Melting sacred glaciers and other fundamental changes confront the Andes's Quechua-speaking farmers
By Barbara Fraser
MAHUAYANI, Peru—A full moon hangs in the frosty sky as hundreds of dancers file in darkness toward the top of the Sinakara valley high in the Andes. Footsteps crunch frozen tundra, and dancing shoes step gingerly over ice-covered rivulets. Musicians blow on numb fingers as sunlight tips the hills to the west and creeps up the valley.
High above, ice fields on the eastern peaks remain in shadow.
Suddenly dancers and musicians turn eastward and kneel, baring their heads. A halo rims the tallest crag, and as the sun appears, music bursts from scores of flutes, drums, accordions and saxophones. Moments later the air fills with the sound of running water, as the skin of ice melts, freeing the rivulets.
At more than 15,000 feet above sea level, it is easy to understand why Andean people have long worshiped the elements that allow them to survive in this harsh climate. In the dry season - May to October - rivulets form streams that flow to rivers far below, providing drinking water and keeping alpine pastures alive so livestock can survive until the rains come again.
Backlit by the sun, long columns of men dressed in shaggy black robes stream down the mountainsides. In a test of endurance and devotion, they have spent the night on the glaciers that still cling to the rocks above the valley. Waving banners and surrounded by dancers, they return to the sanctuary of the Señor de Qoyllur Rit'i, the center of a Christian fiesta rooted in a far older Andean devotion.
These men, known as ukukus, whose costumes evoke the Andean spectacled bear, used to hack off huge hunks of ice and haul them down the mountain on their backs. That is now forbidden. They and the tens of thousands of pilgrims who stream up the mountainside every year are worried that the glacier that is central to this ritual is disappearing.
Climate change is forcing a cultural change.
While governments seek technical solutions to climate-related problems, Quechua-speaking farmers in the Andes are struggling to understand events that are altering their livelihood. Drip irrigation and water reservoirs are only a partial response to a profound change in their relationship with their environment.
People in the Andes "lead vertical livelihoods," says Jeffrey Bury of the University of California at Santa Cruz. They take advantage of every ecological niche, growing crops in valleys and grazing llamas and alpacas on to bleak mountaintops. But farmers are being squeezed by warmer temperatures that shift crops up mountainsides and the expansion of mountaintop mining that destroys high wetland pastures, Bury says.
Audio slide show: Effects of Climate Change on People in the Andes
Andean peaks are more than scenery; they are protective deities, or apus. For generations, the massive and powerful Mt. Ausangate near the Qoyllur Rit'i sanctuary has been white. Now, it is streaked where snow has melted and bare rock shows.
"The mountains are powerful in a very everyday kind of way. People speak of them, there's a lot of ritual involved with them, and their darkening is very disturbing," says Ben Orlove, an anthropologist at the University of California at Davis, who has studied Andean communities since the 1970s. "There's something very troubling about the glaciers being gone."
Carlos Flores, an anthropologist and former Jesuit priest who accompanied the Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage for several decades, recalls people commenting on glacial retreat as long ago as the 1970s. Some saw it as a sign of the end of the world.
The Rev. Antonio Sánchez-Guardamino, the Catholic priest in Ocongate, who has also worked among remote Andean communities for decades, is more cautious. "The snow-capped peaks are not the only apus," he says. "There are many apus that are not snow-capped, and people make offerings to them."
Nevertheless, the vanishing glaciers may still signal the end of the world as the Quechua farmers know it.
"If the snow disappears, the people will disappear, too," Sánchez-Guardamino says. "If the snow disappears, we will be left without water. The pastures and the animals will disappear. Everything is interconnected. The problem of the melting of the glaciers is that the source of life is drying up."
Andean farmers struggle to understand the changes. Some say the mountains are turning black because they are angry or sad. Some blame pollution. Carmina Sicusta has another explanation.
"The earth itself is sick," she says.
Sicusta, 48, lives in Amaru, a village of small adobe houses on a mountainside above Pisaq, a picturesque town near Cusco that is best known for Inca ruins and a Sunday market that draw tourists from around the world.
In the past decade or so, Amaru's farmers have watched the pattern of hillside fields change. On the frigid hilltops, the tundra-like pasture suitable only for llamas is receding. Fields of grain blanket high hillsides that were once too cold for anything but animals. Families that used to own dozens of llamas now have only a handful.
"The earth is warming. The waters are warming. The springs are drying up," Sicusta says in Quechua, looking up from her weaving. "There is going to be a shortage of food. Our children will have less to eat."
Her husband, Eugenio Palomino, 46, adds, "There's less and less rain. There won't to be a good harvest."
Farmers say weather patterns are changing, rain and frost come out of season, and the signs they always used to tell when it was time to till or plant are no longer reliable.
Agriculture depends on predictability, Bury says. Early rains wash seeds away, a dry spell during the growing season keeps potato tubers from developing, and rain at the normally dry harvest time rots grain. All spell disaster for subsistence farmers.
While physical scientists may consider people's perceptions of climate change subjective and unreliable, Bury insists it is important to see the world as mountain people do. "When you lose your crops, it's not a subjective event," he says. "People have a good 10-year memory of how things have changed."
In some cases, perceptions may run ahead of scientific evidence, he says, because people could see very local changes that do not show up on computer models with a 100-kilometer resolution. This is not the first time people have had to adjust to climate change in the Andes. Historian Mark Carey of Washington and Lee University has heard legends referring to glacial retreat and lake formation. Based on pollen from lake sediment cores, French climate researcher Alex Chepstow-Lusty believes gradual warming beginning in 1100, after a long arid spell, facilitated the rise of the Inca Empire.
But it is not easy for Andean farmers to conceive of life in a radically different environment. People in Copa Grande, a village in the snow-capped Cordillera Blanca in central Peru, cannot imagine living like farmers in the bare Cordillera Negra across the valley, who depend only on rainwater for irrigation.
"People generally have a very bleak outlook, and most are thinking on a very short time scale," says anthropologist Katherine Dunbar of the University of Georgia, who is doing doctoral research in Copa Grande. "People say, 'The glaciers are going to go, there's not going to be water and we're all going to die.'"
A generation ago, the glacier above the village was the place where teenagers spent time with friends and courted. Fewer go now, because the glacier is farther away and the ice at the edge is soft and dangerous.
"The loss of the glacier is the loss of a social scene," Dunbar says.
Because environmental changes have a social and cultural impact, technical solutions alone are not enough, says Lino Loayza of ANDES, a Peruvian non-profit organization working with residents of Amaru and neighboring communities.
"Our first priority is food security, so people eat well and have enough food," Loayza says.
Besides planting a variety of staple crops, the communities have established the Parque de la Papa, or "Potato Park," to preserve some 700 varieties of native potatoes adapted to different altitudes. They prepare medicinal plants and are branching into tourism, with hiking circuits, a restaurant specializing in potato dishes, and crafts workshops. As farming becomes more unpredictable, they hope the alternatives will enable them and their children to stay on their land.
Further north, the snow-capped Cordillera Blanca has long been a draw for Peruvian and foreign hikers and climbers. In the communities Cary has studied, about 25 percent of the people work in tourism. The area is losing about 10 percent of its snow cover per decade, and guides say softer snow is making some climbing routes more dangerous.
Worldwide, studies predict the migration of between 25 million and 1 billion people because of climate change and related disasters, but economics also plays a role. A sagging tourist industry in the Cordillera Blanca could mean fewer jobs, spurring migration to cities even before the glaciers disappear. And most of Peru's large cities are in the coastal desert, where water stress is likely to be greater.
