Earthquake

I was sitting at the kitchen table a few Wednesdays ago, eating dinner with Catherine and Teresa, when the floor started to shake. Catherine and I looked at each other; the shaking got stronger. It felt like being on a ride at an amusement park where you have to walk across a floor that vibrates and wobbles under you. We got up, uncertain of what to do--neither of us had ever been in an earthquake before, but we recognized what it was, and I went and stood in the kitchen doorway because I had a vague recollection that that's what people should do in earthquakes. "Teresa, what do we do?" asked Catherine. Teresa, preoccupied by the shaking that showed no sign of stopping, jumped up and scooted straight out the front door without answering, and stood in the open space across the road. Iris had come out of her room when the tremor didn't stop after a few seconds, and the three of us went outside together, leaving the door wide open behind us.

For another minute the ground didn't stop moving. Everything had stopped: dogs were barking, people were leaving their houses with the doors swinging open. It was night and the yellow street lights of Villa El Salvador were marching away over the hills in long lines. I saw the clouds lit up by lightning twice; later I found out that lightning is almost never seen in Lima, and people were terrified by it. A man drove by in a taxi and stuck his head out to ask, "Sister, what's going on? Is there an earthquake?"--it seems that the suspension in cars can prevent people from feeling tremors. Iris was pacing around looking worried. "This is the worst one we've ever had," she said. Catherine and I just nodded--for all we knew, this was normal for Peru.

There was no damage to our house except a few pictures that fell off the walls. Most of the houses in the area were fine too, as was the school, although the bookshelves in the English classroom had toppled over and dumped a huge mound of textbooks onto the floor. The aftershocks recurred during the next few days, including once when I was teaching in the auditorium. We hurried outside and joined the rest of the school on the blacktop, but by the time we got there it was over.

It was an odd experience, but it didn't seem too dangerous at the time. I couldn't really understand why all the Peruvians were so panicky. I gathered that slight tremors are indeed normal around here and usually pass in a few seconds, leaving little to no damage; and yet in the days that followed, some people told me they had thought it was the end of the world, others that they grabbed their children and started praying for their lives, others that they were sleeping fully dressed with keys in hand so they could run outside during the night... I didn't get why everyone was freaking out so much until the reports started coming in of the terrible damage in Pisco and Ica, cities about 100 miles south of Lima near the epicenter of the quake.

Many of the houses there, especially in the rural areas, are made of mud bricks, and they just crumbled. A church in Pisco collapsed on a funeral Mass, killing hundreds of people who were inside. One of our friends from Chaclacayo, Ever, went down to Pisco the day after the earthquake with a group from his work, since he does social work for the government and knows something about first aid. He said it was utter chaos. People were fighting over water, there were bodies all around the main square, there was no food to be had and Ever had to pay 5 soles for a tiny can of tuna and crackers, and tuna and crackers was what he ate for three days while he was working there. A week later, drinking tea in our calm, undamaged house, he told us the story in a quiet voice with a haunted look in his eyes. He said he vomited twice at what he saw while working to excavate the living and the dead from the ruins of the church. Later, however, he decided that he preferred pulling out the dead to trying to attend to the homeless and hungry survivors, because the first slow trickle of supplies sent in was not enough, and the crowds just attacked the cars as they came. There was no way to get down and hand things out calmly unless the military was there. But when the soldiers were there, he said--and at this Ever burst out laughing, so far past stressed that this was hilarious--a kid came up to ask for bread, and one of the soldiers replied, "You want pan? Here, have some of this! PAN! PAN!" and mimed shooting his gun so that the kid ran away. And on top of all this, at one point someone started yelling that the sea was coming in in a tsunami. Pisco is right by the beach. Apparently the water did come up two blocks into the town, but it never reached the main square.

