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Main | Journal: Ica, Peru | ||
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Ica, Peru Tuesday, July 6 Muchachos y Muchachas (have to keep up with the Spanish),
Spending two weeks with the Silvas, my surrogate South American family,
has been one of the most worthwhile experiences of my trip. I write to
you now, a more educated person in the ways of Cusquenan food,
Cusquenan traditions, Cusquena the beer, and salsa dancing. (Aren't
those neat?) Some days I would wake up to find a piece of pig on
my plate. Some days I would come home for almuerzo (lunch--have to
keep educating the masses) with a big pile of mush on my plate that was
actually digestable--well, usually digestable. Some days I would come
home for dinner and find a few bread rolls and a cup of coca mate
sitting on the table--meaning that I would have to go elsewhere for
night-time nourishment, thus the introduction to the Cusquena the beer
(sounds kind of the Spaceballs the t-shirt).
Anyway, I have come to appreciate the Cusquenan way of life. In my
stint there, they must have had more government-given days off than I
had during my entire time in Boston as a management consultant.
(Although it is quite possible that I just wasn't in Boston on the
right days.) The night before the Big Festival of the Sun (Inti
Raymi--a Quechuan name, don't worry I won't be throwing too many of
these Quechuan phrases at you, although I could just hit the keyboard
with my fist and probably come up with a few in that way), I went to a
grand concert of Andean musicians blowing into their flute-like wind
instruments as a mosh pit of locals formed. At one point, my brother
(not my real brother, don't worry Mike you're not being replaced--yet),
somehow got involved in a jawing match with some drunk Cusque-an and I
had to step in with my huge American frame, like the massive bouncer at
hottest club in town (okay, I'm going a bit overboard here), and
encouraged the borracho to turn away. It is actually better to feared
than to be loved!
The Festival, which had been my incentive to remain in Cusco to study
Spanish for a couple of weeks turned out to be a bit of a
disappointment. The tourists gathered at an Incan temple early in the
morning, waiting interminably, for the very colorfully-dressed actors
to slowly march out from afar. Finally, after what seemed like an
Incan version of the clown-car act, the king appeared, emitted a few words
in Quechua and left the Incan clowns to march back into their little
building. A similar act was repeated at the city's grandest plaza,
leaving us to climb up those treacherous Incan steps for the main act.
I splurged for front-row seats to the main performance, trying to
rationalize away the 40 bucks the entire time. My best excuse is that
I'll never have to come back to Cusco to see this festival again.
While I did have the best seats to see a fake llama sacrifice (they
ripped out what appeared to be his heart, really a piece of meat I had
probably seen in the butcher shop window a day before, and threw it into a
bonfire--I was drooling at the thought of how wonderful some smores
would taste), the highlight of the day, for me anyway, was the
performance of several two-week tourist groups--I felt completely out
of place, not ready to graduate to this classification for many years
to come. The disturbed mob of tourists were enraged when several
photographers parked themselves into about 5% of their views, blocking
a few actors who were dancing off beat even though the dances merely
consisted of shifting from foot-to-foot at a snail's pace. (I could
even have done that...maybe.) Too much time on this...
Another festival, more of my style, was celebrated on the 29th of June,
some festival for some virgin, which I never understood why they
celebrate a virgin when they could celebrate a perfectly good...yeah,
so I went to a Catholic mass for the second time in my life, the first
being about five days earlier, and tried my darndest to stay awake,
just barely avoiding a public hanging. After mass, we marched the
virgin replica around a small plaza, in a rinky-dink town 50km outside
of Cusco, our stomachs full of you-guessed-it pig and tamales. We
continued the parade to the house of a relative where the revelry would
commence with more pig, sheep (actually very yummy), beer, and some
fermented alcoholic drink that I will never, ever, never again taste.
The party lasted from 1 to 8, which is a bit long in the hot sun, at
least for me. I decided to entertain myself by speaking English to
anyone that would listen as speaking Spanish for two weeks had already
fried what was left of my brain. I managed to find a cohort, who had
the required minimal level of knowledge for us to make fun of our
family, mostly inebriated at that point. By the way, she happened to
be my "niece", a girl just three years my junior--a bit strange of a
concept for me. After seven hours of virgin celebration, we packed up
the mini-bus and headed for home, stopped at a roadside bottle shop and
waited another hour for the "machista" men to have a few more beers and
this is where I decided that I needed to regain some of my independence
and move into a hotel for the rest of my time in Cusco.
One other brief tale before I let you back to work. I visited the
nursery school of a friend as I had so much success with the five-year
olds, I figured why not try the two-year olds. Well, I sufficiently
riled the group of toddlers so that my friend could no longer conduct
class. I made a major error in judgment when I pretended to eat one of
the children because he took me seriously and, a la Mike Tyson, took a
big bite into my shoulder. Fortunately for me, he failed to rip out my
flesh and spit it onto the canvas, but it did hurt all the same.
Yesterday, after having spent 20% of my trip in what is now my favorite
place in South America, I finally left Cusco. Having spoken so much
Spanish over the past few weeks, I considered myself fluent until I
encountered the cab driver in Lima, whose language was completely
indecipherable. I am now in Ica, nearby to a resort-like village at
the foot of some giant sand dunes where sandboarding is the primary
tourist activity. Wish me luck as many of you know my penchant for
injury.
Dan
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