22 Days in Peru

        As we descended into the valley, I was aware of a singular quality of light that seemed to emanate, almost chartreuse, from the patterned fields and terraces, and copper, from the adobe homes emerging geometric from dark, rich soil.
        This was the womb, heart and soul of the Incan empire. Here, the Incas established the temples, observatories and agricultural bases that supported their expansion into the largest kingdom in the New World – however short-lived. From here, their warriors marched and conquered or accepted the surrender of dozens of more ancient civilizations, swallowing them whole and incorporating the best of their arts, science and religion into the new kingdom. Every rock and tree seemed significant. 

        Most of us left the United States late on December 12, arriving in Lima on December 13, then flying to Cusco. There, eleven of us, plus drivers and (most of) our luggage, were crammed into three taxis for the hour-long drive from the Cusco airport to our hotel in the village of Yucay. I was there because of a chance phrase in a casual email from someone I had not seen in fourteen years. She was going to Peru. I had long wanted to go to Peru. So there I was. Most of the group, ranging in age from 33 to 77, was there through similar happenstance.  Some of them knew the tour leaders through their healing working. Others were their friends. Others, like me, just lucked out.

        The Yucay hotel was a surprise. Quite beautiful, with magnificent gardens and spacious, comfortable rooms with windows that looked out on an open meadow, part of a wide valley cupped by mountains ranging from 10,000 to more than 20,000 feet.
        Many of us had been traveling over 24 hours: most from California and Oregon, one each from Colorado and Montana, and one from Israel. After an hour or so to freshen up and settle in, we gathered in the hotel lobby to drink coca tea and learn a little about each other.
        The leaders of our group were Viviana Martinez (who was born in Cusco, whose family lives in Yucay, and who now lives in Berkeley, California) and Avishai Pearlson (who was born in Israel, where his family still lives, and who now lives in Berkeley). They had been together several years and decided to try organizing a tour as a way for both of them, but especially Viviana, to keep in touch with the Peruvian Martinez clan. We were their first attempt.
        [Avishai’s father, Jason, had traveled from Israel to join the tour and was staying with Viviana and Avishai, in the Martinez family compound about a block and a half from our hotel.]
        Like the others, I placed coca leaves in an annoyingly small white cup and submerged them in hot water. The tea wasn’t too bad. Coca tea, and coca leaves are essential to the people who live at these altitudes, extremely beneficial for the physical well-being of visitors and integral to the traditional shamanic ceremonies that are still routinely practiced by the people. The fact that coca is sometimes corrupted into cocaine is very sad, not only for those who use it but also for the thousands more for whom coca is a benign and beneficial life component.
         Eight women arranged themselves in a corner of the hotel lobby where we were joined by Viviana and her mother, Marina Martinez. Once Peru’s Woman of the Year, Marina worked to improve the lot of Sacred Valley peasants, especially the women. Among other things, she established trout farms to provide an abundant source of inexpensive protein. Now she writes poetry. She was our gracious hostess on many occasions, opening the family compound for our meals and ceremony.

        And we met Alfredo. He showed up with his little dog Delilah while we were having lunch in Urubamba. A friend of Viviana’s, he adopted the whole group, recommending a new restaurant for dinner that evening and, later, enlisting us as hosts to a traditional cocoa party and, still later, as guests on New Year’s Eve.
         We found his recommended restaurant after a long day’s walk amid ruins on a portion of the Incan trail leading to Cusco and Machu Picchu. The ruins were above Urubama and we walked back into town just as dusk was beginning to fall. We passed kids taking their families’ animals home and were rewarded by their smiles and astonished by a double rainbow.

        The second-floor restaurant was top-notch. Chef Ricardo personally prepared salads with incredible Peruvian avocadoes and delectable main dish concoctions of meat and vegetables. Everything local, fresh and perfect, accompanied by fine wines and/or pisco sours. When all had been fed, he turned his satellite receiver to some vintage music and, with his staff, joined in a dancing celebration of a great day.
         Other dinners were a little more subdued. Often, we ate at the Martinez family compound, celebrating a Friday Shabbat, or simply the amazing soups created by Maria, Viviana’s sister in law. Maria and her husband Juan and children, Gabriel, Vincente and little Viviana became integral to the tour. Gabriel, a student guide, led many of the hiking expeditions and Juan was a personal assistant for those, like me, who had trouble when paths became too steep. One early dinner at the compound was followed by a simple ceremony around an open fire where we symbolically burned negative aspects of our lives and celebrated things for which we were grateful.

