To the Devil's Cave

The first time I heard the story in the previous post was from Lizbeth's brother Yamil, sitting eating breakfast in the Valle del Fuego in Cabanaconde and plugging him for contacts who could tell me more "ghost stories of the sierra".

Yamil has something of a fascination with things supernatural and was an enthusiatic informant. Among his tales of phantom figures and strange energies, he outlined the odd case of Señor Mendoza. "Why don't you look for the schoolteacher Rogelio Falcon", he advised me. "It was his father-in-law that disappeared"

Later that day I went looking for Rogelio. Yamil had told me that his house was close to a comedor half a block from the plaza, but when I asked in that place, they directed me to a street across the other side of the plaza. While I was poking around there, nervous about intruding on someone's private property, a an elderly señora appeared and I asked her about Rogelio.

"That young man there can take you to him, that one going into the shop", she said, pointing way back across the plaza to a figure that with my much younger eyes I could only just make out.

I wandered across and hailed the guy whom the señora had indicated. Lucio was another teacher at the local secondary school, who was originally from the Tacna region. He nodded in recognition when I explained that I was interested in the disappearance of Señor Mendoza. His understanding of the story was similar to Yamil's, although he added a few more details.

We wandered through the streets of Cabanaconde looking for Rogelio; he wasn't at either of the residences that Lucio knew of, but eventually we tracked him down coming out of the school. Rogelio was tall and lean, maybe in his late forties. He was happy to retell the story of his father-in-law and answer my questions. I have to say, I was taken by how amenable people were to a stranger, a gringo even, appearing at random to enquire into the intimacies of local families .

I shouted Rogelio and Lucio a coke, and we went to sit down in the school yard to talk. Rogelio was sceptical about local tales of ghosts and demons, saying they were "things our grandparents talked about, from when there was no electricity and they took fright in the dark". He didn't really think the devil had lured his father-in-law into the wilderness, either, although he swore that the figure of the devil was clearly marked on the hillside above where they had found the señor. "When we went up there in the morning and found him, the devil was there, plain as day", he assured me.

I was intrigued by the whole story. "Why don't we go up there", suggested Rogelio, as if reading my thoughts. We agreed that we would take a trip up to the devil's cave on Friday, after I had come back from my trek down to the oasis at the bottom of the canyon. I enlisted Yamil to go along as well. Yamil was eager, but nervous. He insisted that if we went, we should aim to arrive at 3 o'clock sharp in the afternoon. This was the holiest time of the day -- the hour Christ died -- and would counteract any malignant powers that might be present.

Friday came around, and to my mortification I had drifted so far into "Peruvian time" that I missed my rendezvous with Rogelio at the school, but I eventually tracked him down. We went to pick up Yamil, who was a little jumpy. He showed me a handful of coca leaves that he was carrying in his pocket as a source of good energy. Then he reached into his other pocket and pulled something out. "Here, Simon, take this", he said. He handed me an entire bunch of garlic.

We walked for maybe forty minutes uphill and west from the village, through the chacras where animals were grazing, on a route which headed up towards the slopes of Hualca Hualca. Near a big rock off to the left of the pathway, Rogelio stopped. "That's where we found my "father-in-law", he explained.

He also pointed out the shape on the hillside that was supposed to be the devil. But to his bemusement, it was no longer very obvious at all. We stood for about five minutes, changing our position and craning our necks, but try as we might, we couldn't see any configuration on the hillside that really looked like the devil.

Our next step was to climb up to the cave itself, but Rogelio said he was going to go back. He pointed out a trail that ran along the hillside across the other side of a stream, explaining that it was an interesting walk that went near an Incan archeological site; he was going to head that way, and if we took that route now we would just make it back to the village before nightfall.

We said goodbye to Rogelio and he started back. "I think he was afraid", said Yamil. Or maybe he had just got sick of playing the tourist guide and wanted to get home.

As we started off towards the cave, Yamil produced a battered packet of tobacco from his pocket. "You know how to roll these?", he asked. "Sure", I said looking a little bemused. "Well, can you roll one?", he said, handing me the packet. Tobacco smoke would ward off the malignant spirits as we got closer to the devil's lair, he assured me. I went along with it for the first few puffs, but then handed the cigarette over to Yamil. Scrambling up a hill at 3,500 metres above sea level is taxing enough as it is.

When we got up to the top, we found that there was not one, but several, possible "caves". One was a wide, shallow cleft in the hillside at ground level. There, we found clear evidence of a pago a la tierra, an offering to the earth. There was an empty bottle of wine and other items strewn on the ground, ticker tape of the kind thrown round at carnival hanging from the rock, and in the centre of the opening, a large gob of a waxy substance -- llama fat. In front of the cave was a broad flat stone that looked like it might have been artifically smoothed. From what I've learnt later, this probably served as the mesa or table of the curandero who performed the pago. Around a bend in the rock to the left, was a little pile of animal bones, which from later information I'm guessing were rabbit bones.

Up the rock face to the right was another cave-like opening, narrower and deeper. We scrambled up there, but didn't find anything of particular interest.

Yamil wandered back and forth, scrutinising his surroundings like a professional mystic. "On this side, there's nothing evil", he opined. "I just feel...power". He wandered up and peered at the llama fat. "This place has strong energy", he nodded sagely. "I think this isn't llama fat...it's the fat of a vicuña". I grunted sceptically. Yamil walked round to the side with the rabbit bones. "Oh, I don't like it here", he reported. "This is malign".

We took photos of the hillside at various distances, on the way up and the way down. Eventually, at middle distance, I became convinced that I saw the figure of a face. Meanwhile, Yamil was discovering various creatures and demons appearing at various places in the hillside. We struggled to point them out to one another, but it seemed we were seeing different things.

