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Archbishop of Cusco to Evict More Local Restaurants
Screw the locals, screw the poor, screw the backpackers, screw anyone who wants to eat healthy Peruvian food at decent prices.
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Happy Father’s Day, Peru-style
A tension has been building up all week in our house as Father’s Day approaches. This was a low-key holiday for us back in the States — El Hijo would make El Fotografo a card at the last minute, or I’d haul him off to the mall to buy an electric razor — but since moving to Peru in ’07, Father’s Day has grown into an Event. This change is partially due to the hoopla made by EH’s British-Peruvian school over Dia del Papá (and over Mother’s Day as well). From what I understand, this is common practice at schools in Lima. I’d always thought of Father’s Day as a family…
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Photo of a Pilgrimage Leader
"The Lord of Qoyllur Rit'i wants us to live together on this earth peacefully," he explained. "We travel to Qoyllur Rit'i in comparsas to learn to share, to stop being egotistical and hypocritical."
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Peruvian ‘Viagra’ Soup: Does It Hoist Your Sail or Is It Just a Crock of Chupe?
Yesterday's post on the medicinal powers of chilcano de pescado led to my discovering a Peruvian restaurant in Chicago that's serving up a traditional fish soup as a wonder aphrodesiac. Taste of Peru in Rogers Park is touting its seafood-crammed "Sopa de Viagra" as a "natural elixir to jump-start the love life," reports the Chicago Sun Times. And at $25 a serving, the lovers' soup competes with U.S. pharmacy prices for the little blue pill:
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Peru’s Answer to Jewish Penicillin: Chilcano de Pescado
Chilcano de pescado, as made by Gaston Acurio I need my Jewish chicken-noodle soup in the wintertime. I grew up on the U.S. East Coast, where delis and diners and Jewish moms cook up barrels of this fragrant, healing soup all year long. Then I moved to Miami where at gourmet delis like Epicure, you can buy big jars of delicious matzoh-ball soup that will cure you overnight of colds, bronchitis, pneumonia. I’ve been restored from the Dead with homemade chicken soup glistening with beads of kosher chicken fat. Then, a year and a half ago, I moved to Peru where there are like, 3,000 Jews in the entire country and no…
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Photo of the Day: Our Campsite at Qoyllur Rit’i
We camped out for three nights (June 6-9) in the valley below receding Qolqepunku Glacier. That dark mountain on the right used to be covered with snow and ice. Once upon a twentieth century… I look at this photo, and what strikes me is how pleasant and cozy the scene appears. Warm sunlight, plenty of space between campsites. That’s anything but the truth. Climbing out of that tent in the frigidly cold morning was torture. I got dizzy bending over in the high altitude and sort of collapsed onto this chair just minutes before El Fotografo snapped this shot. There is an 11-year-old child inside the zippered tent, refusing to come out after a sleepless…
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Climate Change & Disappearing Glaciers, Festivals, Sacred Rituals, Religion, Peru's Andes Mountains, Traditions + Rituals
I End up Doing the Whipping Dance
El Fotografo and I were making friend with our camping neighbors — a comparsa from Cusco — at the Qoyllur Rit’i pilgrimage last weekend, when suddenly one of the young dancers snatched me by the arm. “Come on, dance,” she said. No, I said, several times — No to the satin skirt being pinned around my (enormous) down jacket, No to the elaborate flat hat (montera) being strapped on my head, No to the leather whip being thrust in my gloved hand. No, because this gringa didn’t want to risk having a heart attack by foolishly dancing the “Yawar Mayu” (River of Blood) ritual whipping dance at 15,500 feet above sea level. Not…
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Getting Our Bearings Back after Qoyllur Rit’i
Back in Lima today after four days and three nights at Qoyllur Rit’i. We got great material (interviews, photos, video), and all of us survived, but it was an ordeal. Bitterly cold temperatures (-10 degrees Celcius), sleepless nights accompanied by constant drumming, dynamite being set off helter-skelter. Having to re-set up camp ourselves in the dark due to our arriero‘s incompetence (tents pitched at angles, facing wind). El Fotografo passing out due to exertion at high altitude….I could go on and on. But on the plus side — we met a great comparsa from Cusco-Santiago, who welcomed us into their rituals and let us understand the remarkable faith that drives pilgrims to make this…
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Going up the Mountain Today
It is quarter of nine in the morning, and we’re waiting for the van to pick us up at Hostal Buena Vista, in Cusco, to take us to Mawayni. That’s where pilgrims begin the eight-kilometer climb to the shrine of Qoyllur Rit’i. The hostal is owned by El Fotografo’s cousin Jorge, who’s got a nice thing going here. We’re listening to the Waifs and eating local bread with eggs, cheese, ham — 100 percent energy, as Jorge says. El Hijo likes Cusco this time around. I have no idea how well he will cope at high altitude, surrounded by tens of thousands of dancing, chanting pilgrims. Tonight we’ll find out.…
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Needless Deaths in the Andes
A front-page article in Sunday’s El Comercio exposed the criminal indifference of local and state governments to the deaths of children in the Andes. Some Peruvians are outraged at the country’s indifference to the preventable deaths of children in the Andes, as this widely circulated cartoon shows. Others shrug their shoulders and say, “That’s Peru.” This year alone, 144 children under age 5 have died of respiratory disease brought on extreme cold in the high sierra, reported El Comercio. Thirty-five of the young victims were from Puno, where temperatures plummeted to -15 degrees C in the last 21 days. (Note that temperature extremes — winter getting colder, summer getting hotter and drier — are an expression…
