Month: June 2024

The last week in Peru has been somewhat of a whirlwind. We’ve seen Ollantaytambo, Aguas Calientes, Machu Picchu, and returned to Pisac all in the matter of a few days and nights. We’ve taken 2 Don Abelino transports, our very own diesel-scented PeruRail car, a behemoth tourist bus careening around switchbacks at 7am, our own two feet (and two hands at some points), and yet another PeruRail (this time with more gen pop). It’s been a lot of seeing, moving, and even a little bit of shaking (gracias amigo Carlos). And it’s not even over yet, we’re headed in another convoy back to Cusco for a quick Inti Raymi jaunt.

We’ve gotten to the point in the trip where we’re coming back to places. Driving into Pisac yesterday afternoon and arriving to Roxana awaiting us in the lobby of the Pisac Inn, doling out the same oddly phallic room keys, felt like coming home. I remember when I was a kid and I had the pattern of turns to get home from the main highway memorized. I knew it so well that I’d wake up from my car nap right around the same curve nearly every time. There was no excuse for not helping unload the car…

It’s interesting how fast a place becomes home when you’re away from what you’re used to. I’ve gotten familiar with the walk from my room to the Mercado, I know exactly how late I can leave for class at the Florencio, you start seeing and snickering at the same NATs around town. We have a dog. Esteban and Henry know I’m not ordering food at breakfast until I’ve had a coffee and orange juice. Roxanna gave me muña tea to take with us to Calca when she heard we were having a parrillada. Dina knows our orders and I will make mine with extra veggies instead of French fries (she does make great fries too though, no shade).

My trip won’t be ending when LAST315 concludes in a couple weeks (cry). I still have at least till the end of August to explore around. I miss my friends. I miss all the routines that make Vancouver home. I miss my favorite beers and I miss my little balcony BBQ. To my surprise, I even miss my home home. I rarely feel nostalgic for Oregon and my parents house when I’m in Vancouver but I just miss it. I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the summer rituals from before I moved away. Maybe it’s just due to where I’m at in life. Everything is changing and maybe I’m looking for grounding in all that.

All this is to say, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be home. And I feel amazed at how quickly I’ve adapted to consider a new place home. I think it’s a testament to the flexibility of the concept, but the longing I feel for what I feel really connected to also exemplifies the grounding effect of place. We’ve been talking a lot in the course about displacement and I think it’s fitting we ourselves have been moving around, constantly not knowing the plan or having things change out of our control.

I think the sense of home is an important facet to Indigeneity. How does the balance between human adaptability and innate sense of place play into creation of identity?

“And yet a permanence of stone and language/upheld the city raised like a chalice/in all those hands: live, dead, and stilled,/aloft with so much death, a wall, with so much life,/struck with flint petals: the everlasting rose, our home,/ this reef on Andes, its glacial territories” (Neruda 29).

This stanza comes from section VII of Neruda’s epic poem “The Heights of Macchu Picchu”. This section plays with the contrast of the permanent and the vanished. Neruda paints the sacrifice of the Incan people in the construction of the citadel as a noble sacrifice, contrasting from the doom he feels in the first few sections about urban life. He grapples with the reality of the lives that went into the construction and describes the rock as having embodied the spirit “in all those hands”.

The contrast of life and death is an important motif for the poem in general and this section highlights it well by the permanence of both the stone (inanimate) and language (animate). There is a transference to the stones itself as a way to show the life that can come from the nobel death. The permanence of the stone maintains the permanence of the language, representative of the living. There is another example of this contrast by the description of the walls. Neruda uses “a wall” as a flexible dependent clause. The “wall” is preceded by “aloft with so much death” and followed by “with so much life”, showing a transference between life and death through construction.

There are 2 interesting images represented in this section which are also found throughout the poem – the chalice and the rose.

