What is a holy grail? Is it a place at the top of a mountain,
shrouded in clouds, waiting to disclose its secrets?
...
...
Saturday, 22 December 2012
LIMA
Running in the Sheraton Gym
The view from the treadmill is not as good as it might be. This
is because the window is set too low. As a consequence, you have to look in a
downwards direction to see what there is to be seen, rather than straight
ahead. Given the sauna-like conditions, this is an unnecessary handicap. On
those occasions you do look down, you can see a park, which is a rarity in
Lima's Centro. The gym is only on the third floor. The figures seem distant and
uninterested. The gaps
in society suitably wide.
...
...
OLLANTAYTAMBO
There's a group of girls with one boy at the restaurant table.
They're talking in US English. But they don't look like travellers. This has
the feel of a meeting. They're discussing knitting. They belong to a charity
which tours small villages and tries to fix a fair price for the local women's
handiwork. There's a shop further down the road. Staffed by these same US
volunteers. The shop contains attractive but expensive objects. All the
material is in English. There's a book about the project which C picks up. She
asks if they have it in Spanish. The girl behind the desk seems surprised by
the question. She says they don't have it in Spanish.
...
...
MACHU PICCHU
Ascent (1)
Someone knocks on the door at 3.10 in the morning. I get out of
bed. At 3.15 the alarm goes off. By 3.30 I'm downstairs. Two of the Colombians,
the Frenchman, the Italian woman and the Spanish woman are already there. We
wait for the other Colombian and the Argentine. C leans out of the window
upstairs and takes a photo of us. The Spanish woman gets fed up with waiting
for the rest of her "family". We set off without them. They catch us
up. Within five minutes we've left Aguas Calientes and headed out towards the
river. No-one's exactly sure where we're going. It's pitch black. The Spanish
woman uses her mobile phone as a torch. It's only a fifteen minute walk. We're there
by ten to four. There's a gate leading to a bridge across a fierce river. The
gate is locked. The Spanish woman talks about climbing around the gate. This
seems like a hazardous option. The two guards are woken up by our chatter and
stagger out of their hut. One of them instantly walks over to take his place in
front of the gate. The other ambles around, trying to wake up.
We send Edwin, the verbose Colombian, to talk the guard into opening the door early. The sign says, officially, that the gate can't be opened until 5.00am. Edwin is as talkative as a parrot on speed. He's cornered one of the guards and he's chewing his ear off. In the minivan on the way, Edwin didn't stop talking for 4 hours. To co-opt a Spanish phrase, he atomised everyone. We assume he will have a similar effect on the guard, who will open the gate just to get rid of him. Sure enough, Edwin comes over with his boyish features saying that the guard's agreed to open the gate at 4.30. We congratulate him. It's now 4am. It's dark, muggy, and there's nothing to do except feel your impatience grow.
At 4.20 a pair of gringo tourists arrive and sit on the bench. We'd been advised to be first in the queue. Our eccentric guide, with his flies open, had briefed us the night before. He'd said we had to be ready to run to get in first. He said that there were people who spent thousands of dollars on their visit to Machu Picchu, and they had paid to be front of the queue, so the only way to beat them was to be the earliest, the quickest, the first out of the blocks. As a result we're here, sometime before dawn, at the front of a non-existent queue.
The gate is not opened at 4.30. Edwin backs off on his campaign.
It's clear the guards have been stonewalling him. From 4.40 a steady stream of
appropriately dressed tourists trickles down. Wearing lycra and goretex in
florescent combinations. Many of them carrying high-tech walking sticks, which
will only ever be used this one time, in honour of the Sun god. By five to
five, a queue of perhaps a hundred people has backed up behind us. It doesn't
seem altogether logical that we chose to get up at 3.15. At 5am prompt, the
gate is finally opened, our passports checked yet again, and the hour doesn't
matter anymore. We're on our way.
...
...
LIMA
Fosse Workshop
We're running late. Paul calls a cab and we head in the
direction of the coast. I have no idea how many people are due to attend or
what the space will be like. The cab drive lasts almost half an hour. A cab
drive through a foreign city is always disarming. There are no reference points
to reassure. Paul points out a vast archeological site. The cab darts through
non-descript back streets. It emerges finally onto a busy six lane road. We
stop in front of a Chinese beauty parlour set back from this main road.
