A Trip To The Supermercado

Supermercado Mega

There are plenty of local abarrotes (corner grocery shops) near us, but just like the ubiquitous 7-11 convenience stores back home in the United States, the selection is poor and the prices are relatively high. For bulk shopping we head to a supermercado, just as we would back home. Since there are no supermercados near our San Blas apartment, we shop at the Mega on Plaza Tupac Amaru. This location works for us because can walk over while our kids are at their nightly swim practice at the Piscina Municipal.

There’s a large open-air market near our apartment, where we normally buy our fruits and vegetables, but we have yet to purchase any meat there. While the meat monger seems to do a brisk business, there is something about seeing meat lying on a concrete counter while flies hop all over it that makes us cringe. As such, we buy our beef and chicken from the meat counter at the supermercado, where they even have packaged, boneless chicken breasts. Even though I have no idea where they’ve been previously, I am somehow comforted by seeing chicken breasts that have been wrapped in cellophane. It’s either because of the perceived cleanliness or perhaps it is because I know I can quickly grab a package instead of waiting for a woman behind the counter to help me. The women behind the counter seem pretty disinterested and it is sometimes hard to get their attention.

The delicatessen counter, however, is a different story. It is hard to walk by without one of the women touting their bacon, offering a sample of ham or suggesting a local cheese. It makes me wonder if they are on commission. Despite their hard sell, I tend to avoid the deli counter as most of the meat has a curious orange color and I’ve yet to find a cheese I like. We do like the packaged salami and Serrano ham for sandwiches. Beyond these two items, some of our standbys are the fresh-squeezed orange juice, ciabatta bread rolls and the kid’s favorite -- Piqueo Snax -- a spicy mixture of snack foods. In general, the selection of fruits, vegetables and grains is excellent and – this being Peru – I always have a choice of at least 10 types of potatoes.

I sometimes run into trouble with the ladies that weigh the produce. For example, when I buy the bulk peeled garlic, it is usually for a dish I plan to cook, so I’ll only bag 5-6 peeled clove pieces. When I put the bag on the scale, the ladies shake their head and tell me I need to buy more. The first time I was sent back twice until I had the requisite number. When I asked the lady what I should do with all the extra garlic, she just shrugged. I got my revenge a few weeks ago when purchasing cilantro. The cilantro bin was just about empty but I was able to find a small handful, which was exactly how much I needed. I brought it to the scale and the lady shook her head and said I needed more. When I told her that there was no more she marched over to the herb section and searched it thoroughly while I tried to suppress a grin.

The store is a smaller than we are used to. The aisles are very narrow so I find it easier to park my cart in the back of the store and go back and forth for what I need. There’s also a shortage of shopping carts; weekday evenings my cart is often snatched away just as I pull the last item out to place it on the checkout counter. Once the checkout clerk has rung me up, I find that the bill usually comes pretty close to 100 soles ($33 USD), probably because that’s the amount of food that will fit into 4 bags, the maximum that I can carry back to the swimming pool.

A Visit To The Venta De Repuestos



Venta de Repuestos (and guard dog)

Not long after finding spare shoelaces in the local market near our apartment, my wife asked me to fix her rolling backpack. The bag, an Eagle Creek Switchback 25, had a telescoping handle that had decided to stop telescoping. I took it apart and found a small part that had broken inside the pack. I needed a fairly thin nut and bolt to secure it so that it would again function properly. After a few failed attempts at finding the right part at some local ferreterias (hardware shops), I decided to check out the group of shops down the street where I found my spare shoelaces.

I walked down to the corner and walked straight to number 9, the Venta de Repuestos (spare parts shop). The shop was like all the others: rusty, corrugate-tin roof, fading blue paint, hand-painted sign, very cramped and parts strewn everywhere inside. This shop had something the others didn’t: a watchdog. I thought about petting him, but up close he looked scarred and mangy -- signs of aggressiveness and disease – so I gave him a wide berth.

The proprietor greeted me and I showed him the broken bolt and I asked if he had something similar. He started looking around his tiny shop, moving aside fuses, screws, coils of wire, gas canisters, bolts, clamps and nails. The interesting thing about his shop was that there did not seem to be any rhyme or reason to his merchandise assortment.  It was if each of the parts in his shop arrived there via some unique circumstance and not ordered from a parts catalog.  The shop was about 8’ x 4’ and it did not take him long locate a nut and bolt that looked like it fit my needs. I held it up to my broken bolt and it looked like a match. I got home and used the new bolt to fix the telescoping handle. My wife had her backpack fixed and I felt good about using a local resource for the solution.

Searching For Shoelaces In Cusco




The Master of Shoe Repair

 

About 30 meters from our apartment in Cusco is a local fruit and vegetable market where we bought our produce a few times a week. Next to this semi-covered market on the outskirts of San Blas, is an open-air courtyard with a dozen small shops offering anything from appliance and shoe repair to the sale of spare parts and second-hand goods. The tiny shops blend into the blue walls and terracotta tiles of the courtyard walls and I walked by them for months before I had occasion to stop by and explore.

The first occasion was to stop by for a pair of shoelaces at the shoe repair place. I stopped by number four, named “Shoe Repair – The Master,” and greeted the 50-year old man working on an antique sewing machine while his adult son hammered tiny nails into the soles of shoe. In front of the shop was a hodgepodge of chairs, spare parts, a metal workbench and a large vice. The roofing was terracotta tile extended by haphazardly-placed metal corrugate sheets. Fortunately it was not raining as the downspout – which looked ready to fall at any moment – was aimed directly at where I stood. Inside, shoes were shelved on the wall, strips of leather, wooden heels were stacked and there were a few dozen plastic containers full of nails, tools and parts essential to shoe repair.