The image of the chalice appears early in the poem as a symbol of Neruda’s negative outlook on urban life. Later in Section VII the image is converted to a positive symbol. In Christian tradition, the chalice is the vessel that Jesus uses to share his blood at the last supper, and can also represent the womb of Mary. In the chalice, there is an emptiness but there is also opportunity as it is used to connect man to God. Neruda describes the citadel as such to emphasize the spiritual nature of the site. Additionally, the raising of the chalice represents success or celebration.

Finally, the image of the rose is used in this section as well. Throughout the poem, Neruda employs feminine/sexual imagery and the rose is no exception. The rose is representative of beauty, femininity and the fleeting nature of time. It’s interesting that Neruda uses such a feminine symbol to represent the citadel, which to me feels masculine in its blocky construction. Nonetheless, Neruda wants to emphasize how the site represents the “bloom” of the Incan empire. The entire bush is not rose flowers, but Macchu Picchu is highlighted as one of the bloom to illustrate its fertility and importance to the empire.

“What had those pots done to that Christian to make him kick them?” (Asunta, 133)

A welcome switch up in our reading schedule, Andean Lives falls under the genre of Testimonio which also includes Rigoberta Menchú’s revolutionary work “Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia”.

From both voices in the text, resiliency in the face of imposed hardship is a consistent motif. I’d like to explore the differences and similarities in resiliency faced by Gregorio and Asunta, although they share commonalities, there are marked differences in the type and extent of violence experienced based on their gender.

The testimony of Gregorio recounts his struggles to find and keep reliable work over the course of basically his entire life. From the time he was a young boy, orphaned, he was abused and taken advantage of by almost every employer he came across. His experience mirrors the picaresco, a young and migratory boy trying to survive under violent and unjust labor conditions. Some of his stories of losing livestock or playing with other boys while on the job remind me of Lazarillo. Additionally, Gregorio struggles with reliable housing, constantly being evicted/displaced/removed and being forced to start over. There’s a general attitude that these hardships are an uncomfortable but unavoidable reality to those born with the same social standing as Gregorio.

Gregorio describes account after account of unwarranted violence against him, but the nature is never sexual. On the other hand, the resiliency Asunta must engage in centers on her identity as a female and the expectations of a woman in the described society. Asuntas story was hard to read in ways that hit closer to home. Asuntas story was one of a loss of agency and identity as a woman. She not only endured abuses due to her identity as an Indigenous Peruvian but as an Indigenous Peruvian Woman.

I think it’s especially interesting that Gregorio doesn’t talk about Asuntas food business in his testimonio. For her this was one the biggest moments of victory and was a form of empowerment in the face of hardship. It wasn’t worth mentioning to him. Not to be forgotten, the domestic abuse she endured as his wife was also only mentioned by her. And mentioned in the same sentence praising his fatherhood as if the two must be inextricably linked and at least it’s not as bad as before.

I chose this quote because I think its exemplifies the need for resiliency that Gregorio and Asunta feel as Indegenous people facing the impacts of a colonial political and economic system.

Has resiliency become a condition of Indigeneity?

this is gonna be a long one …

okay so we went and we did it. We went and experienced what was supposed to be potentially the most “Indigenous” experience we are going to get during the course. Let’s run it back.

At a totally not 9am SHARP, we all piled into 2 trusty vans to drive up into an Andean community called Amaru. This community is connected? Supported? Somehow related? To our hotel and the foundation that runs it. Winding up into the hills, Pisac and its NATs (New age tourists) quickly faded into the rear view as the roads turned dusty and the cliff-side drop off was enough to make your stomach churn (more on that later…). Arriving in the community, we were greeted by men and women in their traditional dress getting ready for a day of working one of the land plots. I would say fields but as it is the dry season, the field was really just dirt. We found out later the village takes turns plowing and tending to each other’s fields when necessary, an example of the Incan theory of reciprocity we have heard about in IGV and Guaman Poma. Little did we know we were about to reciprocate. After our guide told us a few facts about the treatment of the indigenous under colonialism we were gifted with rounds of coca leaves and a charcoal-looking rock that makes your mouth numb. I would’ve liked more facts but nonetheless, experiential learning. We sat there for a while. We weren’t quite sure what was going on. That’s ok. There’s a lot of value in feeling out of place as a white westerner.