Paul leads the way into the beauty parlour. He introduces me to
his mother. We climb a white, hospital-like staircase. There are strange
machines in a back room. In another tiled, medical kind of space, there's two
young women sitting waiting. Paul goes to make some photocopies. The women talk
to me about Lima and the theatre world. They both have Indian blood and Indian
coloured skin. They say that this is the greatest impediment to getting work
and being accepted. They tell me that Peru is racist. Another young man
appears. His name is Anthony. At first I think he's taking the piss. He's quite
reserved, but he assures me his name really is Anthony. He says it's quite a
common name in Peru. Paul comes back and says it's true. English names were very
fashionable for a while. Which is why he's called Paul. His mum liked the
Beatles.
These are the only four attendees. None of them know the work of
Fosse. They are all looking for something new. They say texts are hard to come
by in Peru. One of them is working on Not I, the Beckett play which is nothing
but a speaking mouth. I say that it's a challenge. She says it's never been
done there before. She likes it. Luckily, she has a big mouth.
When they work in pairs I go and stare out of the window at the
traffic. There are tuk-tuks outside. It looks like Delhi.
...
...
MACHU PICCHU
Ascent (2)
Dawn is breaking as we walk across the bridge. We follow a dirt
road for about 500m and then we cut upwards, climbing some steep stone steps.
The steps are a short cut. The road itself weaves its way up the mountain for
8km. There's a bus (which C will take soon) for those who don't want to walk.
The path the walkers take is steeper, a short cut which bisects the road but,
as it quickly becomes apparent, requires a considerable use of the thigh
muscles.
We start as a group but within minutes the group has dissolved.
Edwin, the Frenchman and the Spanish woman are clearly the fittest. They have
soon rounded a bend and are out of sight. The Argentine and the Italian, who
appear to be having a fling, go at a similar pace to me. The other two
Colombians lag behind. We have started at the front, but I'm soon overtaken by
some healthy looking Argentines. A group of gringos, kitted out for the march,
also surge past. But by the time we get to the first crossing in the road, I've
caught up with them.
The jungle all around is coming alive. Birds make their racket.
Things are stirring, but the beasts remain undercover. After fifteen minutes
I'm starting to blow. I remember having heard about a particularly masochistic
sport which is racing to the top of a high rise building, using the stairs.
This is the same, only the stairs are uneven and higher than they have any
right to be. Across the other side of the valley is another mountain, shaped
like an ice-lolly. It acts as an altimeter. Looking over I can see that I'm
half way up. It's barely daytime but it already feels unhumanly warm. My shirt
is dripping wet. So are my trousers. Everything is sodden, desperate.
The Italian and the Argentine move ahead. A Tilda Swinton
lookalike with a backpack and a sensible skirt, clearly British, overtakes me
with a jaunty stride. The pauses become longer and the breathing more erratic.
This is all happening at 3000 metres. The heart is audibly pounding, The
altimeter mountain never seems to get much past the half-way point.
At which point, you enter a phase which might be akin to a
philosophical trance. There seems to be no energy left to proceed, but at the
same time, there's no option but to proceed. Control over your physical being
seems to have all but given way, yet somehow the body puts itself onto
auto-pilot and you continue to move. Upwards and onwards. Like evolution.
The only consolation is that I am not the only one. No-one is
overtaking me now. Three quarters of the way up and I seem to have found a
place of pain which is all my own. A little later I realise with horror that
the altimeter has gone off the scale. Which means that the lolly-pop mountain
which I assumed, from looking at it, was going to be much higher than Michu
Picchu itself, is actually lower. And I am still climbing. Above the clouds.
The trance sustains the body with the mind in a state of
suspended animation. There's no indication that the summit will ever be
reached. Until, turning the ten millionth bend, I hear a cry of exultation.
Someone ahead has reached the end.
Finally I see that end too. I reach a road and in front of me
are the steps leading to the main entrance to Macchu Pichu. The steps are half
full. Up at the top are the Frenchman, the Spanish woman, Edwin, the Argentine
and the Italian. Along with C, who's arrived by bus with the other two members
of our party. They cheer me, calling out to 'El Ingles'. I climb this last set
of even steps and take my place alongside them at the front of the queue. The
gates, which open at 6am, are still closed. I've been climbing for an hour. My
heart starts to slow. My shirt starts to dry. I'm primed and ready to visit the
mystical Inca town, perched on top of the mountain.
