Being vegetarian, I deprive myself of many of the culinary delights of the countries I visit, meaning, for example, that I missed out on roasted guinea pig in Peru. I do my best to compensate for this failure by trying every beer (and other new alcoholic drinks, come to that) I come across. To that end, I can report that I managed twenty brewed-in-Peru cervezas in my six months in the country, which ended Sunday.
The A-Z list is:
Anpay*
APU cerveza de coca
Arequipeña*
Barena
Club*
Cristal*
Cusqueña blonde*, malt, red, wheat
Franca*
Perkas*
Pilsen Callao*
Pilsen Polar
Quara
Real McCoy`s Amber Ale dark and light
San Juan
Trujillo*
Zenda*
The asterixed majority are same-samey bubbly lagers, the best of which may have been Club, the worst Perkas. Barena and San Juan were similar but had a Red-Stripe tang to them, a positive in my book. Cusqueña´s malt was too sweet for many but I found it and the targeted-at-women Quara to my liking, though Pilsen´s black beer,
called Polar for some obscure reason, was my favourite. The coca-leaf beer is something to try yet not savour, though I would steer clear of Cusqueña´s “limited edition” red beer, if it is being marketed when you are in the country.
We came to Chachapoyas to see Kuélap, the mountain-top "fortress" that predates Machu Picchu, consists of more stones than the Great Pyramid and was built by the "warriors of the cloud": the Cultura Chachapoyas. We got more than that: we saw
the world´s third-highest waterfall and sarcophagi to boot.
I asked the iPeru office to send me an electronic version of the map of the region so that I could begin planning my next trip. Apparently, the museum at Leymebamba is not to be missed.
Movil tours now does a direct bus (50 soles) leaving at 6am and taking around 12 hours. The views are breathtaking but don´t look down if you are afraid of heights: the road is only centimetres wider than the bus in parts, with no crash barriers to prevent that plunge.
Most places in Huánuco (we were coming from Pucallpa) told us we needed to go (backwards) to Lima in order to then advance to Chavín de Huantar, site of the ruins of the oldest civilizaton in the Americas. This seemed rather ridiculous given our relative proximity on the map and we eventually found a scenic route along the Cordillera Blanca that took in some great peak views.
In Huánuco, we caught a La Union-bound bus from Union Transport at cuadra 4, Jr. Tarapaca.
From La Union, we caught a 45-minute collectívo to Huallanca (3 soles).
From there we caught one of the thrice-daily (4a.m., 4.4.5a.m., 1pm) buses to Huaraz.
Our original intention had been to stay in Chavín, which would have meant alighting at Catac on the last bus and catching another. We decided last-minute to stay in Huaraz and that was definitely the right decision.
Neither Jun nor I had heard of the plant ayahuasca a year ago. Hitchhiking out of Futaleufu, Chile, in mid-February we were given a lift by a fisherman who was taking Patrick – a U.S. citizen – through the Andes and over the border into Argentina. In the course of the journey, Patrick mentioned its curative properties and Jun asked him to write its (hispanicized Quechua) name down. (The plant has other monikers – most notably “yagé” as in “The yagé letters”: the correspondence between William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg that was made into a book.) Since then Jun has spent hours reading testimonies and papers on the medicine and even gone so far as to suggest that it has become the reason for our round-the-world trip. A trip to Iquitos to try it became a “must do”. I have been less awed by the hype but willing to experiment, as ever. In Cuzco I talked to several people who had partaken of the ceremony and one who claimed to have seen her future. I was also told by one guy I got chatting to that Pucallpa is the emerging location for shamans. The “ayahuasca” of the ritual is usually a “tea” prepared with two plants: the B. caapi vine that bears its name and chacruna. The result is a concoction that doesn´t entice in smell or taste but that bears psychoactive properties incomparable to any others known; there are those who swear by its curative capacity too. We came to Pucallpa, on the fringes of the Amazon jungle and seved by one of the great river´s tributaries, to experience it for ourselves. Iquitos – we figure – is just too touristy and commercial for discerning cultural appropriators like us. Having done some research on the net, we already had our eye on Don Marçial at km26 and caught a collectivo there but my first glance at the conditions – Jun had been considering a prolonged stay on a special diet – told me they were too “rustic” for my posh-bird wife and we left with a vague (and dishonest) suggestion that we might return a few days later. The next day though – after stopping off at not-for-us Jardín Botánico Ayahuasca (near the airport, they have good maps on their Jardín Botánico FB page) – we had two encounters with people that led to opportunities and were sitting in a darkened room the very same night with a handful of locals and no other gringos.
