thegracecoffey

[thegracecoffey]

The Last Post (!)

I have returned to the United States.  In some ways the transition has been shocking, and I double take at drinking tap water, speaking english with strangers, the luxury of towels and hot showers.  And it many ways it is all too familiar and sometimes I wonder if I have actually been in South America for a year.  

My last month of the ALG year I settled in the hippie haven of Pisac, and helped in a local ceramics studio, on the weekends I would go a few hours up into the communities in the mountains and stay wth my quechua farmer friends. One of my last days there I partook in the building of a watea oven.  In a recently harvested potato field they built a dome out of the large clumps of soil.  Then they built a fire and fed it for 45 minutes or so, then chucked  a bunch of potatoes and fava beans inside. After breaking the dome and the clumps so that it covers all the potatoes and fava beans, they let them cook among the hot soil for about half an hour. To cook the potatoes in the very soil that they had grown in is quite poetic.   We ate the delicious roasted potatoes while overlooking the soccer match. It was perhaps one of the most quintessentially South American moments I experienced.   

I said my goodbyes. Hoping to return soon, but knowing that I will never see many of these people again.  Time seems very relentless in these moments. 

I suppose this is the moment to speak to some of the ways this year has changed me and what I have learned, how it has been different than I expected, etc. But honestly, I can’t speak to that at the moment, perhaps because it would tuck it away too nicely in the past. 

Sometimes I like to stop for a moment in the day and think about what some of the people I have come to know in my travels are doing . Many of them have particularly rhythmic lives and this morning I would bet you that Paula is taking the scraps out to the pigs after the lazy breakfast, Anselma braids Marisol’s hair before school, Stephy milks the gentle cows, Marcus corrals volunteers for another day. This calms me as I head into a very not routine, unfamiliar future.

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

Pacchanta- Mt. Ausangate

On our last jaunt together, we continued with the theme of high, cold, remote places, and trekked to the tiny community of Pacchanta. They are known for their alpaca breeding, which makes sense as the only thing you can grow up there are potatoes, which they also have at least 40 varieties of.  The family we stayed with was also extremely sweet and we had an interesting time communicating, as Spanish is their not very practiced second language.  To top it all off, there are the most wonderful hot springs where you can soak the cold away while looking at the stars.  I’m going back there. 

Anna has just left and I am on my own for my last month of the Adventure Learning Grant. Many mixed feelings come with that statement. I’m excited to see friends and family and know how to do things again, but I really love Peru, and South America. At this point I wish I could just transport everyone I know and the Pacific Northwest to somewhere in Peru and live happily ever after.   I try not to think about it too much. 

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

Lake Titicaca

At 12,500 feet Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world. We went there!  We had a lovely time on an island where only men knitted and their knitted caps signified their relationship status.  Again we were blown away by very skillful backstrap weaving. Did I mention the women also spin all of their wool? They are constantly spinning, as they walk, as they talk, it seems very meditative. We got to visit the floating islands of Urus, where people build their islands and boats out of reeds, which are also an important part of their diet. Lake Titicaca was a lovely, remote place, in Andean tradition, it is known as the birthplace of the sun. 

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

Andean Highlands-Amaru

After another bout of vague sickness, Anna and I next traveled to the highlands to a small community called Amaru, a few hours away from Cusco. We found some amazing and remote lakes and were lucky enough to stay with the sweet family of our collectivo driver.  They dressed us up in the traditional clothing and we were blown away by the extremely labor intensive and skillful backstrap weaving the women do.  Their agriculture is varied, and in Amaru they not only grow barley, quinoa, kiwicha, wheat, fava beans, pears, apples, but Amaru also has a community run potato park  where they grow over 700 varieties of potatoes.  Not only are they preserving potato biodiversity, they run trials for productivity and disease resistance, and the local farmers can use it as a seed potato bank.  I enjoyed being there so much I will go back for a week or so to live and work with the family.

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

Chuncho- The Best Chocolate Around

Anna and I visited our friends Augosto and Maria on their cacao paradise on the edge of the Peruvian jungle. We stayed their for about a week and helped with the cacao harvest, taking out the cacao fruit.  They specialize in an older variety, Cacao Chuncho, the native, hybridized fruit that has a finer aroma and flavor. Until the past few years farmers in this area have been encouraged to grow the more productive hybridized cacao.  More recently, they have begun to recognize the value of native Chuncho cacao, and some farmers are going back to the original. Augosto is proud of his chuncho trees and the care for his terrain is notable.  He has some of the most incredible, rich soil I have ever seen, and he cares for it by not using chemicals, planting diverse and interspersed crops, and using agroforestry techniques.

Augosto and Maria are hoping to eventually have their own chocolate processing machinery to create their own label. In the meanwhile, they sell their chocolate to a cooperative. We were shown around the co-op, which handles the fermentation, drying, and distribution of the cacao.  