         On our fourth day in Peru, we boarded a van at 7 a.m. for the ride to Ollantaytambo where we would catch the train to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu. The Ollantaytambo station was crowded with vendors, who persisted even after we boarded, managing to sell Avishai a weaving through the window just before train started moving.
        Vendors seemed to be everywhere we went. At the hotel, some were allowed to display their wares in the outer courtyard and a few weavers worked in the inner courtyard spending long hours creating new items to sell. A woman named Doris often stood, sometimes with her daughter, near the hotel entrance selling paintings created by her husband, Javier Puma. (I bought an orange/red impression of llamas being shepherded under a sky crowded with the sun and a condor.) Only once, in Cusco, were vendors a problem. A crowd of boys and adolescents surrounded my plaza bench, incessantly persistent and eventually unpleasant. My only recourse was to walk away.

        Wandering the non-town, I realized that I was hearing Beatles songs. Every restaurant not broadcasting canned Andean music, played the vintage group. They were so prevalent that I almost grew to hate “Hey Jude.” Later, while others soaked in the local hot springs, I had a great massage from a young woman who spoke no English.

The next day was to be our day at the place everyone wants to see: Machu Picchu. As instructed by our guide, Alexandro, we had breakfast at 5:30 a.m., boarded a bus at 6 and were at the entrance to Machu Picchu by 6:30. During the half hour vertical ride, we rode in and out of clouds, catching fleeting glimpses of mountains and jungle.
        When we got off the bus, our first view was of a low building with bathrooms and a refreshment stand and, to the left, steps leading to the obvious entrance. There weren’t many people at that hour, we got our tickets stamped and emerged onto a terrace in the midst of one of the wonders of the world.
        It was so vast. Grass-topped terraces climbed up and down in all directions. One slender tree graced a central meadow. Remnants of hundreds of gray granite buildings gave hints of a vibrant past. In the distance, occasional llamas.
        We were so high and still surrounded by mountains. No wonder this wasn’t destroyed by the Spanish. It would have been too hard.

        It was often difficult to climb from wonder to wonder but both Alexandro and Avishai helped me when the path got too steep. Incan cosmology honors the four directions and the four elements (air, water, earth and the heart). Its symbols include three levels: above, below and earth – as embodied in the condor, snake and puma. And at Machu Picchu, these sacred things -- plus the sun, the moon, and mountains, and water and (essentially) every element of their existence -- were honored in the stone buildings and sculptures. It took me a while to get that – even though I had read tons of books before going. I think the knowledge came through my fingers as I felt the ancient stones.
        One of my favorite places was the Temple of the Condor. The Incas carved a condor head on the floor of a ledge, just below natural stone formations that served as the bird’s wings. In the wall behind the wings, were niches that held their dead until the condor could swoop out over the precipice to carry their spirits to another life.
        Climbing up past the Temple of the Three Windows and other sacred places, we entered a plateau on which stood a slab of rock, pared to mirror the mountain behind it. And further on, another sculpture, Intihuatana, that priests used as a solar observatory, indicating the time to plant and harvest the crops that once crowded the myriad terraces. Here Viviana paused the group for meditation. It was good to remember to breathe.
        The Incas had carved a staircase up the mountain to the Temple of the Sun. At the base of the stairs was a rectangular room whose walls were indented with regular rectangular niches. Alexandro had each of us stand facing a niche then, at his signal, say “om” in unison. The sound reverberated around and through us, wrapping us in awe. Only after this did we climb to the pinnacle. Alexandro said the Incan priests routinely performed this rite, rather like sprinkling with holy water before entering a church. At the summit, we looked down on the vast complex that once held farms and families, prisoners and priests, rich and poor, living and dead, sacred and profane.
        All that morning we wandered amid clouds that only added to the mysteries. When Alexandro finished his tour, we walked out of the complex to a thatched pavilion where we had a picnic lunch. By the time we were done, the sun had burned away the mist and the day became quite hot. By two and threes or alone, we wandered back into the magic city. I found a place to sit under the condor’s wings and absorbed the peace as succeeding groups of tourists heard the story of the spirit launch.
        After about eight hours among the ruins, I made my way back to the waiting buses. I sat next to a young woman, Ray, from Malaysia, who was traveling the Americas, earning her way by working in YMCA camps, including, it turned out, one near Grand Lake, Colorado.
        Back in Aguas Calientes, I bought stamps, joined the line at the ATM then joined the group as we caught the train back to Ollantaytambo where we caught the van back to Yucay. That night, Maria cooked us corn soup and salad and cornbread that we ate at the Martinez family complex.
        What a day.
        We had been in Peru less than a week. We had seen one of the wonders of the world but by no means all the wonders of the Sacred Valley.