We only had about half an hour of daylight left, so we decided to head back to the village. Back in Cabanaconde, we downloaded the photos, zoomed in, zoomed out. The photo at the top of this post seems to clearly show a face, if not a demonic one. As we zoomed in on the pictures we had taken inside the higher-up cave, Yamil began to discern a number of details in the rocks around where I was crouched posing for the photo: a grinning cat-like demon here, the face of a soul in torment there.

Yamil was excited by the images that appeared in the photos. "This is a genuine discovery", he assured me. "We can take tourists up there". I was amused, but skeptical. Look long enough at a rocky hillside, and you'll find anything you want, I reasoned.

Yet, when I've shown people the image at the start of this post, they've spotted the "face" almost immediately. A couple who I've shown the upper cave photos to have also spotted the "soul in torment" without too much trouble.

Strange forces at work on the mountain, or figments of overworked imaginations? What do you think?

Señor Mendoza and the Devil's Cave

Señor Mendoza disappeared without warning, in the middle of the night, from his home in the village of Cabanaconde.

His family, including son-in-law Rogelio, a teacher at the local secondary school, searched for him throughout the town and the surrounding fields. But their searches were fruitless: after two days and two nights, Señor Mendoza was still missing.

A call was made to inform Señor Mendoza's daughter, who lives in Spain. The daughter, fearing for her father's life, went to consult a local curandero. The curandero did the required rituals, and then told her:

Your father is not dead. He is in the same place where they have been looking for him. They should send the night praying, and scattering holy water, and in the morning they should look again in the same place.

This message from the Spanish curandero was communicated to the searchers back in Cabanaconde, who did as had been instructed.

The next morning, they went out early to search again, on a pathway through the chacras up towards a place called Puqio. There, about forty-five minutes from the village, they found Señor Mendoza huddled under a big rock, below an opening in the mountainside which locals know as the Devil's Cave.


"At first we thought the devil had taken him", says Rogelio. "Now we think maybe he just wandered off in a coma. The place we found him was below the devil's cave, well below. And he he'd walked quite a long way to reach the path, from where he had been on the mountainside. That's where we found his glasses and his blanket".

"But it's true that where we found him, the devil is marked in the rocks of the hillside above. In the morning when we went up there, you could see the form of the devil, plain as day".

Maybe Señor Mendoza had just been absent-mindedly sleep walking. But somehow he survived on the barren hillside, without food or water, for three days and three freezing nights

What is true is that when they brought him back to the village, his wife showed her relief by scolding him: "What were you thinking?", she asked. "Why did you wander off like that and lose yourself in the wilderness?"

The old man looked at her strangely. "But why do you ask?", he said, "when it was you who took me there".

Señor Mendoza insisted that his wife had led him into the wilderness. When he had tried to walk back, she had blocked his path and wouldn't let him leave.

After that, for about a month, the señor kept getting up in the middle of the night and trying to leave the house. His wife, his daughter and son-in-law had to watch out for him, and restrain him when he tried to wander off.

This continued until the family contacted a local curandero. After ascertaining the reasons for the old man's restlessness, the curandero took him back up to the place where he had been found. The curandero performed a ceremony called a pago a la tierra, involving an appropriate mix of plant and animal offerings to the earth. After that, the señor was cured, and he once again slept soundly at night time.

"The curandero said he had left part of his soul out on the moutainside", says Rogelio. "We had to go out there and bring it back".

Catching Up and Travelling in Circles

Because I'm so long-winded and becuase there's always a tension between doing and writing, I tend to find that when I'm travelling my blogs are always catching up with one another, and often get out of order.

So it is that although I had started a more narrative-style piece from my time in the Colca, that's only going to get finished if I have time tomorrow, while in the interim I'm dashing off a quick 'planned movements' post.

Right now I'm back in Lima. It was Lizbeth's birthday yesterday, and Hugo had two returning Swiss clients to pick up from the airport, so it was decided to have the celebrations in Lima at the house of Lizbeth's uncle Antonio, attended by numerous members of her labrynthine family.

I've just bought myself a bus ticket to Ayacucho So far on this trip I've travelled Lima-Arequipa-Cuzco-Santa Teresa-Cuzco-Arequipa-Colca-Arequipa-Lima. I'm currently planning on working my way from Ayacucho through Andahuaylas and Abancay (check the map) to Cuzco and from there back to Arequipa. I will have described a big circle.

From there, I plan to head back to the Colca for a few days, and will also try to fit in some trekking and climbing. Hugo has offered to go with me to Ampato, but you can never tell if he's serious, and in any case I insist on doing a 'warm-up' trek or climb. At this stage, a likely possibility is the Salkantay trek in Cuzco, which is a more gruelling and remote alternative to the Inca Trail, with ascents up to 4,600 metres.

It's ironic. Most travellers who arrive in Lima are eager to escape the crowds, the pollution, the insecurity, and, in winter, the grey overcast skies. Sunshine, laid back villages, and picturesque landscapes beckon in the Peruvian interior. Yet, after nearly four weeks in the more tourist-favoured regions, coming back to Lima is a relief in a number of ways. Most prominent, surprisingly is the climate. June skies might be unremittingly dull, but the moist air feels like a balm after the rock-bottom humidity and ever present dust of the sierra in the dry season. In Arequipa, I've always got mild nosebleeds and lingering snuffliness, and in the past used to think that smoking was partly to blame, but it's been the same this time and I haven't been smoking. Yet, a couple of hours after arriving in Lima, all my cold-like symptoms had disappeared.

Another nice change in Lima is the food. There's certainly plenty of tasty eating to be had in the sierra, but you have to shop around a bit, and the food can be plain and stodgy at times. Lima is home of comida criolla, the cuisine developed in Peru with strong influences from Andalucia, and it is also where Chinese, Italian African, and Japanese touches have made the greatest impact. Seafood is generally delicious, and while chili, coriander and other spices add zing to most dishes and even in the cheap places, food is normally presented with flair.