Catherine's first reaction on hearing this story: "If you go down again, let me know, because I'd like to go help." I was floored. In my head I asked, "Did you hear what he's been saying for the past hour?!" I suppose I'm just more cautious or fearful than she is, but Ever's stories about sleeping in a tent with no blanket (he gave his sleeping bag to a homeless mother) and not finding enough food or water for himself, let alone anyone else, and the crowds fighting for supplies, did not exactly inspire me to jump up and go there. I feel unsafe enough in our own neighborhood of Delicias/Tupac, where we get our guy friends to walk us around at night and don't take taxis by ourselves after dark and have to endure various levels of whistles, catcalls, and verbal harrassment just walking down the street... I would simply be too scared for my physical safety to go somewhere basically chaotic like Pisco was after the earthquake. But Catherine reasoned quite sensibly that since some time had passed, there were aid organizations going down that she could go with as a volunteer. (She was right, as we learned from the news in the next week.) She hasn't gone yet, however, because our friends kept saying they would go and then not doing it after all.

Our parish collected clothes and food items to send south... and that's been it as far as the earthquake around here. But we know there is an incredible amount of rebuilding to be done, and that thousands of people are still homeless. If you want to support the relief efforts, you can donate to the American Red Cross's work in Peru at http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_peru&JServSessionIdr006=o5vhiluha1.app194a.
Thanks on behalf of the people who have lost everything and will benefit from your help.

...oh, and speaking of help: The money donated by my readers to get books for the Fe y Alegría library is here! Sister Iris now has $255 to get some good literature for her students. Thanks so much to all who donated and I will keep you updated on what the money is used for!

Machu Picchu

Catherine, Chrissy, and I left Cusco at 4 pm with the two taxi drivers and headed up out of the city into the highlands. We were still mad at our drivers for upping the price on us at the last minute, but they were very attentive and anxious to be of service, telling us the names of all the small towns, pointing out the fields where the people grow potatoes and telling us how they harvest only once a year and keep the potatoes dried to eat all year round. I had bought a new, larger memory card for my camera (the old one only held 24 photos!), and in response to Josue's assurances of "anything you need, anything at all, just ask," I asked if he had scissors to open it. He didn't. The next thing I knew they were pulling over next to a little ramshackle house on the edge of Cusco, and Josué runs in and comes back out with a blunt steak knife, with which he proceeds to free my digital memory card of its plastic. Classic Peru moment.


The drive to Ollantaytambo was beautiful. We went first over long highways rising and falling with the curves of the hills, and then down a long switchback descent into the Sacred Valley itself, to the small city of Urubamba. The mountains are not gradual in the Sacred Valley; Urubamba is on flat land perhaps a few miles wide, with steep, bare rock mountains towering straight up on either side. Their shadows fall early on the valley in the evening, and it seems like dusk in the town while the daylight still shines on the mountains themselves. We passed through Urubamba and wound through more hills, following the river now, to Ollantaytambo. It was getting dark when we got there and the stars were coming out. The train station was a ticket box next to two sets of doors where people could pass through to the train tracks--one door for Peruvians, the other for tourists. The two groups sit on different sections of the train and pay (so I hear) vastly different prices, just as they do for Machu Picchu. In the yellow lamplight we waited in line with our backpacks, watching the crowds mill around with all their stuff in between the little puestas selling everything from chapstick to chullos to fried-egg-and-cheese sandwiches cooked on the spot over tiny gas flames. When the train arrived, the Peruvians returning to Ollantaytambo came out the doors running and literally raced each other up the hill, I suppose to get places on the buses and taxis congregated farther up with their drivers standing outside yelling "Cusco! Urubamba! Cusco! Taxi to Cusco!"