...
...
OLLANTYATAMBO
Back from Machu Picchu, recuperating in the quaint Inca town.
Which feels like it could be in Italy or Greece. Because the presence of
history is so pervasive. In the angles and materials of the architecture. The
preserved precision of a streetplan drawn up by another culture, radiating
order, spatial prescience, urbanity. With its central square hemmed by pleasant
restaurants and cafes. Clean air and mellow fruitfulness.
We walk on and visit the ruins. They're remarkable. A whole town
spread out. With its temples and living quarters. Up on the hill, which is not
too steep a climb, there's a bizarre, sci-fi like stone, polished, marked,
incomplete, the size of a bungalow. Behind it is a fort, an ordinary ruined
fort, like you might find in Scotland. It could be Dunsinane. The view is
pleasant, unintimidating, on another scale to Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is for
gods and eagles; Ollantyatambo could be a Roman villa. Water gurgles from
rockfaces. An irrigation system fuels the fields at the side, the crops growing
merrily.
After a few hours we head back through the town. The book fair
is still there. I go over and buy the book.
...
...
LIMA
I'm visiting Lima for one of its many theatre festivals.
Although I don't officially belong to any group, I'm accepted as an honorary
Uruguayan for the duration. I get the free lunches and get to stay in the
Sheraton, which acts as a landmark in the city.
As soon as we arrive in Lima we walk straight into an earthquake
rehearsal. The sirens go off and the airport is shut down. Everyone heads for
the big yellow S which is painted in a ring on the ground in the carpark. The S
stands for Seismic. The rehearsal lasts about five minutes. Everyone mills
around happily. No-one falls through the floor.
These large S's are all over Lima and all over Peru. Bruno, the
affable festival organiser, shows me the Earthquake app on his iphone. There
was an earthquake of factor 5 point something last night, somewhere not so far
away. The Limenos seem to embrace the spirit of the earthquake with a
fatalistic pride. One day it will strike. It makes their city special. Later,
when we go to stay in our friend Paul's house, I notice a handy instruction
poster fixed above the lift. Always have a rucksack to hand, ready for the
event. The rucksack should contain basic foodstuffs, drinking water and
medication. When we head down to the seafront at Barranco, there's a clearly
marked Tsunami evacuation route. The only trouble is that it starts at the
bottom of a cliff. Which provides a slightly Darwinian edge. When the Tsunami
arrives, the fittest might make it to the top and safety in time. The rest will
perish.
Later, when we visit Macchu Pichu the guide tells us that
there's something remarkable about the Inca architecture: it's anti-seismic.
Designed to withstand earthquakes. Looking at the stones you can believe it. In
Cuzco's Temple of the Sun, another guide shows us what happened after the 1950
terremoto. The Dominicans had built a church on top of the Inca ruins. The
church collapsed. The ruins remained.
...
...
GARCILASO
Garcilaso de la Vega was the son of a conquistador and an Incan
princess. At the age of 23 he left Peru for Spain and never returned. He fought
against the Moors before retiring to Cordoba. One suspects he was aware of the
ironies. He comes across as an intelligent man. In old age he began to write
about his homeland and carried on writing until he died.
He is a pioneer. The first modern man. The original American. A
man who belonged to both worlds and, as is the way of these things, neither. He
also understood that the pen is mightier than the sword. Time after time he
comments that the glory of the Incan world failed in only one regard. Its
failure to devise a written language in which to recount its greatness.
His book deals in detail with the three hundred year history of
the Incan Empire. He is shrewd enough to make an ironic comment on its origins,
when the Sun deposited two children on the Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca, who
founded the Incan empire. He says of this tale: "I myself think that this
first Inca...must have been a man of wisdom, prudence and intelligence, who
well understood the simplicity of his peoples and who had astutely and shrewdly
invented this fable about the Sun in order to make them obey him and follow the
path of natural progress."
However, not only is this a history, it's also an
anthropological account of Inca culture, which covers almost every aspect.