Nevertheless, the pilgrims at Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrims faced the future with faith. Awaiting sunrise on a ridge below the sanctuary, a tall, young ukuku with a short, braided beard and a single silver earring - himself an emblem of cultural change - said the rituals will continue even if the glaciers are gone.
"These people are very resilient," Orlove says. "They're in it for the long haul. They're very committed to their land. They're able to come up with remarkable responses."
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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lawyerinperu at 11:41 PM on 10/14/09
Dear Sir.
What had said Miss Barbara Frasser is absolutely true, and be must added to that tragedy, the poverty of the most of the people who live in those almost desert zones. The ecosystem of that towns depend almost solely of the melting ice and seasonal rain, and if that changes dramatically as now and in the nexts years, the peoples destiny of that zones will be worst than use to be
sábado, 17 de octubre de 2009
miércoles, 7 de octubre de 2009
Peru's Lost City of Gold
by Jonathan Levi | Published March 2009
When Machu Picchu is overrun with tour buses, Choquequirao—just twenty-five miles away and accessible only on foot—is deserted. Jonathan Levi sets off on a five-day trek and discovers the secret of Peru's original El Dorado
Don Nazario Turpo died a stupid death. The driver of the bus in which he was traveling from Saylla to Cuzco didn't realize that the local campesinos were making one of their quixotic low-tech protests—placing stones and tree trunks across the road without warning. Fourteen others besides Nazario died in the crash, and fifty were wounded. I had met Nazario, the pacu, or shaman, of Ausangate, a couple of years before at Machu Picchu. Long after the other tourists had gone, he sat in the quiet of the ruins and told my daughter's fortune. Although pacu translates into English as shaman, the pacu is little different from the priest of any religion who acts as an intermediary between the human and the divine. It's just that in the religion of the Incas—and Nazario, like most Peruvians, was a descendant of the Incas—mountains, rivers, and all the forces of nature are apus, spirits. "I'm coming back to Peru," Rebecca had whispered to me as we walked past grazing llamas in the dusk.
"But not to Machu Picchu," Nazario had said to me the next morning. The impregnable fortress of the Incas had fallen to the forces of mass tourism. Every day, foreigners by the hundreds were arriving from Aguas Calientes on buses belching diesel, and charging down the Inca Trail and through the Sun Gate. They came here guzzling pisco sours on the five-hundred-dollar-a-head Orient-Express Hiram Bingham deluxe day-trip from Cuzco, gazing seraphically at campesinos tilling their fields with hand ploughs—a journey to what is fast becoming one of the world's most endangered gorgeous sites.
Nazario had mentioned another ancient Incan citadel, a name full of guttural q's in the local Quechua language. No one went to this place. But it wasn't until Roger Valencia of the tour operator Auqui e-mailed me with news of Nazario's death that I wrote back to ask if he knew about this sister to Machu Picchu.
"Choquequirao," Roger answered instantly. "Even more beautiful than Machu Picchu. When do you want to go?"
Choquequirao. Choqeqirau. Chokekiraw. I Googled as many variations as I could imagine and came up with very little. I pulled my much abused copy of Lost City of the Incas off the shelf and searched the index. Lost City was written by Hiram Bingham forty years after he had become the first Northerner, in 1911, to "discover" Machu Picchu. Pictures of Bingham in Peru show a certain kind of Yalie who was still in residence several generations later: a Faulknerian dreamer from the provinces (in Bingham's case, Hawaii instead of Mississippi); a man whose height and good looks made him the rumored inspiration for Indiana Jones, and doomed him to a desire for easy conquests. Yet without the inheritance that many of his classmates brandished on their lapels, Bingham realized that he needed to write himself into mythology. "Machu Picchu was to Bingham the crowning of all his purest dreams as an adult child," wrote Che Guevara decades later.
Lost City was full of Choquequirao. Choquequirao, in fact, was Bingham's destination on his virgin trip to Peru in 1909, the city he believed to be the last holdout of the Incas during the dark days of the 1530s, when the Spanish conquistadors of Francisco Pizarro systematically destroyed their empire. City of Gold was how the Peruvians translated the name to Bingham, a guttural El Dorado. The last holdout would hold the last treasure—not to mention the thrill of danger. "In the journey to Choquequirao," Bingham wrote, "it seemed as though our heavily laden mules must surely lose their footing and roll down the fifteen hundred feet to the raging Apurímac River below."
Once Bingham decided that Machu Picchu, in fact, was the City of Gold, Choquequirao faded like a discarded high school girlfriend. But recent archaeologists have cast doubt on Bingham's theories on Machu Picchu. Choquequirao, the original City of Gold, may be getting ready for its red carpet walk.
I called Rebecca. My daughter had already fulfilled Nazario's prophecy, having returned to Peru just after college graduation to teach the local children in the town of Urubamba, up the river from Machu Picchu.
"Sure," she said. "May's good for me, I can take a day off." I replied that there's a reason Choquequirao is so unknown. It takes more than a day to reach it, and even then there's no easy way to do so. I knew some people who had flown in by helicopter, but the winds in the mountains can be vengefully unpredictable. They had nearly crashed. Three times.
"It's a five-day hike," Roger said.
"With mules?" I asked, imagining Bingham's heavily laden companions.
"Leave it me."
And so it was that at noon on an early-May day, after a four-hour drive from Urubamba, Rebecca and I found ourselves at the beginning of the trail, squatting beside a camp stove with our guide, Ana, and our cook, Felicitas, finishing up a lunch of cold chicken and cauliflower. The fifth member of our party, Carlos, our arriero (muleteer), ran after one of our three mules, which had just disappeared off the side of the road.
It was Ana who, several years before, had introduced us to Nazario and invited him on our trip to Machu Picchu. The daughter of a schoolteacher from Cuzco and a Quechua-speaking mother, she had begun guiding visitors into the rain forest of Manu and the Incan villages of the altiplano during the worst of the guerrilla violence of the 1980s. Ana knew a lot of facts—names of plants and trees and birds and historical dates—but even better, she knew a lot of rumors, a lot of folk history, tales of ghosts and apus.
For the first hour, we skipped three abreast on a wide trail. Rebecca and I looked at the broad panorama of Salcantay Mountain and the nearer glacial peak of Padreyoc across the river, and then at each other. This was lovely. Less than twenty miles to Choquequirao. Piece of cake.
And then we turned the corner at the town of Capuliyoc and saw what lay ahead. "There." Ana pointed to a bump on a mountain in the distance. "That's Choquequirao." With the sun directly above, we could just make out what seemed to be a handful of man-made structures in the distant trees. Not quite close enough to touch but almost. "And that," she pointed down, "is the Apurímac." We took her word that the twisting white thread below was a river. Far below. One mile below. This was the canyon of the Apurímac, the true headwaters of the Amazon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. "And that is our path." A snaky thing. A steep snaky thing, so steep it disappeared at times. And then, across the river, another steep snaky thing. Down one, up the other.
"Daddy . . ." Rebecca began, in a voice I hadn't heard since her eighth birthday.
"I didn't know," I stammered. Bingham's heavily laden mules plunged through my guilt.
In the first hour we discovered at least four ways to get downhill, three of them involving our feet. In the second hour we found that, as narrow and steep as the path was, Carlos and Felicitas and our heavily laden mules were still able to trot along without slipping over the edge. In the third hour, I began to wonder how much this path resembled the one Hiram Bingham had trod a hundred years before. It sliced mercilessly through fields of bloodred wild grass. It slalomed around iron-rich rock slides that looked as if they had happened only moments before. It sought shelter from the unmediated altiplano sun beneath white-blossomed cotton trees laden with vines and orchids. And in the fourth hour, we realized just how appreciative your right quad and your left big toe and your calf muscles can be when you reach the campsite and give them a rest.