It was too dark to see anything out the train windows. As soon as we stepped off the train in Aguas Calientes, we were swept up in the river of tourists pouring up the hill and found ourselves in the central plaza. We made plans with some people we'd met on the train to meet at the plaza at 5 am to hike up the mountain and be at Machu Picchu at dawn; then we made our way up the brightly lit main street to our hostel. Aguas Calientes is made up almost entirely of hotels and restaurants, as 90% of its population is tourists. As we scrambled up the hill, I looked up long enough to see the mountains, or the shadows of the mountains, blotting out the sky and the stars on all sides like enormous waves in a dream. We felt them rather than saw them--the awesome, unseen presence of the mystery of the place, towering just beyond the little lights of the town.

We found the hostel, but when we gave our names, the guy looked away and said, "No, that wasn't for the 29th, I had you down for the 19th." Translation: they hadn't kept our reservations. At this point it was 10:00 and Chrissy was fading fast. Suddenly a random Peruvian lady was at our side saying she had lodging for 25 soles per person; we shrugged and followed her. Her hostel was off the main road, noisy, but clean enough. It was warmer here than in Cusco, and humid, and we could hear the river close by as we fell into bed.

The next morning, instead of feeling better, Chrissy had diarrhea and nausea and didn't want to get out of bed. Our visitors were dropping like flies! We hated to leave her. Would she be better later? Catherine and I took turns going out to get Gatorade and other foodstuffs, and I got to see Aguas Calientes in the early morning.

Finally at 9:30 we had to face the facts. We paid the hostel lady extra to let Chrissy stay in bed during the day, and Catherine and I set out, the only ones still on our feet, to the sacred summit.

The tourism industry around Machu Picchu reminds one of Disney World. It has taken over the city of Cusco and created the town of Aguas Calientes. But once you get up to the ruins, all of that falls behind; you leave it below in the valley. The bus from Aguas Calientes follows the river around the base of a mountain--the mountains go straight up like tapering fingers, practically piled on top of each other, so that it's no wonder nobody got through to discover Machu Picchu for years--and then starts the switchback climb. We watched the river get smaller and smaller below us, and then we were there at the entrance...

We took a walk up toward Inti Punku, the Sun Gate, but I was too tired to make it all the way. On the path we met some llamas and offered them chocolate, which they were not interested in.

Catherine sat down to write a letter to her boyfriend, and I drank in the view.

The ruins were impressive, but I have to say the mountains were more so, and most amazing of all was the light. I felt I had gone from glasses to contacts or gotten an adjustment to my prescription, it was that sharp and brilliant and clear. I thought, whatever the hardships of the people who lived here long ago, they knew nothing of smog or of Lima fog. Their wars and their sacrifices and their sicknesses and feasts were all lived out under infinite skies, always in the presence of majesty and beauty. Up on these mountains, all you have to do is wait and walk, and one after another these amazing sights open up to fulfill you. In Lima I had been so starved for a glimpse of sun and space and beauty, and here was all that beyond anything I had thought of...

We wandered through the ruins, listened in on tours, and tried to pet the llamas frollicking on the lawn. We were only up there for about two hours before I got dehydrated and had to go.

Incas were short!


(The llama and I both blinked.)

On the way down the mountain, as I drank my Gatorade on the bus, there was a local boy dressed in traditional clothes who ran down the hiking path to wave at the bus at every switchback, yelling a long, singsongy phrase in Quechua. It was charming and all the tourists were looking for him by the end and waving back... but then it turned a little sad when, at the foot of the mountain, he climbed on the bus and called in the same beautiful, high voice, clear as the air of his home-- "Thank you very muuuuuuuuuch! Muchas graaaciaaaaaaaaaas!" and went around collecting tips from the tourists.

...So that was Machu Picchu.

That night we went back to Cusco the same way we came. Tuesday was our last day in Cusco, and it was a day of frustrating decisions because I'd been leaving my mom and sister behind the whole week, and now they didn't want to go on to Arequipa like we planned, because Marissa just needed to get home asap to recuperate. In the end they decided to return to Lima for the two days before their international flight. Catherine wanted to go on to Arequipa, and I chose to go with her mostly because I didn't want her traveling alone, but also because part of me really just needed to leave all the sick people behind and have a few days of vacation not worrying about anyone else. So we got on an overnight bus to Arequipa. Mom and Marissa would have one more day in Cusco in which to go on a tour of the Sacred Valley, which made me feel better because at least they'd have seen something.