Regarding the stonemasonry, he describes in detail something that most
Spaniards for whom he was writing would never see. The highest form of Inca
masonry is achieved without the use of any kind of mortar. Enormous stones are
carefully assembled and bevelled so that the sheer weight or pressure of their
assembly lends them a structural force (and physical beauty). It is a form of
architecture the like of which never arose in Europe (unless one includes dry
stone walls). Any guide in Peru will tell you about the remarkable knowledge of
physics and geometry which is implicit in this stonemasonry. Adding that there
must have been a way of passing this knowledge down from generation to
generation, as indeed there must have been. The unfinished stones which
populate every Incan site are testament to the fact that this was an
architecture conceived on a glacial level. To be honed and worked over decades,
perhaps centuries. At the heart of Macchu Pichu is what our guide referred to
as 'the office': the place where unfinished stones, or stones whose destiny has
yet to be decided, lie, eternally awaiting the return of the labourers who will
convert them from works of nature into works of art.
Garcilaso quotes the words of a monk, recently returned from the New World. Who says that the only way he can rationalise the constructions he has seen (which would have been closer to the state of their original glory) was to say that they had been achieved with the help of "the Evil One."
CUZCO/ MACCHU PICHU
We only have an afternoon in Cuzco on our return from
Ollantytambo. It's hot and for the first time we're stuck with our rucksacks.
There's also a degree of exhaustion setting in. Travelling is hard work. Anyone
who says any different has too much money. Days of sleeping on buses, climbing
hills, waking early and wearing unwashed clothes, start to mount up.
We walk down the Avenida del Sol and find a bench in front of
the Templo del Sol. C sketches. I dig out Garcilaso, bought yesterday, and
start to read. Sure enough, I come to the passage where he talks about the
Templo del Sol itself. He talks about having seen three of the Templo's five
primary halls in his youth. Two were already destroyed. The Templo's remarkable
external Incan wall, which seems to hold up the church constructed by the
Spanish on top of it, is black and ageless. Once again, it looks like the
stepbrother to Kubrick's space-plinth in 2001. It also seems to mock everything
else constructed around it. It's not about size, it's about perfection. The
wall seems to taunt its conquerers culture with its flawlessness. Something the
white men can only dream of achieving.
After lunch we join the throng and go inside, hiring a guide.
Flocks of tourists lead by guides speaking every language under the sun buzz
around us. The guide points out the way in which the temple appears to have
been constructed to capture the light of the various solstices. The careful
orientation of the chambers. The hamfisted intervention of the Dominicans, who
only let the public in to see the Temple they annexed twenty years ago. As
though they might have been scared of its effect on the Cuzcan citizens.
Inciting them to reclaim their former glories.
The guide has a laconic attitude. He stresses that no matter how
much anyone seeks to interpret the things they find in the Templo - sacrificial
stones, for example - no-one really knows what any of these rooms represented
or were used for. Garcilaso talks of rooms dedicated to the Sun, the Moon, the Stars,
the Rainbow and one for the priests. But no-one knows which is which. And even
his account is no more than something passed down, a generation later.
Underneath the Templo are, apparently, tunnels, linking to the fortress of
Sacsayhuaman on the edge of town. Tunnels which have since been bricked up.
Once upon a time three locals got lost in the tunnels. One emerged three weeks
later with a Corncob made of gold. The other two were never seen again.
The Incas destroyed most of their city to stop the Spaniards
getting their hands on it. What they didn't destroy, the Spaniards did. One
wonders whether, in his old age in Cordoba, the old Inca saw the connection
between what his father's line had done in the Inca's Templo del Sol and what
they the Spanish had done in the grand Mesquite in Cordoba. Both of them
desecrated in the name of God. Just as now we take old churches and convert
them into flats in the name of Mammon. Garcilaso is more likely to have visited
the Alhambra than Machu Picchu. So the comparison between these two idyllic,
heavenly redoubts was one he would never have been able to make. But the sound
of water, trickling and gurgling through the Inca cities is the same sound
loved so much by the Moors, forever embroidering their palaces with its
freshness, just like his ancestors. When he was fighting the Moors, did he
think of the Inca's fate?
...
...
MACCHU PICHU
The whole point about Macchu Pichu is that it's difficult to get
to. The distance from Cuzco is only 80 km, but distance and difficulty are not
the same thing. Saying it's not that far is a bit like saying Shakespeare's
plays are only three hours long.