Although I'm biased by the fact that questions of traffic and transport are a bit of an obsession of mine, I think I'm on reasonably firm ground on saying that they are among the most important issues facing Lima at the moment. The surge in economic activity over the past few years is a generally good thing, but the greater disposable income has meant more more people on the move, and more vehicles on the road. Traffic in the past was chaotic and dangerous, but usually flowed to some degree. The last couple of nights, we have found ourselves in Hugo's hired 4x4, absolutely stuck in crawling traffic, smoke-belching kombis mixing with the newer vehicles of the aspirational middle class. It is starting to resemble Bangkok.

To be fair, there are a lot of public works projects underway, some of which have already delivered sweeping new freeways and interchanges. Luis Castañeda is making a big legacy push before his term as mayor expires, and a number of projects are to be inaugurated on January 18 2010, including a bus way and the ill-fated electric train that was begun in the 1980s. It will be interesting to see what improvements occur, but Lima remains unique among large South American cities in not having a mass public transit system. If it wants to become a truly world class city, it desparately needs either a proper metro or a fully integrated busway system like Bogotá's Transmilenio.

With its football team at an all-time low, Peru is in need of sporting heroes. Fortunately, it has found one in the impressively-named Kina Malpartida, current women's world heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Last night, almost everyone in Lima was glued to the nearest TV screen watching Kina defend her world title against a Brazilian opponent. There was even a big screen attracting a large crowd in the Plaza Mayor. Kina's defense was comprehensive, totally dominating the fight and unleashing a massive straight right in the third round that convinced the referee to end the bout early. The crowds clapped and cheered wildly. In an ironic twist in this macho society, a tough woman has restored some of the deflated national pride and self-belief.

Images of the Colca

This post is a bit of a cop out given that blogging is supposed to be a primarily written medium and I generally aim to do a reasonable job of narration and description.

However, much of what I've learned and experienced over the past week or so has to go into my 'enthnographic research methods' project, while some things won't show up until my Master's thesis next year. I'm therefore reserving the more writerly tasks for things that I'm going to get graded on, and this post is little more than a series of glorified captions.

So, here are some snaps from my time in the Colca Valley last week.

This is a view over the village of Cabanaconde from near the mirador of Achachuia (a lookout point into the nearby canyon). The mountain in the background is 6,025-metre Hualca Hualca, from whose slopes Cabanaconde has traditionally received most of its water. Unsurprisingly, it is considered the main apu or mountain divinity for the village.



Anyone who has been near Peru, or been subjected to any of my accounts of travels there, has probably seen enough images of the Colca Canyon. But I think this one is worth including anyway. Taken from Achachuia, it gives a reasonable idea of scale, showing the drop from mountaintop to the river. This is not the deepest or most precipitous part of the canyon -- the section near the Cruz del Condor is considerably more spectacular. However, Gelmond assures me that the deepest part of the canyon is actually quite a lot further downstream, when the river has already become the Majes. That's something I'll have to check out some day.

The green strip in the above picture is Sangalle, which was once a verdant orchard, but now offers tourist accommodation, camping, and swimming pools. The area known as the Oasis is owned by Lizbeth's family and currently administered mainly by her younger brother Pablo. Pablo is aiming to convert the accommodation at the Oasis from rustic bamboo bungalows with dirt floors to rooms made of adobe, with tile floors, corrugated-iron and palm thatch roofs, and glass windows. He is building a new kitchen with space for a restaurant, and hopes to install an electric generator in the near future.

The picture shows rows of adobe bricks drying in the sun. They are made of mud poured into a mold, reinforced with wiry ichu grass, and then left to dry for five to six days. After this time, the adobe is rock hard. Although adobe doesn't withstand earthquakes well, it is still the dominant building material in most of the Colca Valley, and would certainly offer improved sleeping conditions for tourists at the Oasis.

The latest addition to Pablo's modernisation drive is a large refrigerator, which will apparently run on gas. Apparently, it took 14 men to bring the fridge down Cabanaconde. If you've ever done the trek down into the Colca Canyon, or something similar, you can appreciate what a monumental task that must have been. As a reward for their effort, Pablo's father put on a burrillada. Translated literally: they ate a donkey.


Cabanaconde's corn is famous as the tastiest and most nutritious in the valley, and perhaps in all of Peru. The harvest ends in May, and at the time of my visit, people were mainly occupied in collecting, deleafing, and drying the corn which had been collected in great heaps in 'corrals' after the harvest. The señora in the photo below kindly agreed to let me watch and learn about the process and take some photos of her and her family at work.


After nearly a week in Cabanaconde and the Oasis, I headed to Yanque, a village about two hours up the valley towards Chivay. There, I was met by Edy, who works at Lizbeth and Hugo's place and is studying gastronomy in Arequipa. He is from the village of Ichupampa, about 30 minutes walk from Yanque, and was back there for a couple of days for his birthday. He had offered to show me his village while I was in the Colca valley.

On the way to Yanque, I discovered that the locality was coming to the end of four days of fiestas. The final flourish was an afternoon of bullfighting at the local ring. On our way towards Ichupampa, Edy and I decided to stay and watch.

This is a view of part of the crowd watching the bullfighting, including the band, which struck up a Mexican-style flourish as the bullfighters entered the ring, and then continued for the rest of the time with variations on the distinctive, swirling local melodies. The mountain at the right is Hualca Hualca (seen from a different side than in Cabanaconde), while the peak poking its head over the horizon, Putin-like, is Sabancaya, the volcano that erupted in 1994, melting the ice cap of nearby Ampato and leading to the discovery of the mummy Juanita.