Felicitas and Carlos and the mules had navigated the seven miles to the site, Chiquisca, in half the time it took us. The upper site was already packed with the tents of a dozen people, mostly French couples, their bare calves painted with bug bites. Twenty-year-old Uriel connected a pipe to the spring, and we bathed in fresh glacial water using a pockmarked plastic Gatorade bottle for a showerhead. We drank tea and ate popped corn of the giant Peruvian variety in the last heat of the afternoon, as a pair of Andean condors circled three thousand feet above us.
The stars replaced the sun by seven o'clock—first Scorpio, with its two piercing eyes, and, after dinner, the sideways kite of the Southern Cross, rising above us on the south side of the valley. I fell asleep to the sound of the mules rolling in the cool of the dust above camp.
The next morning, we let gravity and altiplano french toast drag us down the final hill of the canyon to Playa Rosalina, by the banks of the Apurímac. One mile lower than the main village of Cachora, we were in the heart of a tropical climate. Agave and saguaro cactus lined the path parallel to the river. May is the first month of the dry season, and the roar of the river, twenty feet below its high-water mark, was more pussycat than lion. Before the bridge, fruit trees signaled a spring. And within that grove, improbably, was a series of sturdy buildings that resembled an Andean Motel 6.
And then we turned the corner at the town of Capuliyoc and saw what lay ahead. "There." Ana pointed to a bump on a mountain in the distance. "That's Choquequirao." With the sun directly above, we could just make out what seemed to be a handful of man-made structures in the distant trees. Not quite close enough to touch but almost. "And that," she pointed down, "is the Apurímac." We took her word that the twisting white thread below was a river. Far below. One mile below. This was the canyon of the Apurímac, the true headwaters of the Amazon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. "And that is our path." A snaky thing. A steep snaky thing, so steep it disappeared at times. And then, across the river, another steep snaky thing. Down one, up the other.
"Daddy . . ." Rebecca began, in a voice I hadn't heard since her eighth birthday.
"I didn't know," I stammered. Bingham's heavily laden mules plunged through my guilt.
In the first hour we discovered at least four ways to get downhill, three of them involving our feet. In the second hour we found that, as narrow and steep as the path was, Carlos and Felicitas and our heavily laden mules were still able to trot along without slipping over the edge. In the third hour, I began to wonder how much this path resembled the one Hiram Bingham had trod a hundred years before. It sliced mercilessly through fields of bloodred wild grass. It slalomed around iron-rich rock slides that looked as if they had happened only moments before. It sought shelter from the unmediated altiplano sun beneath white-blossomed cotton trees laden with vines and orchids. And in the fourth hour, we realized just how appreciative your right quad and your left big toe and your calf muscles can be when you reach the campsite and give them a rest.
Felicitas and Carlos and the mules had navigated the seven miles to the site, Chiquisca, in half the time it took us. The upper site was already packed with the tents of a dozen people, mostly French couples, their bare calves painted with bug bites. Twenty-year-old Uriel connected a pipe to the spring, and we bathed in fresh glacial water using a pockmarked plastic Gatorade bottle for a showerhead. We drank tea and ate popped corn of the giant Peruvian variety in the last heat of the afternoon, as a pair of Andean condors circled three thousand feet above us.
The stars replaced the sun by seven o'clock—first Scorpio, with its two piercing eyes, and, after dinner, the sideways kite of the Southern Cross, rising above us on the south side of the valley. I fell asleep to the sound of the mules rolling in the cool of the dust above camp.
The next morning, we let gravity and altiplano french toast drag us down the final hill of the canyon to Playa Rosalina, by the banks of the Apurímac. One mile lower than the main village of Cachora, we were in the heart of a tropical climate. Agave and saguaro cactus lined the path parallel to the river. May is the first month of the dry season, and the roar of the river, twenty feet below its high-water mark, was more pussycat than lion. Before the bridge, fruit trees signaled a spring. And within that grove, improbably, was a series of sturdy buildings that resembled an Andean Motel 6.
And then we turned the corner at the town of Capuliyoc and saw what lay ahead. "There." Ana pointed to a bump on a mountain in the distance. "That's Choquequirao." With the sun directly above, we could just make out what seemed to be a handful of man-made structures in the distant trees. Not quite close enough to touch but almost. "And that," she pointed down, "is the Apurímac." We took her word that the twisting white thread below was a river. Far below. One mile below. This was the canyon of the Apurímac, the true headwaters of the Amazon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. "And that is our path." A snaky thing. A steep snaky thing, so steep it disappeared at times. And then, across the river, another steep snaky thing. Down one, up the other.
"Daddy . . ." Rebecca began, in a voice I hadn't heard since her eighth birthday.
"I didn't know," I stammered. Bingham's heavily laden mules plunged through my guilt.
In the first hour we discovered at least four ways to get downhill, three of them involving our feet. In the second hour we found that, as narrow and steep as the path was, Carlos and Felicitas and our heavily laden mules were still able to trot along without slipping over the edge. In the third hour, I began to wonder how much this path resembled the one Hiram Bingham had trod a hundred years before. It sliced mercilessly through fields of bloodred wild grass. It slalomed around iron-rich rock slides that looked as if they had happened only moments before. It sought shelter from the unmediated altiplano sun beneath white-blossomed cotton trees laden with vines and orchids. And in the fourth hour, we realized just how appreciative your right quad and your left big toe and your calf muscles can be when you reach the campsite and give them a rest.
Felicitas and Carlos and the mules had navigated the seven miles to the site, Chiquisca, in half the time it took us. The upper site was already packed with the tents of a dozen people, mostly French couples, their bare calves painted with bug bites. Twenty-year-old Uriel connected a pipe to the spring, and we bathed in fresh glacial water using a pockmarked plastic Gatorade bottle for a showerhead. We drank tea and ate popped corn of the giant Peruvian variety in the last heat of the afternoon, as a pair of Andean condors circled three thousand feet above us.
The stars replaced the sun by seven o'clock—first Scorpio, with its two piercing eyes, and, after dinner, the sideways kite of the Southern Cross, rising above us on the south side of the valley. I fell asleep to the sound of the mules rolling in the cool of the dust above camp.
The next morning, we let gravity and altiplano french toast drag us down the final hill of the canyon to Playa Rosalina, by the banks of the Apurímac. One mile lower than the main village of Cachora, we were in the heart of a tropical climate. Agave and saguaro cactus lined the path parallel to the river. May is the first month of the dry season, and the roar of the river, twenty feet below its high-water mark, was more pussycat than lion. Before the bridge, fruit trees signaled a spring. And within that grove, improbably, was a series of sturdy buildings that resembled an Andean Motel 6.
"The engineers came to build the lodge," Isabel Pancorvo told me. "The first time, I cooked for them, gave them beer and chichi [homemade Peruvian corn beer] and they paid. The second time, the same thing and they paid. The third time, they put in plumbing, ate my food, drank my chicha, locked the doors, and ran away. They didn't pay."
I found Isabel in a dark shack across from the deserted buildings at Playa Rosalina, waiting for the occasional hiker to walk by and buy a soft drink or chicha. In her broad-brimmed straw hat, she came about halfway up my chest. I bought three passion fruits and invited her to join us for a cup of mate de coca. She sat with us on a low wall outside the abandoned buildings. I asked where she lived. She pointed up the mountain.
"Behind the tree house?" I asked.