It's due to this difficulty that Macchu Pichu owes its continued
existence. The Spanish never discovered it. And the Incas didn't destroy it.
The jungle shrouded it. A few local farmers planted crops on its terraces.
Locals knew of its existence. But word never got out. Then Hiram Bingham turned
up in 1916 and realised he had discovered one kind of holy grail.
Today, there are three ways of getting to Machu Pichu. The
easiest is by train. However, the Peruvians realise that this is a gravy train,
literally, and it's not cheap. $160 for a return trip to Cuzco. UK commuter
prices. The second way is by walking. Doing the Inca Trail. You need to be fit
to do this, but more than that, you need time. Because it takes at least three
days. It's no doubt the best way to get there, and every gringo worth his or
her salt does it, but we were neither fit enough nor did we have the time. So
we went the third way, the cheapskate fashion, which is by minivan.
In most countries in the world, the minivan is the predominant
mode of transport. Where distances are large, minivans carry enough people to
enable the driver to make a profit and everyone else to be able to afford to
travel. They are cramped, uncomfortable but essential. There were eleven of us
in our minivan plus a driver. Three Colombians, two French, two Italians, one
Spaniard, an Argentine, a Uruguayan and a Brit. The Colombians rapidly established
themselves as the most vocal. Edwin started talking and never really stopped.
This was OK until we hit the passes.
After two hours driving, near to Ollantaytambo, we stopped for
breakfast. Where we played a curious game of throwing a coin in the mouth of a
bronze frog. Which was a bit like bar billiards. My brother would no doubt have
excelled. In the small restaurant, the man working there said that so far it
has been easy. Now we were going to hear the tyres scream. The way he said it
made it sound as though this was going to be as painful or more so for us as it
would be for the tyres.
Sure enough, we began to climb. And climb. And climb. One of the
Italian girls, who'd been drinking until the early hours, was on the point of
vomiting. We stopped, she recovered, we went on. Up to over 4000 metres. The
tyres screeched. Most of us fell silent. The Colombians, all of them Andinos,
talked. And talked. And talked.
Finally we began to descend. The body feels these ups and downs
and rewards the downward trajectory with a warm feeling, suggesting the worst
is over. It wasn't. The tarmaced road came to an end. Four hours and counting,
we entered a ravine. On a dirt road carved out of the side, half way up the
mountain. The dirt road looked, from where I was sitting at the back, as though
it was narrower than the van. Every time we took a bend, which was every thirty
seconds or so, the van seemed to swing out over the edge. At every moment I
anticipated entering the final shot of the Italian Job. Only nothing was going
to stop us going over the edge. The road went on and on. The Colombians didn't
even seem to notice. I sat there in the expectation of my imminent demise.
Someone asked the driver how often someone went over the edge. He replied that
it's better not to ask questions like that.
Finally, after half an hour which felt like six, we began to
descend. We arrived in a small town and had a late lunch. The last part of the
journey followed the riverbed at the bottom of the ravine. The road was of no
better quality, but at least we could breathe. Later, in Paracas, we heard a
guide talking to some travellers who were on their way to Machu Picchu. He
strongly advised them not to travel by road. The rainy season was coming and
there was an excessively high mortality rate.
The end of the road was a place called Hydro, where a dam is
being built. Supersized lorries careered up and down. There was a small train
station, with a train taking you to Aguas Calientes. (Apparently the train used
to pass through the valley we'd driven through, but there had been 'an
accident'). Aguas Calientes is the base for ascending Machu Picchu. We didn't
have tickets for the train, so we walked for three hours alongside the train
track. Suddenly we were in jungle. Vivid flowers, birdlife, nature. We turned a
corner and saw, perched up above, high, distant, the outline of Machu Picchu.
Night was drawing in when we arrived in Aguas Calientes.
This is why Machu Pichu still exists today. It was created with
the explicit intention of being almost impossible to reach. So when the
Hispanic apocalypse arrived, it remained protected. Not by soldiers, but by
mountains, ravines, jungle and altitude.