After exchanging greetings, the owner, who peered at me through rheumy eyes, politely asked me what I was looking for: “Senor, que busca?” I held up some shoelaces that were dirty and ready to fall apart and asked if he carried any spares. As he told me that he doesn’t normally carry shoelaces, he started looking under piles of leather squares and in the many bins placed beneath the counter. He kept looking, while explaining that the money was in the service of repairing shoes not in selling spare shoelaces. He kept looking and repeated this to me as if to reinforce that he was losing money just by helping me. Just as I thought he was going to reiterate this idea again, he found a pair of laces that looked to be about the same size. While they were just as dirty as mine, they were in good shape so I said I’d take them. I paid him the equivalent of a dollar. Yes, it was too much for pair of dirty shoelaces in the Andes, but I figured I’d paid for the right not to hear him complain again.

Miguel Angel's Choice

Wood carving detail on my chair

In some ways, Miguel Angel is much like the city in which he was born. The 28 year old Cusqueño with a cheerful countenance and easy manner seems torn between the same two worlds that divide Cusco: the world of the traditional and world of the tourist.

Miguel Angel was named after his father, the Italian translation of which echoes the name of one of the world’s greatest sculptors: Michelangelo. Miguel Angel’s father is a well-known wood carver and sculptor who makes pieces of wood come alive with intricate and detailed workmanship. The father makes altarpieces, armoires, picture frames, headboards, doors and all types of furniture (see photo). As I write this I am sitting in one of his chairs, a beautifully carved, high-back dining chair. He is particularly well-known for his altarpieces which adorn many churches in Cusco and one of his best sits in a museum in Denver, Colorado in the United States. The father has been able to support a large family through his work and they live very comfortably by Cusco standards. He’s done well enough to build 3 floors above his house to rent out: we live on the third floor. I’m guessing that there is some degree of pressure on his sons to follow in his footsteps: Miguel Angel carries on the Michelangelo name and his older brother is named David, after one of Michelangelo’s greatest works. I occasionally see Miguel Angel working on small pieces, just like his father; the other day he was gold-leafing a small carved picture frame downstairs. He’s also shown me a large painting that he’s done that is pretty good.

Like Cusco, I think it’s been hard for Miguel Angel to resist the allure of tourism and the money it brings in. One of the University of Cusco’s most popular degree programs is tourism, which combines history, language (English), cultural anthropology, archeology and business. The number of travel agencies in Cusco and the number of Cusqueños who speak some English has increased greatly since I was last here 23 years ago. Whenever I talk to someone working in a travel agency and ask them where they learned their English, they usually reply “in university.” Miguel Angel and his cousin have had plans to start a travel agency for some time now, but it has been slow getting off the ground. They have an office space downstairs with desks, phones, printed literature and some large posters of the various sites in and around Cusco. With his personal charm, good looks and ease around people, I think he would be very successful.

One of the pre-requisites of running a successful travel agency is being able to speak English. Miguel Angel was studying at a language school for a while but had to postpone his lessons in order to help his father build out the apartments upstairs. When I asked him about this, he smiled quickly, shrugged and said “My father needs my help.” Now that the apartments are finished and rented out, it will be interesting to see which direction he takes: the world of the traditional or the world of the tourist.

The Best And The Worst Haircut

Peruvian barber shop

One of the things that I did not have time to do prior to leaving for South America was get a haircut; there were just too many things to do, plus I figured that I could always get a cheap one in Peru. Right about the time we arrived in Peru in late April, I noticed a brand-new hair salon two doors down from our Spanish school. It had 3 barber chairs, a full accompaniment of hair paraphernalia and a large poster with Brad Pitt and Megan Fox grinning and showing off their well-coifed hair. The proprietor was a woman in her late 20’s and when she wasn’t standing in front of the door waiting for customers, she was in the back room taking care of two small kids. I’d walked by each day for a week before impulsively deciding to go for it. I plopped down in the chair and said “Quiero aparacer como Brad Pitt.” (I want to look like Brad Pitt)


Sometimes an impulsive decision in Cusco turns out to be a great story: a chance visit to a non-descript panaderia reveals their awesome onion bread rolls or extreme thirst makes me enter a “hole in the wall” restaurant that serves outstanding chicha morada. This was not going to be one of those stories. She nervously started cutting one side of my head and I could feel her hands shaking while my daughter was documenting the experience with her new camera. I started to wonder whether she had ever given a haircut before. Once the ordeal was over, I surveyed the damage in the mirror: on the left side of my head the hair stood straight up and only copious amounts of water would make it lay down. I left thinking that it was the worst haircut I’ve ever received.

Usually my hair grows back pretty quickly and I often make the following joke “What’s the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut? About 2-3 weeks.” Well, three weeks and then four weeks went by and it still looked bad. After about 6 weeks I stopped thinking about it. A few months later we returned from our vacation in Bolivia and it was time for another haircut. My son accompanied me to a busy barber shop a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas and as we walked in the next available barber motioned me over. Romulo was one of 10 barbers working in the shop and he sat me in his chair and started snipping at my hair. The first things I noticed about him were his severe limp and his forceful way of positioning my head while cutting hair. He grabbed my chin and moved my head to the right while snipping away with dull scissors. The scissors pulled on my hair a bit and I had flashbacks to my earlier experience, but as I watched him at work, I gradually began to realize that he really knew what he was doing. He was very thorough and the haircut took almost 30 minutes. My son was so impressed that he decided to get a haircut as well. I gave Romulo a big tip and my son and I left thinking that we’d just had our best haircuts ever. I found it amusing that both my best and worst haircuts were both here in Cusco. It was no surprise to me that the hair salon run by the woman who butchered my hair was no longer in business.

About a month later, at a point where I had a 3 week growth of beard, I decided I would go back and get a shave from Romulo. I walked in, sat down and made eye contact with Romulo. He let me know that he’d be with me shortly by holding up one finger so I leaned back in my chair and looked around the barber shop. I looked at each barber in the shop and then my eyes rested on the barber working the chair next to Romulo and…it was the woman who gave me my worst haircut. Not only were my best and worst haircuts given in the same South American town, the barbers were now working 2 feet from one another.

Sweet And Delicious Picarones

Picarones

One of our family’s Cusco traditions is to go out for picarones, which are deep-fried, donut-shaped treats with molasses drizzled over them. Though not the healthiest snack in the world, they are delicious. A while back, we invited another American expat family to join us at our favorite picaroneria and they loved them as well. Their young daughter, who was falling asleep after a long day, rallied when she took her first bite. We all watched her as extreme fatigue dueled with overpowering sweetness, creating what looked like a 4-year old devouring a picarone while fast asleep.