        San Pedro is a cactus that can be used to create a mild hallucinogen. The peel is boiled for at least four hours to create a pale green liquid. Evidently many Peruvians drink it for meditation and ritual. When we were offered a chance to try, every one of us accepted. Viviana, Juan and Gabriel abstained so they could watch over us. We gathered in the hotel meeting room, where Gabriel smudged us with the smoke of an aromatic wood. The jar of San Pedro juice was passed and we each drank a generous and not too unpalatable portion. We then walked about a mile from the hotel to a secluded glen on the edge of field of corn. The walk was hard but I had help, especially from Juan. When I got to the glen, I lay flat on the damp ground, aware of earth energy. I could see the sparkle of air particles, the pulsing mountains, the vibrating green of the plant life. Gabriel retrieved his guitar then sang some of the beautiful songs he had composed. Most of the others sang along and danced. I stayed mostly on the side, observing. It was a joy to see Juan’s joy in his son. A gentle rain fell, adding patterns on nearby waters … and cold.

        As Juan escorted me back over the difficult path, we had an incredible, not quite bi-lingual conversation, about the tranquility of the valley and the persistence of the life force, as seen in the eucalyptus that lined the path. Young shoots grew out of the trunks of their decapitated elders, which served as their new soil. Through the barrier of partial languages we agreed:  life begets life and nourishes life and returns to life and it is all a miracle and it does not end. He called it ‘returno.’
        The next day we went to Ollantaytambo, a city I’d never heard of, a city that is itself a sacred symbol. And all its component parts, symbols. A sun temple perches atop terraced steps that, even with Juan’s help, I could not climb. It turns out that the Incas were a tall people, well over six feet, and very strong. I am neither.

        On the plateau below the terraces were temples to water, stones for sacrifices, the faces of first ancestors and images of sacred animals. On the condor mountain, and across the valley, were platforms for priests to meditate. The thousand-acre complex is itself in the shape of the Tree of Life and the first houses clustered like a cob of corn. All of it comprised an astronomy center for the early empire. Everywhere, remnants of ritual and worship, surrounded by the spirits of the mountains.
        As we left the protected ruins, I saw a group of natives scamper up to the Sun Temple, reclaiming their own heritage.

        Unlike Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo is a living city. You can walk Incan streets, still bisected with water channels, and enter domestic courtyards, where people live, raise guinea pigs for food (I did not eat any) and sell handicrafts to tourists. Including me.

        During the Christmas season, most Peruvian hotels, churches, and schools hold cocoa parties for children in their vicinity. Our Yucay hotel had one and Alfredo traditionally hosted one for his Urubamba neighborhood. Using one of his three cell phones, he negotiated a deal with Viviana: he would supply the traditional cocoa and cake that our group could serve when we distributed the traditional trinkets, which we would provide. In return, he would fix us dinner in his incredible house. He expected between 75 and 100 kids to show up. We agreed to the event that would occur on Friday, Dec. 21. Late that morning we climbed into the van and disembarked into Urubamba’s plaza. While Viviana and Avishai procured the trinkets, the rest of us wandered the town. I settled in the plaza where I made mime-friends with two little girls and, with the mime-permission of their father, bought them ice cream … which completely ruined their previously spotless outfits.

