaving cooperative in Patacancha, I met a girl named Magdalena. She and the other women of the cooperative were learning how to make placemats, a piece of household frippery that doesn’t exist in Peru. Sixteen years old, Magdalena is already the secretary of the cooperative. I admired her placemat design, and she began to ask me questions. “Where are you from? And your parents?” Still living, I explained, but in a different part of the country. “But…” her serious dark eyes were perplexed. “How will you know when they die?” I didn’t have the words to explain that in my culture, it is expected that children will leave their parents and forge a life apart.

Toilet paper goes in the trash can instead of in the toilet, and hot water for showers trickles from a terrifying electric shower head. I washed my hair three times in the four and a half weeks that I lived with Feliciana. Differences abound, but in the end, Ollantaytambo felt like home. This is the challenge that keeps me traveling. Plopping myself down into a foreign situation and figuring it out is thrilling, because it’s always different, always new, always enlightening. Learning how to respect and enjoy the way of life in Ollanta and other towns and countries makes me a better, stronger, broader person. I’m addicted. Viva la diferencia!

Someone turned the music up: waino, the music of the campesinos (a word that translates literally as “peasant”). A male emcee shouts the name of the singer, usually a woman, repeatedly throughout the song. Sometimes shouting directions to the crowd, “Manos arriba, manos arriba, manos arrrrrrrrrrribaaaaaa!” (hands up, hands up!), sometimes calling out names of Andean towns and communities, sometimes repeating the main themes of the song. Harps, drum machines, and high-pitched vocals add a unexpected dash of oriental flavor. The songs are either about tragedies, heartbreak, or about getting drunk. Tonight, at least, there were no tragedies. More chicha, more beer, and soon I was apologizing to the woman who cleared my plate, still half full of potatoes, noodles, and meat. Too loud to talk, people continued raising their glasses, clinking them, mouthing ‘Salud’, then refilling.

I ducked out for a bit, running through the rain to meet up with a few of my fellow volunteers. I told them about the party. They rolled their eyes. “At least you missed the dancing,” one said.
“Oh, no, I’m going back. I promised my host mom.” My friends blinked.
“Really? Have you been to a waino party? This is how they dance – ” one friend grabbed another’s hands and started shaking them. “One time I tried to move to the rhythm of the music with my dance partner, but she shook her head and made me dance like this! Nah, no no no. I just don’t like it, I don’t want to do it.  You know they’re all going to want to dance with you?” I shrugged. This is why I’m here. To dance waino and eat too much starch and drink too-sweet beer and pour the dregs at the bottom of the bottle onto the floor.

An hour or so later, I was back at the closed restaurant, knocking on the window to be let in. The boy who answered was one I hadn’t met yet, and he was confused, thinking I was looking for the internet café, or the restaurant. “No, no, we’re closed,” he said.
“No, no, I’m invited,” I said.
“No, it’s a private party,” he said.
“Yes, yes, I know, Maria invited me. I’m living with her sister, Feliciana,” I said.
“Oh…” he said. Inside, drunkenness had proceeded with abandon. One uncle dozed where he sat. A cousin sat with his face on the table, passed out. Feliciana and my host sisters had left, but Maria recognized me and invited me to have another beer. I sat with Balthasar, Feliciana and Maria’s brother. His wife, Adela was deep in conversation with another woman across the table. The drums and harps were still thudding and chirping away, but I’d evidently arrived at a break in the dancing. “Salud!” Balthasar clinked his bottle against mine. I couldn’t find a clean glass, but Adela pushed hers over to me. “Where are you from?” he shouted. I told him. “Ahhh. And how do you like Peru?” I nodded and smiled, and gave my well-practiced line about how I’d been here three years ago, and fallen in love, and how I was called back by the country’s magic. “Ahhh. Si. And what places have you visited?” More well-practiced lines. “Ahhh. Do you like this music? This is our music, the music of the campesinos. Should we dance? Let’s dance.” We joined Maria, another woman, and the elderly aunt of the pink sweater and soft, wobbly hat. The elderly aunt shouted along with the emcee on the stereo, and others gathered around, clapping a rhythm. We held hands and danced in a circle, stomping our feet, swinging our hands and hips from front to back and side to side. The movement made perfect sense to me, and I relished the trembling of the wooden floor beneath our heavy steps. The elderly aunt drove the whole circle, swinging her arms vigorously, pounding her heels in time to the music until the nylons on one leg began to sag and slip down off of her knee. She let go of the hands next to her and spread her arms like a child pretending to be an airplane, and spun in a circle, kicking with one leg and pivoting on the other. The crowd loved this, and shouted in time with the music, “hay, hay, hay, hay, haaaaaay,” shouting giving way to trilling tongues and cheers. Moving along with the rest, I laughed, and smiled at the strangeness, the unselfconsciousness, the faroucheness of it all.