"I think in the tree house," Rebecca whispered to me.
"Alone?" I whispered back.
Rebecca quickly translated Isabel's rapid Spanish. She was sixty-two years old. There was a husband who was superfluous, and a few sons who had either died or run off to Lima—Rebecca was unsure. The deserted lodge was part of a Peruvian-French initiative, brokered in part by Eliane Karp, the French-born wife of former president Alejandro Toledo. The flight of the engineers presumably coincided with the end of Toledo's term.
"What did she say?" I asked.
"Something about debt forgiveness," Rebecca answered. "Is that a word?"
"Didn't she say something about Russia?"
"Sí, sí," Isabel answered. "Last year, four beautiful Russian ballerinas came with three musicians. They played and danced—right here." She pointed to the concrete terrace of the abandoned lodge as visions of sugarplum fairies danced in my head. Petrushka by the Apurímac, Swan Lake with condors, all to a balalaika accompaniment. "I taught them a huayño dance," she said, putting down her teacup and demonstrating the shuffle step. "I'll teach you."
"I bet Hiram Bingham never did that," I boasted to Rebecca fifteen minutes later as we crossed the bridge and waved good-bye to Isabel.
"You mean kick a small old Quechua woman?" It was true. I had had trouble with the shuffle step.
And then we began the uphill. The sun had started to shine, and although the switchbacks afforded the occasional shade, our conversation consisted of panting and pointing. A waterfall here, a hawk there.
"Chestnut-fronted parrots," Ana said as our arrival sent them into squawking flight. "And these," Ana said, stopping by a powder of yellow petals on the trail, "are lady's slippers, ayaq zapatillas. The locals put them in coffins to walk the dead to the afterlife."
Six hours after leaving the camp of Chiquisca, we arrived at Marampata Hill. The twelve members of the Covarrubias family who owned that side of the valley had tapped into the glacial feed from above and carved out a small farm. Once again, we had a campsite to ourselves. From our private plateau, the Apurímac Valley opened up farther to the west and turned north, toward the jungle. We lunched on fresh cheese and guacamole from Covarrubias avocados and gazed hypnotized by fatigue and the view.
Carlos brought mate de coca and hot water for washing to our tent at six the next morning. It had rained during the night. But here, at ten thousand feet above sea level, we had a clear light for the big day at Choquequirao, the City of Gold. We left Felicitas, Carlos, and the mules to rest for the day. The path was level. And around the next bend, finally, Choquequirao.
We were still two hours away, but finally we had a sense of what we had hiked down and up a canyon to see. A puzzle, a mystery. Across the ravine and a thousand feet below us, a series of terraces, impossibly steep, had been excavated. Farther up the hill was another set of terraces, partially cleared but still with large clumps of trees. Far above the terraces, directly across from us, was the perfect helipad of the ushnu, "the sacred meeting place of Choquequirao," Ana said. And above that, joined by a neatly mown plaza on the ridge, was more of the site. At this distance, Choquequirao was a giant Sudoku with only a handful of numbers penciled in. In comparison, Machu Picchu is a fully filled color-by-numbers.
"People have known about Choquequirao for centuries," Ana told me. "There was a French explorer, the Count de Sartiges, in the 1800s. But before him there were Spaniards." And after. Some say the city was built during the reign of Pachacutec in the mid-1400s and became the last refuge of the Incas under the final ruler, Manco Inca, a hundred years later. Others say that pieces of pottery found at Choquequirao show that it was inhabited hundreds of years earlier. Each successive visit by anthropologists and archaeologists brings a new theory. And yet Choquequirao gave off a whiff of inscrutability as we came around the bend in the ravine.
"When I was a little girl," Isabel had told me down by the river, "I lived at Marampata and looked after the cows. But my uncles told me that Choquequirao was full of ghosts. 'Never go there,' they warned. Even when a cow wandered off into the ruins, we left her for the ghosts."
There was something ethereal about Choquequirao as we walked out of the trees and onto the paved terrace leading to the deserted city. City may be too grand a word for what has been uncovered so far. Choquequirao is compact in its emptiness. There are a couple of town squares and a handful of Incan stone buildings like the ones at Machu Picchu, with tapered doorways and intricate niches and hooks for hanging lamps or securing ropes for the roof thatching.
Ana pointed out a set of protruding beams at the level of the second floor. "Balconies," she said. "The Incas didn't know about balconies before the Spanish came. There are no balconies in the houses of Machu Picchu, only here." It's a small marvel, a modest discovery.
The latest find is one that hasn't yet made it into the books or blogs on Choquequirao. Four years ago, terraces were discovered on the far side of the mountain, the side away from our approach. On the walls of these terraces, in crude mosaics of white stone, are the figures of twenty-three llamas, some adult, some baby llamitas. Former first lady Eliane Karp has grandly taken some of the credit for this discovery. But as with everything else at Choquequirao, it's hard to know what to make of the llamas.
Puzzlement plus silence equals mystery. And silence is abundant at Choquequirao. During the eight hours we wandered through the ruins, lunched on the plaza, and explored the terraces and forests, we saw two groups of six people in addition to the guardian of the site, perched with a paperback on the heights of the sacred ushnu with an overview of anyone entering. That was all.
From the ushnu, I could look back at the path we had taken—two days to walk down one side of the canyon and up the other. I had become used to thinking of time as airplane time: one hour to get to the airport; check in two hours before departure; ten hours from New York to Lima. But here in front of me were two days, laid out in the zigzags of a rocky trail, the thread of a distant river, the tightness of a hamstring. There was a physicality to time that I never felt on a plane to Cuzco or a train to Machu Picchu.
In the tranquility of that late afternoon on the ushnu, I made the most precious discovery of time as I listened to Rebecca talk with wisdom about Mariluz and Rodrigo, Vilma and Ignacio, the children of Urubamba. She might not have become a pacu like Nazario. But the days spent walking the trails of the apu of Choquequirao had opened my ears to how my daughter had become an intermediary between two worlds.
At five o'clock, the sun set at the far end of the valley, and we began the two-hour hike back to Marampata. As the darkness fell, Rebecca and Ana strapped tiny miner's lamps to their foreheads. I followed their dim beams and voices as closely as I could, wondering how the Incas six hundred years ago, how Hiram Bingham a hundred years ago, how Nazario had felt out this trail, clinging to the protection of the mountain, moving forward without slipping into the Apurímac a mile below. I felt stupid not to have brought a lamp—as stupid, perhaps, as that bus driver the moment before he hit the rock that sent him and Nazario to their death.
Suddenly the path opened up in front of me, bright as dusk. I found Rebecca and Ana standing in wonder, their lamps extinguished. The earth had breathed a thousand fireflies to light our way home.
"I could keep walking like this another week," Rebecca said, taking my arm, "all the way to Machu Picchu." The apu of Choquequirao, or the spirits of Nazario and Hiram Bingham, had brought me gold.
PERU: PLACES & PRICES
The best way to explore the Choquequirao ruins is to fly into Cuzco and then drive to the town of Urubamba (9,400 feet above sea level), in the Sacred Valley. In Cuzco, a handful of tour operators can arrange trips to Choquequirao. Roger Valencia of Auqui Tours has a reputation for quality customized trips to all the famous sites in the Sacred Valley—Machu Picchu, Ausangate—and into the rain forest as well as to other parts of Peru. A five-day hike to Choquequirao includes tents, cots, three-course dinners with wine, and transportation to and from Cuzco or Urubamba (84-261517; auqui.com; five-day hike, $800 per person with a four-person minimum).