PISCO & PARACAS
After coming down from the mountains we head for the coast. This
involves a 16 hour journey, three different buses and an extortionate taxi
ride. The taxi picks us up on the outskirts of Pisco, on the Panamerican
Highway. We negotiate him down from 20 Soles to 18. Another taxi driver shouts
out to him, insultingly, on hearing the price, asking if he's hungry.
The taxi skirts around Pisco. Five years ago it was hit by an
earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale. The taxi driver tells us that
most of the city was destroyed. He also said it has meant that Pisco has become
dangerous. For tourists, for everyone. We drive past a shack city, which was
created after the earthquake and has now become permanent. I ask the taxi
driver if the government has helped in the reconstruction. He says the
government is corrupt.
On the road out to Paracas, our destination, the rubble from the
earthquake is still piled up on the beach. Kilometres of detritus. After the
apocalypse. Further on are the fish factories, where they make animal feed. The
area has a potent smell. The taxi driver says it's not to bad today. Sometimes
it's unbearable.
All this doesn't seem like an auspicious tiding for a beach
resort. Paracas turns out to be scrappy, in the midst of a building boom.
Various resorts are nearing completion. The centre of town is a bit like London
after the Blitz. Full of holes. There's a small beach promenade. The beach
itself is dirty and scrappy. We walk away from town, heading for the only
functioning cashpoint at the Hilton. (There was another one but my card got
trapped in it and it stopped working.) We pass smart, well-watered holiday
homes, but the landscape is bleak. Harsh, grey-green desert. The beach has
dirty sand. As if to accentuate that this is not a place for swimming, it's
covered with jellyfish. Beautiful, red-green-yellow-gold jellyfish are littered
across the sand. It's not even safe for paddling.
The Hilton is a two km walk away. Guests are sprinkled round the
pool. From the outside it looks like a prison camp. From the inside it feels
like the Hilton at the end of the world. The cashpoint is working. We catch a
minivan back into town.
LIMA
On our last full day in Lima we're invited to theatre festival
in Lima Norte by one of my students. She sends quite specific directions,
telling us to follow the PanAmerican Highway North and get off at a stop called
Juan Pablo 2 (After the Pope). From there it's two blocks to the site of the
festival.
So we catch the bus/metro (basically a dedicated bus lane)
North, into uncharted territory. The festival lies beyond the end of this
'metro' lane. We get off at La Naranja and ask for advice on getting to Juan
Pablo 2. One man suggests one bus but the people who work there suggest
another. The stop at the end of the line is called Lenin. We take that one. A
bright, modern orange bus. The edges of Lima are scrappy. The hillsides are
adorned with small, brightly painted one-story houses. We ask on the bus where
the stop is. It turns out that the stop is known by another name. But we get
there. In the middle of the dual carriage way is a stop clearly saying Juan
Pablo 2. So far so good.
We walk down a couple of blocks and there's no sign of a theatre
festival. We walk into a shop and they've never heard of a theatre festival.
Someone suggests we try the other side of the highway. So we walk back again.
But no-one has heard of any festival or the place we're trying to get to. We
make calls. No-one seems to know where we are. Then we ask someone who tells us
we're miles and miles away. We need to go to the Oval. And catch a bus from
there. We ask how far away this Oval is. He says it's a long way away. We need
to catch a bus across the road. We cross the road. There's no bus stop.
Different types of buses pass. The old beaten up ones and the minivans with
someone calling out from the open door for passengers. We ask twelve different
people which bus to take and get twelve different answers.
Finally, with evening drawing in, we decide to head back to La
Naranja, the bus station at the end of the 'Metro' line. From there we try to catch
a cab. But none of the cab drivers have ever heard of the place we're going to.
They charge us 30 Soles to get in the cab. In the meantime we've been talking
to my student from time to time. She doesn't have a phone so calls from
payphones, which cut off. She says that they're charging us non-local rates.
She also says it could be dangerous after dark.
We give in. We never get to the festival. We go back into town and eat one of Lima's most popular dishes, fried chicken, at a place called Rockys. Washed down with a pisco sour.
...
LIMA
Lima is renowned as a gastronomic capital. It's signature dish
is Ceviche. Marinated raw fish. Now enjoyed in bijoux restaurants around the
world. Another popular dish is Chifa. Chifa is Sino-Peruvian food. Noodles, rice,
stir-fry. You can find it all over Peru.