In the morning, Feliciana and I walked to Balthasar and Adela’s house to hang laundry. Both brother and sister-in-law were outside, nursing hangovers. “Ahhhh, buenos dias, Susana. I was drunk last night. But I remember what we were talking about. Today I, today the cerveza is a bit too much, but there are other interesting places here. Much history. Today I can’t, but next Sunday I will tell you about our customs and show you the places I know.” I worked in the morning, and arrived home for lunch late, but Feliciana wasn’t there, and the stove was cold. An hour later she arrived, bustling in her very Peruvian way, obviously upset. “Oh, Susana,” she tsked. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Ahhh, but what bad children my sister has! Five children she is raising, paying for them to go to university. And they don’t appreciate it. They don’t understand. The oldest daughter left school because she got pregnant. And now Maria is supporting her grandchild and new son-in-law. And now, the second oldest, ahhh.” Feliciana picked up a pot, put it back, picked up another pot and started boiling water. “The second daughter, she’s pregnant, too. Five months! Five months pregnant, and she’s been keeping her belly wrapped up tight so her mama wouldn’t know. What was she thinking? How is she going to finish school with a baby? She just thinks her mother is going to take care of her? And the baby, too?” There had been an intervention this morning, Feliciana told me. Certain family members who knew about the pregnancy had decided that it was time for Maria to be told. Feliciana had walked in expecting to have a drink with her sister and relive the party the night before, and instead had found the entire family gathered, several crying, older brothers furious, other relatives preventing them from taking to the streets and finding their sister’s boyfriend. “My sister was in shock. She fainted. Her brother had to catch her; her husband is in shock, too.” Feliciana was chopping potatoes. Small chunks shimmied off the cutting board and onto the floor. “Five months, without saying anything to her mother! Oh, Susana, what was she thinking? Maria was so happy yesterday! Drinking, dancing, with all of her friends, and today, well.” She sighed, putting both her hands on the edge of the counter and resting her weight against them for a moment. “Poor Tia Maria.”

That’s life, the waino musicians sing. The world can change that quickly. One minute you’re drinking with friends, spinning, soaring, the next, trying to forget the pain of being human. The contract that we sign by default, being born, requires us to live each moment. Opting out means escaping the bad times, but missing out on the good ones, too. But, this is why I’m here. To drink the sweet chicha and the bitter dregs, and to move along with the rest of the circle, squeezing the hands of the people next to me as we swing in tune with all the songs, even the ones I don’t like.

Speaking of animals.
“Do you know how to kill a duck?” Feliciana ducked into her neighbor’s doorway. “No? Ya, mami, gracias.” She giggled, and soft-shoed down the cobbled path to the next house, Estefani, her daughter, trailing behind with the panicked, unlucky ducky, and I (and my camera) trailing after Estefani. “Si? Ya, mami, gracias,” There was a flurry of feathers as Estefani transferred the duck into the hands of the señora with the stick. The señora laid the duck’s head on the dirt floor of the cook shack. I could hear cuys chirping in the shadows. The body she grasped with both hands, and Feliciana placed the stick over the duck’s neck. “Ya, listo.” The señora stepped on the stick with one foot on either side of the duck’s head, and pulled. Wings flapped, in vain, and the rose-colored beak struggled to open and draw air through a crushed windpipe. “Ya esta.” It is done. Feliciana thanked the señora, collected the limp but still twitching body, and shuffled quickly back down the path to her mother’s cook shack. Water was already boiling over the wood stove, and Feliciana plunged the duck into the water, head first. Careful not to burn her fingers, she pulled the body back out, dropped it into a plastic bucket, and began pulling feathers. White down stuck to her hands and knees and drifted in the air like ashes. Soon the white gave way to yellowish pink, thick skin pocked with stubble. The clean, white, quacking duck was quickly reduced to a carcass hanging in the butcher’s window. Without its feathers, it was suddenly just a piece of meat. Raw. Undignified, inanimate. My sympathy kept trying to revive the struggling, snowy animal that had been picking at grains in the courtyard only a few minutes earlier, but the animal was gone, and lunch was in two hours. Time to get cooking.

Criollo is a soulful, passionate music that comes from the coast. It consists of guitars, gently strummed, mournful accordions, and male and female voices belting their woes to a sympathetic audience. I fell in love with it on my last trip. Of all the different types of music I endured on the many long bus rides, criollo was the first that caught me humming along, the first with which I connected in this foreign land. I like it for the same reasons I like Billy Holiday and Edith Piaf. It has that same antique quality; as if it’s being sung into a black and white room of suited men smoking cigarettes wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and women in nylons and smart evening dresses with gloves, heels, and matching clutches. Or, today, into a small, crowded kitchen lit with one bare light bulb, to a sympathetic gringa, her Peruvian madre shredding carrots and butchering a chicken breast, and her hermanita (little sister) in a sparkly pink sweater with her hair falling out of a tight bun. After every third or fourth song, the same macho announcer would remind listeners everywhere that they were enjoying “¡Criollo a las doce!” courtesy of “¡Radio Felicidad!” – Radio Happiness!

A stubborn cold has resigned me to low-energy activities for the last few days. “It’s because you wear sandals everywhere!” Feliciana scolds. It’s kept me close to home, where I’ve been able to work on bonding with my host family. Before lunch today I helped carry bags of textiles, hats, and other souvenirs to the plazoleta (small town square), where Feliciana presides over a wooden stall next to her cousins, nieces, and other relatives. The plazoleta is at the base of the famous ruins, through which all the tourists funnel. Unlike other tourist areas (the train station, for example), here the women sell passively. Their brightly colored wares attract enough attention without the women hounding the tourists: “Poncho, lady? Blankets? Hats?” I sat and practiced counting in Quechua (joc, iskay, kinsa, tawa, pisac, socqta, canchis…), wanting to regain the little proficiency I gained on my last trip. Feliciana helped me count, and I helped her translate each of her items for sale into English. Camila and one of her thousand cousins played with a stick and a red ribbon, and I took pictures. I had imagined doing this on my first trip to Peru: sitting and passing the time in the market, a fly on the wall instead of another staring tourist. The society of women and  children there fascinated me, but I was too shy to talk to them, too wary of offending with my very gringa presence. Today I felt protected by my position as Feliciana’s (paying) house guest. I was invited, welcome to sit and submerge.