But, in keeping with the rest of our vacation, Arequipa did not go as planned either and we ended up spending a total of 15 hours there. It has a very pretty plaza, on which we enjoyed a nice breakfast after our overnight bus ride... very quiet and restful after the stress of Cusco.

We saw the cathedral (much simpler than Cusco's but beautiful) and went to Mass, then went back to our hostel and slept. In the afternoon we went to a tourist agency and arranged a tour of nearby Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. But the tour was not to be. At lunch I started crying because my family was in Peru and I was not with them, and twenty minutes later Catherine was sick to her stomach. So we gave up and changed our bus tickets to return to Lima that night. And I had two days of hanging out in Delicias with Mom and Marissa before taking them back to the airport on Saturday night.

Cusco

Sorry for the delay in posting this! I am determined to get caught up because there are new things happening that need blogging too. So here goes our vacation.

On the morning of the 26th we got up at 4:00 am to make it to the airport by 5:30. We were on two different flights to Cusco because of some rather frustrating mix-ups with the travel agent beforehand, namely, that she did not get back to me in time for us all to get on the same one. In retrospect it seems this was an omen of how the rest of the trip would go--one detail after another going just wrong enough to keep us from doing things all together, and us scrambling to somehow make things happen anyway.

The flight from Lima to Cusco was amazing. We got up through the cloud layer and out into the sun, and looking out the window I could see mountains hemming the clouds in, the natural barrier that keeps Lima covered by fog all winter. It looked like a white lake was lapping against brown hills. As we flew inland, the edges of the cloud-lake crept in little rivers up between the fingers of the mountains--and then, as the mountains got bigger and wider, the clouds stopped dead. At a certain point the blanket of white just ended, with one little poof like a cotton ball broken off from the rest and floating inland, and down below in the valley was a silvery road where people driving away from Lima would come out of the fog into the sun.

And we were over the sierra. I always thought of mountains as a long, narrow string that you crossed over and were done, but this was true highland--mile after mile of tumbled hills and shadowed valleys. The mountains were steep and brown and looked inhospitable, but as we went on some of the slopes turned greener and I could see towns and farm areas perched on them, reached by little ribbons of road winding over and up and down. The lakes looked like sheets of metal and flashed as we went by. Later I learned that I was lucky to be on the left side of the plane--the right side going inland is apparently tilted up and gets none of the same views. Mom and Marissa missed out for that reason. Chrissy and Catherine didn't seem to care about the vistas as much as I did, but maybe they were just being polite about my having taken the window seat.

In the airport at Cusco we all found each other. We were driven to our hotel by a pair of taxi drivers/tour guides who had a very comfortable minivan and kept offering us rides to all the sights in the Sacred Valley, until Catherine answered, "No, tour guides cost a ton! We're not made of money!" which seemed to get them off our backs... for the moment.

Mom and Marissa in our first hostel. It was cheap, no heat, but generally clean and the sun warmed the top floor where we were during the day. The only problem was that Mom's rooom smelled really bad because when the toilet flushed it kind of sprayed little drops out onto the floor... she didn't stay there for long.

The first day I was lightheaded and short of breath from the altitude. Coca tea, an infusion of the leaves that the native peoples chewed for extra energy in wandering through the mountains and modern people now refine into cocaine, helped. Marissa felt sick at lunch and so Mom took her back while Catherine and Chrissy and I wandered the city. Cusco is absolutely beautiful--all the buildings are white with orange-brown slanted roofs, and the mountains surround it on all sides. It's so isolated, and the air is so fresh and clear, that it really does seem like it might be the center of the world the way the Incas thought. It also helps that the city revolves completely around tourists now, so everything in the center is kept beautiful and entertaining. In our wanderings around the plaza at night, I bought alpaca socks and Catherine found a dress for her sister's wedding, of all things.