Our friend Paul is half-Chinese. He takes us to his cousin's
restaurant in Rimac. Rimac, is the oldest part of Lima, across the river from
the centre. The moment you cross the bridge, a different vibe is palpable.
Firstly, the houses are all vast, decaying Hispanic buildings from the C18th or
earlier. The streets are a heady, never-ending bustle. People stop and stand in
front of TVs showing pirated movies. Salesman sell everything from plastic toys
to chinese tea in the streets. It might be as close to Hogarth's London as
you're going to find in this day and age. The vitality of the place competes
with the sense of people getting by, making ends meet. The Chinese food is
great. There's a queue for tables. Old men come in singing tango. We eat wonton
and clear broth soup.
The Chinese influence is everywhere in Lima. In the C19th,
Chinese were drafted in as coolies. But the trade with the Chinese had been
going on for far longer. How long is hard to tell. Spending time there, looking
at the pre-Colombian art, it's not hard to fall for the thesis that the Pacific
was a melting pot long before the Europeans learnt how to get across the
Atlantic.
Paul went to a Chinese school. He says his Mandarin's not that
good and his Cantonese is non-existent. But the presence of his heritage is
evident in his flat, with his teapot, stones and charms. Almost all the
countries in Latin America are constructed through a combination of immigration
and the indigenous, but none feels more diverse than Peru. A land with Chinese,
African, Japanese, European and indigenous roots. The Incan empire itself was
the product of the constant assimilation of other tribes and peoples, and
modern day Peru is merely continuing this tradition.
The breakfast at the Sheraton, where we stay during the Theatre Festival, features Japanese Omlettes, Sushi, Croissants, Sausage and bacon, Maracuja, Chicharones, Miso soup, Wonton and Scrambled Eggs. (Though everywhere else we stay offers two rolls with butter and jam and a cup of coffee.)
...
LIMA
We go for Pisco Sours with Bruno, at el Catedral del Pisco.
Where the pisco sours cost three times the standard price and you're paying for
tradition. Bruno tells us, in his laid-back fashion, that there are three
countries in Peru. The Altiplano, the Coast and the Jungle. And the three don't
really mix.
This is before we went travelling. On our travels we saw
something of the Altiplano and something of the Coast. Perhaps we touched on
the jungle, as Machu Picchu is located between the mountains and the jungle.
The differences between the zones were remarkable. Geography shapes your
disposition. The hardships of the mountains feel a long way away down on the
coastal plain, where distances are easier to cover and the air is easier to
breathe.
Garcilaso's history of the Incas documents the warlike
tendencies which underpinned their dominance. Every couple of years the
resident Inca is off on a new campaign. Indeed, from his account, it seems as
though one of the reasons for the empire's demise was that it had conquered
about as much as it could, its lands extending from Southern Colombia down to
Argentina and Chile. As a result the conflict became internal, with Atahualpa,
the bastard upstart, revolting against his brother. The Incas had so many
enemies within the empire that the seeds for its collapse were already sown.
All the Spanish had to do was take advantage. Today the "Inca"
profile is the one that is used to sum up pre-Colombian history, but the truth
is that their empire was short-lived and there were a host of other populous
tribes and civilisations within their territories.
In addition to the three zones of Peru which Bruno named,
there's a fourth which is Lima itself, which existed in something of a bubble
through the guerrilla wars of the late C20th. In addition to this there's the
eternal division, reflected in the actors' opinion that this is a racist
country, between the indigenous population and that of Spanish descent.
The solution to these divisions appears to have been a conscious
decision to embrace diversity. The City museum celebrates Lima's African,
Japanese, Chinese and European roots. In a land which has always thrown
disparate peoples up against one another, for reasons of geography, class or
history, the early C21st, post-modern narrative promoting society's differences
functions perfectly as a strategy for the development of a national identity.
Peru's current pragmatism with regard to its history and its
diversity is perhaps best summed up by the fate of the statue of Pizarro, now
to be found tucked away by the banks of the Rio Rimac. Paul explained that it
used to be in a major square. A prominent reminder of all that has come to
pass. When it was there, vendors used to sell eggs for people to throw at it.
