una aventura mas – señor qoyllur-ritti

After the thirteen days of non-stop hiking, after the jungle and the coffee truck, I was ready to go back to Cusco, to luxuriate in a hot shower and inject some cake into my fat-starved body.  My diet of rice, eggs, potatoes, coffee, yuca and the occasional piece of meat kept me running but did nothing for my imagination.  I felt like a skinny Homer Simpson, drooling as I fantasized about cookies ‘n cream ice cream and Eggo waffles slathered with peanut butter and maple syrup (mmm…syrup…).  Wilson, however, had other ideas: “Qoyllur-ritti,” he said, the excitement in his voice lending a sense of intrigue to the unfamiliar word.  He talked about a massive pilgrimage to a holy glacier, about dancers and costumes and music and mountains.  “Once in a lifetime.  Hakuchik, let’s go!”  And so we left Kiteni at seven AM on day fourteen in a crammed combi, heading not for Cusco, but for Mawayani.  The first leg of the trip, to Quilabamba, took five hours.  I was squished in the back next to Wilson, next to the window.  I had no leg room, but plenty of fresh air and an unobstructed view of the jungle valley and the river below.  The combi had started out crowded, and it stopped frequently to squeeze passengers out and wedge a few more in.  At one point I counted twenty-five people inside, with at least eight more riding on the roof with the luggage.  Feet in rubber sandals dangled outside the windows.  Every time the van slowed to round a hairpin turn or ford a stream or pick up another abuelita, our dust caught up with us and blew in thickly through the window.  By the time we arrived in Quilabamba, I was coated (picture Johnny Depp’s desert race scene in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”).

Day fifteen: Mawayani (4050m – 13,200ft), a tiny village northeast of Cusco, the starting point for the three-day pilgrimage/festival in the name of Señor Qoyllur-ritti (coy-or-REE-tee) de la Nieve.  The town’s two dirt streets were a sea of temporary blue tarp shelters and buses.  Wilson and I, joined by Maxi (a twenty-year-old German, tall, lanky, blonde), merged with the current of people who streamed through the town and up the dry, steep hillside behind, toward the encampment where the festival would begin.  The entire world was on the trail, with supplies piled high on horses, mules, and in mantas on the backs of men, women, and children.  Women wore traditional, bright, embroidered skirts and vests, layers and layers of wool, with flat-top hats held on with beaded chin straps.  As the night drew on they added blankets, piles of them, until they resembled walking clothes heaps.

Spectacularly situated, in a natural amphitheater at the base of the sacred glacier, the base camp was heaving.  8,000 people, Wilson estimated.  We arrived as the sun was disappearing behind the steep sides of the valley and the cold bite of nighttime above 4300m settled in.  Wilson, Maxi and I hurried to set up our tents, then worked our way through the crowd to the heart of the camp.  Lining the wide principle pathway, under blue tarps and between low stone walls, cave like temporary “restaurants” were wedged.  Alongside and in between sat the vendors, ensconced in their wares, candles, blankets, rosaries, banners, gloves, whips, hats and plastic keychain idols.  Women sat in front of huge cauldrons, pouring coffee or selling tamales and candy apples.  Smoke from a hundred different cooking fires burned my eyes.  Tents crowded the edge of the main thoroughfare and climbed the sides of the valleys.  Horses and mules grazed in between, and kids ran to collect water from the icy streams that ran from the peaks.  Firecrackers exploded from all sides, the smoking sticks dropping among the crowd.  Where there weren’t tents or food stalls, there were people, camped under blankets and bits of plastic, among the rock walls.  Candles blazed in front of makeshift shrines, flowers littered the streets.

