We thought we were so clever that night, playfully posing with and laughing at its little dismembered claw. It was one of a hundred or so cliché activities I as a tourist was dutifully to perform, with only the presence of six Peruvians urging me along to give this gruesome ritual a tenuous air of authenticity.
I was in Cuzco, Peru, you see, and I just ate a guinea pig. And the events thereafter can only leave me with one conclusion – its vengeful spirit was determined to wreak havoc on my life.
As a “decision ultimo minuto” the thought of heralding in the new year atop a verdant Incan mountain seemed appropriate so I booked a flight to Peru (thanks Dad and Ginny for the inspiration.) The flight from Cochabamba to El Paz is labeled by experts (aka my Lonely Planet on a Shoe String guidebook writers) as one of the most spectacular known to man (as long as you sit on the right side of the plane). For once, I must agree with their hyperbolic descriptions – we were so close to breathtaking snowcapped Andean peaks our plane was virtually parallel with their cloudy summits.
When you arrive to El Paz you feel like someone has kicked you squarely in the chest, constricting your breathing to tight little gasps …. It is, after all, the highest airport in the world. Being no stranger to the hand-curling, stomach hurling, tunnel vision-inducing effects of altitude sickness, I swallowed my panic with a little pill and anxiously awaited my connecting flight.
It is a funny range of reactions a woman receives when traveling alone, from matronly concern to thinly veiled unChristian thoughts of bored middle aged men. But most predictably, everyone feels compelled to offer you suggestions or assistance in some form or another. However the only advice any woman needs when traveling alone can be boiled down to just three words – trust. your. gut.
My stomach and I were as one as I warily approached the door of my “hotel” (or so claimed Priceline when I booked it). However, a lack of sign or any indication that this was indeed a legitimate establishment was only cemented when the man who answered my doorbell revealed that the ‘lobby’ was actually his garage and the only breath of life in my grimly lit room was a squadron of flies buzzing in lazy, determined circles. Not to mention he refused give me a room key. So I wasted little time in getting the hell out of there.
Fortunately attempt #2 yielded a jackpot of an open air, garden-terraced, Spanish-inspired inn whose setup was bested only by its view of one of the many 17th century red stone churches rising majestically from every street corner.
Cuzco is everything you’d think a world heritage city would be, the beauty and mystery of centuries of complex civilizations and the hordes of tourists stumbling over one another, willing to pay top dollar to rub up against something vaguely profound. But even I must quash the incessantly mumbling cynic within to marvel at the undeniable richness of this place.
Long before the haughty Spaniards left their cruel bootheel on the land, Cuzco was the administrative, political, and military center of the mighty Incan empire, which stretched nearly 2,500 miles up and down the continent. When my European ancestors were still living in hovels and dying in their own filth, the Incans had made stunning inroads into mathematics, agriculture, irrigation, astronomy, animal husbandry, complex communication systems, stone masonry, and architecture.
Now, history respires from the cobbled streets and massive Incan stone walls like mist from a morning lake. The smell and taste of incense permeates all things – the air, the wine, my brain. And on this day, New Year’s Eve, yellow – the color of Incan renewal – burst in sunny snatches all over the streets – bouquets, hats, flags, glasses, necklaces, firecrackers and tiny bags of flower petals for one hell of a celebration later than night.
I wish I could say I witnessed it firsthand. My willlld New Year’s Eve culminated in an 8 PM bedtime. Oh well. A blissful night with a down comforter is never one in vain.
But it was on the next day when it all went down. Surrounded by my new friends, a welcoming group of young Peruvians who adopted me on a tourist bus – I stared at the gnarled body as it stared back at me from my plate. The guinea pig – or cuy – was one of 3 animals that the Incans had domesticated, and now, stretched out before me, I was able to revel in yet another of Incan’s incalculable contributions to mankind.
I wish I could say I understood. But all I could think of was Ruby, our family’s beloved pet rat, or the endless train of hamsters we reared and killed in the cruelty of childhood. Urged on by my new ‘cuy-coaches’ I gingerly picked my way through its fragile bones, trying to avoid hovering my gaze too long on its still attached head and gracefully ignoring the proddings to eat its rubbery skin.
Maybe it was the untamed spirit of the cuy that lifted my sails the next day on my maiden voyage to Macchu Pichu. Or perhaps its fate of being relegated to a tourist gimmick more accurately reflects the reality of modern day Macchu Pichu. Or maybe I’m just a grump. All I can say is that my honest reaction to the hordes of tourists, teaming ants whose antennae has been replaced by spindly selfie-sticks, and the garbage strewn all about the ancient sacred ruins made me want to flee my fellow man in a hurry. Which I did, only pausing long even to collect two heaping bags of trash on my way down the unforgiving Incan steps snaking down the mountain.
It is not to say the day was not without its undeniable merits. The Peruvian landscape will take your breath away, resplendent in its lush carpet of green craggy peaks, interrupted only by the mind-blowing terraces constructed by the Incan in order to leverage different temperatures found in soils at varying heights. I also got to participate (at least passively) in a full on tourist bus mutiny against a driver who the passengers thought was driving too fast. Twice the driver pulled over to scream back at the unhappy patrons. And finally, I would be remiss without saying that – when taking a step back from the shoving crowds – seeing the Incan stronghold tenaciously gripping the mountain top after thousands of years is a feat for which words can’t describe.
But for me, though, it is those quieter moments in which the profound reveals itself. Moments as when I was standing next to Claudia, my new friend from Lima, who described how meaningful it was to experience the spiritual connection to her ancestors, or Roberto, my Peruvian guide, who after zipping me through the Cusco streets on the back of his motorcycle (sorry Dad) to pick up a bus ticket, spoke for over an hour about the mysteries the Incan culture has left behind. In a flash, surrounded by a dingy office and impatient customers, I saw that for these people, history, spirituality and culture is not accessible through a train ticket or guided tour of Macchu Pichu, but is a living, breathing changing thread that weaves itself through the people who are its latest chapter.
And perhaps, I as well, am only a receptacle for spiritual energy and the choices I make in this life. Maybe I was being punished for my vanity and participation in the spectacle of tourism that has cheapened the incalculable depths of the Incan imprint.
All I know is … the day I left, I lost my keys, first time in adult memory. The next day, I was seized by the most violent bout of traveler’s sickness yet, an affair that lasted a full ten hours. The following day, as I entered my family’s kitchen in the route of my normal morning routine, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a site more accurately comparable to the grotesque scenes of human suffering found in the musty Hieronymus Bosch books in our old basement. Soaking in the sink water was a tub of hairless, slippery cuy with mouths gaping, ears curling and claws clenched around each other in soundless death throes. I was not even aware cuy was a thing in Bolivia. I will spare you all the photograph.
Soon after, I discovered some crafty Peruvian scoundrel had hacked into my bank account by scanning my card numbers and made off with nearly $1,000. And not too long after THAT, the incompetence of bank tellers led to the freezing of my bank account, a condition that persists to this moment.
So you tell me – a mere chain of unfortunate events? Or perhaps, the machinations of a deeper evil, an evil found in the vengeful claws and malevolent black twinkle of a scorned guinea’s pig’s eye… It is not for mere mortals such as I decide.