De repente, pick axes and hoes appeared. We were going to till the field. Okay. We are going to till the field. Okay. Um how? No worries, we’ll show you. Oh I forgot to mention, at this point we had been dressed in the traditional garments of the village. Beautiful textiles and hats including ponchos and toques for the Men and skirts and shawls for the ladies. So there we were, clad and ready to reciprocate. It was a sight to see, I’m sure. Jon rolled a cigarette while he “facilitated the learning”. Some people enjoyed this 1.5hours(?) more than others but I think we all learned we weren’t quite up to expectations. In the soil we unearthed potatoes, legos, rocks (which Orla threw at me) and a better understanding for what it takes to produce the food we eat.

The sun blared down from above, still strong even this close to its Winter equinox where we will have to give it our energy. We moved over to an adjacent field (maybe plowed by a previous weeks vans?) where they showed us how potatoes can be cooked in a sod-fueled mound. It smelled delicious. Apparently they had gotten it going a few hours ago and the potatoes would be ready in 30 mins or less. It felt like when the cooking show has a whole baked turkey ready to go. Jokes aside, it was actually really cool and I enjoyed watching the ladies bury the potatoes under the coals. Back to Pachamama they go.

March on we did. The community had set up a beautiful welcome for us where we were bestowed a kantu over our necks and arranged ourselves in the shade for the next phase. Turns out it was shopping and then also a lunch! The textiles on display were handmade by the community and the prices reflected this (as they should). If I wasn’t a student my wallet may have been as hungry as my eyes. Lunch was brought out wrapped in a red, white and black blanket which contrasted beautifully with the green grass and the mysterious sauce that I could put on anything. The bundle contained aforementioned roasted potatoes, fava beans, loose corn and a complement of farmers cheese (almost certainly not pasteurized). But the fun didn’t stop there! The cooks brought out a delicious potato soup. Our guide told us that apparently limeños look down on a soup like this since it’s “poor food”. Well, so was whole wheat and so was quinoa until people decided it was healthy. In bears to mention, at this point our group had had a great casualty. Our fearless and otherwise seemingly indestructible (see diet of cigarettes, Inca Kola, and various manifestations of alcohol) leader had fallen. It didn’t seem to be the roads at fault, maybe the altitude or the 24 flu that everyone seemed to be getting or maybe a combination of all 3 and a brief involvement in the day’s field tilling. Nevertheless we persisted. Lunch lasted 2 hours? Kerri told us this was quite normal for when visitors come to the village. Finally, we had a demonstration of the textiles and the weaving processes. We learned that the women learn the craft very early in their life not only as an occupation but as a way of life. It is a way to foster community, the women sit together and talk and care for the children while the men farm etc. she also told us that often the Andean women are extremely adept at mathematics because of the thread counting, even more so than non-Andean students. 3 cheers for women in STEM!

There was a bit more shopping and a bit more music and a bit more dancing and that was the whole day. I think it’s good we went. Did we get what we came for? I don’t know. I guess I didn’t have any expectations really but I wished there was more information presented. Plowing a field is cool and all but some more context and explanation would’ve enriched the experience. Maybe that’s antithetical to what they’re trying to present to us though.

I wonder the impact the rolling door of foreigners has on the children, children living in a community which is priding itself on remaining unaffected by a western lifestyle. What impact do trips like this have on the youngest?

Last blog post I started it off by basically saying “this isn’t my thing”. This blog post I’m starting off by saying this is 10000% my thing, in fact this is probably more my thing currently than anything else. My good friends will tell you I never shut up about how important shared food, as a nutrient and as an experience, is for relationship building. Every major (and minor) occasion should be marked and celebrated with a meal. This isn’t an original thought, but I think it gets lost in our modern culture of go go go and eat in front of the TV.

