Peru: Wonders of the World with Food and Nature

Side view from Manchu Picchu 

Have you ever dreamed of visiting a place? Thinking about the place, reading about the place, and dreaming about the place? Peru was that place to me. The top of my bucket list. It began when I was nine years old and I saw a picture of Manchu Picchu in an old text book. My father and my grandmother had both been school teachers and we had an abundance of text books in the house. One day as I was browsing through them, in my parent's closet where I was not supposed to be, I came across a picture of Manchu Picchu. I felt drawn to it, immediately I fell in love. Like a child with a new toy I sat and read about it. When I was done, I read it again, looking for information I might have missed the first time. I took the book to my dad and told him all about it, asking him, "How can I go there? Do a lot of people go there? Is there a job I can get someday that will take me there?" On and on and on. Luckily for me my dad was a school teacher and god endowed him with the patience to answer my questions, all of them.  He explained Cuy (the traditional cuisine of Guinea Pig), he explained the Anthropologists go there to study and Photographers go there to take pictures. I could not get enough information. I wanted to do anything to go there. I asked for more information on Anthropologists and how they get to go there. I collected any National Geographic with the articles about Peru. I learned so much about Peru and the more I learned the more I wanted to go. This has been a part of my life forever, I even got my undergraduate in Anthropology when I graduated college because I was so intensely interested in Peru and as I got older other places.

The city of Cuzco

I, like most people, have a tendency to let my fears control me. If I am afraid of something then I back out. Peru was no different. I had a goal to go there by the time I was 30. I didn't make this goal, for a myriad of imaginary reasons: South America seemed dangerous, the cost of the trip, no one would go with me, there is a cornucopia of vaccines to get...... so obviously there were a plethora of diseases to which I could be exposed, basically I was making excuses for my fear.  Randy finally convinced me that I had to go and stop making excuses, but he couldn't go with me. He made me get all the vaccines and urged me to find someone to go with me.

I finally took my journey to Peru last October after getting 6 vaccinations and begging my former boss to go with me. It was begging, I texted him, called him, dropped hints, sent emails, he finally considered it when he saw Lake Titicaca and that's when the deal was sealed, (mostly he wanted to fish in it, but he was ok when I told him we wouldn't be able to do that because he would get to see Alpacas and perhaps eat one).

 The first day in Peru we went on a tour of the city and saw many of the cathedrals downtown and the Plaza de Armas. There were so many things to see that we were sure we would not see everything. Everything was so interesting, I felt like an explorer. The money was different, the people were different, the language was different.

The tiles in the church at the Catacombs. Many of them were shipped in from Spain.

 At the Cathedrals we saw so many different kinds of art and artifacts. The tiles the Spaniards introduced in the churches was the most interesting part to me, they would send the heavy tiles made in Spain to Peru, and then they would send the gold back from Peru to Spain. The boats needed the weight to ensure that they could carry the weight of the gold. The mixture of the native people and the Spaniards created an entirely new culture.  The Catholic Church worked feverishly with local artists to create religious paintings to help convert natives.  The local delicacies continued to flourish, but there was a mixture of the old and the new. I felt very fortunate to be able to see all these things that I read about and to understand them first hand. As we traveled throughout the country these mixtures became more and more evident. In two separate churches we saw Jesus with the Cuy (Guinea Pig) at the last supper. Cuy is a very important delicacy, it's similar to a Christmas Goose, or a turkey at Thanksgiving, it is reserved by native people for the most scared and important events.

The Mummy 

 Luckily we got to see the Mummy and the artifacts with which she was found.  They are currently trying to build a temple similar to the ones the Incas built. The architecture of the Incas has been lost over the years, the earth quake proof buildings they built are not a mystery any more, but how they created them still is because even today it is difficult to chisel the rocks and make them fit perfectly. 

The Urubamba River

The Urubamba River Valley is also called the Scared Valley of the Incas. The picture above was taken from the bus as we drove through the area. Everywhere we went was surrounded by mountains, they were all around us and they were extremely majestic. It felt like they were holding up the sky around me and I felt incredibly safe and comforted by them.  We went to the market in the Scared Valley and I bought a traditional Peruvian hat. Everywhere we traveled to had a different kind of hat. Peru is very much the land where people wear many different hats. 

The food was one of the best parts of the entire trip. Most Peruvian dishes consisted corn or potatoes. Peruvians figured out pre-history how to avoid potato blight, just plant many different kinds. There are over 2,000 different kinds of potatoes that have been cultivated in Peru and 55 varieties of corn are currently grown here. The spices that were used were delightful and everything I ate seemed to dance in my mouth. I have never been a fan of cilantro but somehow they made it delicious. I did try the Cuy as well, which disappointed my niece because she has two Guinea Pigs as pets.

Uros Islands, human built Islands made of reeds. 

Lake Titicaca was a very interesting place. It is at 12,500ft and is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. The lake itself looks like a glass of water that has been overfilled. It is almost as if the water is above the land. This is the only place in the world where people build their own islands and live on them. These have been there since before the Incas. The native people that live on these islands created them as defensive tactics against tribes like the Incas. They use reeds from the lake to create the Islands, their houses on the Islands, and their boats. The reeds are also editable at the bottom. They taste like a really mild onion and they supposedly have chemical properties that help the thyroid (this is what they told us). They had extremely colorful clothing and like many places in Peru each of the islands had a different hat. Each Island also had a president that the people living on the Island elect each year. There is a primary school for all the islands that is also on an Island all by itself. The people living on the island have to go really far to try and get things they might need or want off the islands. To get to the islands we had to take a motor boat and it still took an hour. This was a place that felt like time had never touched. They still caught fish out of the lake, dried them by the sun, and lived communally, sharing everything.  I tried the dried out fish and the beans that had been boiled in water.

This trip was a dream come true and I don't think that I could ever imagine if I would have missed this experience. I am satisfied with my experience of Peru. I just think that 10 days wasn't enough and this one blog only scratches the surface of what I experienced in those 10 days.