Alpaca Mignon, Por Favor!

Sacred Valley of the Incas, Peru – Altitude: 2,800 metres

“You can live on it – but it tastes like shit!”

CROCODILE DUNDEE, 1986 – Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan)

The following day we were introduced to yet another Tucan tour guide. No, Dany had not left us, he was busy making arrangements for our travel to the Amazon basin the following day. Enter Pepe! Pepe, a Cusco local, was not new to the Hardcore Hoard. He had accompanied them on the Inca Trail hike and was now our guide to the Sacred Valley of the Incas, a tour that would take us to the Inca ruins of Pisac and its colourful market and then to the impressive Inca ruins of Ollantaytambo. Our excursion to the Sacred Valley was eagerly awaited as it also meant we would be dropping below the oxygen threshold of 3,000 metres, and so gain some respite from the rarefied air of Cusco. As we boarded the bus, I soon realised that this was our first official outing as one group. The Lima Lightweights had officially merged with the Hardcore Hoard. And so it was. One group we were, and the Cusco Crew we became. As we journeyed to the Sacred Valley, we were informed that after today three of the Hardcore Hoard were actually finishing their tour. Ha, Doug and Brian were flying back to Lima the following day. So that had reduced the size of the Cusco Crew to eighteen people.

After about an hour and a half we arrived at a lookout point or mirador as is the term in Spanish, which provided great views into the Sacred Valley below. As is usual with any tourist haunt in Peru, the viewpoint was crowded with Peruvian women and children selling their wares. Rugs, Inca vs Spaniard chess sets, llama and alpaca woollens were among the many items. I offended a young Peruvian girl, when she thought I had taken a photo of her. She demanded her obligatory one Soles, but with my limited Spanish I could not get through to her that I was only lining up the shot, and had in fact not taken one. She gave me a filthy look nonetheless, and I gave into guilt later by taking a photo of another young girl in traditional dress with Margaret.

Afterwards, the bus meandered down into the valley itself and through the market town of Pisac. The market was to be later though, as the bus passed beyond the town through to another valley and then commenced the short climb to the site of the Pisac ruins. These ruins were extremely interesting. A goat track traversed the slope of the valley’s hills, winding through a crack in the hillside and eventually to the site of the Inti Huatani, The Sun Temple. The views of the Inca terraces were excellent. The Incas were highly intelligent and knew how to manage the land well. The terraces were constructed in a series of concave and convex shapes, so as to make the most of the land and the available sunlight for their crops. The Inti Huatani was quite impressive, a large sundial amidst the ruined walls of a temple. Some of the ruins on

On the trail to the ruins of Pisac

the hillside actually predated the Inca period of the 1400s. The sundial was quite a time piece, but a little impractical to wear on your wrist I pondered, after discovering on the return trip to the bus that my watch had fallen off at some point. It wasn’t expensive. It was just a simple band with a digital clock on it. It was annoying all the same, and would be the first of many things I would lose.

* LOST ITEM NO 1: One wristwatch

After our excursion to the Pisac ruin, we ventured back into Pisac town and to the market. This was very interesting, if not for the colour and character alone. Margaret and I had it in our heads that we had to buy something traditionally Peruvian from this market, and soon we embarked on buying a rug. We must have walked for ages, wandering past all the stalls, passing the food market complete with fly adorned poultry and fish awaiting purchase in the early afternoon sun. We soon spied a nice looking rug in one stall, and so the haggling began. “CUANTO CUESTA?” we enquired of the woman on the stall. 120 Soles was the reply. Having taken some haggling advice from Rudy our Lima tour guide we halved it straight away.

Gullible Gringo: “Sesenta (60) Soles” I stated. She laughed.

Persistent Peruvian: “NO! NO!” you dumb gringo she probably thought. “CIEN (100) Soles!”

It had come down at least, but still too expensive.

Gullible Gringo: “Setenta (70) Soles”, I parried.

Persistent Peruvian: “NOVENTA (90) Soles!” she came back with.

Almost there now!

Gullible Gringo: “Ochenta (80) Soles”, I said, with quite some conviction I might add.

Persistent Peruvian: “OCHENTA Y CINQO (85)”, came the stiff reply.

Gullible Gringo: “Ochenta!!!!”, I demanded.

Persistent Peruvian: “OCHENTA Y CINQO!!!”

Gullible Gringo: “No Ochenta!!!”

