Life at the Lodge

    These photos illustrate life at the lodge and around the town of Ollyantaytambo.  

    Our days have settled into a familiar routine. I get up just before seven unless there's an "early breakfast" scheduled for people trying to catch the early train to Machu Picchu. "Early breakfast" set-up happens the night before and I just inspect for any missing items, and host the breakfast, often starting at six. "Regular breakfast" set-up begins at 7 for a 7:30 sitting and I usually get most of it done before Ruth arrives fifteen minutes late. She used to be an hour late, sometimes two, but now Louise is back and has read the riot act to her, so she's shaped up a little. Usually Gregorio arrives on time, and helps by cutting fruit and other little chores. Some mornings he brings in the fresh buns; on other days if he hasn't arrived, Deb has run out to get them.

    After clean-up, I have my own breakfast and shower, and then check our portfolio and read the equity reports quickly before we hold an English class for Gregorio and Francesca ("Pancha"). We've started pushing Gregorio forward at breakfast to ask whether the guests want "fresh squeezed orange juice" (he does the squeezing), and whether they want "two fried eggs or two scrambled eggs" (he does those, too). I hover, in case he doesn't fully comprehend their answers to his questions - for example if they use unpredictable vocabulary such as "one egg, easy over", if there are multiple orders of different types and amounts of eggs, or if they speak too quickly or indistinctly.

    Ruth invited Gemma out for a walk last night. They ended up at a disco, and were gone five hours, precipitating a spat between Gemma and Cesar; but while they danced, Ruth told Gemma she had been pilfering, after having denied it vehemently during her meeting with Louise. However, she insisted on sharing the blame with Pancha, and I guess she figures that makes her only half-guilty, somehow...thinking like a kid. Seems like a dumb move, the kind a cop would seize on to wring a confession.  

    We haven't connected with any local schools even though their vacation period is officially over next week.  Some are in class already.  We may choose not to. A small amount of volunteerism mixed in with the days of a snowbird seems comfortable, at the moment. We only have two weeks left here, and some of that time will be used to see other Inca ruins and sites of interest. 

    Next week we'll go out on a field trip with Kiya Survivors. I've learned about one school here that is staffed entirely by foreigners, mostly Spanish and French, and including one male teacher from Botswana. When people ask the administrator why there are no Peruvian teachers, she explains that she tries to hire them, but they never arrive on time for classes, and have to be canned - I guess they keep "Peruvian time", like Ruth does. When I was growing up we used to talk about "African time", but we were quick to forgive because most Africans didn't have clocks and didn't know how to tell time by minutes and hours; but here they do, and everyone has a cell phone. If you ask them the time and it is 7:26, they won't round to 7:25 or 7:30. They'll tell you that it is precisely 7:26; yet punctuality just doesn't seem to matter to most of them. Gregorio and Pancha appear to be exceptions rather than the rule.

    Before and after English class, Deb can usually be found helping the staff with laundry, or sweeping the kitchen and dining room.  I often do the breakfast dishes. Not that we're supposed to do those chores, but it helps out, especially if we're taking time out of their mornings to make them sit through an English class. Then I read - mostly Incan and pre-Incan history over the past month. 

    One thing I'm pondering lately is the appearance in mythology of several S. American cultures of a Moses-like personage, sometimes a poor but powerful prophet and religious leader in a modest but flowing robe and a long white beard, with a tall staff, sometimes made of gold. In Incan mythology the first Inca ruler, Manco Capac leads his people (as Moses did) on a journey from the Island of the Sun in the middle of Lake Titicaca, through an underworld tunnel (an echo of the parting of the Red Sea).  They come out in the cave of Pacariqtambo in the Valley of Cusco. As he goes he plunges the gold staff into the earth looking for soft, arable land. Moses' staff turned into snakes; here snakes are revered as representing Mother Earth, Pachamama, and they are a sign of knowledge. The guardian of the underworld in the Old World was a two headed snake; and the two headed snake is an important cultural icon in pre-history here, on friezes, pottery, and textiles. 

    These are pretty interesting myth parallels. It reminds me of the fact that all of the miracles and legends of Christ in the Bible had already existed in pre-Christian religions and cultures, including healing the sick, virgin birth, crucifixion, and turning water into wine.  In the middle east those stories were all in the same part of the world, where they could be easily overlaid from one religion and region to the next. How did they spread to central America?  There is some evidence of foreign visitors and even one who became a ruler of a pre-Incan coastal kingdom, arriving here in pre-historic times with, presumably, other stories and customs which might have influenced the mythological traditions here.