Picarones, a popular dessert in Peru and other Andean countries, are made from squash and sweet potato, along with flour, eggs, yeast and spices. They are sweetened with miel de chancaca (chancaca honey), a sweet sauce made of raw cane sugar. They are frequently paired with anticuchos (marinated meat on skewers) and are often served during the month of October during the procession of Señor de los Milagros. Picarones were created during the colonial period to replace buñuelos, which were too expensive to make. People started replacing traditional buñuelos ingredients with squash and sweet potato and the new dessert rapidly increased in popularity throughout the Andes.

Just as the Incas imported their creation myth and religious traditions from Lake Titicaca, this tradition of ours originated there as well. Coming back from our Bolivian vacation, my wife and daughter decided to visit the Titicaca islands of Taquile and Amantani, while my son and I headed straight back to Cusco. They were hiking to the top of Amantani to see the sunset and some Pre-Inca ruins when they saw a stone cottage with “picarones” written on a chalkboard in front. It was cold, windy and getting dark and the fire inside was inviting. They sat down at one of the two tables and ordered the only two things on the menu: picarones and hot chocolate. They watched the lady knead the dough and place it in the cast-iron skillet filled with hot cooking oil. After frying it, she set them on a plate and drizzled molasses on them. When my wife and daughter returned and recounted the highlights of the trip to the islands, picarones were high on the list.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered our favorite picaroneria in Cusco while walking home from work. The shop is on a corner with a large vat of hot cooking oil right near the door. Inside there are five tables and the back wall is dominated by a large photo of a smiling woman with blue eyes and too much make-up biting into a picarone. Three ladies work there: one kneads the dough, one woman fries it and the other takes orders. While close to San Blas and the Plaza de Armas there seems to be many Cusqueños frequenting this place, a Peruvian version of a blue-collar donut shop in the U.S. For me, this comparison was reinforced about a month ago when a policeman walked in and ordered a dozen picarones to go. Some things transcend borders.



Recipe for Picarones:


Ingredients for picarones:
1/2 kg (1 lb) of peeled sweet potatoes
1/2 kg (1 lb) of peeled buttercup squash
1/2 kg (1 lb) of flour
3 tablespoons of yeast
2 stick cinnamons
4 cloves
2 tablespoons of aniseed
3 tablespoons of sugar
A pinch of salt
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Vegetable oil

Ingredients for the chancaca honey:
1/2 kg (1 lb) of chancaca
1 cup of brown sugar
4 cloves
2 stick cinnamons
2 pieces of orange peel
4 cups of water

Preparation:

Chancaca honey: Cut the chancaca in pieces, put them in a pot and add sugar, cloves, cinnamon, orange peel and water. Boil until it gets a little thick (200º F, 110º C), more or less for 20-25 minutes. Strain.

Picarones: Boil in a pot a lot of water with the cinnamon, cloves and aniseeds for 10 minutes. Strain. In this water, cook the sweet potatoes and the squash. When they’re ready, take them out from the pot and strain. Keep back 2 cups of water and let it cool down.

In a bowl, mix the yeast with this 2 cups of water and the sugar. Go down for 15 minutes.

Mix the sweet potatoes and the squash making a purée. Add the salt, the yeast mix and the eggs, beating and mixing good. Add the flour while you continue beating with energy. You must get a soft and elastic pastry and it mustn’t get stuck to your fingers. Go down for 1 hour or until the preparation doubles its volume.

Heat a lot of vegetable oil in a big frying pan. Moisten your hand in water with salt, take the pastry and let it fall in the hot oil forming a ring. Let them get brown and turn over.

Usually, the portion is 3 picarones topped with miel de chancaca.

A Night At The Cockfights

Squaring Off at the Cusco Cockfights

For our first seven weeks in Peru, my daughter and I lived with the Chavez family in the Santa Monica suburb of Cusco. The family is very well off by Cusco standards; they own a large 3-story house with a maid in the nicest suburb of Cusco and they also own a 35-acre corn farm in the Sacred Valley. Alfredo, the husband, has a large dental practice and drives a SUV, while Zulma, the wife, is from a wealthy family and enjoys having foreign students stay in their home. They have made a concerted effort to include us in all the family activities.

One Sunday morning at breakfast, Alfredo turned to me and said “Vamos a Gallos?” (Do you want to go to the Cockfights?) Even though Alfredo is a professional and a doctor he definitely has a macho streak in him, so I interpreted his question as “Eres Hombre?” (Are you a man?). Not wanting to disappoint, I agreed. He said to be back at the house by 3:00 pm.

Alfredo and his son Alfredito, along with Alfredito’s friend and I left the house at 3:00 pm and started winding through the suburbs of Cusco. We arrived at the “Coliseo de Gallos”, situated in a dusty area behind the airport. We paid the entry fee and entered a courtyard with food stalls, beer vendors, a smelly bathroom and the cockfighting arena itself. There were about 400 people there, 90% of which were male. The entire arena was about 50 feet in diameter and resembled a pit, with the circular, central fighting area ringed by ascending seating rows. The fighting area itself was a sandy surface about 25 feet in diameter surrounded by a chain link fence. Inside the cage were signs on either side, one saying izquierda (left) and one saying derecha (right). Since most roosters look the same, especially when the feathers start to fly, these signs help during the betting process. Prior to each fight when the betting happens, each trainer stands near one of the signs, poking and agitating their roosters (sometimes biting them on their backs) so that they become more aggressive.

