In the language that was several weeks ago completely foreign to me and I now miraculously speak, I have a favorite word that says it all: viajar. To travel. In my mouth, in my ears it is like a prayer, like a spell. Viajar, the kind of living that feels most alive. In traveling, each little detail of a volatile landscape becomes stunningly clear, equally relevant: the sound of a street, the carving of a face, the smell of a bakery, the song of a new world.
Before I left the Peruvian Amazon to head to the lands of the Incas high in the Andean mountains, I spent a night in the hut of an Ese'eja shaman. I hired a car to take me deep into the rainforest and, after an hour on a dirt road, yelled the shaman's name across the river where I was told he lived. At dusk, he came for me in his canoe and took me across the Tambopata River to a cottage propped on tall wooden legs. On this bank Shae'jame lived undisturbed by the Ese'eja settlement on the other side. Still, his neighbors were in the millions, though invisible in the falling night; the dense forest that enveloped us pulsated with quacking, croaking, crawling, and howling, a symphony without comparison.
"Don't fear," Shae´jame said, "I shoot my rifle every now and then so the puma knows not to come near."
One of the few left the Ese'eja people who still spoke their ancient language, Shae'jame had been using the bitter ayahuaska tea made with Amazon plants in healing ceremonies for forty years. In the few hours before complete darkness when the ayahuaska healing would begin, we spoke in the light of a candle. Enormous jungle cockroaches were crawling in our bear feet. He didn't seem to notice them, but I kept thinking, they can fly too.
After we emptied the shot glasses with thick potion, Shaa'jame blew the candle out and bats stormed into the cottage from the openings under the thatched roof. We lied on our backs, right on the wooden floor, and he chanted, whistled, called to the spirits, puffing away with his tobacco pipe. It was a tense, sticky Amazon night, and I knew that what was coming would, to put it mildly, not be easy. My previous explorations with ayahuaska had taught me a few things about the intensity of the medicinal tea, the severe physical discomfort it could create, the continuous purging, and the extremity of the mental states one could go to. Called on occasion the "vine of death", ayahuaska has been credited for its capacity to bring the death of the ego, disassemble one completely until there is no sense of self, and deliver profound insights into the nature of being and the connectedness between humans and universe, often accompanied by intense visions.
Out of the jungle and just after a 30-minute flight, I landed in a different world within the same country, 3,800 meters higher and with temperatures forty degrees lower. Cusco, the magical ancient capital of the Incas, sprinkled onto the spectacular hills of the Andean mountains at an altitude of over 11 000 feet is not only one of the highest cities in the world, but is also believed to be the oldest living settlement on the American continent. The Incas called it Qosquo in the Quechua language inherited from the cultures they conquered. Most everyone in the Peruvian Andes continues to speak it. Even Google is offered in Quechua.
For the great Incan Empire Qosquo was the center of spiritual worship. The sun, the moon and the earth, Pachamama, were the gods they respected. Today, the puma-shaped city guarded by giant hills is still revered as sacred. It has been called the house of gods, the solar plexus of the world, and the vital center of the planet. Its steep streets paved through and through, much in the colonial style of the Spaniards, are a challenge to climb. The oppressive altitude soon leaves the westerner gasping for breath.
Of course, today the Incan Empire, its art, history, and legends are packaged for sale in sleek wraps with labels in English and prices in dollars. You can't walk for half a block without being harassed by the hordes of local craftsmen begging you to buy a carved Incan miniature, knitted bracelet, or a leather pouch. Cusco feeds on tourism, it has no economy outside of it and, to survive, the locals have no choice but to work for the tourist. The mamitas, the proud Andean women with rigid faces, long thin braids tied together at the waist, and black cylinders tilted on their heads have made themselves a tourist attraction demanding 1 sol each time you take them a picture. In the colorful shawls wrapped around their backs they carry most everything– from their babies to stacks of hay and, so equipped, they line the sidewalks of their beautiful city selling ponchos, corn on the cob, and woolen socks.
With its many cute restaurants, sweet shops, live music bars, and a buzzing international crowd, Cusco is a memorable experience for those who get paid with dollar bills. But for the descendants of the mighty Incas it is an everyday market place where they sell their city and its traditions at discount prices.
From the very moment I enter Cusco, I take on a strategy to avoid the gringo places. What’s the point of living like a gringo in Cusco? Done plenty of that where I live. I find rooms in small family guest houses for 3 dollars a night, bargain the price like Peruvians do, and my one-night neighbors are Cusquenian workers or low-budge Peruvian tourists with whom I practice my Spanish and deepen my understanding of how they live. In the streets, when I get approached with “Miss, one photo? Madam, a massage? Dinner? River rafting?” I look back at them bemused and say, “Yo hablo Castellano. No te entiendo.”
Cusco is a tough place to leave, but one night I do, prompted by a hint that the country’s biggest folklore festival is reaching its culmination point over the weekend in a town called Puno, an eight-hour bus ride. Hundreds of dancers and musicians dressed in unspeakable multicolored traditional costumes fill the streets day and night sweeping the whole town in a spectacular fiesta. Impressive orchestras perform as they go music from the jungle, from the mountains, and the coast, and tireless dancers follow them swirling in typical dances. From early morning hundreds of cases of Cusquenia beer are stacked up on the sidewalks and all day long performers and spectators alike keep pouring the amber ale into plastic cups until the count is lost. At each corner, the mamitas grill meat on long skewers and stuff it in toasted white bread.
