An avid ambassador of the word 'yes', I am a life traveler and experiencer that winds up in all kinds of mischievous and somewhat hairy situations.
When I am not gallivanting or doing ridiculous things around the world, I am a super responsible high school chemistry, science and mathematics teacher. I am also a singer/songwriter who released an EP, Yours For The Keeping, in 2006. Delivering performances in many places around the world, one of my favourite places to perform was with the drag queens of Toronto's Church St in 2010/2011. These days I just chill with my ukulele, does the odd cover gig for fun and writing ridiculous jingles. Other favourite activities are Crossfit, boxing training, cooking a million and one different varieties of pie, growing vegetables, International Spy Missions and hiking. Oh and travel. But I consider that a lifestyle, not a hobby!
So Follow me through life as I take on the world and whatever challenges are thrown my way!!
One of the biggest joys of travel for me is food. Oddly though when people ask me what foods I miss from home, I tell them none really. I don’t really miss any of it. Most of what constitutes “Australian foods” are candies, chocolate biscuits and all round unhealthy shit.
After time spent in Canada and the UK, I can safely say that a Tim Horton’s chilli is probably the only thing I miss from there. But despite my adversity to Western foods, there are specific foods from other parts of the world that blow my mind that I do occasionally get cravings for and that I cannot replicate and cannot get in the authentic manner where I am.
Fish and sweet potato puree from an amazing restaurant called La Sirena d’Juan, Mancora, Peru. My god….. foodgasm!
So one can imagine my excitement when I am walking around downtown Melbourne and in the market I find a stand that sells Burek, an Albanian pastry most commonly filled with ricotta and spinach or minced meat. I am well excited! And gözleme from Turkey! Momo’s from Nepal! Arepa de choclo from Colombia! And I am now well excited. I even managed to find an amazing woman who was so incredibly lovely selling pre-mixed packets of Indian spices to make things like Goan fish. Authentic Goan fish. Not the shitty, watered-down, westernised, jar sauce rubbish that tastes nothing like curry from actual India. I’m talking the ones that will blow your head off and still be considered “mild”. Real. Curry. Mmmmm…..
Menu del dia from the side of the road in Cali, Colombia…. approximate cost, 3 USD.
I miss my standard “menu del día” from Colombia with my fried plantains and chicharrón. I miss real Mexican Tacos made with maíz tortillas and not the shitty Old El Paso box crap with crunchy tortilla shells. Not once did I see those in Mexico. I miss a proper ceviche from Peru with those little toasted corn kernels of white corn on the side…. Any authentic empanada from anywhere South American. Venezuelan arepas. Pad Thai cooked in Thailand. Tom kha kai….
Traditional Peruvian causa with passionfruit juice.
Mussaman curry. Mango sticky rice. Actual Vietnamese Phó from Vietnam. Amok Curry from Cambodia. Egyptian falafel…. Ugh…. All of this is making me hungry as I write. Proper gelati from Italy and those little tortellini things that float around in the beef broth from Bologna. Norwegian brown cheese. All cakes and hot chocolate from the Republic of Cacao in Ecuador…..
The world’s best hot chocolate from the Republica de Cacao, Quito, Ecuador…. oh and the cake! This was dinner every single night for a week. Oops.
As is, half of my backpack coming home was filled with Ecuadorian Cacao paste and packets of Sancocho soup mix from Colombia. Throw in some David’s tea from Canada and an authentic Indian chai…. Ugh….. Take me back!
The most amazing Nicaraguan ice cream sandwich ever!
Anyway, the point is, I managed to find places in Melbourne that sell these things or ingredients to make these things authentically. And upon this discovery, I was the happiest I had been in a long time. Because if I can’t go to the food, at least the food can come to me and remind me of all of the good times I had with such foods. Venezuelan arepas dripping down my chin as I drunkenly smashed one down in the street. The pupusas I ate every day in El Salvador on the beach. The falafels I ordered on my own with my very limited Arabic on the side of the road in Egypt, despite arguments with my guide. The targines we ate every single day in Morocco with couscous and Morrocan BBQ in a dingy market. All the days I sat with locals, the only white person in the place munching down on Indonesian bakso or ayam Goreng.
Indonesian bakso…… mmmm…..
The food opens doors to my memories. It allows me to keep them alive through my taste buds and the connections they have to events. I expected to find some, but never this much here. And now that I have, I’m excited to get in the kitchen and cook. It is my own little time machine at home, when jumping on a plane cannot suffice. And for now, it will have to do.
I have met some very cool couples travelling. Couples that are their own people that can interact with others and make friends and better yet, can for the most part, respectfully keep their hands off each other in public. I love these people. These people are great. What I don’t love are young, needy couples who think it’s ok to treat a shared dormitory with ten other people in it like their own private bedroom.
Last week I rolled into Cochabamba at 8pm and was ushered to a dorm room where I was shown to a bed one meter away from a completely STARK FUCKING NAKED couple that were fondling each other and whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears while I am trying to awkwardly organise my stuff and go to bed. The most confrontational part was when I roll over and open my eyes to bear witness to one hairy male arse crack escaping from under the sheet cause ‘guess what mate? Single beds and single bed sheets were made for one fucking person so either put some fucking clothes on or go to your own bed!’