As we arrived I bought four large beer bottles and quickly learned how men in Peru share beer. Despite all the news coverage of the swine flu, everyone shares a glass and drinks one bottle at a time. When the beer bottle is passed to you, just hold on to it and wait until the drinking glass is passed to you. Once it’s passed to you, fill up the glass and then keep the chain going by handing the bottle clockwise. When you finish your glass, hand it to the man with the beer bottle

Once the beer protocol was understood, I watched the trainers carefully tie the sharp blade to the rooster’s right leg and then hold them up to the crowd. Suddenly, the arena went crazy with men shouting bets. Alfredo explained to me that the betting process isn’t terribly scientific…just pick the one that looks stronger and shout out your bet to the crowd and wait for a response. The first round I watched Alfredo as he shouted veinte derecha, held up 2 fingers and scanned the crowd. A young man looked up at him from the first row and held up his 2 fingers and shouted veinte izquierda: Alfredo had just bet 20 soles on the rooster on the right side of the cage.

The fighting was now set to start with Alfredo yelling "vamos derecha!" Most of the fights followed the same pattern as this one: the roosters carefully stalked each other for 4-5 minutes until they got close enough to pounce on one another. Then after a about a minute of flying feathers and blood, one of the roosters stood above the other, the loser with its beak resting on the sand floor. Alfredo’s rooster lost this fight and I watched him settled up with the young man in the first row. After observing Alfredo, I tried a few on my own.

Over the course of the evening’s 15 or so fights, I ended up winning about 15 soles ($5). As the night wore on, more and more cerveza was consumed and the men in the crowd became filled with drunken bonhomie. A man near me affectionately babbled indecipherable Spanish to me throughout the night and I occasionally babbled something indecipherable back, to which he laughed loudly. After almost 5 hours of drinking beer, we all stumbled out of the coliseo and went home.

Tying the blade to the rooster's leg

River Rafting The Chuquicahuna

Running the "Chuqui"

Our shuttle picked us on Cusco’s Plaza de Armas and we rolled out of town and headed for a point on the Chuquicahuna River, also known as the “Chuqui,” about an hour and a half to the southeast. Our family’s plan was to spend the afternoon running the lower Chuqui and have a relaxing lunch by the side of the river afterwards.

After we got out of Cusco, we followed the river upstream past stands of Eucalyptus trees and corn fields. Once we arrived, we got into our slightly-mildewy wetsuits and took an abbreviated safety course at the spot where we were about to put in. Then we coasted down the river for about 20 minutes before we started to pick up some speed. The terrain was rocky without a lot of indigenous foliage, save for the eucalyptus trees, themselves imports from Australia.

We bumped our way down the river and I thought about how the Chuqui would flow into the Vilcanote (a.k.a. Urubamba), the river that cuts through the Sacred Valley of the Incas and winds past Machhu Picchu. From there it would head to the jungle and flow into the Ucayali, which would feed into the Amazon, which would then gently course into the Atlantic Ocean over 4,000 miles away. The river during this winter day was fairly gentle with a sprinkling of class II and III rapids and fortunately no one fell into the chilly water. The last time the four of us river rafted, my wife was abruptly dumped into a Panamanian river.

After each successfully negotiated set of rapids, we all put our paddles together, high in the air, to celebrate. Our cameraman, in a kayak, paddled ahead of the rapids and set up in the best locations for photos. Towards the end of our two and a half hour run, our guide, a woman in her 20’s from Panama, instructed our kids to “ride the bull” by climbing on the front of the raft holding the rubber handle between their legs and shouting like a cowboy riding a wild bull.

From this point, we soon pulled into camp at the side of the river, showered and had a meal of chicken, potatoes and quinoa soup. It was an uneventful day on the river – the way a rafting trip should be.

Cusco Characters: Senora Melvyn

Melvyn Douglas: 1940's Hollywood Leading Man

Approximately 60 years ago, a Peruvian couple was anxiously awaiting the birth of their child and in the days leading up to the delivery, they had yet to pick a name. As the due date approached, they went to a Lima movie theater to see a Hollywood movie and to relax. To this day they can’t remember the name of the movie but it starred an enchanting actress who was paired with a well-known Hollywood leading man. They loved the actress’ performance so much they decided right then that if they had a girl, they would name it after the actress. Unfortunately, they left the theater hurriedly and didn’t get the actress’s name and a few days later they gave birth to a baby girl.

When it came time to name the baby girl they had a lasting memory of the actress’ performance but not her name. Under pressure from the doctor who was filling out the birth certificate, they did the next best thing. They named the girl after the film’s well-known leading man: Melvyn Douglas. At that time, Melvyn Douglas was one of America’s finest actors and would finish his career with two Oscars, a Tony and an Emmy award. He won best supporting actor awards for “Hud” and “Being There” during an acting career that spanned six decades.

This is how Señora Melvyn got such an interesting name, not to mention a perfect icebreaker at social events and business meetings. Señora Melvyn’s works at the CTTC (Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco) and spends most of her time working on preparations for a textile convention. She is extremely affable and warm and makes friends quickly. She seems to know everyone in town; when we walk across town for a business appointment, we often have to stop multiple times to briefly chat with business acquaintances, extended family members and friends. After every stop I remind her that she should run for Mayor of Cusco.

Melvyn and I became fast friends when we first started sharing an office. We discovered we shared a joint love for the 40’s Cuban bandleader Perez Prado and I offered to make her a CD of his greatest hits from my digital library. She was thrilled and spent an inordinate amount of time making a detailed and intricately decorated CD case for it. Melvyn thrives on details and she will often spend a good part of her day organizing her office belongings, alphabetizing the business cards of her contacts or re-writing meeting notes.

Melvyn thrives on interaction with people and is very good at getting the information she needs in order to push her project forward. I often hear her on the phone setting up appointments and often, after introducing herself on the phone, there's a pause and she launches into an abbreviated version of how she got her first name. From there the conversation becomes animated and she usually gets what she needs from the person she's talking to. Señora Melvyn has made the most out of a very unique name.

Peruvian Fusion: Salsa Dancing

One of the things that many foreign visitors to Cusco try is Salsa dancing. There seems to be dozens of Salsa Dance schools and clubs (Mythology, Mama Africa, Kamikase, Roots, etc) clustered around the Plaza de Armas.