“Nonetheless, what I most remember about that night is not a sense of danger but the perfume of the marinade hitting the grill”

I pulled this quote from “How Food Became Religion in Peru’s Capital City” by Marco Avilés in the Lima Reader. This article stood out to me as it connected the personal experience of the author with a larger commentary on how Peru and Lima have changed in the modern age of the culinary boom.

Aviles recounts a story of the “old Lima” where it wasn’t safe to go out, but food was something that held Lima together in the midst of violence. For aviles, food is memory, of his family, of his town and the changes it was undergoing, of the contrast of the daily violence with the daily pleasures still hidden within the spirit of people. Food is an extension of the emotions felt by himself and the community and food is a semi truck transport into a shared consciousness. The types of foods available are representative of not only the current community but of the origins and shared histories brought by immigration to the city. The community is characterized and self identified by how and what they eat, either out of necessity and happily out of pride.

While our other texts haven’t focused so solely on the role of food in community, it is an ever present theme. The Incas cajoled their subjects with gifts of banquets and traditional foods of the Andeans are maintained to this day as an important part of Peruvian daily life and, as we saw in Amaru, Andean ceremony. Meals are communal. Community is built around partaking in ingestion and imbibing as a way to create a sense of sameness. We all eat the same, therefore we are all in some ways the same. Therefore, we are a community.

Jon, please don’t cancel the final dinner.

A few interesting notes on “pan” in wheat-heavy culture

• pan means bread. Pan also is the Latin prefix for all.
• In the Middle Ages, not only was bread a religious food (body of Christ etc), it was given out to the poor as charity. So you’re not just giving nourishment, you’re giving a sameness.
• Compañero/companion literally means “who I eat bread with

To be honest, economics is neither my area of expertise or area of interest. That being said, Mariategui does a good job of laying out the economic structurings of Peru in a readable and straightforward way. In relation to indigeneity, his main point in Essays on Peruvian Reality is that “the problem of the Indian” can only be solved by land reform. He also makes the argument that “the oldest and most obvious mistake is, unquestionably, that of reducing the protection of the Indian to an ordinary administrative manner… wise and detailed ordinances, worked out after conscientious study, have been quite useless”.

This made me think about what types of administrative reforms are common to todays (thinking Canadian here, would need to find out more about Peruvian) political sphere. Some things I thought of were status cards, special grants and scholarships, social assistance, and of course land acknowledgments. We’re all very familiar with the boiler plate UBC paragraph that gets delivered at the beginning of most sponsored events. While I’m sure it’s well-intentioned, it often feels performative. Yes, we are acknowledging the rights of the land, but after that, what?

Mariateguis argument throughout the essays seems to highlight the land richness of Peru, and the subsequent mismanagement of the land by Spanish colonizers. He advocates for the Indians right to the land which under colonialism, was swallowed up by feudal latifundios. Could the use of indigenous land to build a university which enrolls mostly non-indigenous students constitute an educational appropriation of land in the same vein that the Spanish colonizers appropriated Indian lands for their own economic systems (systems which were markedly unsuccessful in Peru)?

I think the concept of land acknowledgments would enrage Mariategui. The words-without-action nature of the acknowledgment gives people an out from actual land reform, which Mariategui argues is the only solution.

The last few days in Pisac I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few different Incan ruins in both Pisac itself and in the surrounding towns. Each time we’ve visited I’m struck by the same awe but also an odd sense of confusion or “inquietud” which is a word I seem to only know in Spanish and I’m not bothered to find out in English because it suits me so well as it is.

In Pisac, the ruins are way up high on a hill side as opposed to being nestled in the valley where the modern city of Pisac is. This meant that the residents could not only take advantage of the agriculture by elevation system, but had the advantage of gravity being on their side. A local guide told us the Incans primary weapon against enemies was the slingshot and I noticed Daniel practicing his marksmanship from the tippy top of the fortification. He was confident he could defend the terraces (no tourists or llamas were harmed in this recreation). But the genius of the incas extended even further, they understood that the hillside rock was more stable that the slope across the valley and chose to place their settlement for longevity instead of ease of construction. Note: that unstable hill side is now completely occupied…