Thinking that after a day I had escaped this, I moved on to the next city, but low and behold, two cities later, adjacent bed, same naked fucking couple. Do they get that in their own little world of neediness that they are making every other person around them uncomfortable? They also barely talk to anyone else. They don’t need to. They have each other… How adorable and completely unhealthy.
So they left, and even better, my mate and I walk into the room where we’re staying and two more couples who don’t know how to stop touching each other have moved on in. Great. As it is I write this in the darkness to the lovely musical intonation of people kissing each other. But you know, they put a sheet up so nobody can see and this apparently acts as a magical fucking sound barrier as well. And given the head of my bed and theirs line up, I don’t have a magical sound barrier. By the light of iPad, I can see and hear fucking everything. And you know what? I’m sick of it!
Some people call me a prude. Some call me unromantic because they are young people in love. The fact is, I don’t care if you’re young and can’t keep your hands off each other, just do it somewhere else. Get a private fucking room like all of the respectful couples I mentioned above do so they don’t annoy people or do what my ex and I used to do; kiss each other goodnight and go to our own fucking beds to sleep. I’m not so fucking needy that I need to cling to you in the middle of the night on a top bunk that’s narrow with no railings at the risk of falling out or sleeping like shit just so that I can show ‘I love you’. I already trashed my back and neck sleeping in a single bed with my boyfriend at 18 in a room on our own at uni. Why you’d want to do it in even a shitter dorm beds is beyond me.
But then I’m a loveless old hag with respect for the personal comfort of others and situational awareness. What the fuck would I know?
I was picked up this morning by a very funny local man by the name of Antonio Banderas. He tells me that there is the famous Antonio Banderas of Spain who sings (?? I thought he was an actor) and then there is famous Antonio Banderas of Potosí who dances (him).
We first went to his office where we were equipped with sexy red pants and jackets, helmets and torches, ready for a bit of industrial spelunking. On the way of course, we had to stop and acquire some supplies. Such supplies consist of coca leaves, a 96% bottle of booze, and snacks to give as presents to the miners. Why you ask does a person need a 96% bottle of alcohol in a mine, well, we will get to that later.
Antonio Banderas and his dick dynamite
So a bit of background history. Locals lived here for thousands of years happily. The Spanish rock up with their guns and evil trickery and take over pretty much the entire continent. Upon the discovery of a boat load of silver ore underground, some of which being up to (oddly) 96% pure, they decided to base their entire South American economic operations out of Potosí. Problem though. Who is actually going to work in these unsafe mines in shocking conditions for the profitability of the Spanish? Certainly not the Spanish.
According to Señor Banderas, up to eight million local Quechua died working in these mines from either accidents or lung failure from the silica dust. They were forced to work there as slaves. My fact checker journalist friend finds a mere hundred thousand in comparison on the internet but no doubt these numbers have been fudged a bit along the way by both parties. As it stands today, there are 7,500 people still working across 40 different cooperative mines in the area and there are on average approximately three deaths per month. One of the last they had to haul out in pieces after he exploded himself with dynamite.
A derailed cart for transporting silver through the mines
In an attempt to protect themselves from the evils of the mines, there are several rituals which miners undertake to ask Pachamama and their devil friend they call Tio, for sparing. At first we throw coca leaves and some alcohol on the ground at the mine entrance to ask Pachamama for her blessings and then we enter.
Back in the days of the Spanish, when the Quechua would refuse to enter the mines, the Spanish lied to them and told them that unless they went and pulled as much silver out of the ground as possible that they would seriously piss of the God of the underworld, also known as Satan, and that he would rain fucking hell down like you’ve never seen. All lies of course, but what this started was super interesting.
Scattered throughout the mine are devil statues of varying sizes that they call Tio. Tio means uncle in Spanish, but it is more likely the case that they were trying to call him ‘Dios’ without the capacity to be able to pronounce the letter ‘d’, thus ‘tios’. Each Tio has his hands on his knees in sitting position with an optimistically giant erection sticking out from between his legs. The ritual proceeds that one gives coca leaves and alcohol to each hand, to protect the hands, to each feet, to protect the feet and lots for the penis for “lots and lots of sex sex sex!” Antonio Banderas tells me. Of course he is joking, the significance of the giant schlong is fertility and they make the biggest offering to it in hope that the mine will be rich with ore and give back ample dinero. Antonio then also sparks up a doobie, has a few puffs and inserts this cigarette into Tio’s mouth so he gets the trifector of all vices of miners. Most of the Tios have black noses for this and black lips. This is still something that is performed in devout manner to ask for protection and safety every single day in disregard to occupational health and safety measures. Despite losing both his father and grandfather to lung disease from working in the mines, Antonio still didn’t wear a mask.