Back to the kitchen. The humid childish warmth of Camila leaning on my knee, and her inquiring smile as she’d look at the dictionary and then at me as she practiced reading the letters made me feel relaxed, at home. A part of the household. The music swelled and ebbed, invisible men and women asked not to be abandoned, asked for their love to cherish them forever. Feliciana shouted up the stairs to her son, Aaron, with a mother’s loving frustration, stripped another hunk of meat from the chicken carcass, and rolled her eyes at me with a smile. And then the announcer came back; in case we’d forgotten, we were listening to “Radio Happiness! The best songs of your life!” Maybe. The best songs of my first week back in Peru? Definitely.

My job while I’m there will be to create a guidebook of local trails, day hikes, and longer treks that will attract more Western tourists.  Hiking AND writing?  It’s perfect.  When I read the job description back in September, I thought, this job was made for me! And then I thought, I’m going to make it happen.  I’ve been working three and four jobs since I got back to Utah in order to save enough money to make the trip a possibility, and it’s finally coming together.  Two years ago I spent four months hiking through the Peruvian Andes, practicing my Spanish and learning Quechua, the language of the indigenous mountain people.  I was lucky to meet many locals who helped me to trek far off the beaten tourist path and explore regions rarely visited but unparalleled in their history and wildness.  It was this experience, as well as my passion for writing, that I described to Awamaki to indicate my unique qualification for the guidebook job, and they agreed to take me on. I won’t be getting paid, but I will be a hired writer.  Being able to put the experience on my resume is going to be worth every penny.

Like most non-profits operating in the third world, Awamaki is constantly seeking donations of time, money, and supplies.  In order for me to participate in the program, I will be paying a one-time donation of $650.  This donation will cover my first month of room and board in a homestay (almost half of the funds go directly to the local family that will host me), project materials, and a donation to the guidebook project. It also covers the expenses that Awamaki incurs in hosting volunteers and running the volunteer program.

Now that I know for sure that I’ll be going, I’m reaching out.  I’m talking to my contacts at REI, and planning presentations to talk about my past experiences in Peru as well as seek donations and sponsorship for this upcoming trip.  I’m talking to the owner of Brighton Resort to request permission to hold a fund-raising bake sale and to see if Brighton would be interested in being a sponsor of the trip.  And I’m asking all of you to consider supporting me and Awamaki.  The program is currently requesting baby and kid’s clothes, prenatal vitamins, school and art supplies, used digital cameras for a community photography workshop, and a used laptop computer.  I know many of you readers are far from Salt Lake City, Utah, but if you have any of the above supplies and would be willing to mail them to me, I know that Awamaki will be exceptionally grateful, as will the local Ollantinos who receive your donations.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for your support.

The Eduardo VI dropped us at the pier in Lagunas, the town that serves as the entry point for the Reserva Nacional Pacaya Samiria. Here we organized a canoe and two guides and embarked for a four-day canoeing/camping trip into the jungle. During the days, we paddled. Javier and María, our guide and cook, talked over our heads in heavily accented jungle Spanish – a disjointed melody with stops and uplifted notes in an exotic patois. Their voices stayed in my head like a song, working, knocking around until the tune was familiar, pleasant, and I could almost sing along. In moments, our paddles struck the water in perfect unison, propelling us through the quiet, dark water, between narrow river banks overhung with dense greenery. Papagayos (macaws) and parrots exploded from the canopy, feathered fireworks of red, green, blue, yellow. Small yellow butterflies landed on Jesus’ bare back, tasting his sweat. Our guides’ sharp eyes picked out monkeys in the trees and spotted the markings of crocodiles and turtles on the sandy banks. The first day, it rained – poured. I sat in the canoe and tilted my head up, drinking the warm rain, letting it drench me, feeling wild and real and alive. At night, we searched for caimans and hunted the fish that jumped in the shallows, spearing them with a three-pronged lance. We slept on spongy palm branches under tarps and mosquito nets. After dark, we went to the bathroom in pairs, checking the ground and branches carefully for spiders and snakes before squatting. I fell asleep every night listening to the whooping of the frogs and counting the flashes of the lightning bugs flickering through the dark trees. This is the Amazon, the real deal: there are trees that walk, and other trees that kill, clinging with their roots to a healthy trunk like a giant squid wraps its tentacles around a ship, squeezing, strangling, subsuming.

There’s a potent magic in the jungle. Primitive, elemental, it stirs something deep in our bodies, something we already know but have forgotten the words for. Jesus and I returned to Lagunas enchanted. Time passed differently. I caught myself drifting, waking after minutes, hours; four more days slipped through our fingers. We spent hours at “the beach”, and more hours in the town’s only bar, drinking cold beer and watching the heat shimmer on the packed dirt of the main street. There was lots of walking barefoot and playing volleyball in the street with the same group of kids, every afternoon at four. There was nothing to do and so much time to do it in, but no one ever seemed bored. Different to the culture of the States: Do MORE in LESS time – IMMEDIATELY!! Life is simple: simple foods, rice, eggs, fish, bananas, and yucca, simple homes with dirt floors that still need to be swept, hammocks instead of beds. And yet, in the month I spent in the jungle, I saw more people laughing, more smiling and joking, more families at ease: more enjoyment.