I get invited by a few musicians to join their group of over 100 performers and follow them to the stadium where a flamboyant competition between the ensembles unfolds. After that, we spill into the streets again for more beer and a fiesta rivaled only by the carnival in Brazil. The Peruvians have a way of drinking that you better respect: a large beer bottle gets passed around along with a single cup and each person has to down it before passing it on. Everywhere you look, ecstatic performers spin in their dances and yell: “Eso es el Puno! Eso es el Peru!” The end comes only when the last dancers and bywatchers collapse on the sidewalks defeated by many liters of beer and long hours of dancing. Last are the dogs that come out when the town is silenced and rummage through the fiesta leftovers.
Other than the carnival and the seducing sweet shops offering an astonishing variety of cakes and pies, there isn’t much to be seen in Puno and the brutal altitude of near 4000 meters (12 000 ft) makes my body week and my experience surreal. The good news is that Puno is on the shores of Titicaca, the largest navigable lake in the world and Latin America’s tallest body of water. There are dozens of islands in Titicaca’s blue waters, which have been inhabited for millennia and where native people still live. One early morning I take a boat to the most famous amongst them: the islands of the Uros people who, in order to avoid colonization by rival tribes, built floating reefs and sailed into the lake surviving on fish and the stems of totora, the very plant they used to make the islands.
From 400 years B.C. until 35 years ago, they lived just so: without contact with the world, without identity documents or nationality. Then they were “nationalized” by the Peruvian state and turned into one of its most profitable attractions. Now the Uros have ID’s, a floating school for their children, know about Jesus Christ, and accept plenty of visitors. Like exotic species threatened by extinction, they are now exhibited in front of their hay huts and try to act normal as yet another group of weird pale-skinned people claps around excitedly and points cameras to their faces.
The bitter taste of the Uros’ fate still in my mouth, two hours later we arrive at the island that would become my favorite: Amantani. It is big, rocky, and tall and hosts a couple of thousands of Quechua speaking natives. The whole island is terraced down like and amphitheatre. In these sophisticated terraces, the islanders grow potatoes, corn, and wheat, but if one keeps climbing, the terraces at the top of the island turn into temples: one for the moon and one for the sun, as is the Inca way. The night I stay with one of the families. We converse while the woman prepares a simple vegetable meal kneeling over a pen in the kitchen whose floor is the earth. On these islands people are mostly vegetarian, they tell me. Animals are bred only for milk and butter.
Here, the waters of Titicaca are deep, clear and dense blue, and if I didn’t know where I was, I wouldn’t doubt that the lake is a sea. It is now calm, but the locals say there are often waves, sometimes reaching 2,5 meters. Titicaca’s energy flows through me like electricity. For thousands of years it’s been respected as a sacred lake. This is where the first Quechua and the Aymara people originated. As legend has it, this is also where, much later, the first Inca, Manco Copac, was born. He emerged from Titicaca’s waters sent by the God Sun.
Back in Cusco, I join a cheerful bunch of internationals for a four-day back-rout journey to Macchu Picchu. Instead of taking the expensive tourist train that is widely promoted as the only way to get to one of the seven miracles of the world, we cram into two minibuses and get dropped off at the foot of the mountain. The next few days are an unforgettable adventure of walking through lush rainforest, resting in the shade of mango and avocado trees and picking their fruits, then balancing on the narrowest paths along the edge of steep drop-offs that dive into the roaring Urubamba River. These are also times of incessant laughter, singing, and SpanGlish jokes as the Canadians teach slang to Argentineans and Chileans “educate” Americans. We spend the nights camping by hot springs and waterfalls, chew on coca leaves to boost our walking capacity like the people of these lands have done for millennia when faced with long hours of physical work.
As we go, we witness the finest vistas of this planet. The slopes of the Peruvian Andes are spectacular giants dressed in velvet green coats over the rocky bodies. Their pointy peaks are capped with mist and clouds that make them disappear and reappear with surreal unpredictability. But when we get to Macchu Picchu, all that we’ve ever seen begins to fade. There is nothing that compares to the lost city of the Incas and I wouldn’t dare describing it.
Splitting off the group, I take several days to travel alone through the Sacred Valley– small pueblos nestled in the mountains through which fast, bursting rivers flow. The whole region of Cusco and its valley just now happen to be paralyzed by a popular strike against the privatization laws of Alan Garcia’s government allowing foreigners to buy land and build hotels in the sacred land. From early morning people start bringing massive rocks and blocking the roads for any transportation attempts. For a few days tourists can no longer travel between places and, trapped in the middle of the Sacred Valley, I’m given the rare gift of a tourist-free environment. I talk to villagers, stand with them in the plaza where they gather to protest, and then climb the hills to wander about the Incan ruins.
How can life be more real, more meaningful, fuller? Viajar. Viajar. Viajar. Life on the go, diving deep into what is unknown; changing places so rapidly that you have no choice but to be completely present in the moment so you can take it all in. Love, too, happens on the go, on the way to somewhere else, shared under open skies, sweet like something that won’t last. Like two rivers that merge and then follow their separate paths because one thing is above all: viajar.
Now that I’m back in the Amazon jungle, the final countdown has begun. Just a week and I’ll be home. A part of me craves it: the stability, the comfort of a warm shower and a bed when I need it, the things that I am used to and the privilege of your company. But my gypsy blood won’t let me rest for too long. Viajar is now not only a desire. It is destiny. It is karma.
Why would I fight it?