(Light and shadow in Cusco is amazing.)

On the first morning, Catherine felt a little sick to her stomach, but she stayed in bed and was better by lunch. The rest of us spent the morning in administrative details: first getting another hotel room for Mom, in the beautiful tourist hotel around the corner from the cheap hostel, then buying our train tickets to Machu Picchu, then our bus tickets for the end of the week from Cusco to Arequipa. It was beautiful and sunny and I was loving the incredibly clear, fresh air, even though we hadn't "seen anything" yet. Then after lunch Mom felt sick with a fever and chills. She went to lie down in her new (heated) room. Marissa and I went and bought the last of our many tickets, the "tourist ticket" that admits you to many of the sights around Cusco... but then discovered that it didn't let you into any of the churches, which was what we wanted to see. In retrospect, I should have just paid the 10 soles and taken my sister in to see something already, but I was so sick of spending money on tickets that I wanted to actually use one of them. So we walked through the museum of the Quorikancha temple site, where the Church of Santo Domingo now stands. It was small and not very interesting.

Iglesia de Santo Domingo, from the outside, with a random guy's head.

One thing we could use the tourist ticket for was a performance of native music and dance at the Cultural Center in the evening, so we did that. It was full of brightly colored costumes and traditional huayno music, which uses a lot of string instruments and high-pitched voices all on the same (often very repetitive) melody, and dances with a lot of little foot-stomping jumps and interesting interactions between the dance partners (at one point the men put ropes around the women, at another the women kicked the men to the floor). We hear a ton of huayno in Tupac, and it gets really old really fast when your neighbors play it really loud for twelve hours straight on a Sunday to celebrate their patron saint--but it wasn't annoying at all in its natural setting, so to speak, of Cusco and the traditional dances. I feel like I understand it better just from seeing the landscape it comes from.

On our second morning in Cusco, Catherine, Chrissy, and I woke up early to go hiking. At last we were going to really explore the city. We followed my guidebook's directions up small cobblestone streets between white walls, up to an old, out-of-use church with a view over the whole city. On the way was a street called Purgatorio. This is us in Purgatory.

This is us on the church's plaza overlooking the city. By this time we were all hopelessly addicted to chullo shopping; here we are wearing some of the first ones we bought. I bought a belt from a señora here who showed me how she weaves them by hand.

We contiuned up the road and out of the city, up a hillside, shopping for more chullos and other gifts at the tourist stands set up along the way, to the ruins of Sachsayhuamán. It was a beautiful day and we took our time rambling around the remains of the Inca fortress that once stood there...

...and we met llamas!

We walked down the road to another hill, where there are ruins of the ancient temple Q'enco which was used (I found out from eavesdropping on a tour guide) for ritual sacrifices and telling the future, among other things. You could go inside the temple underground and walk around the tunnels, and we saw where they would pour chicha into rivulets in the stone to predict the future by the paths it took. We took a picture of me as a sacrifice on the stone tables, but unfortunately it was on Chrissy's camera and not digital.

Meanwhile Mom (who was feeling better) and Marissa went out to see the inside of the Cathedral, which houses a famous painting of Jesus at the Last Supper eating cuy (guinea pig), a traditional Cusqueñan dish. By the time we met up it was evening. They were in yet another hotel, because the nice one they'd found had only one night available; this one was cold because the room got no sunlight, and now Marissa was sick with the same chills and fever.