One of the many ‘Tios’ scattered throughout the mines
What he did do however was sing the Indiana Jones theme song quite consistently and recommend that we use hands to crawl like ‘Spider-Mans, Spider-Womens and Spider-Pigs’. I can say that I not so graciously attempted to follow this advice as I squeezed my way through some of the small cracks where we observed the miners working in their actual conditions with hammers to break up stone, shovelling rocks into carts and pushing them along the tracks. These days the ore is lucky to contain ten percent and as such, not a lot of money is to be made from such a gruelling process.
They are however a proud people. Proud of their jobs and proud of their history. I can tell you this right now, I don’t think you could pay me enough money in the world to make the daily sacrifices that these men make, with their lives and their long term health, just to sustain their families. But then I was fortunate enough to be born with such a choice. Many of them don’t and come from generations of miners like Antonio Banderas. He did something smart though. He learned to speak English and started doing tours of the mines.
One of the tunnels used for transporting silver in the mines.
“Six years”, he will proudly tell you he has been speaking English. “Fuck is the first English word I learned”, he chuckles as he adds in “fucking tourists, jejeje”. He is one of the most friendly and jovial men you will meet, and very, very funny. But his face takes a hard worn look to it as he discusses his friends that died in the five years he was working in the mines as a miner. A reality that every single man in the mine faces.
It’s all fun and games crawling around a mine as a tourist, in all your gear, with your helmet, but at the end of the day, that’s what we are. Tourists in the unfortunate lives of others. These men work in appalling conditions that will either lead them to rapid accidental death or the eventual death by age forty from the constant inhalation of silica dust. It is hard, dirty, and completely unregulated in what we would consider a western standard. Nobody here survives in the end. They just accept that it’s their card and get about it until they die, with the exception of the odd ones like Antonio and a few others who defy this and find work elsewhere. It certainly gave me an appreciation for the options I have for work in my life. At least I don’t have to die to provide for my family for the short working span of life I would have working here.
Going home. It doesn’t really have very strong connotations for most of us. Going home from work. Going home from a holiday. You can pretty much expect things to be exactly the way that you left them. But what if you’ve been gone for four years? What if you don’t even know anymore what you are going home from? Or even better yet, going home to?
Obviously I am going home to my family and a lot of exciting and not so exciting things that involve my family, whom I adore to pieces. But everything else is more scary. Everything else is so unknown, and for someone who has lived unknown for such a long time, you would think that I would be used to it. But this is different. This feels more permanent. This time I don’t have an escape and somewhere else to go to. This time, I am back to stay.
And that is hard when I don’t feel like I know or relate to my country anymore. For the last few times I have been home, I have felt like an alien walking around a land that looks so familiar to me. A foreigner in a land where everyone sounds just like me. A stranger to people who I have known for a long time. The truth is, in moving around and meeting so many other people, I have detached myself from the parts of being Australian that I didn’t want to associate myself with. The parts that get involved in ridiculousness like national outrage over shaved cricket balls and supermarkets banning plastic bags. The parts that need to be in everyone else’s business because there is nothing else to get worked up about in a place where people are so fortunate. The parts that have a reputation globally for being racist and unaccepting. Or better yet, drunk all the time and disrespectful. I left them behind somewhere along the way and I don’t want them back. A part of me went about collecting the best parts of other cultures and trying to incorporate them into who I am. Will this person be accepted? Or shunned by others who will go about isolating me and keeping their distance, which something I experienced last time I returned for several months.
I fear the lack of being able to communicate with others on the same level. After leading such a different life for such a long time, it is hard to come back to what is considered normal. It is harder when people don’t like to acknowledge that you haven’t been living normal. That you’ve been living something unexplainable. How do you make new friends when you’ve forgotten how to talk to normal people about normal everyday things that aren’t “Where are you going? Where are you from?” How do you communicate with old friends when so much of who you are has changed? Half the time I feel like I am sitting as an island witness to conversations I no longer have the capacity to be a part of because I lost pop culture along the way.
I fear not making enough money to survive and yet I also fear having a job where I wind up in the same stress cycle I did last time, ending up in adrenal fatigue and nervous breakdown. How do I manage to navigate a network of obtaining a job that is considered acceptable or do I just blow the whole thing off and go work as a card dealer at the casino or serve ice cream or something? Will I again be judged for choosing something that isn’t considered ‘professional’ in a society where what you do for work is a large part of defining who you are and what your worth is? If I shun the standard view of worth and work, will I still be accepted by others or will new people I meet walk away and decide I am not good enough because of it?
The biggest thing for me is that I fear that I cannot make this work. That at some point in six months from now, I am going to want to pick myself up and go somewhere else because I am unhappy and it is too hard. The truth is, I am at an age where I need to consider whether I want to have children and a family and if I can’t stay in one place long enough to meet someone that I connect with at that level, then I am giving those things away. And if I don’t manage to meet someone because I have waited so long to do so, then I have given it away with my choices up to this point already. And that, well it will be a bridge I cross when I come to it. But I actually need right now to commit to it. I need to commit to opening myself up, putting myself out there, meeting people with the knowledge that I am not saying goodbye to them in six months from now and making myself a life. I tried in England. I failed. After two years, I walked away with very little to show for myself because of several different factors that I don’t want to repeat.