I took a lot of pictures. The town of Lagunas is incredibly photogenic, the grass and trees are tall and bright green-yellow against the blue and green houses and the dirt streets that look golden in the baking midday sun. A girl moves through the grass with a bucket of water on her head, a toddler walking at her side. Women use machetes to chop at the grass in front of their houses. Half-naked boys stand on the gunwales of their canoes, leaf-shaped paddles in hand. A fisherman hauls his nets across the river, shouting and stamping his feet to scare off the pink river dolphins that circle his catch. The realization that came to me was simple, but powerful. These images, these faces and scenes in front of me are real. Not from the pages of magazines, romantic, exotic, staged, or contrived. This is life. These people don’t know that they’re beautiful, that what they’re doing is special or photogenic. It’s just life. It’s just the jungle.

Just.

15 July – 6 August

The first five days, we hiked up, then down, then up, then down.  River valley to river valley, straight up and over the peaks in between, descending 1000m then climbing 1000m.  Like climbing over a 4,000-footer in the White Mountains, without switchbacks.  Straight up, then straight back down the other side in one day, five days in a row.  Unlike in New Zealand, the rivers at the bottom of these valleys were crossed once, easily, with a rough log bridge, then forgotten.  No trails meandering along the valley bottoms, circumnavigating the hills in the middle – we traveled direct, and at an average altitude of 3300m (10,800ft).  It’s impossible to talk about the trip without dwelling on the elevation.  Our maps were poor and we didn’t have an altimeter, but with every step, I knew that we were high.  My lungs knew it and my heart beat out protests in Morse code.  Up, up, up, then down, down, down.

In between breaths, Wilson taught me words in Quechua, the language of the locals.  We’re passing through their land, he reasoned.  We should speak their language.
“How are you: imaynalla cashanky,” he’d prompt.
“Ee-la-mayna…eee-ya-llama…how was that again?”
“Imaynalla cashanky.  And the response: aliyammi cashany, I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“One phrase at a time!” I’d protest, and put one foot in front of the other and pant the unfamiliar syllables like a mantra.

We carried no food, only a bit of bread, cheese, fruit and nuts, and I brought my emergency jar of peanut butter and a spoon.  Our meals Wilson begged and bartered from the campesinos who lived along our route.  On the third night, I sat next to Wilson on a wooden bench inside a tiny mud and thatch hut.  On the rickety table in front of us, our hostess placed two bowls heaped with rice, runny fried eggs and boiled yuca root.  Nodding to us that we should start eating, she settled back on her low stool next to the cook fire, tucked her skirts between her legs, and poked another branch between the rocks, sending a fresh wave of smoke into the already thick air.  I took a pinch of salt from the bowl and applied it liberally to the egg before mixing the bright yolk into the rice.  Starved at the end of a long day’s walking, the simple carb-and-protein blast made my stomach sing.  The white, potato-like yuca was dry and starchy, but with a thin layer of salt, delicious.  Satisfied, I leaned back against the wall and sighed.  Straw fibers from the mud bricks tickled the back of my neck, and a curious cuy (guinea pig) startled me as he brushed against my toe, cooing and burbling to his brothers, huddled in the corners of the small cook hut.  The only light came from the small fire, dim, but enough to make out the shapes of the family sitting by the fire, watching us eat.  I felt shy under their gaze, a gringa, wearing in my synthetic-down jacket and head lamp.  When the daughter stood up to clear our bowls and serve tea from the kettle, Wilson nudged me insistently under the table.  “Practice your new language!” he said in English.  “Sool-pie-coo-ee,” thank you, I murmured to the daughter, who froze and looked up from her pouring.  My stomach fluttered and I tried again, “Ee-mahn-soo-tee-kee?”  What’s your name?  She turned to her parents, and the three began to chatter excitedly.  “They want to know where you learned to speak Quechua,” Wilson translated.  Suddenly I was under the spotlight.  I blushed, my eyes watering from the smoke, excited, overwhelmed by a sense of unreality.  They asked me questions.  I could barely get the answers out.  I smiled nervously and tried to breath.  What was I afraid of?  How different these people are?  How much I stood out?  They laughed at my poor attempts at Quechua phrases, but Wilson beamed, proud of his “gringa”, showing me off.  “They love you now,” he assured me.

Three days later we crossed the next pass, Abra Choquetacarpo, 4500m (14,700ft).  It was cold and I was having a hard time breathing.  My senses were on overdrive; every step registered: soft squishing mud, the brush of dew-soaked tussock blades against my leg.  Every blink, every breath had its own savor, and everything I saw sent my mind zooming back through the people and places of the last three years.  New Zealand: Graham, Jasmine, Dr. Gonzo, Lumir, Aussie Bob, long solo hikes when I felt invincible; Antarctica: André, all the good and all the bad; Wyoming: Cal, the Tetons, Jan.  Chile and Argentina and Patagonia and the recent days with Wilson.  Rich, I whispered to myself.  As if here in Perú I’ve finally stored up enough experiences to recognize it.  Rich.

