Llamas, Alpacas, Vicunas - oh my!

The next day, we left Arequipa & began a long climb (by bus) into the sierra. Peru is composed of 3 distinct zones: the strip of desert near the coast; the Andes mountains that run down the middle of the country; & the Amazonian jungle that makes up the entire eastern half.  Each area has distinct cultures and even ethnic composition, so it's fascinating to move from one to the other. This was my first trip to the sierra (mountains).

And those mountains are really high! We passed the13,000 foot mark, and I had the altitude headache to prove it. Traditional remedies like coca tea did help.

In these high mountain plains is a National Reserve for Vicunas, Alpacas & Llamas. It was amazing seeing bands of them roaming around. Here I am feeding an alpaca. Later in the trip, I would discover that alpacas are not only cute, they're also delicious! (Alpaca is a local delicacy). With a slight twinge of guilt, I highly recommend alpaca with cream of quinoa.

 

My favorite picture of llamas & alpacas...

The local people build stone corrals to keep their herds of llamas. From a distance they look otherwordly!

We were also lucky enough to see vicunas, which are wild (vs domesticated). I hadn't realized that vicuna fur is much more expensive than llama or alpaca, and it's because they have to be caught in the wild & sheared. According to our tour guide, the Peruvian government allows vicunas to be caught once a year, and it's the occasion for a big fiesta. The local people meet in the high Andean plains. They join hands & start walking in a line, loudly singing & shouting. Apparently, the vicunas are distressed by the loud noise, and they respond by freezing in place and becoming docile. The line of villagers surrounds them, still singing, and walks them back to a temporary corral, where they are kept until they're sheared and then released. With all that work, no wonder their fur is so expensive!

Vicunas:

More Arequipa

Arequipa was a kind of colonial religious center, and you can see wonderful architectural detail blending Incan & Christian themes.

Here's a stone carving on a church, showing Christ dressed as the supreme Inca.

Another detail from the same church. This religious figure is wearing a crown of feathers, which was the sign of supreme authority in the Inca culture.

Finally, here's a depiction of the Last Supper with Maize & Cuy (Guinea Pig) as the main course. Sorry it's such a poor photo due to not using the flash. Anyway, I just had to include it here!

On the theme of Cuy - yes, I did give it a try! It was fine, but very bony: more like eating the idea of meat than meat itself. Guinea pig has been a dietary staple in Peru for hundreds of years, as this story illustrates: while in Arequipa, I visited a colonial-era Convent that housed the daughters of the aristocracy. It was quite posh: each woman had her own private casita and multiple servants attending her. The casitas are 2 stories tall. Downstairs are the living quarters and kitchen, and upstairs is the terrace where they raised their own guinea pigs. Somehow the contrast between the luxurious religious retreat & cute little guinea pigs running around on the roof was really charming.

Here is a picture of that convent at nightfall, with the volcano Misti in the background.

Vacation - Arequipa

Well it's literally my last day in Peru & I'm ticking away the hours until the cab comes to take me to the airport, so this seemed like a perfect time to do some blogging. Because I certainly won't have time to describe my whole visit, I will greedily skip to the best parts first.

My vacation! I spent 1 wonderful week in southern Peru, starting in the Spanish colonial town of Arequipa. Arequipa is surrounded by 3 towering volcanoes, and it's often called "The White City" because it was entirely constructed from a white stone mined from the craters. It's a lovely place and jammed with tourists.

Here is the Plaza de Armas...

There are these wonderful arcaded balconies where you can sit & have an overpriced drink.

 

The city has such a stark, simple beauty now, but apparently the exterior walls of the buildings used to be covcred with colorful murals like this; it's hard to imagine:

Arequipa is known for its wonderful food, and my guide & I had a leisurely, traditional lunch. For drinks, they serve Red Chicha, a non-alcoholic drink made from maize. Here I am with the waiter who is serving it up in the traditional way.

PERU: Gods of Above & Below

Hola a todos! The blog is back - this time from Peru. I've been here about 3 weeks & there is so much to tell you.

What has struck me most is the incredible stretch of history in this place. Of course, when you think about Peru, Machu Picchu and the Incas come to mind, but there were actually empires that predated that by thousands of years. In fact, Peru was home to the oldest known civilization on the American continents (the Carals, from 3000-2500 BC). More recently - like from 100 to 700 AD! - there were vast Moche & Nazca empires in the north and south of the country. With all this ancient history, the Incas are starting to seem quite recent to me.

These ancient civilizations shared a belief in a 3-part world: the world of above, represented by the Condor; the 'earthly' world where humans live, represented by the Puma; and the underworld, represented by the Snake.

The Sky - Condors evoked power and supreme authority. Here is a golden outfit that a warrior would have worn into battle, complete with bird nose to strike fear into the enemy.