So here we go again. Like always, I feel the fear, and I get on the plane and I tell it to shove off and I go home. I go home. To what I don’t know. But to home, nonetheless.
The Bolivian ladies are a special breed. They don’t take any shit, I can tell you that right now. In comparison to their other South American counterparts, these women have got it going on. Just be prepared for them to kick your arse good and proper if you piss them off though. So here’s the four-one-one.
A ‘Chola’ means a lady that uses traditional clothes. However, over time, and through inappropriate use by the Spanish, this word took on a derogatory tone. The women, however, adopted the name ‘Cholita’ which translates to ‘cute, little women dressed in traditional clothes. Have no fear though. These women are indeed not as timid as the ‘ita’ would have you believe. In fact, some of these women are involved in a local Bolivian pastime; Cholita Wrestling. I was fortunate enough to go and watch one of these shows and the women here are brutes, yelling and screaming at the crowd, threatening audience members, one even threw her opponent on the laps of two of my friends. Somewhat hilarious, but very much staged and a funny thing to see.
Cholitas preparing for battle, ie. talking shit.
From the word Chola, mixed with the Swiss word, chalet, you find yourself with ‘Cholet’, a very expensive and posh house that you mostly find up in the area of El Alto, in the higher and richer area of the city. These houses are all developed with extravagance to demonstrate wealth and every house has to be designed differently. Some are used for actual houses, some are used to house Cholita wrestling, and others are used as function rooms. They are however, impressive.
A couple of cholets.
The women in the markets, with their Chola-heritage, also don’t take shit. If you take a picture of one without asking, expect rotten fruit to be piffed at your head and god-forbid you actually touch the fruit. You will get the mother of all slaps. You see, they choose the fruit that they want to give you, you don’t get to choose the ones you want. The best way of not getting slapped is to repeatedly go back to the same lady for the same product day after day. She will then get to know you and reward you for your loyalty by giving you the best fruit. You can also ask for an ‘yapa’ (I think this is the spelling, I am not sure) and they will give you a little extra. However you should never, ever ask for a discount as this is considered rude and devaluing their product. If you manage to score a regular lady, she becomes your ‘casara’, which comes from the word ‘casar’, which means ‘to marry’. Go see someone else next week and she catches you, you’re as good as divorced and are going to have to find somewhere else to get your juicy goods.
Women’s calves are considered attractive here (Bingo! I’m in!) As such it is not uncommon to see the single ladies let a bit of ankle slip out of the bottom of their skirt to show just how strong those lovely legs are. The married ladies, cover those babies up because hubby wouldn’t be impressed with the exhibition of his lovely calves.
The hats that the women in Bolivia wear were originally designed in Europe and bought over by the Spanish. The women originally wouldn’t wear them and then the Europeans thought up a fabulous idea and decided to lie to them about the hats special ability to increase fertility. Next thing you know, hats are everywhere. They are worn straight on by married women and tilted to the side for single ladies so that the men know who the eligible ladies are. They don’t secure these hats to their heads either. They maintain the hat’s position through posture and head tilting.
Of course, each lovely Cholita is somewhat different and for the most part, lovely if you don’t piss them off. I, in fact, like these women. They are definitely more spirited than those that sit around placidly waiting for a man to come along and do everything for them and tell them what to do. They got sass. And you have to respect that.
So we’ve covered politics, and we’ve covered Incas and the Quechua, what else did I manage to learn in Peru? Loads. That’s what I learned. So here is some more random shit I learned whilst travelling Peru.
1. There is a type of dog here that has no hair. At first I thought that dog had mange and all of his friends too. So I asked the owner and he was offended. Oops… Turns out ugly, hairless dogs are a thing here.
2. Beware women in traditional dress holding sheep. Yes they are sheep. They will tell you “baby alpaca” but this is a farce. Those babies are too busy getting shawn for their expensive threads to be sitting on the side of the road with a lady for one sol pictures. Also of note, they’re so cheeky that they will insert themselves into photos or videos you are taking of other things and demand money. Very very sneaky.
3. In the middle of Lake Titicaca, there are families there that descended from the Aymara, and these people created islands made from reeds that were not easily accessed by other tribes in the region. They would put down several blocks of reed roots compacted with sticks driven through the middle and tie these together to form the base, then anchor it down with rocks. After this, they would lay several layers of reeds down to form the land. These reeds are constantly having to be replaced and the whole island needs to be replaced every fifteen odd years.
A group of indigenous ladies that live on the reed islands known as Uros.
4. Peru’s most famous author, Mario Vargas Llosa was a sly dog. Not only did he run off with his cousin against family wishes, he then got sick of her and decided ditch her to marry his aunt instead. Talk about keeping it in the family. After that all went to shit though, he swiftly settled on Enrique Iglesias’ mum and if he’s anything to go by, she’d be a right hottie. Possibly a good life choice.