Travelers who don't mind carrying their own equipment can take a public bus from Cuzco to Saihuite, where they can hire a taxi or walk the 40 minutes to Cachora, the head of the trail. Farmers host the campsites (a donation is expected), and mules can be rented from concessionaires. Dario Cunza and his wife have a dozen horses and mules for hire at the Hospedaje San Pedro ($10 per day).
High-altitude hiking is best done with a hat, sunscreen, and insect spray. A sturdy rubber-tipped walking pole will save wear and tear on your knees.
The country code for Peru is 51. Prices quoted are for March 2009.
Lodging and Dining
The 30-room Hotel Sol y Luna, in Urubamba, is the luxury choice, with everything from massages to horseback rides to special pachamanca feasts (84-201-620; bungalows, $200). The Sonesta Posadas del Inca, in Yucay, has 84 rooms, a colonial chapel, and even a ghost (84-20-1107; doubles, $160). Part of the Libertador chain and with a private train to Machu Picchu, the Tambo del Inka Luxury Collection Hotel is scheduled to open later this year in Urubamba.
The road from Cuzco to Cachora passes through plenty of small towns, all of which have at least one shop where you can stock up on provisions, including (if you're lucky) the pita-shaped local bread. Campsites along the trail itself also have shops that may sell fruit, bottled beverages, and packets of instant noodles. Fresh water is abundant, but it pays to ask the locals where the stray horses are grazing—and to avoid those streams.
Reading
Hiram Bingham's Lost City of the Incas is a classic that, like the best non-fiction, is only partially true (Phoenix Press, $13). Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (Everyman's, $20) and the photographs of the mid-20th-century Cuzqueñan Martín Chambi ( martinchambi.com) are still my favorite introduction to the complex culture of highlands Peru.
When Machu Picchu is overrun with tour buses, Choquequirao—just twenty-five miles away and accessible only on foot—is deserted. Jonathan Levi sets off on a five-day trek and discovers the secret of Peru's original El Dorado
Don Nazario Turpo died a stupid death. The driver of the bus in which he was traveling from Saylla to Cuzco didn't realize that the local campesinos were making one of their quixotic low-tech protests—placing stones and tree trunks across the road without warning. Fourteen others besides Nazario died in the crash, and fifty were wounded. I had met Nazario, the pacu, or shaman, of Ausangate, a couple of years before at Machu Picchu. Long after the other tourists had gone, he sat in the quiet of the ruins and told my daughter's fortune. Although pacu translates into English as shaman, the pacu is little different from the priest of any religion who acts as an intermediary between the human and the divine. It's just that in the religion of the Incas—and Nazario, like most Peruvians, was a descendant of the Incas—mountains, rivers, and all the forces of nature are apus, spirits. "I'm coming back to Peru," Rebecca had whispered to me as we walked past grazing llamas in the dusk.
"But not to Machu Picchu," Nazario had said to me the next morning. The impregnable fortress of the Incas had fallen to the forces of mass tourism. Every day, foreigners by the hundreds were arriving from Aguas Calientes on buses belching diesel, and charging down the Inca Trail and through the Sun Gate. They came here guzzling pisco sours on the five-hundred-dollar-a-head Orient-Express Hiram Bingham deluxe day-trip from Cuzco, gazing seraphically at campesinos tilling their fields with hand ploughs—a journey to what is fast becoming one of the world's most endangered gorgeous sites.
Nazario had mentioned another ancient Incan citadel, a name full of guttural q's in the local Quechua language. No one went to this place. But it wasn't until Roger Valencia of the tour operator Auqui e-mailed me with news of Nazario's death that I wrote back to ask if he knew about this sister to Machu Picchu.
"Choquequirao," Roger answered instantly. "Even more beautiful than Machu Picchu. When do you want to go?"
Choquequirao. Choqeqirau. Chokekiraw. I Googled as many variations as I could imagine and came up with very little. I pulled my much abused copy of Lost City of the Incas off the shelf and searched the index. Lost City was written by Hiram Bingham forty years after he had become the first Northerner, in 1911, to "discover" Machu Picchu. Pictures of Bingham in Peru show a certain kind of Yalie who was still in residence several generations later: a Faulknerian dreamer from the provinces (in Bingham's case, Hawaii instead of Mississippi); a man whose height and good looks made him the rumored inspiration for Indiana Jones, and doomed him to a desire for easy conquests. Yet without the inheritance that many of his classmates brandished on their lapels, Bingham realized that he needed to write himself into mythology. "Machu Picchu was to Bingham the crowning of all his purest dreams as an adult child," wrote Che Guevara decades later.
Lost City was full of Choquequirao. Choquequirao, in fact, was Bingham's destination on his virgin trip to Peru in 1909, the city he believed to be the last holdout of the Incas during the dark days of the 1530s, when the Spanish conquistadors of Francisco Pizarro systematically destroyed their empire. City of Gold was how the Peruvians translated the name to Bingham, a guttural El Dorado. The last holdout would hold the last treasure—not to mention the thrill of danger. "In the journey to Choquequirao," Bingham wrote, "it seemed as though our heavily laden mules must surely lose their footing and roll down the fifteen hundred feet to the raging Apurímac River below."
Once Bingham decided that Machu Picchu, in fact, was the City of Gold, Choquequirao faded like a discarded high school girlfriend. But recent archaeologists have cast doubt on Bingham's theories on Machu Picchu. Choquequirao, the original City of Gold, may be getting ready for its red carpet walk.
I called Rebecca. My daughter had already fulfilled Nazario's prophecy, having returned to Peru just after college graduation to teach the local children in the town of Urubamba, up the river from Machu Picchu.
"Sure," she said. "May's good for me, I can take a day off." I replied that there's a reason Choquequirao is so unknown. It takes more than a day to reach it, and even then there's no easy way to do so. I knew some people who had flown in by helicopter, but the winds in the mountains can be vengefully unpredictable. They had nearly crashed. Three times.
"It's a five-day hike," Roger said.
"With mules?" I asked, imagining Bingham's heavily laden companions.
"Leave it me."
And so it was that at noon on an early-May day, after a four-hour drive from Urubamba, Rebecca and I found ourselves at the beginning of the trail, squatting beside a camp stove with our guide, Ana, and our cook, Felicitas, finishing up a lunch of cold chicken and cauliflower. The fifth member of our party, Carlos, our arriero (muleteer), ran after one of our three mules, which had just disappeared off the side of the road.
It was Ana who, several years before, had introduced us to Nazario and invited him on our trip to Machu Picchu. The daughter of a schoolteacher from Cuzco and a Quechua-speaking mother, she had begun guiding visitors into the rain forest of Manu and the Incan villages of the altiplano during the worst of the guerrilla violence of the 1980s. Ana knew a lot of facts—names of plants and trees and birds and historical dates—but even better, she knew a lot of rumors, a lot of folk history, tales of ghosts and apus.
For the first hour, we skipped three abreast on a wide trail. Rebecca and I looked at the broad panorama of Salcantay Mountain and the nearer glacial peak of Padreyoc across the river, and then at each other. This was lovely. Less than twenty miles to Choquequirao. Piece of cake.
And then we turned the corner at the town of Capuliyoc and saw what lay ahead. "There." Ana pointed to a bump on a mountain in the distance. "That's Choquequirao." With the sun directly above, we could just make out what seemed to be a handful of man-made structures in the distant trees. Not quite close enough to touch but almost. "And that," she pointed down, "is the Apurímac." We took her word that the twisting white thread below was a river. Far below. One mile below. This was the canyon of the Apurímac, the true headwaters of the Amazon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. "And that is our path." A snaky thing. A steep snaky thing, so steep it disappeared at times. And then, across the river, another steep snaky thing. Down one, up the other.