There were four bullfighters, one each from Puno, Arequipa and Cuzco, and one all the way from Venezuela. Below is an action shot as one of the more boisterous bulls managed to separate the bullfighter from his cape. We stayed to watch four bulls, and left before the toro de muerte, or the bull which is to be killed. I kind of preferred it that way.


Between the bulls was an impressive exhibition of the marinera, a dance of criollo (Spanish colonial) origin and practiced with the greatest attention on the north coast of Peru. The dance follows a pattern whereby the women elegantly dances around waving her handkerchief at the man, who describes tight circles on his horse and occasionally takes off his hat to salute the lady. It was pleasant to watch, and I was particulalry impressed with the performance of the horse, which they call a caballo de paso.


The below picture is of Edy with his aunt outside her small 'milk product plant' in Ichupampa. Edy's aunt and uncle have small plots of land which they largely use to graze animals, as do most of the residents of the locality. They received some assistance from an NGO called DESCO to establish the plant and were taught how to make saleable cheeses and yoghurts under appropriate conditions of hygiene. Their daughter was the one who was mainly responsible for the commerical side of the process, and she has now moved to the Majes Valley with her husband, although she is still assisting her parents to an extent. Edy's uncle told me that it is difficult with just the two, but they are struggling on, and that the NGO 'puts pressure' on them to keep the business running.

The milk is pasteruised and flavouring is added to the yoghurt, but not preservative. This means that it only lasts 3 or 4 days, and most is sold locally. We bought a cheese to take with us to Arequipa, and some delicious yoghurt which we consumed in the bus on the way.

That Incan Ruin in the Back Yard

If you've done the rounds of the Incan ruins in Cuzco, the stone work in the photos below should be quickly recognisable. The large, rectangular blocks, smooth surfaces, and uncanny fit, are all hallmarks of the architectural structures to which the Incas accorded importance. The contrast is notable with the rubbly stone work to the right of the picture, while it can be seen that these stones and the Incan blocks have all been glued together with the dried mud used as cement in the traditional adobe constructions of the region.

For various reasons, I didn't get a very good angle on either photo, and you can't quite see that the large, 'Incan' blocks form the left hand side of a doorway, which has been filled in with the rubbly stones. The right hand side of the doorway (out of picture) was also made of large, smooth blocks.

So, is this doorway in some obscure corner of Machu Picchu, or one of the lesser ruins dotted around Cuzco and included in a tourist route? No, in fact it is sitting quietly in the back yard of a private residental property in Cabanaconde in the province of Caylloma, Arequipa. The doorway was apparently part of the palace of a regional Incan governor. Now it's an anomalous structure out the back of someone's little corner shop.

It's things like this which kind of sum up what is so attractively offbeat and incongruous about Peru.

I'm not going to reveal the exact location, so as not to subject the owner of the property to excessive harassment. Yes, I know that I only have about thirty readers, of whom most probably won't be in the region in the near future. But it only takes someone from the Lonley Planet or similar to happen across this post, and the next thing you know the place has become a tourist curiosity, whether or not its owner is ready or willing.

As you'd imagine in the case of a piece of architecture that has presumably sat virtually untouched for over 500 years, there are stories of strange powers attached to the Incan doorway. However, I won't say any more for now -- the details need to be worked into the report for my ethnographic research project.

Arequipita Linda

In Lima, you almost have to know what you're looking for to notice the effects of the Peru's rapid economic growth over the last few years (it's only since 2005 that the GDP per capita has exceeded that obtained in the 1970s). In Arequipa, the changes are much more obvious.

The calle Mercaderes, which runs east off the main plaza, and is the retail heart of the city for middle class shoppers, has been cleared of traffic along all its five blocks, with the sidewalks turned into flat tiles merging with the street's cobblestones. What used to be a chaotic though vibrant scene, pedestrians tipping off the pavements into the path of the congested traffic, is now an almost European-style mall.

Some of the principal avenues have been repaved with ashphalt and are near enough as smooth as those in a typical Western city, while I'm informed that upgrades for several more are scheduled. Cobblestone alleyways through the historic centre have been opened up and beautified, with the addition of bourgeois touches like flower pots and park benches.

Yet the public development is exceeded by the private. Retail has gone bigger, brighter, and more formalised. Nestled under its 6,000-metre volcanoes, Arequipa now actually has a couple of stores selling mountain gear. On the calle Mercaderes there's a menswear store, while on La Merced heading south from the plaza exotic new shops selling beds, furniture and solar water heating systems have appeared since my last visit. There's a diverse array of new cafes, restaurants, and hotels, while tourist oriented pizzerias, laundromats, alpaca-wear boutiques and, of course, travel agencies have filled in the available space on Santa Catalina, San Francisco and Jerusalen. Tasteful advertising frames most of the new businesses. Local makers of banners and signs rustically carved in wood have clearly enjoyed bonanza years.

Interspersed amongst the ubiquitous yellow 'Tico' taxi bouncing over the cobblestones are a handful of Hyundais and Toyotas and the occasional shiny 4WD. On the streets of the city, as far as I can tell, there are fewer beggars, vendors of random consumer items, or children selling sweets.

Walk from the centre into the inner suburbs and you see repaired walls, painted facades, less rubbish, even the odd private car or pitched roof. In streets such as those leading up to Hugo and Lizbeth's place there are more trees, shrubs and cacti planted along the sidewalks.

What it all adds up to is the significant expansion of that elusive entity, for Latin America, the middle class. If there's something unreflexively thought of as 'development', Arequipa has been seeing some of it. It's not as if there is exaggerated, flashy wealth sprouting up next to complete misery. Rather, the wealth seems to have been spread around moderately well -- perhaps coming down in splashes, instead of a trickle. More people have the means and the confidence to spend, and things to consume are appearing to meet their demand.