    Eventually the Incas arrived at Cusco, where the staff sank into the earth, and it became the land of milk and honey, at the doorway to the "Sacred Valley", and the new capital of the Incan empire.  It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Western Hemisphere.  The Spaniards built right above the Inca foundations and sometimes simply took over their palaces. 

    After lunch I usually nap, and sometimes in the afternoon we go for a hike in the village, looking for interesting photos. Later in the day there are usually new guests to meet and greet.  We provide an orientation to Ollantaytambo and the surrounding sights. In the evening we often sit and chat with Gemma, Cesar and Carlos; I usually make a bowl of popcorn and sometimes we have a drink of Cusqueña beer or Pisco - a Peruvian clear grape brandy, named after a city in Peru, that they use to make the famous "Pisco sours" with a sugar syrup, lime juice and beaten egg white. Deb read that we're supposed to include a dash of Angostura bitters, but we don't have any of those. Sometimes we just use fresh squeezed orange juice and make "Pisco screwdrivers".

    Today there is a family of four at the lodge: Mom, Dad, son and daughter about grade 8 age, who are eight months into a year-long round-the-world tour.  They keep a travel diary, like I do.  They're heading back to Cusco this afternoon - and others are flying in this morning - right in the middle of a city-wide strike. 

    Strikes are a very common phenomenon in Cusco, which some have called "strike city". All transport gets shut down, taxis can't get past the city limits, and the police swarm the airport - because 5000 teachers once decided to make that the locus of their strike and tried to burn it down. What the airport has to do with education, I don't know; it appears to be simply another selfish and short-sighted case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Tourism is the major industry here. It supports public works, schools and teacher salaries as well as the rest of the city's economy.

    A while ago there was a strike over the price of drinking water. It was supposed to be a one day strike, and there were about a thousand people marching and yelling and beating drums, but it stretched over into the second day. However, on the second day there were only about a hundred official protesters - everybody else had turned it into an impromptu family holiday, and they were playing soccer on the streets where no cars or buses were allowed to pass. At noon the strike leaders assembled in the plaza for their heroic official photos for the press, and only then was the strike officially pronounced over. The populace has zero regard for the tourists who've spent an awful lot of money to come and enrich the people who depend on their foreign currency, and who will miss connecting flights as a result of the strike action.

    Two ladies arrived at the lodge. They'd planned to include a trip to Pisac on their way to the lodge from Cusco airport, but they got sick in Lima. The price including Pisac, which is a short distance in the opposite direction, is 180 soles; the price directly to the lodge is only 100 soles. The driver, a new one for the lodge, which usually has a list of five regular reliable drivers, was unsympathetic, claiming he could have had a different fare with someone else if he had known.  He wanted them to pay the full 180 soles even though he only drove them directly here from Cusco airport. He tried to ask for a compromise price of 150. In fact, you can get a car from the airport to Ollantay for 60 or 70 soles, so he was still asking for double the normal fare, and the lodge's usual drivers are already well paid for their trips at 100 soles. Ruth and Deborah were hemming and hawing with him over that, but fortunately Carlos arrived for his afternoon shift just in time, and he put a stop to the bull****. He simply handed the driver a 100 soles note and sent him on his way, with no further discussion. Deb says the driver was too shocked to argue...and maybe suddenly realized that if he expected to be on the lodge driver short list and get regular business from them, he'd better be reasonable with our customers.

    The drama wasn't over, though. The following morning, Juvenal, the driver who hadn't been able to get us through to Patacancha on our second try in his taller Mercedes van, even though other cars and combi's were going through, phoned to harrass Ruth about the lost trip to Pisac. He claimed the driver had been one of his drivers (he must be quite an operator!) and that he'd put 90 soles ($36) of gas into the vehicle and therefore only made 10 soles profit on that trip! Of course, the gas he used to come directly to Ollantay was about three gallons round trip, maximum 35 soles rather than 90, so the remaining gas is still in his tank for use for the next fare; and he could have picked up another fare to go back the other way as well. His argument is, to use a polite lawyerly term, "without merit" - and in the vernacular, he's "full of it".

    Carlos can instantly recount many problems he's had with taxi drivers being obstinate and overcharging, including one issue he had trying to get fair service for a disabled customer of the lodge the precious year. Taxis here, even in the capital city Lima, are not metered, they ignore the advertised and posted fares if they can get away with it, and with tourists they usually can. They have a terrible reputation even with the locals. In the "collectivos", 11 passenger vans that often carry up to 7 extra people standing in the aisles, you may not be as comfortable but you will at least be more likely to pay the standard, much lower fare.