That was arranged through Miguel Tang. We met him at Yarinacocha when looking for a boat trip on the laguna. We did that (and saw Jardín Botánico´s lakeside retreat) and he mentioned that we could do a ceremony for 50 soles each, a very reasonable price. Miguel – who is also known as “Pituco”, after his boat - is also mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide book so we knew we could trust him. Contact him on 961928694. Since we knew the process involved “purging” (vomiting is usual, shitting a distinct possibility) and had heard of one guy soiling himself three times during an evening´s experimentation, there was an element of trepidation involved in our first encounter. When the ceremony began, Alejandro, our “strong” shaman, blessed the concoction (there were syncretic Christian elements throughout the event) took the first drink and I was the second to receive it. Agua de Florida was given as hard-to-swallow chaser. Jun was second and had purged within about twenty minutes and began a journey that she was to describe as the best of her life. Sitting in the dark, I had trouble getting comfortable and relaxing into receiving the “spirit” of the plant. I spent the best part of three hours yawning. Finally I got up to go the toilet and was surprised by how disoriented my body was. I subsequently purged from both ends but saw nothing. Four nights later – after a jungle excursion - we tried again. This time I took a follow-up swig and received shallow visions and experienced some feelings of insignificance and self-criticism. My trip, however, was over within an hour of imbibing for the second time. The next day we bought some prepared ayawaska (the preferred Quechua spelling) and tried it on three consecutive nights without a shaman. Nothing to report, unfortunately. Finally, we made the decision to go back to Don Marçial (061788754) at km26 and phoned him to arrange it. We then spent four consecutive evenings there (coming back to town in the morning to rest at our hotel) and – especially on the third night, when I increased my dose by 50% - I finally felt the concoction overtake me. Click here to read my description of my dark but rewarding journey.
At the end of October I blogged about Kiva, a microcredit organisation that helped facilitate loans from people like me to entrepreneurs who couldn´t access the traditional financial system because they did not have the requisite capital. I lent a group called Emprendedores de Sicuani $25 to help them acquire merchandise. Today I had my first repayment of one-third of the amount.
Since I have credit on my pay-pal account (due to winning a prize for my “Video technology in football” piece), I decided to make another loan now that I can see the money is paid back. I chose to lend another $25 to Manuela, a woman who lives in the city of Pucallpa, which Jun and I will be visiting in the new year. Manuela is a single mother of two children and sells general merchandise from a small store set up in her home. She needs a 2000 sol loan to buy grocery items and beverages to sell in her store.
I encourage all who would like to help alleviate poverty in the world to sign up to Kiva and make a loan to someone who is trying to help themselves. It feels great and all this at no cost to you.
Last night we spoke with a Peruvian couple about politics here. The husband, Sergio, repeatedly expressed his disdain for the tactics of the “strike”, which are used throughout the country by the disaffected and disadvantaged to gain recognition for their causes (and have affected us on more than one occasion). I disagreed with him, arguing that this was the only recourse open to the relatively disenfranchised and its effectiveness – roads and rail closed to the tourist dollar – made it a useful method of having their voice heard (since the couple have their own trekking agency, there is no small amount of self-interest involved).