        Trinkets in hand, we crowded back into the van and rode up the mountain to Alfredo’s establishment. There we wrapped 100 little packages, struggling with tape that didn’t stick too well as we molded sparkled dark green paper around little toys. Finally, we moved to the hotel courtyard to greet the hordes of kids waiting outside the gate. We organized them into circles. I got all boys, including Carlos. He had a piece of plastic string which he tore into strands, which I in turn tied together into a sort of flower which I hung on a little bush, much to his delight. Others in our group organized real games, which the kids didn’t really understand but seemed to enjoy anyway. They consumed gallons of cocoa and their huge chunks of cake and left exultant with their trinkets.
        All this time, Alfredo and his staff were preparing a feast of trout and chicken, roasted on his central fireplace, and a consummate salad. After wine and dancing, we too left exultant.
         Peruvians celebrate the Summer Solstice on Dec. 22. Before dawn that morning, Gabriel led most of the group up the mountain to watch the sunlight come through a special portal in the local Incan temple. They returned with yellow confetti in their hair, the Peruvian good luck blessing.
        At 9:30 a.m. all of us climbed into the van for another adventure. Our driver was Leon, Marina’s neighbor. Intent on getting too many people and their things to too many places, he rarely spoke. But that morning I sat in front between Viviana and him as we drove through lovely fields, where farmers were hard at work, with hoes or oxen or tractors, and children tended mixed flocks of sheep, burros, goats, and cattle. In the gentle sun under clear skies, the valley looked idyllic and I must have said something to that affect. Leon said something in Spanish which Viviana translated as: however beautiful this looks, these people are desperately poor and their future bleak.

        We stopped at Maras, where the Incan system of more than 5,000 drying pools is still used to evaporate water from salt springs and the salt collected for distribution – mostly by burros. We then went to Moray, a vast complex of concentric terraces that served the Incas as an agricultural laboratory. They planted various crops, brought from all over the Inca kingdom, to determine which were best suited to which environment. Here it was easy to believe that the Incas domesticated more than 500 kinds of plants.

        As we drove toward our next destination, Leon looked up at the mountains and worried aloud at the diminished snowcaps. When those glaciers are gone, he said, it will be the end of Peru [which depends almost entirely on snow melt for its water]. Not always glum, he noticed my frequent pit stops and told Viviana that Peruvians didn’t get diarrhea because they had the stomachs of pigs.
But I did not.
        The next day, my digestive disorders precluded exploring the Pisaq Sun Temple although I did manage to support the amazing market in town. I had not come to Peru to shop but the plethora of handmade items – weaving, carving, pottery, paintings, dolls, and metalwork – was irresistible. There had to have been several hundred vendors filling the plaza and lining the streets. I found presents for my kids, an interesting shirt and even a pretty woven bag to hold my purchases.

        By this time, I was beginning to see things less as a dazzled tourist and more as a careful observer. Living in an adobe house with a dirt floor and minimal plumbing was neither romantic nor particularly sanitary. Life in the valley was tranquil but also hard. Even the Martinez family complex, although large and rambling and full of charm, was hardly luxurious. It would not have done well on the U.S. real estate market. As simple, and somehow honest, as the little villages were, I was amused at the occasional and completely incongruous gas stations. Scattered sparsely and essential, there seemed no rationale for the pinup posters each station used to lure vehicles to the pumps.
        From Pisaq, we drove into Cusco so we could experience that city’s Christmas Eve market the next day. We were to stay overnight at a hostel, the converted family home of a Martinez family friend, Norma. We were only a few blocks from Cusco’s main plaza, the Plaza de Arma, where we ventured for dinner. At the restaurant, we were serenaded by another musical group (I bought their CD) and en route back to the hostel I bought finger puppets from a young girl who could recite the names of all the U.S. presidents. We had made this trek to experience the next day’s Christmas Eve market in Cusco. Jason checked out the plaza after dinner and saw chalk marks numbered for 1,100 vendor booths, each about 12 feet square.
        Still infirm the next day, I rested and read while the others shopped. That afternoon, they returned from the market laden with treasures and great stories. Later, we rode back to Yucay where Christmas Eve festivities were in full flower. During the night and into Christmas day, there were sounds of music and church bells and firecrackers. I heard stories of parades of dancers in bright costumes and processions to the town’s two churches (one with a melodious bell, the other just a clang).
        On Christmas day, I occasionally ventured onto the balcony to enjoy the warm sun, cool breeze and birdsong. I once made my way to Yucay’s plaza to join the others for a picnic. I could eat nothing but one small banana but it was good to be outside. There I saw some of the still-costumed dancers and the little baskets with each household’s Jesus image that had been taken to church to be blessed. I connected with a little girl who had obviously received a new toy bear, dressed, like her, in pink. She demonstrated how it played music and I rewarded her with a little Bic pen.