Much is still the same: the ancient, dirty kombis, the cracked and crumbling sidewalks, the pollution. But with the rough edges of decay and desperation softened, Arequipa is on its way from being a place of melancholy beauty to becoming a truly spectacular city.

I have to admit that it's surprised me somewhat. I've been used to reading the trenchant criticisms from the likes of Humberto Campodónico and other commentors, of the Peruvian government's unreformed neoliberalism and failure to take advantage of the boom times, the claimed manipulation of poverty statistics, and the lack of progress with economic diversification, health, education, pensions, or improved labour conditions.

However, the development that has occured is still consistent with those criticisms. So much money has flowed into the country, and hence government coffers, that although the adminstration hasn't done anything particularly progressive, in absolute terms it has had greatly increased resources to deploy. Arequipa is a mining region, and has benefited from the Canon Minero, a portion of the taxes paid by mining companies that goes directly to the affected regions. It's also the country's second-biggest, and most orderly, urban area, with an existing civil society and a core of educated, ambitious residents capable of developing an interconnected domestic economy if given the chance. If anywhere is going to take advantage of good times, it's here.

The question is how widepread and durable all this is. My impressions so far are all from walking and driving around the centre of Arequipa city, which has always been among the most middle class places in Peru. What is it like in outskirts and the pueblos jovenes? Have they also seen improvements? What about the rural areas? Have the beggars and street sellers really got jobs or improved their living standards, or have they been shovelled away out of sight by a government wanting to give a good impression to tourists and investors?

There's also the odd fact that for the moment, at least some Peruvians are more optimistic than those elsewhere in the world. Several people have told me that "the world economic crisis isn't really affecting Peru". Perhaps not that much so far. For one thing, at a macro level, Peru's government and major banks (like those of Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia) have managed their accounts with technocratic efficency and didn't do anything stupid during the good times. There are also enough accumulated foreign reserves for the government to be able to apply an economic stimulus (through not to the same extent as Chile, which having squirreled away earnings from its copper exports, is one of the few countries to be able to act as Keynes foresaw and inject funds from its savings rather than borrowings).

At some stage, however, the world situation is going to affect Peru. The downturn of soaring mineral prices that have driven much of the economic growth, lesser demand and lower prices for the 'non-traditional' agricultural and garment exports, and fewer tourists arriving, will mean that the boom will end and export-led growth will likely slow dramatically. That's when it will become apparent just how much progress has been made with important but less visible things like the improvement of education, the recovery of civil society, the establishment of basic infrastucture in rural areas, and the integration of these areas into the wider economy.

In Arequipa, I see the growth in retail and services as being driven by an expanding middle class, rather than being just the rosy flush of a transient mining and tourist boom. But so much is directed at the international tourist that the concerns I outlined in this post still hold. Since I was last here, the number of travel agencies has increased significantly again, while tourist numbers or destinations haven't really changed. What will happen when all those people who have sunk loans or savings into their shiny new offices come up against the reality of fierce competition for dwindling numbers of clients?

Peru has seen booms before, often based around a single raw material, and generally dissolving into thin air leaving little more than social dislocation and a damaged environment. This time, will the development stick? Or will the raised expectations of the last ten years make the come down even harsher and more destabilising?

Voices of the Not So Poor

It wouldn't cost that much more, in international terms, to fly from Lima to Arequipa, but for me it wouldn't be quite right. After arriving, I wanted to work my way into the country by land, as if making its acquaintance again.

On my way to the bus station in Lima, I had a more jovial and conversational taxi driver. Still preoccupied with the theme of security, I asked him which parts of Lima were more or less safe. He thought a second and said: "only really the very centre". He said that things had got no better in the last couple of years. What was worse for citizens was that the very police supposed to protect them were sometimes implicated in the crimes. He cited two cases where police were accused of robbing motorists who had stopped or been pulled over.

My driver acknowledged that some things had been improved in Lima; public works and the modernization of some parts, but that while credit had to be given to Luis Castañeda for gettig things done, "no one holds him to account".

He was particularly critical of public education and health services:

"if it's an emergency and you're dying, you'll get treatment; anything else, they send you off to wait, even though you're sick. Then you get the basic treatment, but they send you off to get a whole range of scans and tests, which of course you have to pay for. Or there's some process to get reimbursed, but you know, those processes...and then you have to pay more for brand medicines, otherwise you only get the generic ones, which aren't effective, and you have to take ten times as much".

We moved on to talking about politics, and my driver reported himself unimpressed with Alan Garcia, who this time around was only doing better because, he had more money:

"Last time things were ok from 1985 to 1987, until the money ran out. It's like, in football, if you've got some skill, you're playing with good team mates, you get on the field, you'll do ok".

Not quite following the analogy, I asked: "So, is Alan a bad player surrounded by good team mates, or a good player surrounded by bad team mates?"

"I think he's a bad player surrounded by bad team mates", said my driver.

His theory on what underlaid Peru's problems was a familar one: "insitutionalized" corruption, at every level. I asked him how he thought that could be changed, and after a moment's thought he replied: "with difficulty...with great difficulty".

At the Ormeño bus terminal on avenida Javier Prado, surgical masks were again ubiquitous. The terminal has been improved, and now has a cafe, nice seats and a TV. However, passengers were scare, and when the Arequipa bus was called only a handful of people hopped on. The announcement for the bus indicated its destinations would include Cañete, Chincha, Ica, Nazca, and Camaná, before arriving in Arequipa. This contradicted the stated "direct" service of the Royal Class buses, but given the paucity of clients, I could forgive them.