On the other side of the pass, I skipped alongside Wilson on the long Inca road.  It’s seven feet high, five feet wide, a smooth stone highway built into the rocks on the side of the valley, built to speed along the Inca chaskis (foot messengers).  The even white line of the road stretched out ahead of us, and our conversation wound around to become a monologue: Wilson dreams of traveling the world - wants it so bad he can taste it – but money and family problems weigh on him like sandbags on a hot air balloon.  I listened, impressed by his determination and maturity (he’s three years younger than me), and at the same time humbled by the sudden, clear realization of how easy I have it.  I listened, but something in my head was breaking free.  All the times I’ve talked about how money’s not necessary to live, bragged about my minimal living expenses.  How easy, how trite, when you don’t have medical debts or a family to support.  Every moment I’ve spent whining about “too many options”.  I want to bury those thoughts, erase them from existence.  An abstract vision of what my future might be spun around in my head, something rattled and clicked into place.

Two days we spend in Huancacalle, the first town we’ve seen since leaving Cachora a week ago.  It’s one dirt road, lined with whitewashed adobe houses, but there are two or three hole-in-the-wall shops where we buy bread and cheese and bananas through the grated door, and a hostel with electric hot water in the outdoor showers.  It’s Sunday, Mother’s Day, and we wait in line at the top of the hill to use the town’s one telephone so that Wilson can call his mum.  A tiny, baseball-cap wearing woman serves us dinner and breakfast in her kitchen.  The plastic chairs and stained tablecloth, the bare light bulb that hangs over our head, the sink where she turns a tap to run water and rinse our dishes, these are unspeakable luxuries after the past week of smoky bamboo shacks.  Dinner is beef loin, with rice and tomato slices.  Breakfast is the same, with fried trout instead of beef, and black coffee to follow instead of tea.  Our hostess has a silver-rimmed fake tooth and a bright, smiling face that she has to keep uplifted when she talks to us; she barely comes up to my chest.  She, Wilson, and the man who works with her keep up a running commentary while we eat, about me, excluding me.  I’ve spoken Spanish to them, even tried out my Quechua, but I’m a gringa, and our hosts insist on believing that I understand nothing.  It’s harmless, joking, but I feel trapped by my appearance, accent, and culture.  They won’t look past the stereotype.  Still, I like this woman, with her electric laugh, and her efficient way of chopping washing talking cooking all at the same time.

And on the eighth day, it rained.  Wilson and I crossed our final pass in a cloud, a few hours along the road from Huancacalle, a mere 3700m (12,000ft).  The wind whipped the cold rain into our faces.  Three local women passed us as we stopped to dig out our heavy rain jackets and warmer layers.  They carried large bundles on their backs in their traditional, colorful mantas.  Pausing a few steps beyond us, they reached over their shoulders to pull bits of plastic out of the top of their bundles, which they wrapped around their shoulders like capes.  Rain pooled on their wide-brimmed felt hats and their sandaled feet squelched in the red mud as they smiled at us and kept walking.  After about seven hours, our easy, well-graded road petered out in the middle of a lush, green hill.  Houses dotted the hillside and the heavy clouds trailed between tall eucalyptus trees.  Pampaconas.  A chorus of little kids appeared out of nowhere and extended shy hands to wish us “buenas tardes.”  I passed out pieces of hard candy and gum, bought for the purpose in Hunacacalle.  The younger kids were terrified, and I was too, a little.  We sat in another tiny, smoky cook hut to wait for our rice with eggs and potatoes.  The woman cooking for us squatted on a cinder block while she scooped hot oil over the eggs.  When she stood up to pull down bowls from the shelf, I could see a tiny white cuy sleeping under her skirts inside her cinder block seat.  Outside, kids played with our bags.  One of the braver boys poked his head into the smoke and held out my adjustable walking stick.  “What is this for?”  Wilson grinned.  “For killing bears.”  The boy shrieked with glee and ran out again, shouting to his friends.  The rain closed in again before we left, and I hugged my arms to my chest in the sheltered doorway of the cook hut, steeling myself.  I noticed one small boy sitting in the doorway opposite, playing quietly in the mud with his bare big toe.  A pink knitted hat dwarfed his thin, dirty face.  Out of the rain, but not the cold, the boy’s nose was running, and he watched us, the strangers, with huge eyes.  Wilson made him laugh, teasing the chickens, and I resolved never, ever to complain about anything again.

Below Pampaconas, we follow a river we don’t know the name of, through countryside we don’t have a map for.  Directions are asked of the men and women we pass on the trail.  It’s the harvest season, and mule trains pass us, carrying potatoes down to the river, corn up into the mountains.  “Chht…chht…hup, chhhhht,” the campesinos blow through their teeth to keep the animals moving, flicking small sticks and long pieces of grass against the mule’s flanks.  They pause to clasp our hands and say hello as we pass, their deeply lined faces turned upwards in easy, sometimes toothless smiles.  Half-chewed coca leaves tucked into their cheeks distort the sides of their faces and turn their smiles green.  The women wear multiple layers of skirts and sweaters, and under their hats, their hair hangs in long braids down their backs.  The men wear jeans and t-shirts with incongruous slogans in English.  Everyone wears rubber sandals made from recycled tires.  Cracked heels and dirt-crusted toenails testify to years spent working hard in the chakras and running the trails behind the mules.  My Quechua is improving, and draws laughter and occasional confusion from children and adults alike.  I am repeatedly struck with awareness – where I am, what I’m doing - like a bolt of lightning, grounding me in the moment.  I’m absorbing knowledge faster than I can process it.  I’m trying not to romanticize what I’m seeing, I’m trying to understand it and be a part of it, but it’s impossible for me to blend in, and I’m uncertain of my role and how to relate.  My culture is a filter; everything I see and think is run through twenty-five years of life as a US citizen.