In Chinchero and Moray we also got to visit the fruits of Incan labor. Chinchero had more terraces than fort ruins and Moray was basically a really high tech pit. Apparently at Moray, the Incans conducted agriculture research and it was a kind of lab space. The terraces descend from a ledge concentrically like a telescope. They are incredibly symmetrical and obviously precise. The walls are, of course, perfectly designed and aligned. The sheer scale of Moray is hard to describe. We were there during sunset and it felt like the site had eaten up the afternoon sun itself to lend a blueish haze to everything. In the background Salkantay and Ausegante (?) tower over the valley. Imposing and powerful in the same but opposite way as the Moray pit.

And now “mi inquietud”. Real people lived in these places. Real people live laugh loved at the Pisac ruins. They played games, they made jokes, they fought with their siblings etc. And now they’re just not here. And now we just wander around and look at the graveyards of their existence. It’s fascinating but it’s really very morbid. Cissy and I were chatting on the walk around Moray about why the terraces aren’t in use anymore, they seem totally structurally sound and there is a lot of land not being used. We thought about it for a bit and felt that if the lands were being worked on and the site was also open to visitors (which I think it should be as there is value in remembering history), that it would become a sort of zoo. People would come and gawk at the workers, similar to how we all act when we see llamas. It would devalue the site and be disrespectful of the people.

So this made me think, are we still treating these sites as respectfully as we can while also learning from them? Is it effectively a zoo of the past?

(This is gonna be a bilingual post !)

We’ve talked a lot about indigeneity and how we make/unmake it, but we haven’t talked much about the gray area that exists between those two extremes of indigenous and “not”. According to the RAE, “mestizo” means “Born of a father and mother of different race, especially of white man and Indian, or of Indian and white woman” and/or “Coming from the mixture of different cultures”. It differs from a Creole who is of European heritage on both sides, and born in colonial territory. But, as we’ve been uncovering in our course, the indigenous and thus mestizo identity is more complex than the content of blood. Although the meaning of the word mestizo has changed over the years, it has always been a “socially and historically constructed identity” (Martinez-Echazabal). In Comentarios Reales, It is not so clear what relationship El Inca has with his cultural heritage as a mestizo.

Desde el Proemio, hay una ambigüedad sobre sus intenciones, él dice que escribió C.R “forzado del amor natural de la patria” (Voces Proemio.8), pero ¿Cuál es su patria? ¿Patria peruana? ¿Patria Inca? Al inicio, parece que identifica con un indigenismo pre-colonial, “Yo nací ocho años después que los españoles ganaron mi tierra” (Voces 1.XIX.19-20) pero el uso mezclado del “Su” y “Nuestro” en referencia a los Inca crea un conflicto entre su origen y su identidad.

Por un lado, Garcilaso identifica con la herencia Incaica “…sabiendo que un indio, hijo de su tierra (Voces 1.XIX.29-30) y parece que se considera culturalmente incaica “con lo cuales me crié y comunique hasta los veinte años” (Voces 1.XIX.5-6). Especialmente, Garcilaso aprovecha de sus relaciones indígenas para justificar su escritura, “…para que se vea que no finjo ficciones en favor de mis parientes [los Inca]” (Voces 1.XIX.51-52). Aún más, hay un esfuerzo de poner distancia a su herencia europea como “allá los españoles” (Voces 1.XV.25). Parece que no considera a los españoles como parientes cercanos.

Pero en contraste, él también emplea el “Su” para distanciarse de los sellos culturales incaicos, “Me contaban sus historias… larga noticia de sus leyes…como procedían sus reyes… trataban a sus vasallos… su idolatría… sus ritos…sus fiestas… sus abusos… sus agüeros…sus sacrificios…su república” (Voces 1.XIX.8-15). El uso repetitivo del “su” parece contrario a la previa insistencia de su raíces y relaciones como los indígenas incas.