"Daddy . . ." Rebecca began, in a voice I hadn't heard since her eighth birthday.
"I didn't know," I stammered. Bingham's heavily laden mules plunged through my guilt.
In the first hour we discovered at least four ways to get downhill, three of them involving our feet. In the second hour we found that, as narrow and steep as the path was, Carlos and Felicitas and our heavily laden mules were still able to trot along without slipping over the edge. In the third hour, I began to wonder how much this path resembled the one Hiram Bingham had trod a hundred years before. It sliced mercilessly through fields of bloodred wild grass. It slalomed around iron-rich rock slides that looked as if they had happened only moments before. It sought shelter from the unmediated altiplano sun beneath white-blossomed cotton trees laden with vines and orchids. And in the fourth hour, we realized just how appreciative your right quad and your left big toe and your calf muscles can be when you reach the campsite and give them a rest.
Felicitas and Carlos and the mules had navigated the seven miles to the site, Chiquisca, in half the time it took us. The upper site was already packed with the tents of a dozen people, mostly French couples, their bare calves painted with bug bites. Twenty-year-old Uriel connected a pipe to the spring, and we bathed in fresh glacial water using a pockmarked plastic Gatorade bottle for a showerhead. We drank tea and ate popped corn of the giant Peruvian variety in the last heat of the afternoon, as a pair of Andean condors circled three thousand feet above us.
The stars replaced the sun by seven o'clock—first Scorpio, with its two piercing eyes, and, after dinner, the sideways kite of the Southern Cross, rising above us on the south side of the valley. I fell asleep to the sound of the mules rolling in the cool of the dust above camp.
The next morning, we let gravity and altiplano french toast drag us down the final hill of the canyon to Playa Rosalina, by the banks of the Apurímac. One mile lower than the main village of Cachora, we were in the heart of a tropical climate. Agave and saguaro cactus lined the path parallel to the river. May is the first month of the dry season, and the roar of the river, twenty feet below its high-water mark, was more pussycat than lion. Before the bridge, fruit trees signaled a spring. And within that grove, improbably, was a series of sturdy buildings that resembled an Andean Motel 6.
And then we turned the corner at the town of Capuliyoc and saw what lay ahead. "There." Ana pointed to a bump on a mountain in the distance. "That's Choquequirao." With the sun directly above, we could just make out what seemed to be a handful of man-made structures in the distant trees. Not quite close enough to touch but almost. "And that," she pointed down, "is the Apurímac." We took her word that the twisting white thread below was a river. Far below. One mile below. This was the canyon of the Apurímac, the true headwaters of the Amazon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. "And that is our path." A snaky thing. A steep snaky thing, so steep it disappeared at times. And then, across the river, another steep snaky thing. Down one, up the other.
"Daddy . . ." Rebecca began, in a voice I hadn't heard since her eighth birthday.
"I didn't know," I stammered. Bingham's heavily laden mules plunged through my guilt.
In the first hour we discovered at least four ways to get downhill, three of them involving our feet. In the second hour we found that, as narrow and steep as the path was, Carlos and Felicitas and our heavily laden mules were still able to trot along without slipping over the edge. In the third hour, I began to wonder how much this path resembled the one Hiram Bingham had trod a hundred years before. It sliced mercilessly through fields of bloodred wild grass. It slalomed around iron-rich rock slides that looked as if they had happened only moments before. It sought shelter from the unmediated altiplano sun beneath white-blossomed cotton trees laden with vines and orchids. And in the fourth hour, we realized just how appreciative your right quad and your left big toe and your calf muscles can be when you reach the campsite and give them a rest.
Felicitas and Carlos and the mules had navigated the seven miles to the site, Chiquisca, in half the time it took us. The upper site was already packed with the tents of a dozen people, mostly French couples, their bare calves painted with bug bites. Twenty-year-old Uriel connected a pipe to the spring, and we bathed in fresh glacial water using a pockmarked plastic Gatorade bottle for a showerhead. We drank tea and ate popped corn of the giant Peruvian variety in the last heat of the afternoon, as a pair of Andean condors circled three thousand feet above us.
The stars replaced the sun by seven o'clock—first Scorpio, with its two piercing eyes, and, after dinner, the sideways kite of the Southern Cross, rising above us on the south side of the valley. I fell asleep to the sound of the mules rolling in the cool of the dust above camp.
The next morning, we let gravity and altiplano french toast drag us down the final hill of the canyon to Playa Rosalina, by the banks of the Apurímac. One mile lower than the main village of Cachora, we were in the heart of a tropical climate. Agave and saguaro cactus lined the path parallel to the river. May is the first month of the dry season, and the roar of the river, twenty feet below its high-water mark, was more pussycat than lion. Before the bridge, fruit trees signaled a spring. And within that grove, improbably, was a series of sturdy buildings that resembled an Andean Motel 6.
And then we turned the corner at the town of Capuliyoc and saw what lay ahead. "There." Ana pointed to a bump on a mountain in the distance. "That's Choquequirao." With the sun directly above, we could just make out what seemed to be a handful of man-made structures in the distant trees. Not quite close enough to touch but almost. "And that," she pointed down, "is the Apurímac." We took her word that the twisting white thread below was a river. Far below. One mile below. This was the canyon of the Apurímac, the true headwaters of the Amazon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. "And that is our path." A snaky thing. A steep snaky thing, so steep it disappeared at times. And then, across the river, another steep snaky thing. Down one, up the other.
"Daddy . . ." Rebecca began, in a voice I hadn't heard since her eighth birthday.
"I didn't know," I stammered. Bingham's heavily laden mules plunged through my guilt.
In the first hour we discovered at least four ways to get downhill, three of them involving our feet. In the second hour we found that, as narrow and steep as the path was, Carlos and Felicitas and our heavily laden mules were still able to trot along without slipping over the edge. In the third hour, I began to wonder how much this path resembled the one Hiram Bingham had trod a hundred years before. It sliced mercilessly through fields of bloodred wild grass. It slalomed around iron-rich rock slides that looked as if they had happened only moments before. It sought shelter from the unmediated altiplano sun beneath white-blossomed cotton trees laden with vines and orchids. And in the fourth hour, we realized just how appreciative your right quad and your left big toe and your calf muscles can be when you reach the campsite and give them a rest.
Felicitas and Carlos and the mules had navigated the seven miles to the site, Chiquisca, in half the time it took us. The upper site was already packed with the tents of a dozen people, mostly French couples, their bare calves painted with bug bites. Twenty-year-old Uriel connected a pipe to the spring, and we bathed in fresh glacial water using a pockmarked plastic Gatorade bottle for a showerhead. We drank tea and ate popped corn of the giant Peruvian variety in the last heat of the afternoon, as a pair of Andean condors circled three thousand feet above us.
The stars replaced the sun by seven o'clock—first Scorpio, with its two piercing eyes, and, after dinner, the sideways kite of the Southern Cross, rising above us on the south side of the valley. I fell asleep to the sound of the mules rolling in the cool of the dust above camp.
The next morning, we let gravity and altiplano french toast drag us down the final hill of the canyon to Playa Rosalina, by the banks of the Apurímac. One mile lower than the main village of Cachora, we were in the heart of a tropical climate. Agave and saguaro cactus lined the path parallel to the river. May is the first month of the dry season, and the roar of the river, twenty feet below its high-water mark, was more pussycat than lion. Before the bridge, fruit trees signaled a spring. And within that grove, improbably, was a series of sturdy buildings that resembled an Andean Motel 6.