On day thirteen, when we rode out of the jungle and into Kiteni, my eyes bulged at the site of pavement, cement sidewalks and internet cafes.  Wilson steered us toward the outdoor mercado for a late dinner.  The meat and french fries were served out of an industrial sized pot that sat over a portable gas burner.  One month in Perú, two weeks in the boondocks, and this was normal: eating dinner at a bench in front of a “restaurant” strapped to the front of a bicycle vending aparatus.  We’d arrived with about thirty other people in the back of a truck loaded with sacks of raw coffee beans.  Coffee grows wild in the jungle, and the villagers who live close enough to the road harvest the beans to sell.  Those who don’t, pick it, roast it, and grind it in their own huts for their families - and serve it to the rare gringa passerby.  ¡Riquisimo! We caught the truck in a small town on the edge of the jungle in the late afternoon.  Five young boys sprawled across the bottom of the truck bed and looked at Wilson and me curiously as we hauled our packs over the wooden sides.  The road, still very much in the jungle, was narrow and rough.  Dust rolled back over us every time the truck slowed to turn a corner.  Palms and lemon trees hung low and encroaching and threatened to knock us from our perch atop the sacks of coffee beans.  The smell in the back of the truck was both rich and repulsive: humanity, raw coffee, dirt, plants, damp wood.  It was slow going.  We stopped every ten or fifteen minutes outside of small houses or along the side of the road where people gathered with their overflowing bags of raw beans. The driver’s wife, a large woman with a meaty face, climbed out of the cab to negotiate, paying cash per kilo. The boys leaped to the beat of her harsh voice: “¡Pan, dos soles! ¡Cinco sacos! ¡Papas, cuatro kilos!” The two older boys strained to heft the tremendous sacks to the top of the pile, while the younger boys swung like monkeys from the center beam, rushing to fill orders for vegetables, riced cans of condensed milk, passing bags of supplies down to the waiting campesinos. They hammed it up for my camera, absolutely brilliant, entirely a part of their surroundings. We picked up more passengers, and the boys shouted to them to move forward, look out, make room!  We resembled immigrants: families, belongings wrapped up in blankets and plastic bags, a box of peeping baby chickens, men straddling the wooden sides of the truck.  Later, the five boys sat in a row on top of the truck’s cab, silhouetted against the back glow of the headlights on the lush jungle foliage.  A nearly full moon rose just before we reached Kiteni.  It was a beautiful night, the end of the first part of the adventure, a prelude to the next four nights to come…

(Don’t forget to check out the photos)

There are two Cuscos. One, which includes the central Plaza de Armas and the adjacent streets with their “turistico” restaurants and tour agencies, belongs to the extranjeros (foreigners), and vibrates with the heavily-accented English of a hundred different touts and vendors swarming around the tourists, looking for money like mosquitoes hunt unprotected skin. Postcards, watercolors, handmade jewelry, painted gourds, finger puppets and musical instruments are paraded and displayed; young girls stand in the middle of the plaza passing out cards, “Massage, lady?  Waxing?  Pedicure?  Manicure?” Restaurant employees hover in the doorways with menus to attract clientele. “Yes, lady, yes, we have a free drinks for you!  Free drink!  You want Mexican?  Or you want tee-pee-cal foods?  Si, yes, we have, only ten soles!  Please, lady, come, come!”  Competition is fierce and therefore prices are low, but even so, the cost of one meal in a tourist restaurant would buy five in a local place.

Outside of Tourist Cusco, pollerías line the streets, selling rotisserie chickens in pieces (an eighth of a chicken with a plate of French fries and buffet salad costs four soles – USD$1.50), and in the mercado (market) there are dozens of abuelitas and mamichas (literally: little grandmas and mamas) standing over small gas ranges cooking up almuerzos completos (complete lunches: a huge bowl of thick soup with corn or potatoes to start, then a plate piled with rice, salad, and the main course of chicken stew, or a piece of fish or beef or sheep, or with French fries cooked with tomatoes and onions) for less than one US dollar.  Clientele have their favorite stalls, and at the popular ones the benches overflow and people eat standing up, passing the bowl of ají (hot sauce) back and forth, shouting for kachi (Quechua – the indigenous language – for salt). A roll of toilet paper is provided to wipe the grease from your fingers.  And in the same mercado: dried pears, spices, shoe polish, rugs, chocolate, flowers, cheese, fruits, corn, woven fabrics, ceramics, flour, vegetables, backpacks, cleaning products, pig heads, shawls, fruit juice, towels, herbs, quinoa bars, freshly butchered cow portions. There are metal drains in the cement floor for washing down the fish guts and cow blood and spilled soup. In this Cusco, they speak Spanish and Quechua only.