5. Señor Sipan was one of the only kings of the time that didn’t have his tomb looted and all his shit taken. As such, his grave was in impeccable condition when found. They had fourteen layers of jewels and offerings buried with his body among them. He was also buried with guards, whose feet they cut off so they couldn’t go wandering in the afterlife and ditch him. This clearly worked given how well it was protected from thievery. And just for good measure, they threw some alpacas, women and kids in there with him too.
6. Even though ritual slaughters of humans were quite popular with the majority of cultures throughout the Americas for thousands of years, the Chachapoyas decided to be trend setters and go against the general killing of people to make rain and food grow. Clearly progressive.
The ancient Chachapoya civilisation at Kuelap
7. Peru is home to about four hundred different species of potatoes. It was the main crop, along with corn, for feeding the masses during the day. They even developed a method of dehydrating potatoes at altitude so that they can keep for twenty odd years.
8. The Incan’s used to grow their crops on terraces that they had established on the hillsides of their communities. It is suggested that they developed this system to develop different microclimates so that they could grow different crops at different levels. They also added different layers of sand, dirt and gravel to act as a water filtration system so that the water would feed downwards and not be wasted.
The Incan terraces at Moray.
9. The Nazca lines are only on average about ten centimetres deep. Given the amount of makeshift small canals from where the water has carved out the land it is a wonder that they managed to find them at all. There is a local lady that walks around and sweeps them every day so that they are maintained and can still be seen.
10. The food in Peru is insanely good. Compared to most other countries in the region, Peru’s food kicks some serious arse and is one of the top countries in the world to visit for gastronomy. I am particularly a fan of the ceviche and the estofados. You come here, cashed up, you will get fat. There is nothing more to say about it, it is just too good.
And there we have it! Three weeks of solid shit learning in Peru. On to the next country!
After two months of travelling around Peru, one may say that I learned quite a bit of shit. I definitely learned a lot about the predominant indigenous culture, the Quechua, also known as the Incas. So here are a few fun things I learned about them.
Quechuan words
Majority of the town names around Peru are butchered versions of Quechua, also the name of the language, because the Spanish lacked capacity to either listen, or pronounce words properly. As such we have the following.
Cusco – from the Quechuan word Qosco, meaning ‘navel’ or ‘belly button’ as it was considered to be the heart of the four Incan territories that divided up the region.
Inca – meaning ‘king’. “Who is they?” ask the Spanish pointing at the Quechuan king.
“Inca”, respond the Quechua.
“Excellent, they shall all be called Inca” decide the Spanish. The tribe of kings.
Lima – Named after terrible pronunciation of the river that runs through this area, the Rímac. Though the Spanish will tell you it has some fluffy and lovely meaning in Spanish and this was not the case.
Perú – We believe takes its origins from a local ruler called Birú, whose name the Spanish also couldn’t properly pronounce.
Charky – the process of taking alpaca meat and drying it with a boat load of salt from one of the many natural salt resources here. This was obviously butchered to become ‘jerky’…. Mmm…. Beef jerky…..
Other Quechuan Words
Solpayki – Thank you. Stock standard manners.
Hakunchis – Let’s go. Clearly my favourite word in every language and one that I need to learn every time.
Callpa – meaning strong. It was the name of my first trekking group through the Salkantay but it should have been called team moan instead because that was all they did.
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu means old mountain. Machu meaning old, Picchu meaning mountain. There is actually a mountain out of Arequipa called Pichu Pichu which literally translates to mountain mountain…. Not exactly sure why this is.
The great civilisation of Machu Picchu
Anyway, whilst trekking the Salkantay a local guide told us of the dangers of pronouncing things wrong. You see there is picchu, and then there is pinchu, and pinchu means, you guessed it, dick. So if you don’t pronounce your Quechuan properly you could wind up going to old dick instead of old mountain and that would just be embarrassingly.
What is fascinating is that this wasn’t the original name for the city. The original name was lost when the city was abandoned upon the arrival of the Spanish. Majority of the people living there were professionals, architects, priests, royalty. Parts of the city indicate that is was also used as a part training facility and an old school research lab for architecture with the structure of the terraces. However the food for the people was supplied by Cusco as their terraces were not large enough to support the population, which mostly only stayed during the summer months anyway. When the Spanish invaded Cusco, food supply was cut off and they were forced to leave and as such, the Spanish never found the city.
Quechuan Textiles
There are four different types of camelid in the Andes that were used by the Quechua, llamas, alpacas, vicuña and guanaco. Mostly they used the llamas for the heavy lifting and the others for wool and tasty snack.
These guys! Alpacas for the record as they have long necks and hair on their faces
Once the wool has been taken from the alpaca, they wash it in water with a plant or a root that contains saponin to make it all foamy. After drying it, the women then spin the wool onto a thing that looks like a spinning top to make the thread. From here they dye it using loads of natural dyes, the most interesting to me being the blood of a parasite they find on the cactus. The colour of this blood changes depending on what you add to it. It is a darker end in its normal state, a very vibrant and orange-red with the addition of acid in limes, and purple when you add soap and try to wash it off your hands. They also use other plant-derived dyes.