On board, I struck up a conversation with practically my only fellow passengers in the front of the bus. Carlos and Claudio were from Ayapata, which they explained to me is reached from Juliaca, first heading southeast to the frigid Andean town of Macusani and later dropping down to around 3,000 metres on the way towards the jungle of Puno.

They explained that the main industry there is gold mining. With the current high prices of gold, it has become worthwhile to work over the tailings of old mines, and business is good. Carlos is a middle man, buying the gold off the prospectors, while Claudio is himself a prospector. He said that on average he could get 2 grams per day, worth around $250 USD, but some days there could be 10 or even 20 grams.

Carlos told me that in their territory, "the state is almost entirely absent", and the government does nothing for them, except for the paved highway from Macusani to Puno, "which in any cse was put in by Fujimori". He also criticised the level of bureaucracy that the central government imposes on the regions, and makes it difficult to get any projects moving. "They make an example out of the Puno regional government for only spending 1 percent of its investment budget, but it's them who made it so hard to do anything".

I asked if the state didn't even provide basic functions like police and health services.

"No, we threw the police out", said Carlos. He said that the police post used to be staffed by unwilling recruits sent from the likes of Lima and Arequipa, who didn't fit into the local culture. He claimed that they abused local women, and hassled local youths by constantly imposing fines on them. Now, security was provided by the ronda campesina, a kind of district-wide, rural neighbourhood watch. If a thief was caught in the community, "we take care of him ourselves".

In their community, Carlos and Claudio had developed a cooperative project to generate hydroelectric power, but wanted to expand it from 100 MW to 400 MW, to be able to supply the whole district with electricity. They had met with similar community groups from Junin who had received loans from NGOs to support them, and they wanted my advice on how to get something similar going. I gave them the names and addresses of some Peruvian NGOs that could possibly help.

According to Carlos, the community was welcoming the development of the Interoceanic Highway between Brazil and Peru, which, if they could get a 13km connecting road built, would greatly improve the ability to get their products to market, including subtropical fruits from the lower part of the territory.

This would be a typical story from the development literature: mariginalized rural, ethnic community, ignored or abused by the central government, working things out for themselves and becoming more empowered in the process. But reality usually has something incongruous to add to the picture.

As Carlos dropped off to sleep, Claudio, who had been pretty quiet, began to tell me about the Chinese herbal medicine for which he was a sales representative. I'll have to find the pamphlet that he gave me for the exact name and description, but it apparently involves different pastes, creams and tonics, which cure a range of ills, and are sent prefabricated from China according to a secret recipe. According to Claudio, this medicine was originally introduced to Peru after some soldiers with lingering ailments from the Peru-Ecuador jungle frontier war found that it was the only thing that worked for them. It was now so popular that a company representative had been received in the government palace by Alejandro Toledo.

Disturbed that Claudio was turning quacky on me, I said ¨what about the gold mining?". "Oh, I do both", he said. He explained that the medicine was sold through a system of "affiliation", and offered to get me the affilitation papers out of his suitcase. I politely declined, and adjusted my conceptual settings to recognize the possibility of a Chinese-origin Amway scheme operating out of remote Quechua communities.

The jet lag was still messing with me, and by the time we got to Ica, I was practically the only one still awake. A young guy occupied the seat behind me, and I apologised for the angle my seat was pushed back at. He introduced himself as Abraham, and said he was originally from Chumbivilca, a remote pueblito about halfway between Arequipa and Cuzco. He was an operator of heavy machinery, and had been working on construction projects in the area affected by the 2007 earthquake. He said that he earned about 1,500 soles monthly for working "at least" 10 hours a day, six days a week.

This, readers, is now up to what would count as a "decent" salary in Peru. Even as the sole income for a family of four or five, it would still leave them miles above the poverty line. But take into account the conditions and the hours of work, and you'll admit that what amounts to $125 USD per week is nothing to get excited about.

I asked Abraham how the reconstruction of the earthquake-affected zone was going and he said it was more or less on schedule. I recalled that he would mainly be working on the highways. What about the planned rebuilding of people's houses, I asked?

"Ahh, well, that's going a bit slower", he said.

Planned Movements

On my first morning back in Arequipa, Hugo rang from his jungle lodge near Santa Teresa and insisted that I come and visit him there as soon as possible. He would meet me in Cuzco, from where we would travel together to the lodge, spend 4--5 days and then return to Arequipa. Hugo said he wouldn't be returning to the lodge for a while after that, so it was best that I come now. I said ok, but I would travel on Wednesday the 28th, rather Monday or Tuesday as Hugo had suggested. I needed a couple of days to recover from travelling, and run some errands in Arequipa.

Later I spoke to Lizbeth's brother Pablo about wanting to spend some time in the Colca valley talking to people for my ethnography project, doing some reconnaissance for next year's thesis research, and just experiencing a little of campesino life. He said I should come up to Cabanaconde for 10--15 days after returning from Santa Teresa.

So if I do manage to do the intended mountain climbing it will be a bit later, which is not a bad thing, as it gives me time to adjust to the altitude and get over the minor irritants like the cold I seem to be coming down with and the handful of bed-bug bites I picked up in Lima. Throw in a possible visit to my new acquaintances in Ayapata (see previous entry) and the planned trip to Ayacucho, and that just about uses up my entire time here. Too much to do, etc.

A Marriage Made in Heaven

Arequipan adventure travel agency Zarate Expeditions and the provincial government of Arequipa are collaborating to produce the second edition of "the world's highest mass marriage" on 1-2 December this year. Couples are invited to get married in either a civil or religious ceremony, on the summit of the El Misti volcano at the breathtaking altitude of 5,825 metres above sea level.

The first mass marriage on the El Misti took place in November 2000, when a total of 36 couples made the trek to perform their nuptials under the summit's giant iron cross.