"The engineers came to build the lodge," Isabel Pancorvo told me. "The first time, I cooked for them, gave them beer and chichi [homemade Peruvian corn beer] and they paid. The second time, the same thing and they paid. The third time, they put in plumbing, ate my food, drank my chicha, locked the doors, and ran away. They didn't pay."
I found Isabel in a dark shack across from the deserted buildings at Playa Rosalina, waiting for the occasional hiker to walk by and buy a soft drink or chicha. In her broad-brimmed straw hat, she came about halfway up my chest. I bought three passion fruits and invited her to join us for a cup of mate de coca. She sat with us on a low wall outside the abandoned buildings. I asked where she lived. She pointed up the mountain.
"Behind the tree house?" I asked.
"I think in the tree house," Rebecca whispered to me.
"Alone?" I whispered back.
Rebecca quickly translated Isabel's rapid Spanish. She was sixty-two years old. There was a husband who was superfluous, and a few sons who had either died or run off to Lima—Rebecca was unsure. The deserted lodge was part of a Peruvian-French initiative, brokered in part by Eliane Karp, the French-born wife of former president Alejandro Toledo. The flight of the engineers presumably coincided with the end of Toledo's term.
"What did she say?" I asked.
"Something about debt forgiveness," Rebecca answered. "Is that a word?"
"Didn't she say something about Russia?"
"Sí, sí," Isabel answered. "Last year, four beautiful Russian ballerinas came with three musicians. They played and danced—right here." She pointed to the concrete terrace of the abandoned lodge as visions of sugarplum fairies danced in my head. Petrushka by the Apurímac, Swan Lake with condors, all to a balalaika accompaniment. "I taught them a huayño dance," she said, putting down her teacup and demonstrating the shuffle step. "I'll teach you."
"I bet Hiram Bingham never did that," I boasted to Rebecca fifteen minutes later as we crossed the bridge and waved good-bye to Isabel.
"You mean kick a small old Quechua woman?" It was true. I had had trouble with the shuffle step.
And then we began the uphill. The sun had started to shine, and although the switchbacks afforded the occasional shade, our conversation consisted of panting and pointing. A waterfall here, a hawk there.
"Chestnut-fronted parrots," Ana said as our arrival sent them into squawking flight. "And these," Ana said, stopping by a powder of yellow petals on the trail, "are lady's slippers, ayaq zapatillas. The locals put them in coffins to walk the dead to the afterlife."
Six hours after leaving the camp of Chiquisca, we arrived at Marampata Hill. The twelve members of the Covarrubias family who owned that side of the valley had tapped into the glacial feed from above and carved out a small farm. Once again, we had a campsite to ourselves. From our private plateau, the Apurímac Valley opened up farther to the west and turned north, toward the jungle. We lunched on fresh cheese and guacamole from Covarrubias avocados and gazed hypnotized by fatigue and the view.
Carlos brought mate de coca and hot water for washing to our tent at six the next morning. It had rained during the night. But here, at ten thousand feet above sea level, we had a clear light for the big day at Choquequirao, the City of Gold. We left Felicitas, Carlos, and the mules to rest for the day. The path was level. And around the next bend, finally, Choquequirao.
We were still two hours away, but finally we had a sense of what we had hiked down and up a canyon to see. A puzzle, a mystery. Across the ravine and a thousand feet below us, a series of terraces, impossibly steep, had been excavated. Farther up the hill was another set of terraces, partially cleared but still with large clumps of trees. Far above the terraces, directly across from us, was the perfect helipad of the ushnu, "the sacred meeting place of Choquequirao," Ana said. And above that, joined by a neatly mown plaza on the ridge, was more of the site. At this distance, Choquequirao was a giant Sudoku with only a handful of numbers penciled in. In comparison, Machu Picchu is a fully filled color-by-numbers.
"People have known about Choquequirao for centuries," Ana told me. "There was a French explorer, the Count de Sartiges, in the 1800s. But before him there were Spaniards." And after. Some say the city was built during the reign of Pachacutec in the mid-1400s and became the last refuge of the Incas under the final ruler, Manco Inca, a hundred years later. Others say that pieces of pottery found at Choquequirao show that it was inhabited hundreds of years earlier. Each successive visit by anthropologists and archaeologists brings a new theory. And yet Choquequirao gave off a whiff of inscrutability as we came around the bend in the ravine.
"When I was a little girl," Isabel had told me down by the river, "I lived at Marampata and looked after the cows. But my uncles told me that Choquequirao was full of ghosts. 'Never go there,' they warned. Even when a cow wandered off into the ruins, we left her for the ghosts."
There was something ethereal about Choquequirao as we walked out of the trees and onto the paved terrace leading to the deserted city. City may be too grand a word for what has been uncovered so far. Choquequirao is compact in its emptiness. There are a couple of town squares and a handful of Incan stone buildings like the ones at Machu Picchu, with tapered doorways and intricate niches and hooks for hanging lamps or securing ropes for the roof thatching.
Ana pointed out a set of protruding beams at the level of the second floor. "Balconies," she said. "The Incas didn't know about balconies before the Spanish came. There are no balconies in the houses of Machu Picchu, only here." It's a small marvel, a modest discovery.
The latest find is one that hasn't yet made it into the books or blogs on Choquequirao. Four years ago, terraces were discovered on the far side of the mountain, the side away from our approach. On the walls of these terraces, in crude mosaics of white stone, are the figures of twenty-three llamas, some adult, some baby llamitas. Former first lady Eliane Karp has grandly taken some of the credit for this discovery. But as with everything else at Choquequirao, it's hard to know what to make of the llamas.
Puzzlement plus silence equals mystery. And silence is abundant at Choquequirao. During the eight hours we wandered through the ruins, lunched on the plaza, and explored the terraces and forests, we saw two groups of six people in addition to the guardian of the site, perched with a paperback on the heights of the sacred ushnu with an overview of anyone entering. That was all.
From the ushnu, I could look back at the path we had taken—two days to walk down one side of the canyon and up the other. I had become used to thinking of time as airplane time: one hour to get to the airport; check in two hours before departure; ten hours from New York to Lima. But here in front of me were two days, laid out in the zigzags of a rocky trail, the thread of a distant river, the tightness of a hamstring. There was a physicality to time that I never felt on a plane to Cuzco or a train to Machu Picchu.
In the tranquility of that late afternoon on the ushnu, I made the most precious discovery of time as I listened to Rebecca talk with wisdom about Mariluz and Rodrigo, Vilma and Ignacio, the children of Urubamba. She might not have become a pacu like Nazario. But the days spent walking the trails of the apu of Choquequirao had opened my ears to how my daughter had become an intermediary between two worlds.
At five o'clock, the sun set at the far end of the valley, and we began the two-hour hike back to Marampata. As the darkness fell, Rebecca and Ana strapped tiny miner's lamps to their foreheads. I followed their dim beams and voices as closely as I could, wondering how the Incas six hundred years ago, how Hiram Bingham a hundred years ago, how Nazario had felt out this trail, clinging to the protection of the mountain, moving forward without slipping into the Apurímac a mile below. I felt stupid not to have brought a lamp—as stupid, perhaps, as that bus driver the moment before he hit the rock that sent him and Nazario to their death.
Suddenly the path opened up in front of me, bright as dusk. I found Rebecca and Ana standing in wonder, their lamps extinguished. The earth had breathed a thousand fireflies to light our way home.
"I could keep walking like this another week," Rebecca said, taking my arm, "all the way to Machu Picchu." The apu of Choquequirao, or the spirits of Nazario and Hiram Bingham, had brought me gold.