Para ponerlo más complejo, a veces Garcilaso usa los artículos de manera mezclada. En el capítulo XV, el uso del “Su” (vuestro) y el “nosotros” (nuestro) está muy presente. En el mismo pensamiento, aparece el uso de los dos sujetos,

“Inca, tío, pues no hay escritura entre vosotros, que es la guarda la memoria de las cosas pasadas, ¿Qué noticias tenéis del origen y principios de nuestros reyes?” (Voces 1.XV.23-24)

“Empero vosotros que carecéis de ellos, ¿Qué memorias tenéis de vuestras antiguallas? ¿Quién fue el primero de vuestros Incas?… ¿Qué origen tuvieron nuestras hazañas? (ibid. 28-31)

From this discontinuity, Inca Garcilaso shows the complexity of mestizaje identity. The conflict of biraciality means that mestizaje does not fit into any pre-established group. The creation of a “Nuevo nosotros” is fundamental to mestizo identity, His identity as a mestizo is composite of his indigenous heritage, and also his Creole environment. The two cannot be separated without destroying the novel identity and trying to celebrate one while ignoring the other is contrary to their physical existence. Most people we meet and interact with will have some mix of pre-Hispanic and European ancestry. Peruvian culture as we know it now is a mix of pre-Hispanic and European/Western culture.

Does the centering of mestizaje constitute a Making or an unmaking of indigineity in the way which we have been studying it?

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Quotes and analysis adapted from “El desarrollo del mestizaje en Perú por El Inca y José María Arguedas”, Morgan Cooper 2023.

Voces de Hispanoamérica: antología literaria. Eds. Malva E. Filer y Raquel Chang-Rodríguez. 5ª ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2017. 66-67.

Martinez-Echazabal, Lourdes. “Mestizaje and the Discourse of National/Cultural Identity in Latin America, 1845-1959.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 25, no. 3, 1998, pp. 21–42. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2634165.

The conversation we had on Monday about how to define indigeneity brought up many interesting points of view and ways to approach the definition itself or reasons we should back away from applying it at all. One theme that stuck out to me in the discussion and in the reading of “Primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno” was the idea of Sameness and Otherness.

A few people made the argument that using the term indigenous was an imposed colonial (or post-colonial) way of creating an “other”, anything that isn’t part of the colonial regime could be grouped under “indigenous”. A way to categorize an entire pre-existing society of people into a singular, culturally defined box. Some people also proposed that “indigenous” is a term used from within to identify a sameness. A way to gather various voices together and identify under a shared experience which binds otherwise disparate together in a specific way.

In the reading, Guaman Poma also seems to use Otherness and Sameness as a means to an end. It seems to us, Pomas’ objective was most likely to advocate for the improved treatment of the indigenous (Incan) peoples under colonial rule by appealing to the theistic soft-spot of the King. He accomplishes this by Othering the Spanish soldiers from the wishes of the King himself and highlighting the Sameness that the indigenous people have to the Spanish subjectives.

Poma goes about Othering by highlighting the conquistadors’ fall into temptation –  Greed. Using a religiously-backed appeal, he implies that the Spanish conquistadores must be Other to the righteous king himself and therefore not loyal to the wishes or mission of the Spanish.

The implication of sameness can be seen illustrated by the similarities in the drawings of “Adam and Eve” and “The First Generations of Indians Wari Wiracocha Runa” (Poma, 14 and 28).

Both images depict the first people of the respective cultures. Represented is man and woman, working together to sow the land and create life for the continuation of the population. Poma emphasizes the continuous blood lines, which were of importance in Spain, running from Adam/Eve through to Noah and down into the Wari people of now-called Peru, “these were the ones who

left Noah’s ark following the flood, and who multiplied, by God’s command, and filled the world (25). Poma engenders Sameness between the Spanish and the indigenous not just at the level of culture but of shared genetic ancestry, shared Biblical ancestry. He also makes efforts to highlight the religious and non-idolatrous practices of the pre-Incan cultures to emphasize that there is a true “Christian spirit” within them. He even goes as far to say, Christian readers, about these new people! Learn from them how to show faith and service for God, the Most Holy Trinity (27).