        On Dec. 26, the group traveled back to Cusco to settle in Norma’s hostel for several days’ exploration of the ancient city, once the Incan capital and thus the navel of the world. Still infirm, I obtained some antibiotics and felt better almost immediately.

        I was able to walk to the Plaza de Armas and up and down the cobbled streets amid Cusco’s magical blend of Incan and Spanish colonial architecture. We invaded a little shop and some of the group danced with the owner while others insured her day’s profit. That night, the group enjoyed an evening performance of Andean folk dances. The music and dances were all pretty similar but the succession of costumes was stunning. Woven in intricate and colorful patterns and, literally, capped with headgear distinct for each village, they whirled and stomped across the stage with the exuberance of a present rooted in long tradition.

        Viviana’s good friend Eliana joined the group after flying in from Lima. Dedicated to helping the people of her country, she works as a sociologist for international agencies such as Save the Children and UNICEF. She added great dimension, depth, to our tour.
        Childhood polio had left its mark on both Viviana and Eliana. Eliana had a more obvious limp but both women have the courage of persons who have overcome great physical suffering.
        Late the next morning we headed out toward one of Cusco’s apparently innumerable open markets. After a long walk through cold rain, we reached a covered market crowded with people and produce.  As others went off to buy food for the evening meal, I spotted a man with a strange contraption, surrounded by children. The little blue metal cart was layered. A cramped cage of small birds on the bottom was covered with a shelf holding their tiny eggs that was in turn topped by a pot of water over a burner and a receptacle for eggshells. When one of the children (or a mother) bought an egg, he would boil and peel it, pierce it with a long stick, sprinkle it with salt, and hand it to the child. One little girl, perhaps 4, wearing a pale yellow outfit and red baseball cap, danced with pleasure for every egg and for the birds. It was a delight to see her delight.

        After lunch with Eliana and others, I wandered off on my own. At the doorway to a small courtyard, a beautiful woman who said her name was Frances invited me into her shop, hung with hand-woven ponchos. One combined shades of scarlet with black and golden accents. It now hangs in my closet.

        On my way back to the hotel, I took the tour of the Temple del Sol. Actually, it is a complex of temples – for rainbows, thunder and water, all interconnected, and the sun and moon. There was also an observatory and, on the front terraces there were once golden images of animals and plants. On the 28th of December it was home to a nativity scene, complete with a giant llama.  All the temples had been covered with gold and their niches filled with golden images. The gold was stripped and melted down by the Spanish, who built a cathedral over everything. The ruins were hidden until a 1950 earthquake destroyed much of the cathedral. The Incan structures survived because their masonry is astounding. Stones, often trapezoid in shape, are fitted together in sort of a tongue and groove fashion, so precisely, without any mortar, that you cannot insert a knife blade in between the blocks. So they stand while the Spanish buildings crumble and the heritage, hidden for 400 years, is again a Cusco glory.
        Oddly, although Cusco is replete with cathedrals, I did not enter any of them. The group did visit a convent/ art museum one morning but I found the Spanish/Catholic iconography dark and, perhaps appropriately, oppressive.

        That evening Viviana’s uncle, Mario, a distinguished anthropologist, Gabriel and Eliana joined us for a Shabbat followed by a sort of salon. Norma, quite awed to have him in her home, pulled a chair into the crowded living room to hear Mario talk about the still-underestimated depth of the Andean heritage. He talked about the quipu, bundles of colored string knotted at varying intervals that were used by the Inca for inventories and, perhaps, as a way to record laws and legends. Had more of them survived, anthropologists would have a better chance of deciphering their obviously sophisticated code. He said there had been a huge storehouse of quipu in Cusco that the Spanish burned to the ground. Like, I thought, burning the library at Alexandria.

