There are pros and cons to traveling alone. Advantages include the freedom to follow your own itinerary and move along at your own pace, as well as the oft-overlooked fact that flying solo forces you to engage with locals, as well as fellow adventurer-seekers. The primary disadvantage, however, is loneliness…while standing awestruck unescorted before a world wonder can be a deeply satisfying experience, sometimes it is better shared with a friend or loved one.
After the second-longest leg of my trip, crossing the Atlantic and the Equator over the course of a dozen hours, I was excited to meet my girlfriend, Jill, at Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru. My flight from Quito arrived at nearly the same time as her flight from Atlanta, so after a four-month absence, we reunited in the customs lane. Our first two days were spent in the Peruvian capital, at a rented apartment in a swanky section of town called Miraflores.
Lima is a sprawling, chaotic place, a consequence of rural émigrés seeking opportunity in the big city. While situated along the picturesque Pacific cliffs of the Costa Verde ("Green Coast" – though one of our drivers appropriately pointed out that it ought to be called the “Brown Coast”) Lima leaves little to be desired for the typical traveler. As with many large cities, there's plenty of great food to be found, but the task of getting from place to place in the sheer absence of public transportation (all of the minibuses and cabs are privately owned) in such a widespread metropolis is somewhat daunting. But, it didn’t concern us all that much, because within 48 hours we would be on a domestic flight to what was once the capital of the greatest pre-colonial empire in South America, Cuzco.
According to legend, it was the mythical founding father (Manco Capac) and mother (Mama Ocllo) of the Inca who chartered the city after declaring it the “Navel” (Qosco) of the World. In truth, the translation of “Qosco” from the Incan language of Quechua into European tongues is not exactly “belly button”, but more of a word representing the center of the body as a whole. This makes sense, because for the Inca, Cuzco sat in the middle of a vast territory that stretched for thousands of miles along the Andes Mountains from the southern frontier of modern-day Colombia to the northern half of Patagonia. The city itself was laid out in the shape of a puma, which along with the condor and the snake form the holy trinity of animals held sacred in Andean legend.
It didn’t take long after touching down in Cuzco to appreciate the beauty and culture of the place in comparison to Lima. Set in an alpine valley of narrow cobblestone avenues flanked by buildings with Spanish tile roofs resting upon foundations of Inca stone, Cuzco possesses the romantic charm Lima lost long ago. But, it soon became clear that going from sea level to 11,200 feet in elevation would take at least a couple of days of physical adjustment. To combat soroche (altitude sickness), the local remedy almost always involves the frequently misunderstood coca leaf. Illegal in the United States, the coca plant is indeed the base ingredient in the production of cocaine. However, equating coca leaves with cocaine powder would be akin to claiming that gasoline and petroleum jelly are one in the same. While both products are made with oil, trying to fill up your car with Vaseline is a bad idea. For all intents and purposes, the unadulterated hoja de coca acts as a mild stimulant, similar to caffeine, and works to relieve common soroche symptoms like headaches and indigestion.
Taking it easy for a couple of days in order to adapt to the altitude, Jill and I explored the town on foot. From our first dinner together, both of us were immediately impressed with the quality of Peruvian produce. It seems counterintuitive, but for such a mountainous place, the Peruvians have mastered the art of microclimate management. Through their age-old practice of steppe farming, where crops are grown on artificial earth-fill terraces hugging the slopes, they’ve been able to take advantage of the wide spectrum of temperature, precipitation and sunlight available from base to peak. On one mountain, hot, humid weather at the bottom yields tropical fruits, while temperate terraces near the top allow for the cultivation of winter grains. This kind of vegetative variety creates a cornucopia of consumables, and secured Peru’s spot in my own annals of world travel as the best overall country for cuisine. While in Cuzco, Jill and I gloated in getting great value for our money while tasting some of the finest dishes we’ve known. In addition to trying new fruits like the aguaymanto and sampling one of 300 varieties of potato, we also catered to our carnivorous curiosities and cut our teeth into alpaca steaks.
One Andean animal too strange for me to pass up was cuy, known to gringos as guinea pig. Native to South America, the furry rodents many of us (including myself) kept as childhood pets are considered a delicacy going back to before the time of the Incas, and in the Cuzco Cathedral, a provincial painting of The Last Supper depicts Christ and His Apostles dining on the roasted rodent. When the baked cuy made it to our table, it looked anything but appetizing; the entire creature lay on the platter before me, complete with a broccoli floret wedged between its prominent incisors. It marked maybe the only meal in Peru that didn’t impress me much. The meat was meager and gamy, and when my hand made contact with one of the claws of the cuy, it would bring back the sensation of handling guinea pigs as a kid and gross me out a little.
Still, I remained determined to try as many uniquely local perishables as possible, as I had throughout my trip. One of them was a homebrewed corn beer called chicha. Like the Tej Beat in Ethiopia, a Chicheria is a nondescript private operation, usually run out of a residence, marked by a pole with one end wrapped in red material mounted above the threshold. Traditionally, the maize used to prepare the alcoholic beverage is chewed and then spit into the mixture by elderly women. Enzymes in the old lady saliva catalyze the breakdown of starches enabling fermentation. We were taken for chicha by Carlos, a young man who was our guide while exploring nearby Incan ruins on horseback. Because of the effect corn can have on the digestive system, even Carlos recommended that I not drink the entire glass of homemade hooch. But fancying myself as someone who doesn’t do things half-heartedly, after the obligatory libation of pouring the first sip on the ground to honor Pachamama (Quechua for “Mother Earth”) I guzzled the whole drink down my gullet, ignoring a warning I should have heeded.
Seeing the Andes from the saddle was a real treat. Trotting over the high terrain while Carlos piped away on a traditional Incan flute will remain one of my most distinct memories. In all, we visited the ruins of Tambomachay (site of stone baths believed to be linked to an Incan water cult), Pukapukara (believed to be a hunting lodge or traveler’s rest), Q’enqo (a temple possibly used for ritual human sacrifices), and Sacsaywaman (a massive zig-zag fortress that represents the teeth of Cuzco’s puma shape and the site of a tragic battle between the Inca and the Spanish determined to conquer them).
Despite the best efforts of the Conquistadores to destroy them, there are so many Inca ruins remaining in Cuzco, and the Sacred Valley of the Incas nearby, that it’s impossible to cover them all in a handful of days. However, Jill and I managed to take a short trip to one of the most impressive Sacred Valley sites, and we were happy we did. The ruins of Pisac sit high above the modern village of the same name on the holy Urubamba River. Once a densely populated city, the huge ruins of Pisac became one of my favorite places in Peru, with elaborate watercourses and farming terraces still in use today. While there is automobile access to the site, Jill and I decided to hike the steep 2.5 miles up the mountain, in preparation for our next adventure, a four-day, three-night hiking and camping excursion to the greatest Inca site revealed to humanity so far…Machu Picchu.