Early on when our family was taking Spanish lessons at the Amauta Spanish Language school, we would take their free Dance lessons on Friday nights. My wife and I and our kids would swirl around doing doble enchufles with twenty-something backpackers, while the instructor barked out the rhythm “uno, dos, tres…cinco, seis, siete.” After a few weeks, we started to get pretty good and started to accent our twists and swirls with a little Latino swagger. For us this was great entertainment and exercise and, as the rest of the backpackers headed out to the clubs for more, we’d go out for dinner and then head home to our apartment.

It seems that almost everywhere you go in Latin America, there is Salsa dancing. Salsa dancing originated in Cuba, where the Spanish guitar and the African drum collided to form unique rhythms in the New World. Salsa -- also a word for a sauce with various ingredients -- became popular as nickname to refer to a variety of different music, from several countries of Hispanic influence: Rhumba, Són Montuno, Guaracha, Mambo, Cha cha cha, Danzón, Són, Guguanco, Cubop, Guajira, Charanga, Cumbia, Plena, Bomba, Festejo, Merengue, among others. Many of these have maintained their individuality and many were mixed creating "Salsa".

The more we think about life in Peru – as well as the rest of Latin America -- the more we realize how the fusion of three continents (Europe, South America, Africa) touches almost every aspect of Peruvian life.

Inca Kola: Liquid Bubblegum

I remember trying Inca Kola when I visited Peru 25 years ago and being unimpressed with the sweet yellow, carbonated cola that is the Peruvian national drink. It has an unusually sweet, fruity flavor that is often compared to bubblegum. Having learned the Spanish words for bubblegum (chicle) and juice (jugo), I often said Jugo de Chicle instead of Inca Kola when talking to Peruvians, which invariably got a polite chuckle. I knew that Peruvians love it when you like their Inca Kola, but I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for it. Perhaps the most charitable way to describe Inca Kola is to say that it is an acquired taste.

Inca Kola was created in 1935 by José Robinson Lindley, a British immigrant who used the refreshing taste of lemon verbena to anchor the recipe and it became instantly popular. These days Inca Kola is owned by Coca-Cola, who owns the trademark everywhere but in Peru. Inca Cola and Coca-Cola run neck and neck in terms of market share in Peru with each brand capturing about a third of the soft drink market.

When our family arrived in Peru I thought that my 14-year old son and 12-year old daughter would love the bubble gum taste, despite my previous experience. For one of our first meals I ordered them each an Inca Kola and eagerly awaited their reaction. They both took a sip and put their glasses down to a chorus of “yuck.”

Juanita The Ice Princess of Arequipa

Juanita

On our first day in Arequipa we had two goals: see Juanita, the 12-year old Inca ice princess recently found near a glacier and find a toasted bagel with cream cheese for our 12-year old daughter. Our daughter is keeping a list of the foods that she misses most from home and a toasted bagel with cream cheese is high on the list. Among other things, she has “drink tap water,” “eat real pancakes with real maple syrup,” “eat real cheese” (those of you from France, you can lower that supercilious eyebrow now) and “eat clean and big strawberries.” We went to a place that our guidebook described as a “Starbucks-style” coffee house searching for that elusive bagel, but had no luck. After eating a tasty lunch, we visited Juanita.

Juanita is the frozen body of an Inca girl who lived to be approximately 12-14 years old and she died sometime between 1440 and 1450. She was discovered on Mount Ampato (part of the Andes cordillera) in Southern Peru in 1995 by anthropologist Johan Reinhard and his Peruvian climbing partner Miguel Zarate. Juanita was remarkably well-preserved after 500 years, due to being encased in a glacier for most of that time. In September 1995, during an ascent of Mt. Ampato (20,700 ft), Reinhard and Zárate found a bundle inside the crater that had fallen from an Inca site on the summit. Owing to melting caused by volcanic ash from the eruption of nearby volcano of Sabancaya, most of the Inca burial site had collapsed down a gully that led into the crater. To their astonishment, the bundle turned out to contain a remarkably well-preserved body of a young girl. In addition, they found—strewn about the mountain slope down which the body had fallen— many items that had been left as offerings to the Inca gods; these included statues and food items. A couple of days later, the body and the objects were taken to Arequipa. The body caused a sensation in the scientific world due to its well-preserved condition.

Pointing out the similarities in gender and age to our daughter, we learned about what her life could have been like as Juanita. We summarized the advantages: she would be buried with expensive artifacts and jewelry, could wear a very expensive vicuña wool garment and spend eternity with the gods. As for the disadvantages, well, there’s the death thing. During the height of the Inca Empire, sacrifices were common as way to appease the mountain gods who controlled nature. Children from all over the empire were gathered for selection in Cusco and only the most beautiful, innocent and perfect child would be chosen for the honor of going to live with the gods.

We visited Juanita at the Museo Santury on a beautiful spring day in Arequipa and she was in pretty good shape for a young girl over 500 years old. While her skin was a leathery brown, her hair was shiny and black and pulled into a tight pony-tail. The right side of her face is slightly marred due to a couple of weeks of sun exposure (the time between being jarred loose from the glacier and being discovered). For half the year she sits in the fetal position in a refrigerated glass case in Arequipa; the other half of the year she is on tour.

Anthropologists and historians have deduced that Juanita and the presiding priests walked 150 miles from Cusco and climbed the chilly Ampato volcano for the sacrificial rites. At the summit, she would have been extremely cold and was probably given a libation that put her to sleep. When the ceremony was over, she was struck with one precise blow just above the right eye that killed her instantly.

After learning all this, my daughter respectfully declined consideration for the role of sacrificial virgin. We decided to go hunt for the toasted bagel and cream cheese instead.

Finding A Swim Team In Cusco

I’d love to take full credit for getting our kids onto the Cusco Swim Team but the truth is I subcontracted most of the job to company in Mountain View, California. Yes, I’m talking about Google.

 

Piscina Municpal in Cusco, Peru

In the latter half of 2008, I was working for a client that had purchased a bankrupt retailer and I was helping to integrate and move operations from San Francisco to San Diego. Since this transition went pretty smoothly, by November there was less and less for me to do, so I spent part of my time searching for a Peruvian swim team for my kids to join. With very few people speaking English in Peru and the fact that I hadn't spoken my intermediate-level Spanish for the previous four years, it was bound to be a challenge.