The city is a carnival, and everyone in it is a barker.  Women stand on the corners wearing yellow aprons, holding cell phones, selling air time, announcing their wares, ”llamadas llamadas llamadas llamadas“. On the outskirts of the city, combis (crowded, battered vans) rattle through the potholes with a man or woman hanging out of the open door shouting the destination, “chin-CHAIR-o-chin-CHAIR-o-chin-CHAIR-o!” but barely slow to admit or deposit passengers.  I watched one woman in stilettos and a business skirt run full tilt after a combi destined for Urubamba while the caller held out an arm to help her aboard, all the time commanding her to “sube-sube-sube-sube” (“get on, get on!”).  I love the combis.  They’re slow and they’re crowded; they stop for anyone who waves an arm from the sidewalk or shouts “¡Baja!” (“Stop!”) from the inside.  “Too full” isn’t a concept that the combi drivers acknowledge.  People sit on top of each other and stand in the space between the seats where your feet are supposed to go.  Abuelitas with five different bags of farm produce doze in the back seats while clean cut business types pass dirty-faced children back to sit on top of the bags of potatoes.  Young mothers carry infants on their backs in brightly colored mantas, the little ones nearly invisible in the folds of fabric, until a tiny grasping hand fights its way clear or the van jolts through a pothole and suddenly you find yourself staring into two curious brown eyes.  I love the crush and the proximity, the smell of the earth in the clothes of the old men, sharing smiles with the other passengers when the road gets rough or when the sliding door gets stuck and both the driver and his helper have to get out and yank it open. Peruanos seem always to be smiling.  There’s a saying here: in Perú, everything is possible, but nothing is certain.  I like Perú.  You can’t drink the water or find paper in bathrooms (a roll of TP in a Ziploc bag is a permanent resident in my daypack), but for thirty-five cents you can buy hot corn on the cob with salty Andean cheese from a woman on the street corner, and if the combi is too full, you can always ride on the roof.

*

The country is poor, but the people are descended from the Incas, from kings, and they are strong.  Their ancestors constructed stone citadels on mountain tops at elevations greater than 3000m (9,800ft), quarried, carried, shaped, and stacked rocks, some the size of cars.  They carved steps out of the hills steep enough to give tight-rope walkers vertigo, but I’m willing to bet that they didn’t need to use their hands to climb them. Jeni and I, however, out of breath and without shame, perfected the “four-appendage” climbing method over our six days approaching and exploring the most famous Inca ruins, one of the new seven wonders of the world: Machu Picchu. Why did these people build in this place?  So high, so remote, so difficult.  The strength that must have been required and the ingenuity - a marvel.  I must admit my knowledge of the history and the culture and the methods is lacking.  It was not the details so much as the overall honda of the ruins that brought tears to my eyes, once, twice, three times, surprising and unexpected, welling from some vein in my soul as yet untapped.

Our approach to the site took four days.  The anticipation grew during the hike. Long, full days, each one better than the last.  It was a different experience for me: hiking with a group of twelve; mules to carry the packs; breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks all provided and cooked and served under a tent with chairs, a table, napkins, cutlery.  Many in our group had never been on a multiple day hiking trip.  For one young Korean girl, this was her first hike. Ever.  One guy had half-healed broken ribs, and two contracted altitude-aggravated stomach bugs.  Even Jeni, my fellow hard-core hiker chick, was suffering from bronchitis – yet no one ever complained.  We took it slow, we took a lot of rest stops, we talked, we bonded; we had a blast.  I learned a good lesson in anti-snobbery, and the slow pace meant that I took heaps of photos.  It took us two days to climb from Mollepata at 2900m to the 4600m (15,091ft) pass below Mt. Salkantay (6271m / 20574ft).  The word “WOW” was never far from my lips, though I rarely had enough breath to speak it.  Atop the pass, we built a cairn of rocks to honor Pachamama (the Incan mother earth).  Dozens of other small rock towers stood on rocks across the barren saddle.  Clouds drifted between our legs and among the rocks: Pachamama tasting her offerings.  On the other side of the pass, the route meandered down the side of a valley past small farm houses of branches and stone and thatch.  Locals rode past us on horses or stood in their doorways, watching us pass.  Families live in huts on the sides of the mountains, raising their children and their crops kilometers from roads and from their neighbors, linked only by rough foot and hoof paths.  There’s no such thing as “wild” space, it seems.  The land is used, inhabited, despite the altitude, the remoteness, the difficulty of the life.

As we descended, the terrain changed abruptly.  “Welcome to the Jungle” began to play in my head as banana trees replaced alpine grass and bamboo and flowers and creepers crowded the trail.  I had to step aside to let a spider the size of a lime with dark hairy legs pass.  Wilson, our guide, picked grenadillas for us to try, a type of passionfruit with a hard shell and pulpy seeds inside that look like frog eggs: sweet and juicy.  On the fourth day we reached the train tracks and got our first view of the mountaintop fortress of Machu Picchu.  It was hot, and we were sweating, surrounded by banana trees and the sound of insects, and there it was – Machu Picchu – right there.  I could imagine Hiram Bingham and the original explorers in 1911, bushwhacking through the jungle and then suddenly noticing some interesting terracing on top of the peaks.  And then we were there!  Day five – we made the steep climb to the ruins to arrive at six AM when the gates opened.  Jeni and I lagged behind a bit, hesitant to look.  After so much time and planning and energy, here we were.  It was a bit silly, but we held hands, looked at the ground, and shuffled towards the edge of the first overlook, then counted to three and raised our eyes at the last moment…awesome.

Words and descriptions are pathetically inadequate.  There are rock walls and buildings and structures, there are gardens of orchids and a temple that resembles a work of abstract art, all shapes and designs blending into one another, in harmony with the surroundings and with Pachamama.  The ruins are literally built into the top of a mountain.  The walls give way to cliffs which drop dizzyingly to the river below, and in all directions are similar peaks, steep, green, and dramatically independent of the valley and each other.  Jeni and I spent one day, then came back for a second full day, paying extra for the privilege, exploring, climbing the surrounding peaks, relaxing, absorbing, meditating. I don’t remember ever being so content, so utterly at peace in a place.  On the day before my birthday I was sitting on top of Montaña Machu Picchu with Jeni, mixing guacamole in a plastic bag and staring down at the ruins and at the mountains around above and below. And I was smiling.