I explained how the miners strike in the UK had been a watershed in our country´s political history and marked the defeat of the workers, whose rights had never been the same, and argued that privitisation had been sold to us as efficiency and profit, whereas it was really job losses and higher prices. By repeatedly referring to the workers as the country, I was able to argue against the “us and them” mentality that the “educated” classes foster: “us”, the enlightened few looking towards the future; “them” the stupid masses stuck in the past. Sergio insisted that “education” was the way forward, which is a subtler take on the position that “I am educated and know what is best. If the people who disagreed with me were as clever/educated as I am, there would be no disagreement because they would see that I am right”. Or as a Venezuelan I knew in London simply repeated time after time, the poor are “estupido”.
Sergio claimed that some of these strikes in Peru were encouraged or inititated by Venezuela´s President, Hugo Chavez, and as he repeated the slurs of the right-wing news: Chavez, “ a charlatan”, Evo Morales: “a Chavez puppet”, I argued for the majority who voted for these men and pointed out that Alan Garcia could be described as a US puppet. Sergio and Jessica consider their president the lesser of two evils, and stated “better the devil you know”, in comparison to Ollanta, the “nationalist” who they seemed to imply hated white people and with whom they associated a return to the violence of the 80s. Their preferred candidate for the 2011 presidential elections is the current Mayor of Lima, Luis Castañeda Lossio, who they see as having turned around an inept and corrupt city government. As for Keiko Fujimori, they felt she had no chance in seventeen months´ time.
Sergio held opinions that I disagreed with but he was a generous listener and claimed at the end of the conversation that he had changed his perspective. For me, it was interesting to delve deeper into the mindset of the opponents of the “new socialism”, “Boliviarianism” or “indigenous movement” that is gaining ground on this continent and was reinforced yesterday with Evo Morales´ landslide reelection in Bolivia.
I was surprised to learn, while here in Peru, that the number of people "disappeared" in this country during the war between Abimael Guzmán´s "Shining Path" guerilla/terrorist organisation and the state during the 1980s and 1990s eclipses the total number of victims of Chile´s traitor - Pinochet - and the Argentine Dirty War, put together. Around 70,000 people are said by the Peruvian Commission for Truth and Reconciliation to have been killed, with about 15,000 bodies still missing according to EPAF and most of the victims said to be from the Ayacucho region in the Andes (where "Sendero Luminoso" or the Shining Path began). The events of the two decades are still being investigated and of course ex-president Alberto Fujimori is in jail for his part in ordering state organisations to disappear people alleged to be Shining Path members or sympathisers.
Today, disappearances in the Peruvian Andes hit the world news for another reason, when a gang were arrested in the possession of human fat. They have admitted to killing at least 5 people in order to sell the product through Italians to the cosmetics industry. I thought immediately of “Fight Club”, Chuck Palahniuk´s brilliant novel on American masculinity. However, it was claimed that their gang took their name – Los Pishtacos – from an Andean myth about a group of white foreigners who attacked people during the night to make soap and beauty creams from their fat. So, maybe Chuck Palahniuk looked south for his inspiration.
Distilled from different grapes in the two countries – Peru and Chile – that produce it, the liquor takes its contested name from the Quechua for little bird and the pottery in which it was aged (but more directly from the name of a coastal Peruvian city where it was produced).
It was first created in the sixteenth century as a consequence of protectionist policies by the Spanish King banning wine from the new world. Nearly all the first pisco came from a new grape variety – Quebranta – which is still the main source of “pisco puro” in Peru today. Peru also produces aromatic, mosto verde and acholado (blended) pisco. It is the blended pisco which is normally used for the national cocktail of the neighbouring countries, pisco sour, which contains lemon or lime, egg whites, syrup and regional bitters as well as the liquor.
In Chile, varieties of Muscat are the most common grape and certain additives are permitted in order to achieve particular alcohol levels. Chilean pisco is not allowed into Peru, which calims proprietorship of the term “pisco” on historical grounds.