I think there’s merit in seeing “indigentity” as a term effective in both capacities but what’s inarguable to me is that the concept itself seems to have been used for a long time as a bargaining chip to get something out of someone.

• What position do you take on the effect of the term “indigenous”?
• Is identification with a specific term in order to accomplish a goal (whether from the inside or out) an inherently flawed use of an identity? Or is it the purpose of identifying a group to begin with?

What a whirlwind Cusco has been. Everything here in the plaza seems to revolve around spectacle through the senses. During our time in Cusco, I feel all 5 of my senses have been continuously engaged (read: overstimulated) almost all of the time.

Sight: We have seen a lot. The Corpus Christi festival, the churches, the Incan architecture, the art, the mountains, the flags, the costumes, the sunsets over white Christ, the strobe lights of Calle Los Plateros. The colors are brilliant and the sun shines down over everything, lighting up the white walls and reflecting off cars and the Golden Incan in the middle of Plaza Mayor. Peruvian women wear brightly colored outfits, wandering around with baby llamas, lambs and goats trying to get a tourist to buy a photo with them. The city’s flag looks 99% like the Pride Flag, not sure if anyone has told the other about that yet? Viva El Peru is emblazoned on a foothill to the east, I can see it directly out my window. I could also see it directly from the bell tower of the now-destroyed Quorikana. Things are no longer covered in gold (Thanks Spaniards circa Sixteenth century), but the golden rays of sun coat everything in a golden hue twice a day. The sunset from saqsayhuaman felt like Monet had painted the sky himself. Perhaps Inti had something to do with it.

Sound: From our well positioned room in Hotel plaza de Armas we are serenaded just about all day with a combination of different marching band tunes, traffic noise including the infamous police whistle in the morning and evening, cars idling away while people chat and amble by, the yells of street vendors pedaling their wares (umbrellas, stools, inflatable hammers, sugar cane, sweaters and mini llamas to name a few frequent ones). On the streets you hear Spanish and English, but I’ve also heard Quechua, German, Dutch, and a smattering of more I didn’t recognize. The themes that the Corpus Christi marching bands played were religious and unknown to me at some points, but often they played American favorites such as the Universal Group opening tune. Odd to carry your patron saint in too but alas.

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Taste: I would be lying to say I’ve had a bad meal in Cusco and I would be remiss to underscore just how incredible the food has been no matter where you eat. We have had a few excellent meals at establishments clearly catering to the tourist flocks, obvious when they immediately hand you an English menu. I’ve also had lunches at the local markets where there barely is a menu. I’ve hand Anticuchos from a street cart and a 7sole fresh pressed juice just about everyday. I can still feel the part of my tongue that was dissolved from the fresh pineapple juice in yesterday’s post-lunch juice stop. Many many pisco sours and a few strong homemade Chilcanos have been enjoyed and then enjoyed even more 10 minutes later. Cusquenos taste better on the terrace wrapped in a blanket watching the sunset. I didn’t like Cherimoya but I try to have Maracuya whenever possible.

Smell: walking through the streets of Cusco, you are assailed by various welcomed and unwelcome smells. Around lunch and dinner time (especially when I’m really hungry…) the whiffs of roasting meats, fats, salt and fresh breads is heavenly. The smells of the plaza mayor the morning after Corpus Christi were more urine-heavy. The great equalizer in a country where it seems impossible to find a free washroom. Along CuyCuy lane, roasted guinea pigs filled the air. About a street over, the garbage truck emptied out the porta pottys. Not as appetizing to say the least.

Touch: The Inca stone is incredibly smooth and you can run your finger along the perfectly matched seams. The rocks are cool to the touch and you can somehow sense just how big they are. The multitudes of available alpaca products range in softness but they are somehow always softer and more delightful than you thought it would. The mini Llamas feel like little clouds. The streets are uneven under your feet, little rocks placed upright instead of flat (why? For traction?) dig into your feet walking around the cobbled streets. The colonial walls are just as uneven but on the vertical plane, why were the Spanish so bad at building when the Inca were so good?