All of the different natural dyes they use to colour the wool
After the dying process, they use looms to weave blankets, clothing, back braces for those working the fields to protect their backs and a number of other different fabrics they need for daily or ritual purposes.
Quechuan Rituals
The Incans/Quechuans were big on ritual sacrifices. Some of these were things, some were animals, and others of course we’re humans. We will start at the soft end and make our way up.
Chicha
Chicha was considered a drink of the gods. It is a fermented alcoholic drink made out of corn, that is still very popular across South America to this day. The tradition is that the first cup of each batch of chicha is donated to Pachamama, or Mother Nature, to say thank you for the offerings from the earth that keep them alive. As such, the first cup is poured on the ground. This was a problem when the Spanish conquistadors first arrived. The Incas offered them a cup of chicha, thinking it could be poison, the spanish throw it on the ground, the Incas are happy because they offered to Pachamama. Then the Spanish give the Incas a bible and the Incas donate it to Pachamama and all hell breaks loose. It is fair to say that for such ‘disrespect’ of the bible, the whole lot of them were slaughtered.
Baby Llama
If you would like to build a house, you need to ask Pachamama for permission. To do this, you must make some ritual sacrifices in which a shaman comes over, but not just any shaman, it has to be a specific one that is high up, and he makes the ritual. One of the things offered up is the foetus of a baby llama. None of these foetuses are killed for the purpose of this exercise, they are usually taken from mothers that have died from the cold or been struck by lightning. Baby llama, coca leaves and a few other tidbits are burned and construction of your house can begin because Pachamama is now happy.
A plate consisting of ritual offerings including coca leaves, a variety of plants and a llama foetus
Small Children
Nothing but the best for the gods, and of course there is nothing more pure than a child. As such, child sacrifice was a thing back in the days of the Incas. Often, in times of famine or great duress, families would have to put forward a child for sacrifice. These children were often taken to high mountain tops for the sacrifice and many have been discovered as ice mummies that you can go and visit in museums.
The Homeless Guy
At first, upon hearing this, many people believed it to be a joke. Unfortunately it is not. If undertaking the construction of a very large building, Pachamama requires more of a sacrifice to ask permission to use the land than just a baby llama. Pachamama needs a human (apparently). Given that these days killing people is against the law and you can go to jail for it, finding a suitable sacrifice is a difficult one. People turn to the drug addict and alcoholics that live on the streets to find a suitable sacrifice. Such sacrifice is chosen by asking a range of questions to assess if there is anybody about that would miss them if they were gone. If not, full steam ahead. They invite said homeless person to a massive party with lots of booze and drugs, get them well high and plied, offer up a few prozzies just to make sure they really enjoy themselves and when they have eventually had excess to the point of passing out, they take them out back, roll them into an empty hole with some coca leaves and other offerings and pour the concrete on top to make the foundations.
While they believe that this is happening less, evidence has been found in some cases that this is still recently happening. So if anyone asks, loads of friends and family to miss me and mum expects a call in an hour….
Anyway, I’m sure that’s about enough for this week, but plenty more shit has been learned, so until the next.
About a month ago, I was fortunate enough to be in the county’s capital city for the recent elections. They weren’t for the big job, the president, but for all of the governors and regional representatives around the country. Without getting into the nitty gritty, there were a few very interesting things I learned while being in the country during this period.
1. Everybody seems to get involved.
And by everybody, I mean mostly the elderly representatives of the country. They are out, they have their signs, they are protesting until they are hoarse. Many of them have their houses painted with political propaganda to show their support for their candidates. Candidates also paint any free standing structure they can get their paintbrushes on including cliff faces, gutters, bridges, you name it. The thing is, these people remember a time when things were much worse than they are now, so they are heavily on it with protests and campaigns.
2. To vote you have to be in the jurisdiction of where you vote.
Unlike with other countries, if you’re registered in Cusco and currently in Lima for work, you cannot vote. To vote, you have to be in the actual region where you are registered and go into a specific office that they allocate you for voting. That means on voting weekend, transport and booking buses is a nightmare because if you don’t vote, you get fined. It is compulsory.
3. There are political parties, and then there are political parties.
You will see many symbols down the road for different political parties that people are representing in Peru, such as the Maicitos, Somos Peru etc. but of more interest to me as a foreignor were the actual parties. In the lead up to elections in an attempt to convince you of their awesomeness, candidates will have street parties. One blocked off our road in the middle of a tour to Chavin as they were handing out free chicken, rice and potatoes off the back of the truck to all who came and sat in the square to listen to the propaganda. This is mild campaigning. Some take it to a whole new level.
Back in Huaraz, an entire hostel of very shitty people trying to sleep for trekking at five am, were enduring a party in the middle of the street attended by about twenty people with flags. Why was this a problem? Because they had a stage with a ten piece band that had been playing from 1pm until 11pm and at that stage still weren’t looking at stopping, despite a crazy English girl in the hostel hanging her head out the window and abusing them in Spanish for their lack of consideration of others.