And then there was the music.  The festival revolves around the dancers, 2,000 strong and in costumes, and each group of twenty with its own band.  These are the men and women (mostly men) who are imbued with the power of the holy Señor for the three days of the festival, worshiping through their dancing, purging themselves of their sins, exhausting themselves in the thin air in the name of their Andean lord.  The ground shook with the beat of a hundred different drums, sang with the melodies of a hundred tubas, accordions, trumpets and flutes.  The various tunes hung thick in the air, clashing and mingling, swirling above and around dancers who paraded in groups up and down the street.  The pilgrims are Christians, but the Christianity of the Andes has long been intertwined with the ancient traditions of the Inca, and the resulting rituals are complicated and unique.  Sequins, feathers, masks, capes, ribbons and flags spun around us like a color wheel, shades developing and evolving as the dancers leapt and bowed and sang.  Shouting men in long tunics hung with black and red string led the processions.  These were the pabruchas, the jefes, the festival police.  Whistles between their teeth and whips in hand, their faces flushed and serious, they directed the dancers and pushed the crowd to make way, take off your hats, kneel!  The event was all-encompassing; the sound and energy rolled and bounced between the valley walls, rising even to the stars in the clear sky above.

There was frost on the tent at four AM as Wilson, Maxi and I pried ourselves out of our warm sleeping bags to climb to the base of the glacier.  The music and the dancers had carried on through the night, and were already well ahead of us.  By the time we reached the top of the moraine wall, the majority of the dancers had already paid their respects to the god of the ice.  We watched as the last two groups carefully marched up the face of the glacier, their stalwart musicians following behind.  No one wore crampons.  The sharp, rocky walls around the ice were ringed with the faithful and the curious alike, held at a distance from the ceremony by the whips of the pabruchas.  Only the dancers are allowed to touch the sacred ice, but a few determined souls managed to climb up onto the edge of the glacier and snap a quick picture before the red-and-black clad jefes came skidding after them, whistling frantically and cracking their whips against the calves of the offenders while the crowd jeered and shouted, “¡Dale! ¡Dale!” (give it to ‘em!!).  The last group finished their prayer, and as they descended, the rest of the dancers formed lines behind their flag bearers and in a renewed burst of music, began processing back to the base camp.  The pabruchas ran ahead of the lines, whistling and shouting, herding the spectators down the steep, slippery incline.  Dangerous?  Of course.  But we ran anyway.

It was impossible to move back through the main street of the camp except to move with the crowd.  From above it looked like a rolling sea of colors and flags, and the noise of the celebration was even louder than the night before, exploding from mouths and horns and pounding against the walls of the rock amphitheater.  This is when the pilgrimage truly began.  We left camp at noon, joining the musicians, mules, and mantas flowing away from Mawayani, above the base camp, heading for the mountains on the other side of the valley.  We hiked under clear skies, across the grassy brown highland with its protruding black rocks and muddy tarns, and after three hours arrived at the secondary base camp.  Smaller, the pilgrimage now reduced to about 3,000 diehard followers, the energy and sound nonetheless remained high.  Wilson and I set up the tent and tried to sleep a bit, while the music and explosions continued on all sides.  The beat of the drums vibrated through my earplugs, and the repetitive melodies wrapped themselves around the wrinkles in my brain.  I dozed as the sky grew darker, floating in a limbo of recollection and realization, the spirit of the festival stirring odd memories.  A crash of thunder far louder than the fireworks shocked me out of my half-sleep, seconds before the sky opened up and emptied itself of ten million perfectly round dime-sized hailstones.  By nine the sky was clear again and the moon was full, with pinpricks of stars showing through the deep purple ether.  Wilson, Maxi and I were among the last to leave the camp.  In the distance we saw the lights of the dancers and cross bearers.  Music drifted back faintly.  The moon was bright enough to cast shadows and illuminate the path, and slowly, slowly we progressed.

At midnight we reached the highest point – 5,000m (16,400ft) – and caught up with the main body of the pilgrimage.  The cross, draped in orange feathers and embroidered fabrics, had been laid down among the rocks atop the pass, where the faithful placed candles and offerings of flowers before kneeling to make their requests.  For prayers to be fulfilled, the adherents of the cross must return to make this pilgrimage three consecutive times.  People rested on the icy rocks nearby, and again the dancers took turns spinning and singing in lines in front of the representative of their Señor.  Maxi reheated the nearly frozen coca tea from my Nalgene bottle while Wilson watched the dancers and I pounded my fists on my thighs to keep warm.  I taught the guys my Antarctic “stay warm dance”, and we shared the tea, holding the bottle close to our chests to absorb every degree of its heat.