When the Spanish brought Christianity to Peru, they often portrayed Christ wearing a tall feather headdress, as an Incan or pre-Incan emperor would have done. Again, feathers and birds were considered god-like.

I was lucky enough to see actual Andean Condors when I was on vacation in the Canon del Colca. Andean Condors are giants; they have the largest wingspan of any land bird (about 10 or 11 feet). No wonder ancient peoples thought they were gods!

The Earth - in indigenous cultures, it was represented by the Puma god. When the Spanish arrived in Peru and wanted to put an end to this idolatry, they created art that showed a tamed and domesticated puma. Rather than the puma ruling as a god, it was now man who had dominion over nature. To the Incas, this would have been shocking. Here is an example:

The Underworld - ancient peoples associated it not only with death, but also with fertility. Every year, they put seeds in the ground and saw them grow, so they believed the underworld must be a place of fecundity and procreation, as well as a place for the dead. This is why Moche art often depicts corpses masturbating or copulating. Here are some examples from the wonderful Larco Museum in Lima.

More installments soon!

BRAZIL: Ibirapuera Park

In my temporary digs, I am just a few blocks away from Ibirapuera Park, the Central Park of Sao Paulo. September 7th is National Independence Day in Brazil, so I took at stroll over to the Park. It was full of people jogging, picnic-ing, visiting the museums that are scattered throughout it, and generally enjoying themselves.

Picnics, with the city skyline in the background...

The coconut juice vendor...

I love the tall old trees...

Recycling - it's everywhere here! A very strong theme...

The "Monumento as Bandeiros." This bears a little more explanation. The Bandeirantes or "Flag Bearers" were racially-mixed people descended from unions between the Portuguese and the indigenous Tupi people. Some of these men formed bands that scoured the Brazilian interior in search of local people to enslave. Their round-ups could last a year or two, and they brought back groups of hundreds to thousands of people to sell into slavery in the cities that hugged Brazil's coast. The colonization of Brazil was heavily dependent on slave labor. With its small population, tiny Portugal couldn't hope to supply enough colonists to work and settle their huge south American possession. The slave trade - both from the Brazilian interior and from Africa - helped to fill this gap. Brazil's slave trade long outlasted slavery in the US and was much larger in scope, impacting 7 times more people.

The Brazilians I have talked to don't seem to view this as unsavory or an embarrassing chapter in their history. Instead, the Bandeirantes are considered to be a kind of cowboys or land pirates who significantly expanded the borders of Portuguese America. There is a major street in Sao Paulo called "Bandeirantes," and the monument below prominently celebrates them. This unconflicted attitude is related to the lack of political engagement that I see among Brazilians. (If this were Argentina, there would be daily protests at the monument and contentious debates on TV!). The stereotype of Brazilians as having a "don't worry be happy" attitude to life may be an exaggeration, but it's got some basis in reality.

For some reason, people can't resist climbing on the Monument, which produces some charming scenes...

The Monument with Ibirapuera's fountains in the background...

Public Behavior

Last weekend, my friend took me to the Mercado Municipal and the nearby shopping streets downtown. In the discount stores, people push by you in a very assertivee way! It didn't bother me, but my Brazilian friend was quite embarrassed, and she kept apologizing, shaking her head and saying "it's not educated behavior! They are not educated!"

A few days later, I was talking with some Brazilian friends about my experiences in Argentina and I mentioned the remarkable public politeness I had observed there: people giving up their seats on the subway to the elderly, helping people who seem ill or distressed, retrieving dropped items for strangers on the street, and so on. One of my coworkers attributed this strong social code to the educational system. Argentina has one of the broadest educational systems in Latin America, with very high literacy rates. My friend's argument was that one result of having broad-based education is that people acquire a sense of civic duty and literally learn how to behave. I found this fascinating - it's the kind of thing we don't tend to think about in the developed world - and the more I think about it, the more on-target it seems.

Food & Food Culture

I love discovering the tropical fruits that don't even exist back home; instead of defining them, my dictionary can only mumble that there is "no equivalent" in English. Here is the Caju fruit - it's strange, pulpy and milky to eat, but delicious in juice. The green nubbin on top is actually a "cashew nut" - or it will be, once it's properly processed. Until the nuts are roasted, they are actually toxic.

More beautiful fruit at the Mercado Municipal...

Palmito (hearts of palm) are a common ingredient in everything...

"Bacalhau" or salt cod: a reminder of Brazil's past as a Portuguese colony...

Like Argentina, Brazil has had significant Italian immigration. One of the most traditional lunches is a Mortadela sandwich...

There are strong regional differences in Brazil, but the cradle of the culture is around Bahia and Recipe in the northeast. Here is a vendor at a street fair selling traditional Bahian food and wearing traditional dress.

I had a fried manioc ball, with sauces and little dried shrimps. The green sauce was almost like a guacamole!