I began to spend a few hours a week Googling search terms like "swimming,” “team” and “pool,” along with “Peru”…all to no avail. I searched the same words in Spanish (“natación,” “equipo,” “piscina”), but was unable to find the results I was looking for. I looked though many websites: a Chicago personal trainer who swam competitively for a Peruvian college, a Princeton water polo player who did some volunteer work in Cusco, an American volunteer who was a high school swimmer in Trujillo, etc, etc.

Frustrated with my results, I loaded Google Earth onto my work computer and started systematically scanning the satellite photos of Cusco, Ayacucho and Arequipa – the three towns that we were targeting. While virtually soaring above the Cusco city center one afternoon, I spotted a light-blue, opaque rectangle not far from a train station. Was that a pool? Was that an indoor pool?

I quickly typed in the name of the street and district into the Google search bar along with “piscina” and “natación”. The results quickly came up and displayed a news article and accompanying video newscast about what was indeed a pool. As I slowly read the article and watched the video, I was struck by simultaneous feelings of horror and elation: horror as I read about 17 kids rushed to the hospital for inhaling excessive amounts of chlorine and elation as the newscast showed clips of a beautiful, indoor heated pool in the middle of the Andes. I justified the chlorine accident as something that could happen anywhere and gave in to the elation of finding a pool. More searching failed to turn up a swim team of any kind, however. I decided to check out the pool during my planned Peru visit in February 2009.

By February, we had narrowed our sights on Cusco and I went there for 10 days to set things up for our family. In addition to checking out Spanish schools, jobs and housing, I thought I’d take a look at the pool I’d found. On my second afternoon in Cusco, I went there and asked if there was a swim team and the woman working there gave me a definitive “no”. On the third day, I returned in the morning and a different woman told me there was a “Swimming Academy” and that I should come back at 2:00 pm in the afternoon. At 2:00 pm I talked to yet another woman who said the Swimming Academy meets early in the mornings and that I should return the next morning at 7:00 am.

Thinking that by now I should probably give up, I walked over at 7:00 am the next morning and asked again. This time, the same woman told me to wait while she brought over the coach, whose name was Cristian. I told Cristian what I was looking for and he seemed mildly interested. In colloquial and rapid-fire Spanish, he talked about practice times, swim meets and the twice-yearly TransAndean Youth Games. He asked the kids’ ages and when we would be back in Cusco and we exchanged email addresses.

In my numerous Spanish-language conversations while setting us up in Cusco, I’ve sometimes had exchanges like this that have gone nowhere. I’ve found that if people have something to gain from an interchange (i.e, shopkeeper, innkeeper, tour guide) the motivation and politeness displayed in the initial face-to-face conversation is more likely to be sustained when following up via email or telephone. With Cristian, I just didn’t know if he felt he had something to gain by our relationship.

With this in mind, I sent him an email with some apprehension once I returned home. I sent an email that clearly detailed information about us as well as the many questions we had. I decided to send the kids’ best times from the previous season to hopefully add some incentive.

A few days passed -- with me eyeing my email multiple times per day – with no response. Finally, five days after getting back to California, I received a response with an enthusiastic “hola!” in the subject line. Cristian was indeed motivated to make it happen. We exchanged emails frequently in the weeks leading up to our departure, such that the swim team became a large part of our plans in Cusco.

Why There Are No Movie Theaters In Cusco

Cusco does not have a single movie theater and for a city of 320,000 people that is downright strange. Perhaps the reason can be found in a makeshift jumble of market stalls on the outskirts of Cusco; a "black market" called El Molino. During my first couple weeks in Cusco, I heard the words "El Molino" more than a few times. My Spanish teacher told me to visit El Molino for inexpensive CD's and DVD's and my landlord told me to go there for household items that we needed for our kitchen. During our first week in Cusco, my daughter and I frequented a restaurant on the Plaza de Armas called Mythology, a salsa bar-cum-restaurant that shows movies. For the price of a couple drinks or a plate of appetizers you can choose from hundreds of new DVD movies to watch while you enjoy your lomo saltado. Many of the titles come out as soon as a few weeks after their U.S. theatrical release. When I asked where they got so many brand new titles, the answer was "El Molino."

El Molino lies alongside a foul-smelling river about a 10 minute taxi ride from the Plaza de Armas. I'm told that much of the merchandise is brought in duty-free from Peru's southern-most port town of Tacna. The market itself is a collection of hundreds of small stalls with corrugated tin roofing that are jam-packed with merchandise. Look down one aisle and you'll see books, bicycles and bootleg CD's. Look down another and you'll see perfume, pinatas and pirated DVD's. Glance to the side and you'll see clothing, cameras and costume jewelry. Turn around and you'll spot hard liquor, housewares and HDTV's.

Obviously, all the DVD's are pirated; how else could you charge only 3 soles ($1) for a brand new DVD movie that just hit the theaters 3 weeks ago. With every movie title on the market available for just a dollar, who needs a movie theater?

This smorgasbord of cheap digital media does have its risks, however. As El Molino veterans, we have learned from experience what to look for when purchasing DVD's. The first thing to look for is: Does the disc have English-language audio and subtitles? Wheny we bought Steven Soderbergh's 2-disc "Che" (Guevarra) biopic and we previewed the first disc to verify that it had English-language subtitles. After enjoying the first disc about Che's role in the Cuban revolution we popped in the second disc to find that it did not have English-language subtitles. The second thing to look for mainly applies to new releases: Is it a disc-to-disc copy or was it filmed in the back row of a movie theater? Pirated versions of new releases get out quickly because someone sits in a movie theater with a digital movie camera and films it. Our kids watched "Ice Age 3" a while back and a baby started crying in the middle of the DVD soundtrack. When we bought "Transformers 2," the excitement of seeing this new release outweighed our concerns about the video and audio quality. We got home and watched about 10 minutes of it before we gave up. The action scenes were impossible to watch and understand. The third thing to look for applies to TV series: Are all the discs present? My daughter has bought four seasons of "The Office" and on two occasions, we found episodes missing.

