brown bottles and jars

brown bottles and jars

of homemade oils and ointments

fill his portable shop

When I first spot this man, he is standing at the entrance to the Pisac market, holding open his wooden case filled with little bottles and jars. I am not about to buy anything out of a hand-labeled container. Later he shows up at our restaurant and our medicine man guide Amaru introduces him as a friend. Our yachac tells us that this man's family makes these incredible essential oils and ointments on their farm and urges us to give him some business. Now I'm curious. My mother was an accomplished herbalist and I want to know more about the medicinal plants of the Andes. The man speaks some English and the labels are in Spanish. On the label it says: Insituto de Ecologia Y Plantas Medicinales, Comite Productores Ecologicos Del Valle Sagrado De Los Incas. Sounds good. He opens some bottles and jars, and I sniff the contents. Heavenly! I'm particularly drawn to Pomada de Chiri-Chiri. The label says it's good for dolores musculares artriticos, golpes y contusiones. I figure that means arthritic muscles and bruises. Great. Since I usually have sore muscles somewhere and bruise easily, I end up buying seven jars. And it works!

man with long gray hair

man with long gray hair,

smoking ch'aque khuri amidst

fossils, feathers, spheres

This man smoking a brown, hand-rolled cigarillo looks like an old hippie with his long gray hair, fringed poncho and crystal pendant. Perhaps he is a yachac, a medicine man. His shop is filled with shamanic items: condor feathers, crystals, fossils, staffs and beads. I am not sure about the function of the polished spheres made of semi-precious gemstones -- turquoise, hematite, quartz -- but they are beautiful to sight and touch. The little shop vibrates with the frequencies of all these sacred items, mixed with the fragrance of Andean tobacco, called ch'aque khuri in Quechua and c'jama saire in Ayamara.

cheerful campesina

cheerful campesina

at the Sunday feria

offers roots and herbs

Peru has one of the world's largest number of plant species, some 25,000, and of those 1,400 have medicinal properties. This smiling farmer at the Pisac feria has spread out before her a few of these medicinal roots and herbs, used for treating everything from the common cold to kidney stones to cancer. 

sweet passionfruit

sweet passionfruit,

sensuous on the outside,

sublime on the inside

I acquired a passion for passionfruit in Peru, where it is called granadilla. When I encounter this pile of delectable orange orbs at the Pisac feria, I am tempted to purchase the whole lot. Granadillas are the edible fruit of subtropical Andean passionflowers. The "passion" part of passionflowers refers to the passion of Jesus in Christian theology. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of the flower as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion. The Spanish name for the fruit, granadilla, is the diminutive of granada, pomegranate, which derives from Latin granatus, seedy, and both fruits certainly do contain many seeds. The ripe fruit is about the size and shape of a lemon. The orange-yellow rind is smooth, thin and brittle on the outside, white and soft on the inside. The pulp is whitish-yellow, mucilaginous, juicy, with a sprightly, aromatic flavor, and encloses numerous flat, black, tender seeds. The slimy pulp is very sweet, but don't think about what it might look like. You can cut the shell in half and eat the contents with a spoon. Or you can crack the shell with your fingernails and suck out the soft, moist, sticky mass.

she's painting rainbows

she's painting rainbows

from tins of brilliant powdered

pigments piled in peaks

Colors, colors, colors! As an artist, I want to buy everything this vendor has on her table at the Pisac feria. I also want to know what they're made of. Where on Earth do they get that electric blue? These pigments are not synthetic, but I can't think of any rocks that are that color. The crimson red I do know about. It's made from cochineal, an insect native to South America that lives on cacti. The insect produces carminic acid as a defense against predators. Carminic acid can be extracted from the insect's body and mixed with calcium salts to make carmine dye. The bright red dye has long been used for coloring fabrics and was an important export during the colonial period. Its use declined with the invention of synthetic dyes, but recently there has been an increased demand for natural dyes and Peru is now the largest exporter. This brilliant carmine color is frequently used in the traditional clothing of Peru, from hats to ponchos, k'eperinas, shirts and skirts.

hand rolled tabaku

hand rolled tabaku

on the stone sill, cactus behind

reflecting glass

Surreal reflections in a window in Pisac: fluted green cactus with convoluted roots, yellow ear of choclo, abandoned hand rolled tabaku, peeling paint, rough adobe, chiseled stone, orange bull's eye, blue doors. Tabaku, the Quechua word for cigarette, has obviously been borrowed from Spanish, but choclo, the Quechua word for maize, is original to the language spoken by the majority of Peruvians.