    You just can't trust Peruvian kitchens. Deb and I went for pizza at a high end restaurant that's been recommended, but that's been closed for the month of February. Unfortunately, they must have used ingredients that they'd had in their frig for the whole month they were away.  We had terrible gas and other bowel problems overnight. There are no serious hygiene standards and no restaurant inspectors here that I'm aware of.  If there were, they could probably be paid off - in fact they would probably insist on it. The Sacred Valley is a little piece of paradise, which you can often tell more from my photographs than from my text, but there are various kinds of trouble in paradise. It's not all sunshine and roses.  If it were, I think we'd seriously consider having a winter property here.

    We went to Heart's Cafe, which had recently re-opened. The night before, we'd heard, someone had robbed them. We quizzed the waiter, and he said someone - probably from a nearby village - had broken in through an upper window, climbing along the roof, but there was a waiter still working on the ground floor who chased the robber out. The village is abuzz, because this sort of thing happens in Cusco or Lima, maybe even in Urubamba, but never in sleepy little Ollantaytambo. While at dinner, though, I appreciated our location at Apu Lodge, as the traffic lumbered up from the bridge to the plaza and from there to the road out of town. We're a long walk up a pedestrian-only walkway, and although we endured twelve hours of amplified birthday music and raucous P.A. speeches from a neighbour a few days ago, we are spared the noise of traffic and the music from the bars in the hostels for backpackers down at the plaza.

    The owner of Heart's Cafe lent me a thick Spanish language course called Repaso.

    Deb and I hiked to Rumira, a neighbouring village. Our main purpose was to view the "piedras cansadas", the "tired stones". There are three of them along the side of a road which, six hundred years ago, was the ramp up which these stones were dragged (on wood rollers, presumably) to become part of the unfinished Sun Temple. In the photo album you'll see how far they were dragged from their quarry seven kilometres away, across the valley and through a river.

    I collected a photo of "tree tomatoes" in the wild, and one of the Peruvian Torch in the lodge garden, one of 13 columnar cacti from which mescaline can be extracted. The most famous one is the San Pedro cactus.

    On the night I wrote this entry, we had almost a full house, and the volunteers were manning the lodge all by themselves. Carlos' wife 'Toinette is ill with a possible liver infection, and he has called in sick.  There is no paid staff who can be called in to replace him. Cesar and I made a trip to the plaza with the luggage tricycle and came back with five suitcases for three older ladies. We'll have another family of three for early breakfast. They're very nice, originally from Costa Rica and now live in Tampa, Florida, so they speak both languages fluently. After they've left for Machu Picchu, we'll have another seven to ten people for regular breakfast. However, Karina will be in tomorrow - Sunday - and she's a good, reliable kid.

    At around 9:30, a rounded pebble about the size of a very small potato ("but very much harder!" says Deb) came through a glass pane in our front door while our guests were seated at breakfast. Gemma was fit to be tied, because it just missed her while she was standing outside having a smoke. We suspected a couple of kids from one street over that we've seen playing with a slingshot, but we couldn't spot exactly who did it. They might have been shooting at birds, and possibly didn't even take aim at the lodge building. We don't think it's personal, unless someone has some sort of grudge against Louise, or some sort of jealousy. Gemma was rattled, though, and will probably begin smoking out back in the laundry area instead.  Of course, then a much bigger rock may tumble from the rock face. At which point, we'll just have to suggest that she quit smoking...

    Daz came in for a visit with his wife Chris this afternoon. They live and work in Urubamba.  Chris teaches English to Louise' staff two afternoons a week, but they were Helpx volunteers here at the lodge some time ago. Daz told me that a rock actually did fall from the vertical face behind the lodge while he was here, and when it hit another rock at ground level it shattered like a fragmentation grenade.  A large shard went through a back window. Fragmentation hadn't occurred to me - that increases the danger considerably. He said that another much larger rock fell into the neighbour's yard while he was here, as well.

    Little "nightcap" events: a guest fell in the "aqueduct" (a polite word for a ditch) down the side of the path coming home to the lodge, in the dark. She was attacked (she said) by a dog. We'd always found the dogs pretty calm in this town, quite capable of co-existing with humans, even in narrow alleys - they just accept each other and each goes about his business with no fuss. There was just once when one seemed eager to have an aggressive bark at Deborah; and I did read one review where a man claimed to have been bitten while wandering up "the wrong alley".

    Finally, while we were having supper in the kitchen, Louise's ex Arturo's door opened suddenly - his room has a door that opens onto the kitchen. A busty girl stepped into the kitchen, wearing some sort of nightie and corset, but she didn't get very far - Arturo's hand leapt out to grab her by the arm and yank her quickly back into his room!

Next diary entry: Knocking off the Conquistadors