Persistent Peruvian: “OCHENTA Y CINQO por favor!!!”

Gullible Gringo: “Ochenta!!!!”

Persistent Peruvian: “Okay OCHENTA Y DOS (82)!!!!”

Gullible Gringo: “Ochenta!!!”

Persistent Peruvian: “OCHENTA Y DOS!!!!”

Gullible Gringo: “Ochenta!!!”

Persistent Peruvian: “OCHENTA Y DOS!!!!”

A stalemate it would seem, and so an agreed price. We paid 82 Soles, which equates to about 41 Australian dollars, 20 Euro, or 15 British Pounds. Or to be really precise, check out the following:

• 1 Aussie Dollar  – 2 Soles
• 1 US Dollar – 4 Soles
• 1 British Pound – 6 Soles

So by Western standards, Margaret and I had ourselves an absolute bargain! Although when walking away with our purchase, Margaret couldn’t help but think we’d been done. We probably were, but I was still chuffed. I’m clearly not cut out to be a true shopper.

A quick bite in a café on the Pisac square and we returned to our bus, dodging filthy, sweat-grimed pigs along the way. We made it and so continued our excursion to the Ollantaytambo Inca ruins a couple of hour’s drive away. These were equally impressive as Pisac, and perhaps gave you a better appreciation of the intricacy within the Inca masonry. Some of the stones, which are used in the Inca walls, weighed an enormous amount, and were crafted with such precision that they interlocked with one another virtually seamlessly. In fact on one wall adjacent to another Sun Temple* the stones were carved in such a way that the rays of the Summer and Winter Solstice sun would cast a perfect shadow every time. Equally impressive was the fact that the Incas would have lugged the stones from stone-quarries miles away from the site.

* It would seem the Incas worshipped the sun just as much as the Brits do today. This was evidenced in a running bet between one of the Helen’s and Ian. The competition was to see who had the darkest suntan on arrival in Rio.

Margaret and I were pleasantly surprised when ascending the stairs of the ruin to bump into two of our friends from our previous Patagonia trip; Sharni and Sarah. We had last seen them in Santiago, Chile. Our day’s outing as the Cusco Crew was finished and after another 2-hour drive we returned to Cusco for an anxiously awaited meal. It was funny, despite the group officially being the Cusco Crew, the table arrangement at the Maconda restaurant was such that we were still split into the Lima Lightweights and Hardcore Hoard.

Dinner was nice – for me anyway. Margaret and I both ate alpaca. Mine was a tasty Alpaca Mignon. Margaret’s not so good. Alpaca al vino proved to be pretty disgusting. Still, it was another exotic animal to add to our “Been there, ate that!” list. In fact here is a story in itself. While it is fine to eat alpaca, it is not necessarily okay in Peru to make a meal of other members of the llama family. While, it is possible to partake in a meal of llama, the feedback I had heard from Dany was that it was okay to eat, but probably wouldn’t taste very nice. I immediately thought of that memorable line from Crocodile Dundee. “You can live on it, but it tastes like shit!” So the llama is edible but not nearly as delectable as alpaca. What of the vicuña! Well, this is a bit more of a sensitive issue. For one thing, the animal appears on the Peruvian coat of arms, so it would be considered extremely offensive and therefore illegal to make a snack of the beast. I had learnt this particular fact from Rudy, during our day tour in Lima. Rudy had also carefully made the point that it seemed totally incongruous to him why a nation would indulge itself on the flesh of the very animal that is promoted as its national symbol. A sore point in the case of myself being Australian, as the kangaroo and emu, the national coat of arms, appear on menus in many restaurants in Australia and around the world. Another reason for not eating the vicuña is that the animal is much smaller in numbers. Unlike the ubiquitous alpaca and llama the vicuña is a much rarer sight in Peru. Why is it much smaller in numbers? I’m not quite sure, but apparently it has nothing to do with the appetite of the Peruvian people. The final beast in the llama family is the guanaco. The guanaco however, being native to Patagonia, (southern Chile and Argentina) is a bit exotic for Peru, so it remains questionable as to whether this animal has ever ended up on a Peruvian dinner table.

The evening concluded for Margaret and myself after having a quick drink with Sharni and Sarah at one of the two Irish pubs in Cusco, Flaherty’s. It was not a big night for us, as the following day involved an early morning’s flight to Puerto Maldonado, where we were to experience a taste of the Amazonian jungle.