cherimoyas, green

cherimoyas, green

serpent scale skin, big black seeds,

custard pulp, tangy sweet

Cherimoyas, strange looking, but one of my favorite Andean fruit, and I'm in good company. Mark Twain called it "the most delicious fruit known to men." Inside the dragon skin, the pulp has the texture of sherbet and tastes like pineapple-banana, but also a lot of hard black seeds. Cherimoyas remind me of another of my favorites, American persimmons. When ripe, they have a delicious flavor and soft pulp filled with large hard seeds. While I am admiring the texture and color of this unusual fruit at the Pisac feria, a young couple comes up to look them over. The man says in French to his companion, "Qu'est-ce que c'est?"  She says, "Je ne sais pas." Remembering my French I say, "Cherimoya, fruits délicieux." They both smile at me and the vendor smiles at me as we all make our purchases.

eating purple grapes

 

eating purple grapes 

and peaches from her wheelbarrow

watched by curious dog

This fruit vendor has set up shop on the corner of a street in Pisac. The dog looks eagerly at the piles of grapes, perhaps wishing he could sample some too. Her old wheelbarrow, lined with red and blue plastic, and the pink plastic shopping bags create a bright tableau for the purple grapes and yellow peaches. The adobe wall behind her, its pink paint pitted down to the clay bricks looks like an abstract painting, contrasting with the neat design of the stone street.

girl with red balloon

girl with red balloon

in her mouth peeking between

double wooden doors

There is magic in sudden seeing. A moment before, only worn wooden doors set in an unadorned adobe wall. The next moment, one of the doors opens a crack and a little girl, dwarfed by the tall doors, peeks out, holding a red balloon in her mouth. It's like opening an old wooden chest and discovering hidden treasure, a star ruby set in a bracelet of sapphires.

blue doors, azure wall

blue doors, azure wall,

boy in orange jacket and pants,

bushy-tailed orange dog

The blue so often seen on doors in Peru is the same color as the water of Lake Titicaca: ultramarine, sapphire, cobalt, lapis lazuli. The aqua paint on the wall, also a favorite color, is seen in everything from aquamarine plastic bags to electric blue plastic tarps and turquoise plastic pails. On the color wheel orange is opposite blue, and when they are together they not only complement but also compliment each other. The mango orange of the boy's clothes and the burnt sienna of the dog's fur pop out in delightful contrast with the blue doors. This combination of blue and orange reminds me of the intense cerulean of the sky and the persimmon buffalo grass in autumn on our farm in the Flint Hills of Kansas. When we moved into our stone house, built in 1840, I wanted to bring the outside inside, so I painted the walls prairie grass orange and the ceiling sky blue.

mouth of a serpent

mouth of a serpent

spouting water from a stream

zigzaging uphill

Lost in the maze of the Pisac feria, I turn a corner into an open passage, relieved that I have found my way out of the labyrinth, and nearly stumble into the mouth of a serpent at my feet. The realistic stone head is spouting water into a little pool lined with round stones. A water channel set into diamond paving stones and edged with triangular mosaics of small round pebbles comprises its body. The channel runs zigzag down a very long, narrow street. A triciclo is parked not too far away, between the channel and the adobe wall, and a woman in traditional costume, with a striped k'eperina over one shoulder, is walking toward me up the hill. I stand and stare at the serpent for a long time. There is a mystery here which I cannot grasp. My eyes tell me that the water is spouting up from the serpent's mouth but the street into with the water channel is sloping down. It is like a painting by M.C. Escher. My confused mind scrambles for a logical explanation of this apparent contradiction. There must be a pump under the serpent's head that forces water up from a well or cistern, and the channel is merely for draining rainwater down the hill, as I have seen on many other sloped streets. But the mind-boggling impression remains. Perhaps this is its purpose, to take the mind beyond, into the realm of Amaru, the Cosmic Serpent.

sacred Inka choclo

sacred Inka choclo,

maize of many colors, black,
yellow, pink, white, red

Maize, called choclo in Quechua, was the most revered food of the Inkas, who saved their best terraced land for growing this symbol of power. Maize, like squash, anku, and beans, chuwi, was cultivated as early as 10,000 years ago in Mesoamerica. In the milk stage it is roasted in the husk or boiled on the cob. When dried it is popped or ground into meal or flour. There are 35 heirloom varieties, many of them quite high in protein.

heart of winter squash

 

 heart of winter squash

displayed on a wooden crate

with a carving knife

Late March in Peru, the end of autumn, and the feria in Pisac is full of the bounteous harvest, like this giant Blue Hubbard Squash, which may have originally weighed as much as 40 pounds (18 kg). Although this specimen of squash ( Cucurbita maxima) has been cut up for immediate consumption, winter squash is so called because it can be cured to harden the skin and stored all winter. The mottled blue gray skin is covered with warty bumps but the dense marigold flesh has a delicate flavor. Squashes are native to the Americas. They may have been first cultivated in Mesoamerica 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, at a time when cave dwellers were beginning to grow squashes along with beans, chili peppers and agave. The Spanish explorer, Francisco Pizarro, discovered winter squashes in Peru and brought seeds back to his country. Almost the entire plant is edible: blossoms, immature fruit, seeds, tender new growth stem ends and leaves, as well as the mature fruit.