I went briefly to investigate this fiasco while on the hunt for food and discovered that not only was there a band, but they had back up dancers in g-strings and I could see what they ate for breakfast. My sensitive western ways wanted to blindfold and cover the eyes of all small children everywhere to protect them from the sexually provocative images being promoted to urge people to vote for this clearly above board chap. But then, maybe I’m just a prude.
However you look at it, they aren’t campaigning with good values in mind, well most of them…. So what values are they campaigning for?
4. Politicians in Peru earn a shit ton of money.
I have it on authority from a local that many of these low level politicians can be earning as much as $8000 USD a month!?! Yep. That’s even more than most westerners earn and we’re talking about a country where the minimum income is a bit over $200 USD a month. So despite not knowing what you’re doing, you ain’t really got a whole lot to lose by running for parliament. As it was, in the area of central Lima alone, there were over 450 candidates running. No wonder people have no idea who to vote for and no wonder it winds up being a shit show.
5. Roadworks tend to increase when elections are called.
An insight from a friend’s Peruvian mum is thatroadworks always start happening when elections are on. For two reasons. Firstly it is the most blatantly obvious way to point out to people that something is getting done. Because hey have to deal with it every day.
Secondly, because based on a survey of the average cost of a kilometre of road around the world, the cost of road in Peru is approximately three times larger than that of road in Europe. One has to wonder where exactly that money is going, and one can also take a pretty good guesstimate that it is going straight into the coffers of those in fear of not being re-elected. You know, saving for a rainy day, when your opportunity to steal from the general population disappears….. Last minute panic.
About a month on and everything seems to have settled back to normal. The houses are still painted and there are still billboards and advertisements everywhere, but the hype has definitely settled and it is back to business as usual. Less roadworks, as they have now started to steadily cease. And backpackers everywhere rejoice because they can sleep without the noisiest of campaigns happening outside their windows.
Travelling through developing countries is a whole other world compared to the cushiness that you experience living in a country like Australia. For the last year or so, I have developed habits that I daresay are going to follow me around for a while. Some of the things that I am going to have to relearn when going home are as follows:
Toilet paper belongs in a toilet, not a rubbish bin
It is fair to say that plumbing here is fairly shit. So shit in fact that if you throw toilet paper in the toilet and clog it up, you’re facing more shit than you could ever dream of. After my very first trip to Asia, I came wandering into the kitchen of my flat with my toilet paper and my housemate asked me what the fuck I was doing. That is a superb question really. After a year and a couple of months of this, it is going to be a hard habit to break.
2. Taking toilet paper with you everywhere you go
Because they bloody well don’t provide it anywhere. And if you’re lucky to get charged for a toilet that actually has paper you can be sure that they will give you four squares and look at you strange because you ask for more. The truth is, if you’re a woman peeing, you need more, sometimes that shit sprays. If you’re a woman on your period, four squares is also definitely not cutting it. And if you are anyone taking a shit, especially diarrhoea, a measly four squares isn’t going to do the job. As such, you find yourself resorting to the following; stealing napkins from restaurants you eat lunch at, or sitting on a hostel toilet with a cardboard roll and rolling that thing full of paper for ten minutes and then trying to sneak it out of the bathroom down your pants so that nobody sees you.
3. Toilets with actual plastic seats
Long gone will be the days of sitting your arse directly on a cold porcelain bowl or trying to squat over it because someone has kindly pissed all over it and hasn’t cleaned it up due to their lack of access to sufficient toilet paper.
4. You can drink water from the tap without having to boil or purify it.
The days of pouring yourself a glass of water from the tap ended long ago. The constant need to think about where you are going to source your water from and how you are going to purify it is a constant thought process. As one that hates constantly buying plastic bottles from shops as it is bad for the environment, planning for water is a constant thought that I will not have to worry about.
5. I do not need to keep and do surgeries on things that are broken
Everything I own is somehow broken. But when you have no money and having new things isn’t a priority, makeshift fixing is high on the list, when in ordinary life you would just throw it away. Surgeries that have been conducted on this trip include:
Using a hot metal spoon over fire to melt the plastic back together of my neck pillow
Duct taping around the strap of my backpack to try and hold it together long enough to get me home
Sewing holes in the crotches of my pants with patches
Wearing a garbage bag as a poncho because your rain jacket is totalled and no longer waterproof
Sticky-taping the screen of my iPad together so that the glass doesn’t fall out
Using stickytape to hold your shoelaces together so that they don’t fall apart
My engineering mate helping out with neck pillow surgery.
6. Using a telephone.
Broke the awful thing that had no battery life on the kitchen floor of my flat in Colombia….. yeah I don’t need another one of those. These days I function with good old fashioned paper maps and email. WhatsApp? What’s that?
7. Having keys
The current check is passport, wallet, water purifier, lip gloss. Keys don’t register in this because I haven’t had to deal with keys for a very long time. Incorporating them into the daily check is going to be interesting.
8. Sleeping in a room alone
When constantly sharing a room with up to twelve people having privacy is kind of weird. When you finally find yourself in a room alone you start freaking out because, well, where is everyone?
