Living in Peru : your everyday companion

by Venetia Rainey
Nouse - York University


Unable to reach Machu Picchu by the conventional route, Venetia Rainey explores the former Inca capital of Cusco, where history fuses with South American vibrancy

One of the world’s most spectacular treks is the Peru’s Capaq Nan trail, otherwise known as the Inca trail. The classic route covers 70km and reaches heights of over 4,200m above sea. It takes about four days to reach the legendary lost Inca city of Machu Picchu, officially named one of the Seven Wonders of the World last year. The sense of victory after such a hike makes for a once in a lifetime (and fairly costly) experience. At least, so I have been told.

I had the misfortune of suffering what all travellers must endure at one point or another: food poisoning. After drinking impure water whilst staying on an island in Lake Titicaca, I was crippled by the illness and utterly unable to keep food or water down. On the third day, I found myself being roughly pulled out of bed, and my pyjamas swapped for hiking boots, shorts and a t-shirt. Three hours from the starting point of the trail, I had to admit defeat. My family went on without me, and a rather put-out porter travelled back the five hour journey with me to the nearest town, Cusco.

Thankfully I was in one of the best possible places to amble around for a couple of days and wallow in self-pity. Cusco was once the capital of the whole of the Inca empire (its name comes from the Quechua “Q’osqo” which means “navel of the world”), and it was only centuries later when the Spanish conquest arrived in South America that the capital was moved, eventually to its current location of Lima. With a population of only around 300,000, it is positively rural in comparison to Lima’s 9.2 million strong demographic. This is evident in the safe and relaxed atmosphere of the city, relatively sheltered from the crimes that seem to pervade so many other South American cities. Tourists are rife, but easily avoided when you step away from the main attractions, which are hardly worth the money in the first place. Most will visit the Coricancha, the architectural ruins of the Temple of Sun where mummies were supposedly kept by night and taken into the sun by day. Its former resplendence was based on the sheets of gold which once coated most walls, but the Spanish plundering of the region left nothing of any worth, and now the site is fairly uninspiring. The cathedral that sits imposingly in the main square of Plaza del Armas is another main tourist attraction. Whilst fairly impressive, it is also very typical of its type. The attitude to church interiors in South America is on an entirely different level from anything the average European Christian will have experienced, and even to my Catholic eyes, used to lavish embellishments, the effect took some getting used to. Garish dolls representing the Virgin Mary perch on every stand, and glass boxes provide voyeuristic coffins for wax models of Jesus, complete with crown of thorns and bleeding limbs. The area around the altar is so overwhelmingly richly adorned with colour and gold (often fake) that one begins to wonder at the concentration of any praying church-attendee.

Cusco is a city to be explored on foot, and discoveries made on your own will be infinitely more rewarding. One of the most beautiful, and quietest, churches I came across in my days of recovery was La Merced, unlisted in my guide book. I meandered my way through small burrow-like sets of rooms carved out of stone with religious murals depicting hell splashed across the walls, apparently used as inspiration for the religious poet that used to live there. In one of the rooms was a holy bread receptacle adorned with the world’s second largest mother of pearl, presented to me as just another standard relic exhibited alongside the religious plastic effigies.

In terms of less cultural entertainment, one of the quaintest things about Cusco is the cinema. Forget any ideas you have about giant multiplexes with huge screens and overpriced popcorn, and instead imagine having the upstairs room in a café to yourself. You choose your own film from a wide selection of DVDs in a variety of languages, bring in your own food and drink, and make yourself comfortable in front of a wide-screen television on a few battered sofas. The perfect way to pass an afternoon; cheap, relaxing, and with the added benefit of meeting people (so long as you can agree on a film). At night these cafes become nightclubs, where foreigners and locals alike meet up to dance and drink. Whilst the older generations sit by the windows, cooling themselves in the night breeze, the younger ones either linger in the dark corners or gyrate on the bar, an apparently far less frivolous activity in Cusco than in York. Nightlife here is by no means exclusively for the pretty young things, which makes for a much more relaxed atmosphere. With a few Pisco Sours (a mouth-puckeringly strong regional brandy served straight up with lime and egg whites) in the stomach, I felt ready to join my new local friends…

Breakfast came in the form of yuca, a fried plant root native to Peru and very popular due to its high carbohydrate content. They are chewy, and taste of very little, but become better when dipped in guacamole, a dip served out to most obviously non-Peruvian diners at all hours of the day. Bored of museums, I decide to chance the local artisan market, where Inca Kola t-shirts are shamelessly flogged beside dishevelled piles of alpaca wool jumpers. Their sales techniques are aggressive, but by no means the worst I have come across, and a firm, “No, I’m not interested” soon forces their pinching hands to retract from my arm.

Horse riding is one of the best ways to view the countryside and the various Inca ruins splattered across the surrounding hills. Sprawling cracks in the rocky landscape act as a reminder of the earthquakes that yearly raze Peru’s cities. Last year an earthquake of magnitude 8 killed over 500 people and destroyed over 20,000 buildings. The earthquake was felt as far away as Bolivia and Ecuador. As a result, Peru is in a state of constant recovery, as stability is constantly undermined by natural disasters.

When the day finally came for me to rejoin my family at the heights of Machu Picchu, I felt none of the satisfaction gained from physical endeavour and achievement. It was a misty morning, and the area was hidden in swirling shrouds of impenetrable white cloud. As the ground began to heat up, however, the ruins slowly began to appear, tentatively, as if unsure of whether we were deserving or not.

High up on a mountain covered in thick tropical vegetation, a day’s walking distance from any signs of previous civilisation, I finally began to understand the power and beauty of Peru’s history.