white hat and white braids

white hat and white braids,

a vendor smiles at white papas

and red camotes

This is the first woman I have seen in Peru with white hair, though her smooth face gives her an ageless appearance. She is wearing a traditional sombrero de paja, a tall straw hat. These tightly woven hats may take a month to weave and can cost as much as a farmer makes in a year. She is selling several kinds of potatoes, white, red, yellow, orange, sweet, even a strange little gray variety. The Andeans still grow several hundred varieties of potatoes.

waiting for shoppers

waiting for shoppers

a vendor sits among squash,

carrots, striped ponchos

This vendor at the big Sunday Pisac farmer's market is quite modern in her appearance, from unbraided hair to hoodie, rolled-up jeans and canvas shoes. Yet she is surrounded by traditional hand-woven ponchos, heirloom squash, a bundle of cilantro and small, sweet Andean carrots. Ah, those delicious little carrots!

roses on her hat

roses on her hat

a woman selects carrots

at the feria

Being a hat person, I love the way this woman at the Pisac farmer's market has decorated her hat with fresh red roses. At one of the open shops in the feria, I purchased a beautiful deep teal hat with a round crown, made of felted alpaca, for fifteen Soles, about $5.00. When I got home, I decorated the front with red silk roses.

chicha morado

chicha morado

a girl selling rainbow paints

her mother knitting

One of the booths at the big Sunday farmer's feria in Pisac is so electrifying that I stand for a long time just drinking in the colors. The girl, of course, tries to sell me some of her colored pigments or a cup of chicha morada, a delicious drink made from choclo morado, purple maize boiled with pineapple rind, cinnamon and clove and then mixed with sugar and lemon. Both women and men may be seen knitting, often while walking.

waiting for turistas

waiting for turistas

indigenas in costumes

pose for a foto

Wherever there are tourists, as at this big open-air market in Pisac, there are bound to be groups of women and children dressed in bright native costumes, waiting for a camera to turn their way and then politely asking for Soles in return. Indigenas everywhere in Peru wear the striped shoulder cloths called k'eperinas, but each locality has its own distinct traditional dress, like this group from the Ausangate region. The girls are wearing elaborately adorned wool jackets called juyuna, flounced skirts called polleras and hats that look like lampshades. The boy wears a traditional cap with flaps called a chollo, but the rest of his outfit is modern. The costumes are certainly eye-catching, but if that's not enough to entice the photographer, one of the children will cradle a puppy or a baby llama and the woman will carry a baby on her back. From what I'm told, sometimes the woman will borrow a baby as part of her props. Still, it seems to be a fairly harmless and rather charming way to earn some income, especially since they don't follow the tourist around with hands outstretched.

an earthenware bowl

 
an earthenware bowl

of sopa de kinwa y choclo

with mate de coca

Peruvians have a genuine ethnic cuisine based on many indigenous ingredients. Everything has a distinct, delicious flavor. Maybe it's the soil combined with organic farming. The midday meal begins with sopa, followed by salada, then the main course and dessert. At this restaurant in Pisaq, the soup is made with kinwa and choclo, and we can choose mate de coca or fresh lemonade. Kinwa (quinoa), choclo (a type of maize), and coca were all considered sacred by the Inkas, who used them in their ceremonies, and they are still used in this manner by indigenous Andeans. The word kinwa means "moon" in Quechua, and the cooked seeds do look like little moons and crescents. The Inkas called it chisaya mama, "the mother of grains." The Inka emperor traditionally sowed the first seeds of the season using a gold implement. The Spanish conquistadors forbade the cultivation of quinoa due to its association with non-Christian ceremonies. Technically a seed, it has more protein than any grain. Gluten free, it is easy to digest and has a nutty flavor. Choclo has large pale yellow kernels. Very popular boiled on the cob, it also has a nutty flavor. Mate de coca is made from coca leaves. Indigenous people chew the leaves as a stimulant, forming a wad in the cheek. Everyone in Peru consumes it as a tea, which tastes like green tea, slightly bitter. It is held to be especially beneficial to health altitudes, so we drink a lot of mate de coca.

four golden cheese wheels

four golden cheese wheels

glowing in a dark little shop

beckon me inside

On the way back from Pisac to Cusco, we stop in a village for snacks at a store catering to tourists. While everyone else is busy buying bottled water, alpaca caps and seed jewelry, I wander outside. Something bright catches my eye in a dark, empty little shop. Two golden wheels of cheese are laid out on a red-trimmed white cloth, like an offering, on top of a glass case containing two more wheels, preserved like precious gems. The strong contrast in illumination, light against dark, reminds me of the chiarascuro still life paintings of the Renaissance and I feel like I've stepped back several hundred years in time.