9. Sleeping in a double bed
That and you’re always in a single bed with a shitty mattress and pillow. I don’t know how I am going to survive fluffy doona covers and decent pillows. Life is going to be hard.
10. Not packing your bag everyday
This is a reality. Every single day, you pull shit out of the bag, you put shit back into the bag. You are on constant alert as to where everything you own is and trying to make sure that it is in a safe area where it won’t get mixed up with everyone else’s stuff. Watch out Mum, I’m spreading throughout the house.
11. Wearing nice clothes and doing hair and make up
Enough said. Some weeks, I don’t even look in a mirror. I don’t brush my hair. I never put on make up. I don’t care. All of my clothes have holes in them, are faded, and look like shit. It is going to take a bit of adjustment to get used to normal people clothes and feeling like I belong in them.
12. Not constantly saying goodbye to people
Of the most exciting things on this list, is that I will be able to keep in touch with people I meet. Saying goodbye constantly takes its toll and is something that I do on a daily basis. It makes you somewhat closed to meeting new people because you know that everyone is transient.
Well, five more weeks of this and then life changes. Until then, I better get back to brushing my teeth from the bottle and going to bed in my holey socks! Cheers!
For any of you who behave like real men, in a respectful and honest manner, then I am not talking to you. I do not have any problems with you whatsoever because many of you are lovely human beings that I have had fabulous interactions with. This letter is addressed to the “little boys”. The ones that haven’t grown up to realise their manners or civic responsibility. The ones who view women as property and objects and behave as though they are entitled because they were born with a Y chromosome. You. I’m talking to you. Because there are some things I would like you to know.
1. Honking your horn at me incessantly as you make your way down the street does not make me like you. It makes me annoyed. You are behaving like an ignored five year-old jumping up and down screaming “I’m here! I’m here!” Well guess what? That’s lovely, but I really don’t give a fuck. I give minus fucks when you are doing so with your girlfriend on the back of your motorbike or your mother.
2. Making comments about my appearance as I walk down the street whilst salivating all over your own chin is not a way to pick up women. It’s disgusting. You remind me of the salivating dogs in the street that roam around sniffing each others arses.
3. You are not entitled to touch my body because you have a Y chromosome. In fact, when I tell you to stop touching me, that does not translate to ‘please, put your hand on my boob or my vagina’.
4. Just because I am a solo, white, female traveller that is not married, does not mean that I want to marry you and I am here with the sole purpose of finding a husband. Unless you’re my old boss. Who is a man, by the way, and used to ask me every week as a joke. But at least he asked my name first and gave a shit about who I was as a person before he tried to put a ring on it (jokingly).
5. When I tell you I am not interested in talking to you, that is exactly what I mean. It does not mean that if you follow me down the street asking me questions that I am all of a sudden going to think to myself, ‘yeah, respectful human who respects the wishes of others by doing what they ask them to, I want to have a big long chat with that person’. Not going to happen.
6. I am not an object. I am not property that you can fight over or argue about. I am a person. I will do what I want, not what you decide for me among yourselves.
The truth is, I am sick of it. The amount of times I have been sexually harassed verbally and physically on this trip I cannot count on both my hands and my toes. Some of the stories would horrify you. And while there are some lovely and incredible men in this part of the world, the general culture of males here needs a serious looking at. As a western woman, this is confronting. What is more concerning is that to the women here, this is the normal. They accept this because it is such standard everyday fare. But it is not ok. And we need to make a united stand about how ‘not OK’ this is.
I know that currently in the world, there are many different cultures attacking this very issue. And progress is slow. It always is because it takes generations of good examples to raise respectful boys and nurture them into being respectful men. And when the constant example for every five year old boy is that yelling and screaming obscene shit at women down the street and touching them inappropriately is the standard thing to do, this is just going to continue to propagate. So please, boys, stop teaching your sons to behave like disrespectful arseholes and man up. Teach your sons how to be real men. Respectful. Considerate.
And to be honest, you are making it even more difficult for the nice guys who are respectful because I have gotten to the point where I assume that the majority of you men on the street are crotch-grabbing arseholes and I want to run away from all of you. I want to hide. I even felt uncomfortable laying on a beach the other day when I realised there weren’t many people around and there were three of you walking towards me. I was on high alert. This is not how I should feel in the middle of the day on a beach, and yet it is. Constantly on edge, constantly looking for who is around me and how to avoid people and situations, constantly getting ready to fight back. What a way to live in the world. Aren’t you lucky that you never have to think about these things?
But you know, I am a woman, and that is the price that I pay for being born with two X chromosomes. My genetic defect appears to give you rights that are so much more privileged than mine. But remember who grew you inside their body and then looked after you to make sure that you were alive in this world. That is right. Your mother. A woman. And just like every woman, she is having to deal with this shit too. Without women, you wouldn’t be here to behave like you do, so maybe you should show some more respect and stop behaving like such self-entitled, possessive and ignorant arseholes. So on behalf of all women in this world, man the fuck up, boys. I’ve had enough and so have the rest of the world’s women.
Thomas Takes On.... 