Firecrackers
The connotation of the word firecrackers is that of cute little sparky spritzers going off in the backyard, or a carefully manned and orchestrated extravaganza replete with safety standards and cordoned-off areas. Not so in Peru. In Peru they're not so much firecrackers like the Burning SchoolHouse, they are definitely more like sticks of dynamite stuck in cardboard boxes of sand, being manned by people scurrying around in hardhats, through a small patio in the Plaza, which has been cordonned off by caution tape. Which does nothing to keep out a) the milling children or b) the milling dogs. It was a complete miracle that nothing got blown up and that the millions of leafy green trees in the Plaza did not ignite. And how does a hardhat protect you from getting your face blown off? (That said, I just found out an old friend of mine is moving to Lima, Peru for 3 years so her husband can build a new mine. I tell you, if he uses the firecracker dynamite to blast -- no problem! It'll be done in 3 months!) No one seems in the least phased by it though, and the photos I have of these puppies on 'Fireworks setting' are bold Pollack-esque Fireworks of Art.
Food
You know how they say, "When in Rome..." Yeah, had to try the guinea pig. Had to. You know how they also say, "It tastes like chicken"...also true. With one major difference. When you eat chicken, you don't see it in all its breaded horror, its cryogenic scream frozen in time like a carbonited Hans Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. My dinner companions had to help me finish it off. The gnarled claws, clutched in defensive stance are also offputting.
Rivalling cuy is the yummy alpaca meat. Though my brother's girlfriend keeps telling me to stop eating the cute, furry animals of Peru, I really can't seem to. Alpaca tastes a lot like gyuten, that lean, succulent meat that picks up well in chopsticks; I always used to eat it while living in Koshigaya. A month in, my co-workers informed me that gyuten translates to "cow's tongue", but by that point it was already too late. In my defense, alpaca is the only red meat with zero cholesteral. Sad, but true. (Especially after you hug one!)
Meds
Like in many Latin American countries, you can just self-prescribe, and if all you want is two painkillers, they snip two out of the foil. Not necessary to buy the whole pack. I also know for a fact that you can buy singles of Viagra, right over the counter (buying for a friend, not a "friend";) However, one day I went to the pharmacy to just get some paracetamol for the onset of a cold, since I didn't want to be even more breathing-impaired than I already would be at altitude. I don't know why I did this, but on a whim I said, "This doesn't have amoxycillin in it, right...I mean, I guess that's a ridiculous question, I know it's just Paracetamol, it's just that I'm allergic..." and the pharmacist responded, "Yes, it is amoxycillin!" Dear Lord! Who prescribes amoxycillin for "the onset of a cold"!!? I could have been killed, dear woman! (More likely, turned into a giant hive).
Homestays
#1 I explored most of Peru as part of an Intrepid Group; after visiting Colca Canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, hosting the majestic soaring condors, and a pit stop to see the alpacas, vicunas and llamas of Patapampa, 4800 metres above sea level, where my Intrepid mate Bernie and I bought our Devil Balaclavas (well, I did), we made off to Chivay, the site of Homestay Number One. It was a long and dusty drive, so the first thing I saw in this quaintly cobbled town was the washroom! Our host moms came to the town square to pick us up in their embroidered bolero jackets, ground-sweeping skirts and cowboy hats, and after a tour of the premises (several buildings made of stone and cement with wooden beams and thatched rooves) we started in on the chores (collecting twigs for the clay oven). We had the amazing luck to chance into the Alpaca beauty contest, and outfitted traditionally, the women in their embroidered outfits, and men in colourful ponchos, we headed to the outskirts of town where alpacas strutted in their finest, winning ribbons and getting towed and toured by the locals. You've got your Huacaya alpaca (the full, puffy, granny-perm variety, shorn once a year and comprising 82% of the alpaca population) and your Suri alpaca (is that where Tom and Katie stole the name?), the dreadlocked variety shorn every two years. There were faun alpacas, beige alpacas, brown alpacas. Silver grey and rose gray. White and black. For supper, Mama Julia cooked alpaca meet in the clay oven, with only ignitable twigs to fuel the fire. It was freezing in that little stone enclave and all Mama Julia had to warm her was another embroidered mantle and her Keiko propaganda apron. I lent her my silver survival suit and she kept popping the paracetamol I gave her, but the poor thing was just frozen. We went to our stone sleeping quarters and huddled there from six p.m. onwards with alpaca socks and hot water bottles. Julia introduced me to her son; she told me he was nineteen. When I met him, he told me he was sixteen. A couple in my Intrepid group (the girl is 18, the guy is 19) were asked by their homestay mom if they had children yet, and were surprised when the answer was no!
