Puno feria

Puno feria – 

one man pedals a family

with his two strong legs

While we wait for Amaru to shop for food for our picnic at Lake Titicaca, I watch the parade of mototaxis and triciclos transporting people and goods to and from the feria. The passenger triciclos are cleverly designed with two seats in the front and room for purchases between the seats and the man pedaling from behind. Some of them have little awnings for shade and fancy mud flaps. Back at home I have a recumbent trike and it's all I can do to pedal myself, let alone three passengers with their big produce bags and five-gallon jugs. I would love to see this type of zero emission transportation become popular in every town in the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Urubamba market

Urubamba feria –

two women in monteras

chatting in Quechua

Each area of Peru has a distinct traditional costume. These women at a street market in Urubamba are wearing tall-crowned monteras, one of felted alpaca and the other of woven straw. The style of these hats may have originated with the Spanish colonists and are worn by both men and women. The full skirts may also be of colonial derivation. The women wear several layers of polleras, as many as five for special occasions. The woman on the right wears a chuspa hanging from her waist, a small pouch used for carrying coca leaves or corn. She also has a red k'eperina on her back, a rectangular woven cloth tied with a knot in front, used like a backpack. The women are chatting in Quechua, the most widely spoken Amerindian language. The people who speak this language refer to themselves as Runa, "the people," and their language is Runasimi, "language of the people."