I went out again to go to Mass and to bring foodstuffs back to the hotel, feeling very tired and anxious about us getting to Machu Picchu. The church on the Plaza had an altarpiece two stories high and so covered with gold leaf that it hurt to look at, especially after all the sun we'd gotten that day up on the hills. The plan was to set out early the next morning to take buses around the sites in the Sacred Valley, arriving by 7:00 at the town of Ollantaytambo, where our train would leave for Aguas Calientes, the little town at the foot of Machu Picchu itself. The buses don't go any farther into the mountains than Ollantaytambo because the hills get so close together that it would be too difficult to put in roads; everyone who goes to Machu Picchu goes by the train, which follows the river winding in through the mountains. I hated the idea of leaving Mom and Marissa behind, but the train tickets couldn't be moved to another day.

That night I myself got the chills, at which point my goal went from getting everyone to Machu Picchu, to not dying and leaving my mother and sister stranded in a cold hotel in Cusco. In the morning I felt fine, but now Chrissy was sick and Marissa was still not up for the journey. We called the taxi driver/tour guide who had given us a ride from the airport, Josué, and asked him to drive us to and from Ollantaytambo as an alternative to taking the bus. He said he could do it for $40 each way; then he came to talk to us, we agreed on a time, and he went from $40 to $50, because he could see we had no other option if we wanted to get to our train. So we said okay. Meanwhile Mom had managed to contact an English-speaking doctor through her travel insurance and get him to come see Marissa and give her medicine to take. In the afternoon we moved Mom and the still-feverish Marissa to their fourth and final hotel, upscale and heated like the second one and much more comfortable than the third, and left for Ollantaytambo with Josué, our luggage, a still-half-sick Chrissy, much angst and guilt, and those precious, non-transferrable train tickets that were going to take us to Machu Picchu.

Visitors in Lima!

Well! Quite a lot has happened in a short time during our mid-year vacation. I'm back in Lima now and feeling surprisingly rested, or at least refreshed, after a trip that rivals National Lampoon for things gone wrong on a vacation. The good news is that I got to see the sun, Cusco, llamas, the sun, Machu Picchu, the sun, about 27,000 chullos (those Andean wool hats with the ear flaps), the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and most of all my mom and my sister. And the sun.

On July 21st I went with Carlos the taxi driver to pick up Mom and Marissa from the airport. I realized that I really like airports--I love going, being on the road to a new destination, and also meeting people who are coming to see me, and airports are good that way. Having my family come visit was the next best thing to visiting home myself; since I couldn't go home, home came to see me. Marissa had finished the new Harry Potter on the plane and I'm not sure she entirely stopped thinking about it at any time during the two weeks that followed. She felt a little out of place because of the language barrier and being the only teenager around, but Mom was fearless, jumping into any and all conversations with whatever Spanish she had available. This was actually quite a bit, and she got along with the sisters (and pretty much everybody else in the pueblo) as though she'd known them forever--chatting with the people in our English class, meeting the music group after Mass and trying out her skills on the drum, telling slightly weird stories about her friends' pets during our welcome lunch with the sisters, etc. It was great. As always, the sisters were amazingly hospitable. They cooked us a wonderful lunch the first day the visitors were here, and Iris gave up her room for Catherine's friend Chrissy who also came to travel with us.

We did a little tourism in Lima the first few days. This is us in the Convento de Santo Domingo, where we learned about San Martín, my new favorite saint. Our friend Ever took us around the city center and we saw the cathedral, which was very impressive. (Only about an hour after the tour ended did I realize I had actually seen the same cathedral before, in February with the volunteers from Tony's... clearly Peru is driving me out of my mind...) There was sun on the Plaza de Armas and very crowded buses on the way back home.

The Cathedral of Lima...

Mom and Marissa also came to my English classes at the school and in the parish. My students really loved asking Marissa how old she was and where she was from, since they are the same age. On the last day of class before the Fiestas Patrias vacation, the school puts on a display of typical Peruvian foods from the different regions of the country, so our visitors got to see that, plus my chorus sang everything they've learned so far in front of the rest of the school. It was darling and they were so proud of themselves.

Wednesday night the sisters said goodbye to us with a lovely little bilingual tea, and on the morning of the 26th our journeys began...