So ends chapter one of the Peru Story.  Stay tuned for more, and check out the photos.  Two new albums: “Argentina” and “Peru #1″.

Angus and I arrived in Puerto Montt on the Sunday morning bus, and chose Casa Perla at random out of the guidebook.  Perla herself met us at the front door of the homestay, urging us to hurry up, come in, drop our stuff, and ¡vamos!  She spoke too rapidly for me to catch what, exactly, the hurry was, or where we were going, but there was a small cluster of people at the door, clearly waiting for us to join up and get on with it.  “It’s a curanto (coo-RAhn-to),” Trina (a Kiwi woman about my age and fellow guest at Casa Perla) explained as we trooped down the hill toward the waterfront.  “But I’m not really sure what that means.  It’s a traditional Chileno meal, and we have to go to this island, where there’s this woman cooking it.  And that’s all I know.”  Lunch on an island in Chile.  Okay.

At the bottom of the hill, we waited for a bus.  We stood next to the Sunday market, and the scent of fish was overpowering in the 80F sun.  Standing room only on the bus; I found myself pressed up next to Clementine, a Frenchwoman who spoke better Spanish than English.  We communicated between languages, using words and hand gestures and facial expressions.  Closer to the front, Angus met the perfect mate to play Cheech to his Chong.  He and Stace, a sixty-year-old English/Dutch yoga instructor, had somehow grabbed seats and were cracking open their cans of beer, the hoppy odor adding to the sticky air inside the bus.  Stace had a frizzy silver-and-ginger beard and long, thin hair pulled into a tight knot on the top of his head.  Small wisps of light red hair ringed his forehead, ears, and neck.  Off the bus and down a long cement ramp to the edge of the water, where a small, brightly-painted boat waited to ferry us the ten minutes across the sound to Isla Tengla, then another ten minutes walking to the opposite side of the island to the farm where the mysterious curanto was meant to take place.

The farm was small, sheltered, and consisted of a few small buildings: a house, a barn with attached animal pens, and a round, open-ceilinged structure with long tables set for the meal.  Scruffy dogs bickered in the grassy space between the buildings, and older, dark-skinned men stood silently in the doorway of the barn.  Meanwhile a plump, soft-looking matron in a long skirt and lavender apron moved busily from barn to house, house to dining area.  I smiled at the men, asked if I could take photos, and suddenly I had an escort.  Pedro led me through a green arborway into the garden, and to the edge of the stone wall that separates the farm from the beach.  It was low tide, and the beach was huge and wet.  I took a few pictures, and then stood talking to Pedro, doing my best to understand his rapid Chileno speech and trying to respond with the right words when he paused.  He was perhaps seventy, and short, with a heavily lined face, a thick grey mustache, and dark eyes.  My comprehension was not 100%, but it was enough.  He told me about his life, about his travels: he worked in a factory in Connecticut, and later (or perhaps at the same time?) served in the Chilean air force, flying a route that took him through Toronto, Detroit, St. Louis, Dallas, San Antonio, Huston, Mexico and Central America on countless occasions.  It was from him that I learned that GW Bush was on a tour of the Middle East, and that Hillary Clinton had won out over Obama in NH.  He’d like to see Hillary take the general election in November, but agreed with me that change is important.  This feels like someone else’s life, like something I might read about.  And yet, this is real.  This is where I am.

Finally, we were called into the barn to watch them “open” the curanto.  In the floor of the barn was a poured cement hole, perhaps a foot deep and a meter square.  Perla, our expedition leader, stood next to me and explained the process in heavily-accented English.  To build a curanto: first, a fire is built in the bottom of the hole, on top of a layer of round stones.  The stones bake in the fire, and when they’re red hot, the cooks begin constructing the layers of food.  Several layers of huge wet leaves cover the rocks, and on top of that they lay alternating layers of shellfish, leaves, meat, potatoes, vegetables, leaves, more shellfish, more meat, and then on the very top, two kinds of heavy, rich potato bread.  The whole lot is covered with more leaves, then several burlap sacks.  For two hours, the food sits and steams and the fat and juice and flavors from the various ingredients drip and mingle and cook.  The smell, as Pedro and two others peel back each layer, is exotic and mouthwatering.

The shells clack and clatter against one another as the matron forks them out in their red net bags.  Two shy cats hide under the benches around the curanto, eyeing the fish and the people, and the dogs creep closer and closer to the hole until someone notices them and shouts them back outside.  The food, once served, fills the long tables to capacity.  There is a watery salsa to spoon over the potatoes and the mussels; bottles of cool white wine are passed while the pile of discarded shells grows on a tray at the end of the tables.  Jo the dog sits at my feet, licking my knee occasionally in hopes of a pork bone.  By the end, my fingers are greasy and my stomach groaning.  This is cuisine.

There is a siesta on the beach after the meal.  I sit with Angus, Stace, Trina, Ant (Trina’s partner), and Clementine, not talking, each of us in our own private digestive stupor.  There’s no need for words, no need to play the “getting-to-know-you” game.  The six of us, we’ve discovered, are going to be together for another whole week as we travel south to Puerto Natales on the Navimag Ferry.  It’s a four-day boat trip through the Patagonian Channels, and it’s the only way see Chile’s Pacific coast.  We will have plenty of time to talk in the coming days.  For the moment, I am easy.  I’m humming along with the universe, in the exact right place at the exact right time.