#2 Our second homestay was on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We always did a little shopping before our homestays, stocking our "Plastic is Not Fantastic" canvas Intrepid carry-alls with oranges, sugar, flour and Milo. If our first homestay was made of stones, this one was made of straw. Straw and mudbrick. With thatched rooves and wooden doors. Even the water supply was sheathed in long bundles of straw. The walkways were made of bottle ends. Men here wear woolen pants and vests with bowler hats and the women wear embroidered blouses, full colourful skirts and their long black hair twined in two braids with pompoms on the ends. Married women wear flat hats with upturned edges and pompoms, like the Queen of Hearts. Single women wear a colourfully striped nightcap with a pompon at its tip. At this homestay, I was with Rosemary and Tony, and Rosemary and I joined Florentina in her chore of peeling potatoes. However, the potatoes are miniscule and covered with tiny eyes. It is a painstaking and laborious job and when you see the pile of potatoes, its like an unending sea of bobbing corks! Richard, the homestay dad, was hanging laundry in the sunlight and that looked like a lot more fun. My two host families taught me some Quechua words and counting from one to ten, before we set out to play a little volley bolley, Foreigners against the Locals. Those people know how to play! At night, we lucked into another local festival, where we got to guss up in our traditional attire, and see the parades of people dancing in brilliant orange and blue tunics with brightly striped scarves called chaleco de Tinkus. Lots of people drinking Pilsen, and of course the omnipresent fireworks. Lots of what I call 'roller-coaster' fireworks wherein the people have this pinball structure of several metres for the sparks to ignite. Sometimes the sparks go along a wheel, or giant flower, or spell out the name 'Jesus'. In Mexico it was the outline of Benito Juarez. Young children used to shield themselves from the errant sparks with cardboard shells on their backs, but I didn't have one and when a stray 'chispa' ignited my hair, my friends had to put it out, to the mantra of passersby telling me, "No pasa nada."
Elections
Exciting times. Elections were on while we were in Peru. On the left, we had Ollanta. 49 years old. Lieutenant Colonel in the army, who fought against the Shining Path (Maoist insurgent guerrilla organization). Fighting for a more equitable distribution of wealth from the country's key natural resources. Better minimum wage and pension packages. On the right we have Keiko. 36 years old. Former First Lady of Peru (at nineteen!). Got her MBA from NYC. Constructed many orphanages and created the first pediatric cardiovascular intensive care unit. Lots of campaigning and postering and general fanfare. I got handed an Ollanta matchbook and calendar at one point, but had to hide them lest some incendiary right winger attack me! Also, a 72 hour moratorium on alcohol (sober votes only, please!) Ollanta ended up winning (Peru's 94th President), probably because Keiko's father, and former President, Fujimori is in jail for corruption and human rights abuse after a self-imposed exile in Chile and fleeing to Japan. Among other things, he sterilized 300,000 women against their will (some of whom died) to meet international population targets, back in the 90s. At my homestay, they were talking about how he slipped sterilizer into the food packages he handed out to the impoverished rural people. Nice to know women have a choice in their own fertility.
The connotation of the word firecrackers is that of cute little sparky spritzers going off in the backyard, or a carefully manned and orchestrated extravaganza replete with safety standards and cordoned-off areas. Not so in Peru. In Peru they're not so much firecrackers like the Burning SchoolHouse, they are definitely more like sticks of dynamite stuck in cardboard boxes of sand, being manned by people scurrying around in hardhats, through a small patio in the Plaza, which has been cordonned off by caution tape. Which does nothing to keep out a) the milling children or b) the milling dogs. It was a complete miracle that nothing got blown up and that the millions of leafy green trees in the Plaza did not ignite. And how does a hardhat protect you from getting your face blown off? (That said, I just found out an old friend of mine is moving to Lima, Peru for 3 years so her husband can build a new mine. I tell you, if he uses the firecracker dynamite to blast -- no problem! It'll be done in 3 months!) No one seems in the least phased by it though, and the photos I have of these puppies on 'Fireworks setting' are bold Pollack-esque Fireworks of Art.
Food
You know how they say, "When in Rome..." Yeah, had to try the guinea pig. Had to. You know how they also say, "It tastes like chicken"...also true. With one major difference. When you eat chicken, you don't see it in all its breaded horror, its cryogenic scream frozen in time like a carbonited Hans Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. My dinner companions had to help me finish it off. The gnarled claws, clutched in defensive stance are also offputting.
Rivalling cuy is the yummy alpaca meat. Though my brother's girlfriend keeps telling me to stop eating the cute, furry animals of Peru, I really can't seem to. Alpaca tastes a lot like gyuten, that lean, succulent meat that picks up well in chopsticks; I always used to eat it while living in Koshigaya. A month in, my co-workers informed me that gyuten translates to "cow's tongue", but by that point it was already too late. In my defense, alpaca is the only red meat with zero cholesteral. Sad, but true. (Especially after you hug one!)
Meds
Like in many Latin American countries, you can just self-prescribe, and if all you want is two painkillers, they snip two out of the foil. Not necessary to buy the whole pack. I also know for a fact that you can buy singles of Viagra, right over the counter (buying for a friend, not a "friend";) However, one day I went to the pharmacy to just get some paracetamol for the onset of a cold, since I didn't want to be even more breathing-impaired than I already would be at altitude. I don't know why I did this, but on a whim I said, "This doesn't have amoxycillin in it, right...I mean, I guess that's a ridiculous question, I know it's just Paracetamol, it's just that I'm allergic..." and the pharmacist responded, "Yes, it is amoxycillin!" Dear Lord! Who prescribes amoxycillin for "the onset of a cold"!!? I could have been killed, dear woman! (More likely, turned into a giant hive).
