Chicha, Tipon, Desfiles

I have been reading Aves sin nido in class and I think I will finish it this week. That is not because I can read fast in Castellano, but because we keep skipping the chapters where nothing important happens. It is an interesting book but makes me mad at priests. Other than that, my classes are excellent. One day for class I went to the pueblo of Lamay in the Sacred Valley with Dr. Decoster to watch a parade for Santa Rosa. I forgot my camera for that event. But don’t worry, there are always parades in the busy streets. The colors and music and movement were incredible and done with a kind of passion and excitement that is not usually seen in the states. We sat down at a table in the plaza and a woman brought us chicharrones (fried pork) and lamb’s head soup. I didn’t eat any of the meat in the soup. We drank cerveza after cerveza and some of the doctor’s friends came over with their guitar and mandolin. They started drinking and playing and singing and sweating from beneath their sombreros in the hot sun. It is moments like that that remind you how good life is. And then I rode the hour-long return trip in the back of a jeep, having to pee, and sitting with two very large dogs. I was lucky though, because they were very nice and very clean.

Another day, my profesora Jacky and I went out in the streets to watch another parade and drink Chicha, which is the sacred beverage of the Inkas thought to be the blood of the sun god, and which is made from fermented corn and fruit.

Some new volunteer/students came and we had dinner together in the plaza before Stacie had to leave and go back to her home in Hawaii. It was a good night. Kelsi and Simone are the two new volunteers, and we met some of Kelsi’s Peruvian friends that she knows through some strange connection of people. After hanging out in a quiet restaurant that they may or may not have owned, we went out to a club to dance. The music was all from the States but it was loud and good and we danced until it was hard to breathe. Then we ran out sweaty in the street and kept on dancing to the music as it bounced off of the stone walls of the plaza. People were watching us, and children were trying to sell us gum, but everything was good.

There is a small café here called Café Tinku and they serve fresh teas. That means that when I ask for a cup of lemongrass or mint tea, I get a cup of hot water with fresh-cut blades of grass, or fresh-picked mint leaves. It is delicious.

The other day, I went to a huge parade with my family and Simone and I did get some pictures and videos from it. It was a parade celebrating tourism and it took over the entire Plaza. I got burned crispy in the sun and then went to class, and then shopping, and then ended the night watching football with my family. They like to take trips out to the campo every weekend and this time, they took me to the ruins of Tipón, the site of the Incan cult of the water. Way up high in the mountains there are paths and fields carved out of the stone. Levitating stairways protrude from the walls and lead up to more levels of fields and more walls. And all along the walls runs a constant stream of pure cold water. Juan Diego and I dipped our hats in the stream and then put them on our heads with the cold water running down our backs. And it was ancient holy mystical water from the Incan spring that burbles constantly from the rocks. Tío Ronaldo explained to me the history of the stone walls and the water and the flowers with almost magical healing powers. Later we went to a little cuyería with a mud-made oven and ate cuy (guinea pig). There was no door and the flies and dogs and a parrot came in and out as they pleased. Mama Irma crushed the skull to get a bone, and then crushed that bone to get another bone smaller than a freckle that has legend to be a good health charm.

The charm didn’t really work though because I am now suffering from the effects of the chicha that I had with my professor, and have been doing so for four days now. It is not fun and I don’t want to eat anything. But I am drinking a lot of potions that Mama Irma is making for me from exotic herbs and seeds that are bright bright purple.