Rotten eggs cost more. Pizarro was a target for an anger which had not subsided
in over 500 years. Now, they've moved him out of the limelight. He is easy to
miss, hidden away next to a footbridge. There was no sign of any egg throwing
on either him or his fearsome steed.
...
...
GARCILASO
Poor Garcilaso. The end of his book describes the arrival of the
Spaniards and the overthrow of Atahualpa. In detail he outlines the Spaniards'
approach and arrival at Cajamarca, where Atahualpa would be taken prisoner. A
handful of horsemen overthrowing an empire. The discourse between the emperor
and the Spaniards is quoted, as though verbatim, from both sides. The Emperor
pleading clemency; the Spaniards proselytising the gospel. The twin sides of
Garcilaso's genetic inheritance face-to-face.
Who is responsible for what would happen next? How could the
great empire whose glory he has just recounted fall to these gold-hungry
warriors? How could God make such a mess of things? The writer, who wants to
cast each one of the actors in the best of lights, searches for a solution to
history's conundrum.
He finds it in the form of Felipe. Felipe is the translator. Who
speaks neither Spanish nor Quechua with any great fluency. Who somehow manages
to do a botch job on everything anyone has to say. When the Spanish talk with
moderation, in the words of Felipe they sound bellicose. When Atahualpa seeks
to be reasonable and conciliatory, in the words of Felipe he sounds proud and
resistant. All the blame for what is to come belongs to the Indian who somehow
managed to persuade the Spaniards he could be their interlocutor. An Empire
falls on points of linguistic misunderstanding. It was all the fault of Felipe.
...
...
MACHU PICCHU
Our guide is a stocky, middle aged man from Cuzco, whose flies
refuse to stay closed. He spends half the time he talks zipping them up again.
His attitude is belligerent and didactic.
We are the stupid tourists who don't appreciate the splendour of the
spectacle that is laid before us. We come to take photos without knowing what
the photos mean.
No doubt he is right. We don't. He sets out, on a morning which
begins misty at 6.30 and has transformed itself by 8.30 into fierce sunlight,
to educate us. He shows us the way in which a compass, aligned towards the
Southern Cross, is placed at the heart of the town. He explains how Inca
society, whilst not Communist, espoused a type of autocratic socialism, with
everyone having to work a fixed period of the year for the state, but everyone
guaranteed food and shelter. He outlines the Incan legal system, which was, in
his eyes, strict but eminently fair. He describes the Incan methods of
astronomy, architecture and masonry. There seems little doubt that this man
still considers himself an Incan as much as a Peruvian. The battles may have
been lost but the war never shall be.
Machu Picchu, he assures us, is a magical place, which has
connections with the Egyptian Pyramids, among other magical places. It's
constructed on the tip of a mountain at the apex of an Empire. It was not, he
insists, a holy city. It was a retreat but also a trading post, where the
terraces are built upon layers of coastal sand. There are eight documented
entrances to Machu Pichhu, he tells us, and it was never the intention it
should have been kept a secret. That it was was down to nature's beneficence
and its remoteness.
Later, we walk past another guide, expounding a theory which is
the direct opposite. This was a secret enclave, for monks and royalty, where
the common people were excluded. Later still, on our way back to Cusco by
minivan along the perilous route, we stop at a restaurant to buy water, and
there's our guide from the morning, popping up, his flies still falling down.
The Inca is everywhere. No doubt he arrived via a secret passageway. Although
he leaves in a minibus. With more tourists.
...
MACHU PICCHU
When they let you into the site of Machu Picchu proper, at 6am,
there are more steps to negotiate. Finally you reach a terrace. The air is
amazingly clean. There's mist all around. Visibility is minimal.
Then, for a moment, the clouds clear. Facing you are three
peaks. Which do, indeed, peek through the atmosphere. Winking. Hinting at
everything which is out there of which you are still unaware. All there is to
be learnt. Still to be seen. Still to be savoured.
The sun shimmies through a gap. The day is born. The world is
ready to begin all over again.
I lived this once. I cannot imagine what it must have been like
to have lived it, to live it, every day.
Perhaps it would become banal. Or perhaps you would feel, every
morning, as though Inti was reminding you what a work of art the world and all
it contains within it is. Not what a work of art it might be. But what a work
of art it is. It unarguably is.
...
...
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