        Norma’s hostel had its drawbacks. The rooms were not heated and, according to my little travel clock thermometer, the temperatures hovered between 54 and 60. But it was full of fascinating things and conversations.
        On Saturday morning, I learned of another Martinez, Gabriela, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon. A professor, she also makes documentaries, including one about the difficulty of being lesbian in Peru. Eliana talked a little about some of the more atrocious U.S. policies and the School of the Americas and the generally archaic Peruvian attitude toward women. Earlier either she or Viviana had said the U.S. planes spray herbicides over coca fields. Not a good way to endear ourselves to a coca-infused culture.

        But Eliana too was aware of the wonders that awaited in Cusco. She knew I had been impressed by the large candles with thick wicks that illuminated our feasts at the Martinez compound and agreed to help me find some for my son Bruce. We secured a taxi and traveled across the city to a candle factory and found exactly what I wanted.
        We then took another taxi back to the central city. By now, the group knew that Viviana and Avishai planned to be married on New Year’s Day. Eliana and I wandered another little market where I was able to find wedding present components.
        Eliana left for an appointment just before the rains came. The rain quickly became a deluge, accompanied by amazingly loud thunder – rather like a squadron of celestial jets. I ducked under verandas and into shops. During a lull in the storm I returned to the main plaza and found a second floor restaurant. Seated on its covered balcony, I watched life’s pageant parade through the plaza between showers: children chasing pigeons, native women carrying children in their blankets, and a bride and groom getting their pictures taken, old men hunched into benches. To my left, an intense young man sat writing in his journal, looking up occasionally to consult his muse. It was a great way to wait for clear skies.

        When it did clear, I crossed the plaza and climbed up the steep, narrow street to two museums. The Incan museum had, among hundreds of artifacts, a large map showing the many pre-Incan civilizations. Some of the earliest flourished along the desert coastline, one of the world’s driest regions. To survive, these early peoples created ingenious irrigation systems, many of which were co-opted or copied by the Incas. Other cultures emerged along the shores of the giant Lake Titicaca, which someday I would like to see. Further up the hill, a museum of Pre-Columbian art had individual rooms for bronze, silver and gold artifacts, some so intricate it was hard to believe they were created thousands of years ago.

        From there, we visited the pre-Inca Temple of the Moon, which looked like the moon and felt full of female power. We had a picnic there, abbreviated by the onset of rain. We actually passed another set ruins before stopping at the final archeological site of the day. Walking back (and up) from the road, we could see a series of pools, fed by channeled springs, which served as baths for sacred Inca virgins. The path followed a little stream bordered by wonderful old trees. The bark came off in strips that Viviana said she and her siblings used to use for paper.

        The rains returned and Leon was the personification of concentration as he maneuvered our van back ‘home.’ That night, Eliana gave a disquieting talk about some of the less glamorous aspects of Peru, including the fact that more than 25 percent of the poorer children are undernourished.
        The last day of the year began quietly and ended with Alfredo’s New Year’s Eve party. Donning improvised finery, we climbed back into Leon’s van around 8 p.m. for the trip to the mountain hotel. The rest of the guests were Urubamba citizens and when we arrived in the main dining room, they were seated along the outside wall. The canned satellite music was blaring but the only movement was in the kitchen area. Our group arrayed themselves along the other side and, for a while, everyone smiled awkwardly. That didn’t last. The room was festooned with yellow balloons and streamers and soon the two groups began to merge, dancing. The energy increased when wine and appetizers began to circulate, then escalated when Alfredo made his grand entrance. The party was off … a mélange of music and abundant food, supervised by our own dancing chef, Ricardo. Dancing is awkward with a bum knee but I managed a little. The most impressive of the local dancers was Mario, who ‘stole’ my walking stick and improvised a staccato choreography. Others copied him, each in turn using the stick as a percussive guide to whatever rhythm they were capturing. The lights went out fairly frequently, but lighted candles proved quite adequate. Finally, it was midnight, with attendant firecrackers and hugs and showers of confetti. At 12:30 we went to the gate to wait for Leon under a star-studded sky, then drove home amid more firecrackers, campfires and the traditional crazy drivers. It was 2008.
        Wearing whatever finery we could improvise, we began to gather at the Martinez compound around 12:30 p.m., New Year’s Day. I chose to wear the interesting shirt I had purchased in the Pisaq market only to discover that it was identical to the groom’s. No one laughed.