Even with these risks, the economics of pirated DVD's means that it will be a while before we see a multiplex adorning Cusco's Plaza de Armas.

The Evolution Of A Volunteer Decision



Spinning alpaca yarn at Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco

The decision to spend 6-8 months volunteering in South America was easy; deciding where and how to do it was more difficult.

Lots of volunteering organizations
My requirements for volunteering included being able to use my intermediate-level Spanish, to use my retail business consulting skills (if possible), to be part of the community that I help (if only for 6 months), and to have a sustainable impact.

Once I’d decided to volunteer in Peru, I searched the web and found various volunteer organizations and researched what they provided, what type of work was available and what costs were involved. I was happy to find that there were lots of organizations working in Peru but I was disappointed to learn that most of them required a fee of between $500-1,000 per week. I found dozens of these “voluntour” organizations, but felt that spending money to work for free didn’t feel right.

Muhammed Yunus and Microfinance
About the time that I started adding up the costs of “working for free,” I read Dr. Muhammad Yunus’ book “Banker to the Poor,” an inspiring memoir about how he created microfinance. I read about Dr. Yunus’ first experiment with $27 lent to a group of Bangladeshi women, a miniscule loan that started an industry.

As I read about Dr. Yunus’ ideas I thought about the money I might be spending at “voluntour” agencies and started to think about what that money could do if lent directly to those in need. In fact, even if they never paid the money back, I’d be no worse off than if I gave the money to a “voluntour” company. I envisioned buying a bunch of food carts for street vendors and setting them up with an initial supply of inventory.

The Idea of Sustainability
The more I thought about this, however, the more I thought about the potential obstacles – locating worthy candidates, getting ripped off, creating community jealousies and getting stonewalled by local bureaucrats -- to name a few. I was worried about sustainability and I wasn’t sure that giving away a bunch of push carts and food and then leaving after 6 months would be consistent with that. It seemed like I needed six months just to get the lay of the land and to avoid getting ripped off.

As I pondered this, I learned about the Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco, an NGO weaving cooperative run by an indigenous woman that helps nine communities in the Cusco area. They needed help with budgeting, grant requests and some financial analysis and I had made my connection with them without the benefit of a paid intermediary. (I was introduced through a Spanish Language school in Cusco). I met with the Director and I liked the idea that I’d be making an impact and that impact would continue to be felt after I left. During our meeting, she hired me and gave me a project to work on immediately.

From pondering a myriad of paid volunteer organizations to contemplating my own microfinance shop to supporting an established NGO weaving cooperative, my road to volunteering was not a straight line but one that worked out well for me.

Shooting Hoops At Two Miles High

My son and daughter were breathing hard. I was breathing harder. Three-on-three pickup basketball is a good workout but if you are not used to playing at 11,000 feet, your lungs can feel like they are on fire. (more on Sunday morning pickup basketball here) The three of us were playing against three cusqueño men in their early 20’s and we led for the first 10 minutes but then the altitude started getting to us. After my son hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key and my daughter stole the ball and converted it for a layup, we were huffing and puffing and we didn’t score again, losing by a bucket.


Coach Juan talks strategy during time out

We moved off the court to make way for the next team and I plopped myself down on the grass behind the basket. A short man in a track suit came up to me and said, (in Spanish) “Good game. You should have won.” I countered with some altitude-related excuse and he said, “How old is your daughter?” “Twelve,” I replied. He was quiet for a moment and then said, “I coach a team of twelve-year old girls. We will practice in a few minutes. Does she want to join us? My daughter shyly agreed and practiced with the team. She was one of the better players, along with two twin girls. Juan the coach told her to come back for another practice. This is how my daughter joined her basketball team.

For the next few months the pattern was the same. Juan would call me a day before a practice or game and give me the name of some school where we were playing and we would rearrange our schedule to make sure she got there. Once he told us to be at a school that we’d never heard of that was around the corner from our apartment. We walked there and entered a door off San Blas square that we passed by every day and discovered there was a large school inside with a very nice outdoor basketball court in the middle of the interior courtyard.

Usually Juan would give me a time for the games and I found that I could pad those times by as much as 40 minutes. The first few times we’d show up at the time he mentioned only to wait for 45 minutes for everyone else to stroll in. (more on Tiempo Peruano here). Once the games started, it was a great experience for our daughter, who was always the only blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl on the court. Everything was communicated in Spanish so her ability to communicate colloquially improved significantly and she made some new friends. In all, she played in about a half-dozen games and just as many practices.

Within a couple months, we were due to leave Cusco. I never got Juan’s phone number (I’d always wait for his last-minute calls) and we went 2 weeks without a call from him, so we were never able to say goodbye to the team. Despite this, it was a great experience for us and particularly our daughter. She is now proficient shooting hoops at sea level as well as two miles high in the Andes.

Peruvian Fusion: Doña Pepa

Doña Pepa

During our first few weeks in Cusco, my daughter took Spanish lessons at a school just off the Plaza de Armas. Quite often Patty, her teacher, would take her on walks around the city to learn Spanish through the other senses instead of only her eyes and ears in the classroom. Quite often they’d stop at a small kiosk off the plaza and buy a Doña Pepa candy bar and soon this became a ritual on their daily walks. When my daughter offered me one, I looked askance at the packaged candy covered with sprinkles and said “no thanks.” It was only later that we learned about Doña Pepa and her story.

According to legend, an Afro-Peruvian slave named Josefa Maraminillo lived in the Cañete Valley, south of the Peruvian capital of Lima and went by the name of Doña Pepa. Doña Pepa could not work because of paralysis in her arms so she prayed to the Señor de los Milagros (“Lord of the Miracles”) and traveled to Lima to view that saint's image to supplement her prayers. Allegedly, Doña Pepa was cured of paralysis on the first day of the Señor de los Milagros procession. That night she had a dream that a saint gave her a recipe for a cake. She baked the cake the following day and brought it as an offering to the procession. Since that time Doña Pepa cakes are traditionally eaten each October during the Señor de los Milagros procession.



