Drunk Condor | Southern Peruvian Andes

Sweet little toddler resembles her hat. Peru 2024.

With only a week left on his trip, my dad bussed out of Huancavelica, on his way to visit Nazca and Cusco by bus. 

Bye Ben!

A disadvantaged of drop-style handlebars is that you need to use bar tape. In comparison with mtb grips, bar tape is harder to source, harder to install and uninstall, and fragile. I bought some strips of leather from a shoe cobbler and muscled it onto my handle bars. It looks cool and hopefully will last a long time:

06 May 2024 Day 542

I continued along the Peru Great Divide route towards Cusco.

Andean kids:

This evening I was invited in by some armed security guards. The guards, who work 1-2 week shifts at this remote post, are armed and may shoot trespassers on sight. They guard a Vicuña reserve. 

How to shear a vicuña. 

The Vicuña is a wild south American camelid, prized for their super-luxury wool. They're sheared annually,  yielding about 1kg of wool each, mostly for exportation. A vicuña-wool hat would go for about 800USD. 

10 May 2024

I passed a group of high schoolers in uniforms with band instruments, on their way to play music for a funeral.

A kilometer later, people stopped me in the street and invited me to eat, drink, and attend the funeral. My brother was there, they said. Another American. 

Here's the other American, Andre. He is the husband of a granddaughter of the deceased.

Andre's mother is Argentine, his father Ukranian. He graduated high school three years early and didn't go to college but now works in music production and composition for movies and video games. 

Britanny, the granddaughter of the deceased and wife of Andre, met Andre in the US, on a D1 tennis scholarship.

Brittany's grandfather recently died at age 94 due to cancer. After some festivities in the family's house, where the casket was, they carried the casket around differnt parts of the town, stopping here and there for song and speeches. Eventually we made our way to the cemetery, where people delivered speeches for another hour. Then the casket was brought inside the cemetery wall and slid into a tomb. They sealed the tomb with concrete immediately. 

Speeches and songs were in spanish and quechua. People spoke of God. Of this important member of their community, his impact on their community, his love and devotion for the community. It is a loving, proud, resilient community.

I hung out a lot with the highschoolers, who wete the closet to my age, besides Andre and Britanny. They next youngest age group seemed 40+, and pretty much all the high schoolers said they planned or hoped on leaving their small hometown for better economic opportunities. The deceased grandfather was credited with building the school and giving the young generation access to the educational opportunities with allow them to find better work, outside of their village. I find it somewhat ironic. His love for the youth of the village may result in the eventually decline of the village. Rest in peace. 

The family of Britanny and Andre hosted me that night. Thank you. 

Instantly cure headaches and other maladies for .5 USD.

Colonial church build on top of pre-colombian stonework.

How my bikes looking. 

Mandatory horn-honking.

16 May 2024 Day 552

Fried trout, from high altitude fish farms, is a common and delicious dish here. 

I hear some big commotion. There were several cow branding events going on on the roadside, so I stopped and talked to a young woman who was in vet school, and stayed for the event.

They fed me a huge bowl of food and proceeded with the cows. They would rope them, tackle them, tie them by the feet, give them a series of shots and oral medicine, tag the ears with a colored ribbon and also with a plastic tag, and brand them. It was an incredibly efficient feat of human cooperation. 

20 May 2024 Day 556

Someone showed me how to harvest and eat 'tuna', cactus fruit:

It's sweet and has hard black seeds which you can eat. Sort of difficult to harvest and peel because of the spines. 

Now that I can identify them, I see them everywhere. Good snack, good flavor. 

When I was leaving Coyllurqui, the governor of the town stopped me and offered me purple chicha. A fermented drink. Suddenly, a pack of maybe 15 kids and some adults smothered me with attention and questions and I got a little taste of fame as they all asked for my signature and my phone number and asked 100 questions at once. It's cool to have attention sometimes but being a famous celebrity would suck. The governor, Aquiles, invited me to stay with him, and eventually the kids said goodbye and I took a shower at his house. Thank you Aquiles!

This town used to draw a ton of international tourists, specifically for their special bullfight tradition, in which they captured a condor and tied it to the back of the bull. The national government prohibited this practice a few years ago, but they are sending a comitee to Lima to try and get permission to do it legally. Aquiles seems optimistic that they'll allow it, because apparently it's an old tradition, specific to Coyllurqui, and they're no longer going to feed the condor alcohol or free it with a Peruvian flag attached (they used to do this).

The governor of Coyllurqui, Aquiles.

To capture the Condor, they hike into a bowl-shaped valley in the mountains and kill a horse by strangulation. Apparently if they make the horse bleed, it will attract foxes which might dissuade the Condors. When the horse carcas starts to fester, it will attract condors, who descend to feast. The condor, now full of horse meat, can't fly very well, and the humans run in to capture it with lassos and cloths and bare hands. The bowl shaped valley helps with this, making it even harder for the condor to fly away. 

We borrowed an old TV from his neighbor to watch VHS footage of the whole process. 

At the bullfight, they strap the condor to the back of a bull by puncturing the flank of the bull, and tying down the condor's talons. Then the let the thing loose, like some Greek mythological monster. The condor, drunk on corn alcohol, is flung about as the bull rams and charges. It's fearsome beak draws blood behind the bull's head, upsetting the bull further. Then they play with the bull in a bullfight. 

A statue of the bullfight. 

When it's all over they release the condor into the wild again, with a small Peruvian flag attached to it's tail. A little more celebration. 

What is justifiable in the name of tradition? I recognize real value in observing traditions. Even when the original reasons for the tradition may no longer be relevant. Tradition can give people a sense of belonging and identity, which is a great thing. Eating meat can be OK with me because people really enjoy it, there's not a good substitute for the experience, and the cow wouldn't have lived in the first place if wasn't going to end up as our meal. It's harder for me to justify the treatment of the condor, because it's a wild animal that wasn't bred to conform to this tradition. 

21 May 2024 Day 557

Aquiles made breakfast for us. Canned tuna ceviche with chuño. 

Chuño is dehydrated and rehydrated potato. They're more expensive than potatoes, and the first Peruvian food I don't like. To me, they have less flavor, and a worse texture. Like styrofoam, or like they've been frozen and thawed several times. 

Lots of climbing in the Peruvian Andes makes for slow progress. 

Cusco, Peru ended up being the most touristic city I've visited on my whole trip. The night before I arrived, I got permission to pitch my tent in front of a school in a small village just 40km from Cusco. The local people told me they don't remember ever seeing a tourist pass through their village. 

The president of the small village fed me breakfast. He has a USA belt buckle.