The festival reached a quiet point.  Although the bands kept playing and the walkers kept up their chanting, the cold and the exhaustion lowered the tone, subdued it somewhat.  In the half-darkness, and the icy unearthly glow of the moon, I lost track of Wilson and Maxi, and walked alone, passing and mingling with clusters of worshippers, some walking with musicians, others pausing to rest around campfires, kindled with wood hauled from Mawayani.  I saw the cross being carried, passed from the shoulders of one man to another in regular intervals.  The lead pabrucha blessed each new bearer before he continued slowly among the crowd of reverent supporters. They held tall, flickering candles and called to each other, “Chakeeri, chakeeri, hiyo-hiyo-hiyo,” (move your legs, keep going, don’t stop, keep moving).  The mountains, in the cold hours after midnight, so rarely seen by human eyes, seemed to become larger, darker, and radiated an overpowering energy that I could feel in every step.  Behind me, the sky flickered with silent lightning, and vicious fingers of stronger bolts traced lines in the low mushroom cloud of the storm that had already passed.  Cold, and then colder still, we walked.

As the trail began to descend, the mountainside dropped away in front of me.  The snowy peaks of Ausangate (the 6th highest peak in Perú) and its surrounding nevados dominated the entire western horizon, rising above the thick clouds that swathed the valley below, glinting in the light of the full moon.  Here, on the edge was another resting place for the cross.  People were scattered across the frozen ground, musicians and dancers waiting for the cross, pilgrims asleep under tarps and blankets.  It was pure Dante: Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, fitted together in one epic scene.  The stars and heavens and the Apus (mountain gods); the marchers, carrying weights and whips in penance; the sea of unfortunates, shivering in an endless night.  And Wilson, Maxi and I in the roles of Dante and Virgil, the onlookers.  From here, it was a slippery hour downhill on the frosty path to Tayancani, where the whole company would gather to wait for the sunrise.  Arriving at three AM, I pulled out my sleeping bag and arranged a rough bed next to Wilson and Maxi, on the crest of a hill, facing east.  Two, three hours later, I woke as if from the dead.  The sky was lightening, and the world stirred around me.  A man with a kettle and tin cups ran past, selling hot, sweet coffee at 50 centimos a cup.  I woke up Wilson, flagged down the coffee man, and then sat in my heavily frosted sleeping bag, grinning at the world and marvelling at my being in it.

People milled about everywhere, waking, dressing, eating, the costumed dancers grouping in a line across the crest of the hill as they finish preparing.  A few whistle-toting jefes cracked their whips meaningfully in our direction as the line of dancers grew, and Wilson, Maxi and I were quick to break camp.  The cross was placed in the center of the costumed celebrants who danced in place in the line that now stretched from one side of the valley to the other, as far as the eye could see.  Three and four people deep in places, thick like an Incan wall, the column hummed with anticipation, energy, devotion and faith as it built, rising to a crescendo that was cut off just before the climax.  Ten seconds before the sun crested the horizon, everything stopped.  The world dropped to its knees, held its breath, and goosebumps lifted the hair on my arms.  And then the sun, Inti.  After the long night of cold, exhausting efforts, the culmination was a wave of transcendent power that washed over the entire valley.  No longer about God or Señor Qoyllur-ritti or any church, but rather a manifestation of the unfathomable energy of the universe itself.

This was Day seventeen (without rest!) for Wilson and me.  We marked it at sunrise before descending the last three kilometers among the pilgrims in a wild, colorful dance to the finish.  Seventeen days, from our first rice-with-eggs and nearly-killed pig in Cachora, to the lessons learned in Quechua and in life, to the hours in the back of the coffee truck, to these final, jubliant moments below the snowy face of Ausangate.  This was my Perú – different, stunning, awe-inspiring.  Excellent.