The cake is also called a Turrón de Doña Pepa, but is different from the Spanish turrón in that it does not contain nougat. The traditional cake is flavored with anise and cane sugar and decorated with sprinkles. The candy bar that my daughter enjoys is basically a two-layered cookie covered in chocolate and dipped in sprinkles, but the wrapper bears the image of Doña Pepa. Sometimes you learn about a country’s culture from the unlikeliest sources. The one sol coin that I gave my daughter each day for her Doña Pepa has turned out to be a good investment.

Doña Pepa candy bar (courtesy of iheartcandy.com)

Quilting Bee In The Andes

Weaving Contest at CTTC in Chinchero (note the man in the background dipping into a tub of chicha)

When I’d learned that my non-profit weaving cooperative was planning to host a weaving contest the first image in my mind was a bunch of ladies speed-weaving with backstrap looms, rushing to see who could weave a quality piece the fastest. I later learned that the contest wasn’t about speed; it was about quality and village involvement. Each of the villages we support had a few months to weave a manta (Andean blanket) and many, if not all, of the members of the community were to participate. Basically, we’re talking about an Andean quilting bee.

The contest was in Chinchero and hosted by the Centro De Textiles Traditionales de Cusco (CTTC). My wife, kids, sister-in-law and I walked into the compound to see Andean ladies and gentlemen decked out in their best traditional attire with gorgeous mantas draped all around. Almost all of the mantas were stitched-together squares, a sign that villagers had worked separately on their pieces and had sewn them together at the end. When the director saw me she motioned me over and asked the village ladies to make some room on the front row bench for me while my family watched from the back. A cup of chicha was brought over to me and we watched presentations from each village on what their manta represents and how it was made. Besides the host village of Chinchero, the CTTC supports the villages of Chahuaytire, Pitumarca, Patabamba, Accha Alta, Santa Cruz de Sallac, Mahuaypampa, Santo Tomas and Acopia and each of them had mantas on display.

Each presentation was done in Quechua dialect so I had some trouble deciphering what the ladies were saying. I was impressed with the fact that in addition to supporting these villages with aid, health care and providing a market for their textiles, CTTC was also grooming leaders who could speak up and address a crowd and be an advocate for their village.

After a few more speeches, the director got up and delivered the results, with various categories to ensure that each village won some kind of award. As each village picked up their award, pride was evident on their faces. Nilda the director spoke in Quechhua and Spanish and was a commanding presence on the makeshift podium. She is from the village of Chinchero herself and has been successful at drawing foreign financial aid and volunteers to keep the CTTC going. Perhaps one of the ladies presenting that day will be her successor.

The Pisac Piper

The Pisac Piper (note the stone steps in the wall)

We began our walk down through the terraced fortress ruins of Pisac and I thought I kept hearing the sounds of pipe music. The ruins are from the time of the Incas and are perched on the top of a mountain above the Urubamba River and the Sacred Valley. The ruin’s most striking feature is the system of steep agricultural terraces that descend and wrap around the mountain, almost all the way to the Urubamba River. The Pisac ruins were built by the Incas for military, religious and agricultural reasons and the terraces were the result of hauling topsoil up from the valley floor. From the height of the ruins to the valley floor is approximately 4,000 feet and it takes 3-4 hours to walk down.

We walked past the baths and temple complex and the pipe music got louder. It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to go down and we were some of the last people walking down the mountain. We took a break and admired the stone work of the terraced retaining walls and the protruding stone steps (see photo above) that enabled moving from one level to the other without undermining structural integrity. Just then the piper appeared to our side. He stood above a stone retaining wall, wore a dirty chullo and poncho and sandals and concentrated on his music. He played a single-cylinder flute and not the pan pipes that are so common in the Andes. His music floated out and seemed to descend to the valley floor.

Pisac is visited by many tourists so despite the beauty of his music, I felt that at some point he would approach us, chullo in hand, looking for money, but he never came near us, nor acknowledged our presence. The Pisac Piper seemed content to simply share his beautiful music.

Moray: The Sacred Laboratory Of The Incas

Moray Ruins in Peru

Not far from the salt pans of Salinas (see The Salt Pans of Salinas, Peru) are a complex of three large, circular, terraced craters known as Moray, an unusual Incan archaeological site just off the dusty Peruvian plateau. The amphitheatre-like depressions are about 50 kilometers northwest of Cusco, just down the road from the small town of Maras and 600 meters above Urubamba and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The consensus on the site is that it was some kind of experimental area for improving crop yield. You could call it the Sacred Laboratory of the Incas.

Arriving at the Moray site is quite an experience. We walked to the edge of the plateau and looked down to the lowest, innermost, concentric circle in the largest depression – a distance of about 100 meters. We walked down the crude, stone steps carefully, as the height of each terrace was about six feet. (see short video below) From the top of the plateau to the bottom of the largest depression took us about 30 minutes of walking.

Like the Romans, the Incas conquered and assimilated a great many tribes in their sphere of influence. Much of this was aided by the Inca road network, which helped communication, trade and political administration. In addition to subduing conquered tribes and plundering, it appears that the Incas were interested in science as well.

The site was apparently designed by the Incas to take advantage of the natural depressions below the level plain and duplicate Andean, jungle and semi-tropical environments for the growth of various plant species. Pollen studies indicate that soils from each of these regions was imported by the Incas to each of the large circular basins. In the largest crater, there is a network of water channels that reach the bottom that were used to irrigate the experimental crops. The depth and orientation of the craters with respect to wind and sun creates a temperature difference of as much as 15 °C (27 °F) between the top and bottom. The theory is that the large temperature difference was possibly used by the Incas to study the effects of different climatic conditions on crops. It is believed that the Incas could grow over 250 plant species at Moray.

We climbed out of the main crater and huffed and puffed our way back to the top. We looked back down and in my mind I superimposed vegetation over the terraces and Inca scientists taking measurements and recording observations. The Incas were around for less than 100 years prior to Spanish conquest but they accomplished a lot during that time. Watching tourists climb in and out of the Sacred Laboratory of the Incas, I wondered what Peru might be like today if the Incas had not run into the guns, germs and steel of the Spanish.