They showed us a wonderful time, we ate very well, had hot chocolate every morning, and also got the chance to try cuy, the guinea pig that many raise in rural Peru and Ecuador. Its quite a delicacy here, but took a lot of getting used to.  I’m proud to say I did not faint during the butchering of it.  

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu and Sisters.

Two of my sisters came to visit me! It was wonderful to be with family and share a bit of South American life with them.  We also took advantage of this time to do some of the ‘must-do’ touristy things, beginning with a five day trek to Machu Picchu .  Despite some nasty bought of altitude sickness when Anna and Caroline first arrived, we set off with a group to do the Salkantay trek.  It isn’t the famous Inca trail, but it may have been better!  We trekked across the frigid 15,000 ft high Salkantay Pass, jumped in a glacial lake, hiked all the way down into the jungle area, soaked in some very picturesque hot springs, and finally made it to Aguas Calientes (the town before Machu Picchu) with a good third of our group sick from something or another and plenty of blisters all around.  The day of Machu Picchu we woke up at 3:30 am, and climbed what seemed to be at least a thousand stairs way to early in the morning. Machu Picchu is an incredible archaeological site, but what impressed me the most was how it was situated so dizzyingly high, we were surrounded and level with mountain peaks. We were relieved to get back to warm showers and real beds, and much too soon, Caroline had to leave to go back to Seattle. 

[thegracecoffey]

[thegracecoffey]

Aguas en Flor, or, Lactose Land

My past month was spent in the most picturesque little farm in the true countryside of Chile. One can only get there by boat or hiking, no roads have been laid yet.  In this little cabin among the mountains of southern Chile, three friends are realizing their dream of living sustainably and off the land.  My friend Amy and I and a couple of other volunteers spent our days milking and caring for the small herd of cows, riding horses, gathering blackberries and murta berries (absolutely delicious, looking into whether we can cultivate them in the US), gathering firewood, making cheese, preserving food, and all doing sorts of other small projects.  We would work a lot, but because the work was relaxed and diverse, it was fun.  We ate like kings on a vast array of dairy products, yogurt, queso fresco, queso maduro, ricotta, dulce de leche, and, of course, milk. 

We would ride or walk to the lake and take long swims in the cool and lovely waters under the large volcano, one day we camped along the hot thermals, the most beautiful I had ever had the pleasure to visit. A few times we got to ride in the back of the ox-cart, goggling at the skill with which Ignacio drove and managed the enormous oxen.  I was introduced to the wonderful world of cows, lovely and gentle creatures.  Every evening we would call the calves into the pasture to be separated by calling Chequeo! (corral), which sounds incredibly similar to Te Quiero! (I love you) I used them interchangeably.  On a similar note, this was the months where I found I could start doing very rudimentary puns in Spanish!  Or between Spanish and English. Whole new levels!

In Rapunco we also got a taste of what the other campesinos’ life was like, and some of what I saw was not nearly as inspiring as the farm I was working at.  The small community of the area made a living off the land primarily through raising beef cattle, as well as goats and sheep.  Many of them have lost the interest and the tradition of subsistence farming, and prefer a lifestyle raising meat for income. Alcoholism is a huge problem, and often enough we saw men riding on their horses swigging bottles of aguardiente or wine. Again, their lifestyle was so far from the lives I see in those who live in urban areas in Chile, it reminded me much more of rural Ecuador than of the rather wealthy Chile that I saw in Santiago and even Valparaiso. 

My month in Aguas en Flor was lovely, and I was reminded how healthy and fulfilled I feel in that sort of life.  In this trip I have found again and again that I’m really not a quick traveller. I’m not the sort that enjoys spending a couple days in a city, then onto the next one.  I would much rather spend a month on a tiny farm in one tiny part of Chile then spend a month touring the whole thing. I need to go very slowly. 

Amy and I left Aguas en Flor a couple of days ago, and we parted ways, Amy headed home to Iowa, and I, back to Peru!  I am lucky enough to have two of my sisters visiting me for a couple of weeks. 

I have two months left exactly on this trip, and am starting to think about the transition home. I now feel like I live in South America. Obviously, I have been moving around, but its become my life.  It took me a good three months to get into that mindset and now I find myself looking at the other side, how to transition out of this continent and back into the Pacific Northwest and my new old life there. Its a bit discombobulating. Mostly I’m trying not to think of it too much.  When I was preparing for the ALG I asked a former recipient for advice on how to prepare, he said, ‘don’t worry about it too much, spend the time that you have here in the US here, and you will figure out most of it on the way’  Which turned out to be the great advice, and I’m trying to spend the rest of my time here, here. 

[thegracecoffey]