Homestays
#1 I explored most of Peru as part of an Intrepid Group; after visiting Colca Canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, hosting the majestic soaring condors, and a pit stop to see the alpacas, vicunas and llamas of Patapampa, 4800 metres above sea level, where my Intrepid mate Bernie and I bought our Devil Balaclavas (well, I did), we made off to Chivay, the site of Homestay Number One. It was a long and dusty drive, so the first thing I saw in this quaintly cobbled town was the washroom! Our host moms came to the town square to pick us up in their embroidered bolero jackets, ground-sweeping skirts and cowboy hats, and after a tour of the premises (several buildings made of stone and cement with wooden beams and thatched rooves) we started in on the chores (collecting twigs for the clay oven). We had the amazing luck to chance into the Alpaca beauty contest, and outfitted traditionally, the women in their embroidered outfits, and men in colourful ponchos, we headed to the outskirts of town where alpacas strutted in their finest, winning ribbons and getting towed and toured by the locals. You've got your Huacaya alpaca (the full, puffy, granny-perm variety, shorn once a year and comprising 82% of the alpaca population) and your Suri alpaca (is that where Tom and Katie stole the name?), the dreadlocked variety shorn every two years. There were faun alpacas, beige alpacas, brown alpacas. Silver grey and rose gray. White and black. For supper, Mama Julia cooked alpaca meet in the clay oven, with only ignitable twigs to fuel the fire. It was freezing in that little stone enclave and all Mama Julia had to warm her was another embroidered mantle and her Keiko propaganda apron. I lent her my silver survival suit and she kept popping the paracetamol I gave her, but the poor thing was just frozen. We went to our stone sleeping quarters and huddled there from six p.m. onwards with alpaca socks and hot water bottles. Julia introduced me to her son; she told me he was nineteen. When I met him, he told me he was sixteen. A couple in my Intrepid group (the girl is 18, the guy is 19) were asked by their homestay mom if they had children yet, and were surprised when the answer was no!
#2 Our second homestay was on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We always did a little shopping before our homestays, stocking our "Plastic is Not Fantastic" canvas Intrepid carry-alls with oranges, sugar, flour and Milo. If our first homestay was made of stones, this one was made of straw. Straw and mudbrick. With thatched rooves and wooden doors. Even the water supply was sheathed in long bundles of straw. The walkways were made of bottle ends. Men here wear woolen pants and vests with bowler hats and the women wear embroidered blouses, full colourful skirts and their long black hair twined in two braids with pompoms on the ends. Married women wear flat hats with upturned edges and pompoms, like the Queen of Hearts. Single women wear a colourfully striped nightcap with a pompon at its tip. At this homestay, I was with Rosemary and Tony, and Rosemary and I joined Florentina in her chore of peeling potatoes. However, the potatoes are miniscule and covered with tiny eyes. It is a painstaking and laborious job and when you see the pile of potatoes, its like an unending sea of bobbing corks! Richard, the homestay dad, was hanging laundry in the sunlight and that looked like a lot more fun. My two host families taught me some Quechua words and counting from one to ten, before we set out to play a little volley bolley, Foreigners against the Locals. Those people know how to play! At night, we lucked into another local festival, where we got to guss up in our traditional attire, and see the parades of people dancing in brilliant orange and blue tunics with brightly striped scarves called chaleco de Tinkus. Lots of people drinking Pilsen, and of course the omnipresent fireworks. Lots of what I call 'roller-coaster' fireworks wherein the people have this pinball structure of several metres for the sparks to ignite. Sometimes the sparks go along a wheel, or giant flower, or spell out the name 'Jesus'. In Mexico it was the outline of Benito Juarez. Young children used to shield themselves from the errant sparks with cardboard shells on their backs, but I didn't have one and when a stray 'chispa' ignited my hair, my friends had to put it out, to the mantra of passersby telling me, "No pasa nada."
Elections
Exciting times. Elections were on while we were in Peru. On the left, we had Ollanta. 49 years old. Lieutenant Colonel in the army, who fought against the Shining Path (Maoist insurgent guerrilla organization). Fighting for a more equitable distribution of wealth from the country's key natural resources. Better minimum wage and pension packages. On the right we have Keiko. 36 years old. Former First Lady of Peru (at nineteen!). Got her MBA from NYC. Constructed many orphanages and created the first pediatric cardiovascular intensive care unit. Lots of campaigning and postering and general fanfare. I got handed an Ollanta matchbook and calendar at one point, but had to hide them lest some incendiary right winger attack me! Also, a 72 hour moratorium on alcohol (sober votes only, please!) Ollanta ended up winning (Peru's 94th President), probably because Keiko's father, and former President, Fujimori is in jail for corruption and human rights abuse after a self-imposed exile in Chile and fleeing to Japan. Among other things, he sterilized 300,000 women against their will (some of whom died) to meet international population targets, back in the 90s. At my homestay, they were talking about how he slipped sterilizer into the food packages he handed out to the impoverished rural people. Nice to know women have a choice in their own fertility.
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