        The wedding was to be outside and chairs were arranged and flowers strewn. The guests were members of Viviana’s family (visiting from Cusco and Lima) and our group, by now almost family ourselves. We had to wait a while, in gentle sunshine, for the mayor to arrive. When he did, Avishai and Jason sat in two of the four chairs in front of the wooden table. We stood as Viviana and Marina entered from the main courtyard and sat in the other two chairs. Little Viviana carried the rings on a large white teddy bear. When the mayor finished the long civil ceremony and the papers were signed, the four rose to face the guests. They stood under a canopy created from the weaving Avishai had purchased from the train and suspended from four bamboo poles held by male relatives of the bride. Avishai and  Viviana read their personal vows, translated by Eliana. Others came forward to state their best wishes. In addition to the two parents, one of our group had written a lovely poem, and Viviana’s Aunt Gloria expressed pure glee.

        We were all famished when we moved to another part of the yard for a feast that included lamb, chicken, potatoes, quinoa, vegetables, cheese, corn, and fruit salad, accompanied by wine, juice or chichu, a local beer made from corn. I sat at table with two of our group plus Gloria who encouraged me to load the chichu with sugar before drinking.

        Music sounded over loudspeakers and lured the guests from tables to lawn for dancing. Later, wedding cakes were shared. Marina had made with them with local grains and coca leaves then decorated both with flowers. The music and dancing resumed and threatened to last forever until, with Gloria’s encouragement, most of the guests departed and we gathered on blankets and small stools around Hector the Shaman.
        To begin, Hector gave each of us three sticks that we would burn. Two were to represent things to be rid of, and one, something we wished for. While we held them, he arranged little triplets of coca leaves in rows on a piece of wrapping paper. He then started a fire in an inverted roof tile. We placed our sticks in the fire then each of us sprinkled it with grains of incense. Next Hector distributed coca leaves. We each took three and placed them upright between two fingers to absorb our wishes.
        The ceremony consisted primarily of the careful assembly of an elaborate packet called a ‘despacio.’ He began by placing a dark silhouette, a llama fetus, on a bed of cotton. [At some point his cell phone went off, much to everyone’s amusement.] Later, he added the sets of coca leaves for specific apus and we each added those we had been holding.  There followed a series of layers: grains, liquor, candy, etc. Crackers symbolizing the sun, gold, silver, jewels, incense, flowers, ribbons, coca, one little gold sculpture of condor, surrounded by all manner of things, including a star weed to connect with the cosmos. He wrapped the package and tied it with fine string. He required a fresh hole in the earth in which to burn the offering. This was prepared but we could not burn the package until a particular candle had burned itself out. That took a long time, during which he shared teachings and his friend, who had arrived late, shared guitar music. After the candle went out, we made our way to the hole. He built a ‘temple’ of dried cow dung, adorned with cookies, in which he burned all containers and material associated with the ceremony. At last, he put the despacio into the fiery temple and asked us to leave because the offering was for the spirits.         And so we left and Avishai and Viviana were well and truly married and each of us had somehow been well and truly blessed.

        January 2 was our last day in Yucay. We packed up and returned to the Martinez complex for a final lunch and very difficult good-byes to our new family. Leon again arrived and loaded us back into the van for the drive to our Cusco hostel. There, after a group meeting, we scattered for various dinner destinations. With five others, I found a great pizza place on Avenue del Sol. The next morning we were to fly to Lima.
        Theoretically. We got to the airport before 10 but planes were grounded by mountain storms and we didn’t leave until almost two and did not arrive at our Miraflores hotel until after 5 p.m. Jason rendezvoused with an old friend who led us to a bustling neighborhood establishment for dinner. The friend wanders the world staying, when he stays anywhere, in an isolated house in Bolivia.
        I had been advised not to carry my camera in Lima, a city polluted by traffic, crime and foul air. But our hotel was lovely and the next day we found yet another great craft market and shared a fabulous seafood lunch with Eliana. Several of us visited the Museo de Oro where we were astonished by the sophisticated artifacts from pre-Incan cultures. We returned to our lovely courtyard hotel for a final Shabbat dinner before boarding a van for the ride to the Lima airport.
        The journey home was too long and too uncomfortable, and, in Miami, the American and United terminals, too far apart. At the Denver airport, I had to wait an hour for the shuttle to Loveland but I made it, arriving to a friendly reception from my two cats around 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008.