Apart from the obligatory stab at the Guiness Book of Records, the organizers are hoping to promote Arequipa both as a tourist destination and as a centre of religious faith (the city is known as the "Rome of Peru" for its staunch traditional Catholicism).

The event is also intended to promote the family unit and the harmony of cultures, since, according to the organizers, the journey to the summit will be "a pilgrammage [achieved] through the force of love" (though I would also recommend consideration of Diamox for those couples hoping to make it to the altar).

The proprietor of Zarate Expeditions is Mickey Zarate, known for discovering the famous "mummy Juanita" on Nevado Ampato in 1995, along with American explorer Johan Reinhard

As well as the agency and the provincial government, the police, army, Red Cross and tourism commission are lending their support. The organizers are also looking for sponsors to support the resources required to carry out the event.

Anyone interested or seeking further information can contact Zarate Expeditions directly.

Categories: Arequipa, El Misti, Peru, marriage, high altitude

Renzo's Story

Eleven-year old Renzo had the cheeky grin and ready patois of a kid from Lima's barrios. He was happy enough when he said goodbye to his parents at the somewhat chaotic Enlaces station, beside the roaring traffic of the avenida Javier Prado, and boarded the bus with Hugo and I.

On the sixteen-hour journey to Arequipa, though, he was sleepless, panicky and intermittently nauseous. By the time we got off blinking in the White City's morning sunlight, Hugo, by nature sympathetic, was getting slightly impatient.

Over the next few days Renzo suffered from severe separation anxiety. He cried quietly in the room he had to share with Gerardo, and when a call was put through to his parents, sobbed down the phone to his mother.

Lizbeth was less than empathetic. "Aunt!" she shouted down the phone, in front of her nephew. "He's been blubbering all day! He misses your teats!" I told her I was taken aback by such vulgarity, and she chortled.

When he forgot his homesickness, Renzo brought out a series of anecdotes of life in the barrio of San Juan de Miraflores. This is one of the "old new" areas of Lima; once a pueblo joven, it gradually built itself up into working class respectability - though is now plagued by the crime and insecurity that spares few parts of Peru's teeming capital.

This time it was Lizbeth who was a bit shocked, as she listened to the tales. "That area's gone downhill", she said, shaking her head. "When I used to stay there as a student, it was tranquilo".

With casual relish, Renzo told us of how he had been attacked in the park where he liked to play football. "One time I was in the park with my bike, and these guys came up and robbed me at gunpoint. I resisted, and tried to get away on my bike, but they ran after me and threw me to the ground. They stole my helmet and left me there".

How old were these guys, I wanted to know. About seventeen, thought Renzo. And they had pulled a gun on him for his cycle helmet? "It was a motorbike helmet", he said, as if that explained everything.

Renzo shrugged that off plegmatically as an isolated incident and said it didn't worry him to go back to the park. "I'm not afraid of anything", he claimed. But playing and wandering on the streets, he'd been witness to at least two other violent crimes.

One time he'd seen a young guy with his girlfriend get attacked by four muggers, who stabbed the young guy in the leg before running off with his possessions. "Blood came spurting out", according to Renzo.

The people of the neighbourhood came out en masse, but the muggers were long gone. The kid was taken to hospital, where a piece of the knife was removed from his thigh.

Another time Renzo saw a man get grabbed by two guys who ordered him to "give us all your money". When the robbery produced little yield, they got angry, shouted "fuck, why don't you have any money?", and hit him in the head with a tyre iron.

Renzo also claimed to have witnessed a gunfight, just a couple of blocks up from his house.

"The U and the Alianza (Alianza Lima and Universitario de Deportes, rival groups of football hooligans) were fighting, and the police came and started to fire in the air. Then everyone started to shoot at each other", he recounted.

Renzo said he watched from a roof, about 6 or 7 metres away through a peephole in a steel wall. Had anyone been hit in the gunfight? "Sure, lots of them were hit - in the leg, in the arm, the chest, the stomach, the face".

Two of the Alianza cohort were killed, said Renzo. The police were greatly outnumbered and retired from the scene. "Later the Alianza went to look for the guys from the U, and killed seven of them. They cut their throats with big knives".

It was hard to know how much of this to believe, as when I pressed for details of the incidents in question they were supplied in exaggerated, improbable, and somewhat inconsistent fashion. But Renzo's world was was starting to sound uncomfortably like City of God.

He was fascinated with the street gangs that wandered through his barrio from even rougher areas like Villa El Slavador and San Juan de Lurigancho, home of Lima's notorious penal facility.

Like a budding social worker, Renzo deconstructed their criminality. "They're people who haven't had any education, their parents have treated them bad, that's why they're like that. It's not their fault; it's the fault of the parents".

So he wasn't afraid of the gangs, I asked a little incredulously. He shook his head.

"They don't do anything to us kids, they just fight amongst themselves. They steal the arms to defend themselves against the other gangs, or the police. Sometimes the commit a crime so they can get taken to jail, then they escape and steal weapons off the police".

So when the gangs were around, was he happy to just play football in the normal places?

Renzo paused. "Well, when they're around, I don't play. I want to watch them". He ruminated a second. "It's ok for me. But I do worry about when my parents go out. I worry that it's not safe for them. I can take a risk, but I don't want them to. I say 'no mamá, don't go out on the street'"

For all the bravado, I wondered if Renzo wouldn't prefer to live somewhere that didn't feature acts of mortal violence as part of life's daily tapestry. He'd grumped that in suburban Arequipa "there's no kids; there's no football on the street", but I asked him if he wouldn't like to be somewhere safer.

He shrugged. "I'd live wherever my parents were".

"Ok, so assuming your parents were with you, where would you prefer to live?", I queried.