PERU: PLACES & PRICES
The best way to explore the Choquequirao ruins is to fly into Cuzco and then drive to the town of Urubamba (9,400 feet above sea level), in the Sacred Valley. In Cuzco, a handful of tour operators can arrange trips to Choquequirao. Roger Valencia of Auqui Tours has a reputation for quality customized trips to all the famous sites in the Sacred Valley—Machu Picchu, Ausangate—and into the rain forest as well as to other parts of Peru. A five-day hike to Choquequirao includes tents, cots, three-course dinners with wine, and transportation to and from Cuzco or Urubamba (84-261517; auqui.com; five-day hike, $800 per person with a four-person minimum).
Travelers who don't mind carrying their own equipment can take a public bus from Cuzco to Saihuite, where they can hire a taxi or walk the 40 minutes to Cachora, the head of the trail. Farmers host the campsites (a donation is expected), and mules can be rented from concessionaires. Dario Cunza and his wife have a dozen horses and mules for hire at the Hospedaje San Pedro ($10 per day).
High-altitude hiking is best done with a hat, sunscreen, and insect spray. A sturdy rubber-tipped walking pole will save wear and tear on your knees.
The country code for Peru is 51. Prices quoted are for March 2009.
Lodging and Dining
The 30-room Hotel Sol y Luna, in Urubamba, is the luxury choice, with everything from massages to horseback rides to special pachamanca feasts (84-201-620; bungalows, $200). The Sonesta Posadas del Inca, in Yucay, has 84 rooms, a colonial chapel, and even a ghost (84-20-1107; doubles, $160). Part of the Libertador chain and with a private train to Machu Picchu, the Tambo del Inka Luxury Collection Hotel is scheduled to open later this year in Urubamba.
The road from Cuzco to Cachora passes through plenty of small towns, all of which have at least one shop where you can stock up on provisions, including (if you're lucky) the pita-shaped local bread. Campsites along the trail itself also have shops that may sell fruit, bottled beverages, and packets of instant noodles. Fresh water is abundant, but it pays to ask the locals where the stray horses are grazing—and to avoid those streams.
Reading
Hiram Bingham's Lost City of the Incas is a classic that, like the best non-fiction, is only partially true (Phoenix Press, $13). Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (Everyman's, $20) and the photographs of the mid-20th-century Cuzqueñan Martín Chambi ( martinchambi.com) are still my favorite introduction to the complex culture of highlands Peru.
viernes, 2 de octubre de 2009
Pasos para una negociación exitosa, según William Ury
Pasos para una negociación exitosa, según William Ury
Durante el World Negotiation Forum Argentina, William Ury nos propuso una clase magistral de negociación, donde nos explicó sobre como siempre tenemos que encontrar el BATNA de cada problema, acrónimo de “Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement” o “Mejor Alternativa a un Acuerdo Negociado”, y el corazón de su estrategia de negociación se basa en algunos pasos imprescindibles y muy claros para una negociación exitosa.
Salga al balcón
En el medio de una negociación hay que tener la capacidad para distanciarse un poco del tema en cuestión y pensar. Algunos sólo meditan en un parque o plaza, otros consultan con expertos, algunos usan el tetris para balconear, otros fuman y hay otros charlan con sus esposas. Lo importante es salirse del medio y poner tener una visión de mayor espectro para entender cuál es la situación y por que motivos estamos inmersos en esos problemas, para así encontrar una solución mejor y más rápido.
Póngase del lado del contrario
Es la idea de hacer exactamente lo contrario a lo que el otro espera de nosotros en ese momento. Así logramos romper el esquema mental de la contraparte para entender de que van sus problemas. Lo mejor sucede cuando invitamos al otro a ponerse en nuestro lugar, si el otro negociador es hábil, lo hará, y juntos se encontrará el mejor BATNA posible.
Usar criterios objetivos para decidir lo justo
Debe haber equidad en la negociación, objetividad mutua
Identificar los intereses detrás de las posiciones de las personas
Hay que preguntar: ¿Por qué el otro quiere esto?, ¿para qué quiero yo esto?, ¿y por qué no? Diciéndole al otro algo poco habitual: “Ayúdeme a entender sus necesidades” y “Ayúdeme a ayudarlo“. No hay que rechazar propuestas, hay que redireccionarlas, lograr que el otro diga lo que nosotros queremos que diga.
Encontrar siempre las opciones de ganancias mutuas
Creatividad en la negociación, que más puedo agregar? si todo se puede…
Conozca su BATNA (vitál para cualquier negociación!)
El poder de la negociación está influenciado por lo que cada parte considera su “BATNA” (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement/ Mejor Alternativa a un Acuerdo Negociado). Es decir, el mejor curso de acción a tomar, si no logra ponerse de acuerdo. O dicho en una pregunta: ¿Qué hacer si fracasa la negociación? También es importante delimitar lo mínimo que aceptarías.
Construya un puente dorado
Sobre un desfiladero lleno de inseguridades trate de entender las necesidades del otro y que sea atractivo para su empresa y sus posibles decir que sí.
Durante el World Negotiation Forum Argentina, William Ury nos propuso una clase magistral de negociación, donde nos explicó sobre como siempre tenemos que encontrar el BATNA de cada problema, acrónimo de “Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement” o “Mejor Alternativa a un Acuerdo Negociado”, y el corazón de su estrategia de negociación se basa en algunos pasos imprescindibles y muy claros para una negociación exitosa.
Salga al balcón
En el medio de una negociación hay que tener la capacidad para distanciarse un poco del tema en cuestión y pensar. Algunos sólo meditan en un parque o plaza, otros consultan con expertos, algunos usan el tetris para balconear, otros fuman y hay otros charlan con sus esposas. Lo importante es salirse del medio y poner tener una visión de mayor espectro para entender cuál es la situación y por que motivos estamos inmersos en esos problemas, para así encontrar una solución mejor y más rápido.
Póngase del lado del contrario
Es la idea de hacer exactamente lo contrario a lo que el otro espera de nosotros en ese momento. Así logramos romper el esquema mental de la contraparte para entender de que van sus problemas. Lo mejor sucede cuando invitamos al otro a ponerse en nuestro lugar, si el otro negociador es hábil, lo hará, y juntos se encontrará el mejor BATNA posible.
Usar criterios objetivos para decidir lo justo
Debe haber equidad en la negociación, objetividad mutua
Identificar los intereses detrás de las posiciones de las personas
Hay que preguntar: ¿Por qué el otro quiere esto?, ¿para qué quiero yo esto?, ¿y por qué no? Diciéndole al otro algo poco habitual: “Ayúdeme a entender sus necesidades” y “Ayúdeme a ayudarlo“. No hay que rechazar propuestas, hay que redireccionarlas, lograr que el otro diga lo que nosotros queremos que diga.
Encontrar siempre las opciones de ganancias mutuas
Creatividad en la negociación, que más puedo agregar? si todo se puede…
Conozca su BATNA (vitál para cualquier negociación!)
El poder de la negociación está influenciado por lo que cada parte considera su “BATNA” (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement/ Mejor Alternativa a un Acuerdo Negociado). Es decir, el mejor curso de acción a tomar, si no logra ponerse de acuerdo. O dicho en una pregunta: ¿Qué hacer si fracasa la negociación? También es importante delimitar lo mínimo que aceptarías.
Construya un puente dorado
Sobre un desfiladero lleno de inseguridades trate de entender las necesidades del otro y que sea atractivo para su empresa y sus posibles decir que sí.
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