Guinea pig was domesticated in the Andean region about 7000 years ago. Before you say “aah, cute”, this was obviously for food rather than as pets. The cavia porcellus, which was traditionally primarily part of a ceremonial meal, has increased in popularity over a few decades and as well as still seeing them for sale at festivals, specialist restaurants “cuyerias” can be found. About 65 million are eaten per year in Peru alone. As I am vegetarian, I have had to ask what it tastes like. Something between chicken and lamb has been the only response I`ve had so far.
More interestingly, the guinea pig has been described as an “Andean X-Ray”. It is traditionally rubbed over the head and face of the patient and is then inserted under their clothes. Some people sleep with them close to the body too, and the idea is that illness can be transferred to the poor guinea pig. If the rodent dies, it is thought that it has taken away the sickness. If it survives, it is assumed the malaise remains inside the animal.
The evidence of the depth of political conflict in Peru abounds. As soon as we crossed the border – even before we had got to the first town, Tacna – I was surprised by “Fujimori innocent” slogans and even more by painted “Fujimori 2011” campaign propaganda. I know very little about Peruvian politics but was aware that six weeks previously ex-president Alberto Fujimori had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for being the intellectual author of “dirty war” killings in the early 1990s. This, after all, was a fantastic victory for human rights given the number of Latin American “strong men” who have escaped justice for their crimes. True, the number of dead or disappeared he was accused of being responsible for was tiny in comparison to the military regimes in Argentina or Chile during the 1970s and 1980s, but – after all – murder is murder.
The campaign material turned out to be for the daughter of murderer Fujimori, Keiko. She has vowed to pardon her father if elected in two years and is currently looking likely to be able to do just that. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the rural “have nots” of the divided country that still support “chino” Fujimori. (Despite his surname being obviously Japanese (second-generation Nihonjins exist in relatively large numbers in Brazil and Peru, though there are twenty times as many in the Portugese-speaking nation), the nickname of the ex-president apparently plays on the idea of thrifty, hard-working chinese restaurant chefs.) This may be because the Shining Path guerilla group that Fujimori´s government went after so violently was more of a threat in the countryside.
It is the jungle where the contemporary murder is happening though. Just a few days before I arrived, President Alan Garcia had ordered the violent repression of an indigenous blockade in the north of the country. Between 50 and 150 people had died as a result, including about 25 policemen. There were reports that the bodies of some Amazonians (protesting Law 1090, which allows the exploitation of their traditional lands without adequate compensation) had been burned or carried away by security forces intent on hiding the extent of the massacre. This DOES sound like the continent in the 1970s.
In Arequipa, hand-written posters adorn the gates and fence of the cathedral. They tell of solidarity with the people of La Selva (the lowland Amazonian regions) and the desire for peace. There is also a clear line in references to Garcia as a thief and a murderer. He had Shining Path blood on his hands in his stint as president before Fujimori, and now has that of Amazonian Awajun and Aguarunas too. His prosecution should not be too far off.
As the president blamed outside forces (read Bolivia and Venezuela), nationwide protests were organised and today I went to the rally in the Plaza de Armas in Arequipa. Thousands turned out to show their support, demanding a new constitution, a new president, and the repeal of 1090, which – to allow more dialogue - was suspended by the Congress for 90 days last night. I spoke to a guy who said he worked in construction but sounded well-educated and even broke into English. He expressed the fear that the suspension was just a lull before the storm whilst also seeming positive that real change could occur.
I am left doubting that this divided society is going to be healed anytime soon. Despite the hopes of the protesters today, Garcia seems likely to see out his term and that could mean the death of more indigenous people as well as the beginning of the loss of their land and rights such as clean air and water. Come 2011, it currently looks less probable that Peru will be part of the socialist-indigenous South American bloc, and more probable that it will be re-visiting past fights.
Anpay*
called Polar for some obscure reason, was my favourite. The coca-leaf beer is something to try yet not savour, though I would steer clear of Cusqueña´s “limited edition” red beer, if it is being marketed when you are in the country.