"If my parents were in Lima, I'd prefer to live in Lima", he affirmed. "If my parents were in Arequipa, I'd live in Arequipa".

A la Hora Peruana

Have I ever written about "Peruvian time"? Oh yes. Here, here and here.

So it is with considerable amusement that I read in an almost Onion-like article from the Associated Press that the Peruvian government is launching a "plan to combat lateness"

According to the article, "schools, businesses and government institutions will be asked to stop tolerating 'la hora peruana', or 'Peruvian time' - which usually means an hour late". On March 1, it was intended that sirens would sound and church bells ring out, alerting 27 million Peruvians to synchronize their watches.

In part, this appears to be political points-scoring by president Alan Garcia, who likes to contrast his own punctuality with the notorious tardiness of former president Alejandro Toledo.

But to the extent that it's sincere, just synchronising watches and requesting everybody to turn up earlier for work is not going to change Peruvians' deep-seated, fatalistic attitude to time. Rather like life, it's seen as a force that is nebulous, only partly controllable, and prone to unexplained discontinuities.

Some of this perception is captured by the expression "ahorita", a word used from Mexico through Central America to Peru and Bolivia. As a dimunitive of ahora (now), you could be forgiven for accepting the dictionary translation, which defines it as "right now". But, as anyone who has lived or travelled in these countries will tell you, instead of applying more precision, the dimunitive serves to make the meaning more fuzzy or liquid, spreading out the "now" until its boundaries are no longer discernible.

When someone says that something will happen "ahorita", they are usually indicating that, though they are hopeful that the event will occur soon, they will not be held responsible for designating any specific moment.

"Ahorita vengo", for example, would be literally translated as "I'll be right back", but someone seeking to truly understand the import of the phrase should take it as meaning something like "I may be some time".

There are numerous examples of Peruvians' strange conception of time, of which I only have space to cite a couple. Among the many occasions when my Peruvian ex-girlfriend made we wait an unreasonable amount was an afternoon when had we agreed to meet at 4:00 pm to go to a movie. We decided that she would pick me up after her university classes at the office of Incaventura, where I was explaining trekking and climbing expeditions to groups of tourists.

At 4:15 I got a call to the office; it was Paola. "Hey, it looks like my lecture is going to run over time", she said in an apologetic tone. "He's already kept us here longer to explain something and it'll be another ten minutes before we get out. Sorryyy"

I was puzzled. "But what time was your class supposed to finish?", I asked. "Four o'clock", she said with a hint of impatience, as if I should have known that.

To get from the university to the tour office required her to take two minibuses and then walk several blocks. In the absolutely best combination of circumstances, it was twenty-five minutes away. Exactly which wormhole in the space-time continuum she had ever planned to crawl through to meet me at 4:00 pm, I'll never know.

Lest one take all this personally - and in the case of my ex-girlfriend it was so frequent and exaggerated that I did - it's worth observing that the same approach is routine even for esteemed individuals or for very important events

In my most recent trip to Peru, I attended a wedding in Arequipa, which was scheduled for midday Saturday. Some friends of mine from New Zealand, travelling through the Andean countries, also happened to be in Arequipa at the time, and one of them had experienced some health problems which required a specialist appointment at the local private hospital.

The appointment was for the same Saturday as the wedding, at 9:00 am, and I was to attend as a translator. I went to the hospital on Saturday morning already in my suit, thinking to be on the safe side I would plan to go straight from the hospital to the wedding.

By the time the medical issues were sorted out, it was getting late (the doctor had arrived at the hospital twenty-five minutes after our appointment time). The church where the wedding was to take place was only six blocks up the hill, so at 11:45, when everything seemed to be more or less ok, I left the hospital and hurried up to the church.

Arriving about 11:59, I was the second person there. I introduced myself to the bride's aunt, who was standing outside, and we went into the church. People started to drift in; about 12:10, the bride arrived - surprisingly early, and before the groom - and not long after, the ceremony started.

I can recall looking around and feeling a bit disappointed for Chriss that the beautiful colonial church was only one third full for her wedding. But about fifteen minutes into the ceremony, I turned around again and saw that most of the pews were full. People continued to arrive through the readings and the hymns, and eventually it was packed.

Almost last of all arrived the bridesmaids, who strolled into the church about 12:30, looking only very slightly embarassed, and took their place in one of the front pews.

So the lateness has no real rhyme or reason, and can't even be relied on to be consistent. In at least one case I found myself in an embarassing situation when someone I was relying on to be half an hour late actually arrived twenty minutes early.

It would be easy to assume that this is a result of a relaxed, straw-in-mouth approach to life by people who like to take it easy. But in fact the notable thing about Peruvians is that they often seem to be in a terrible hurry. People bump into each other rushing out of shops. Waiters and shop assistants are frequently harried and impatient. Inter-city buses speed along winding mountain roads, taking the curves with more haste than is necessary.

For people from other cultures, all this can be bewildering and frustrating. But once expectations are adjusted, "la hora peruana" begsin to grow on those of us who also tend to feel that time is a fluid and slippery beast. The amusingly passive Spanish verb constructions beloved in Latin America, like "se me hizo tarde" ("it got late on me") capture this feeling well.

I do have some sympathy with the Peruvian government's attempt to stigmatise chronic lateness, which is part of their general modernising drive to get the country to shake itself up and learn to solve its own problems. And yes, it's partly about respect for others, acknowledging that other people's time is valuable to them.

At the same time, it would be a less idiosyncratic, colorful society that gave itself entirely up to the mechanistic observances of schedules. To maintain an ambivalent, uneasy relationship with time's measures is, in part, to assert that they're not all that matters. The day Peru marches to the beat of the clock, it will have lost some of its unaccountable charm.

Fortunately, I don't think there's much chance of that happening in the near future.

Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru