A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu

We had all been terrified and exhilarated by Graham’s excursions. Jonas,Yoshi and I had barely made it down the mountain on the bicycling excursion and we all barely made it up the mountain to the ruins. We were exhausted yet grateful to this tenacious American guide. The next day, we followed Graham and James on a trip to Pisaq, a ruin set on the top of one of the high points in the valley. On the trip there, Graham told us some of his adventures.

When Graham began working with the Spanish NGO to design a tourist campground at the beginning of the Inca Trail, permission had to be gained from the local community. The community leaders granted them a lovely piece of land by the river. The theory behind the campground is that eventually the management and income will revert to the local people. In order to break ground, they were required to make offerings to the earth. This was in the form of coca leaves, chicha (the local corn beer), and candy. Each time new ground was broken, Graham was required to bring these items in abundance for the ritual. He would sit with the local shaman and leaders, each with a huge pile of coca leaves in front of him. Each member would select coca leaves that called to him from the pile, creating a second pile of personalized leaves. This process could take from 1-3 hours. After all the special coca leaves had been selected from each individual’s pile, they would be put together with the other sacrificial offerings and taken to the site. The mixed items would then be placed in a hole on the site and burned. As the offering burned, it would spit hot fire from its mouth, possibly due to the corn syrup in the candy. No one was allowed to watch this process – it is forbidden to watch the earth eat.

Following the ceremony, the crew could begin the laborious process of extracting great boulders and rocks from the earth. Graham’s design called for Incan style rock walls, which required the great rocks which inhabit the soil in this valley. His photos are full of images of Incan men wedging sticks beneath mammoth boulders, attempting to force them out of the earth and down the hill. At one point in the excavation, one of the shovels hit and broke a hard, unknown object buried in the ground. Upon examination, they found that they had inadvertently broken an ancient Incan earth offering, encased in ceramic. Two days later, Graham’s dog, who had been wandering around the site when the accident occurred, died on the ground near the hole, his tongue white and dry. Graham, confused and upset, went to see the Shaman about the death. The shaman asked Graham the details of when and where the death had occurred and then described to Graham the exact manner in which the dog had died. He told Graham that because he had disturbed the ancient site, a great evil energy had escaped. The dog had ingested the energy in place of Graham. Graham, surprised at how accurately the shaman had been able to describe the dog’s symptoms, assumed that perhaps inside the offerings was a poison, lethal to those who disturb the site, with which the shaman was acquainted. Perhaps his dog licked the broken pot or something that came out of it and died an ancient and ugly death. But he could not be sure – there was no sure logical Western explanation for the death. The shaman proclaimed that a new earthing ceremony was required, and no more work could be done until this ceremony had been completed.

The people in the sacred valley appear to live with the modern invasion of tourists with only a casual sideways glance. Their way of life has changed little in the past thousand years – modern conveniences come and go but the back breaking rhythm of farming and sheparding in the Andes does not change. Although the young people are losing the ability to speak Quechua and the tantalizing lifestyle from the west is settling in comfortably here, I doubt the lives of the Incans will truly change, for better or worse, for a very long time. Although Christianity came with the Spanish, the local Incans, as was the case with many indigenous peoples throughout Latin America, welcomed it with their own flavor. In the case of the sacred valley, Christ has a different name – Señor Torrechayoc. A local man once claimed to see a cross in a lake in the mountains; the community decided to rename Christ with his name instead. Although Christ still resembles the blond Anglo figure brought by the Spanish, he now bears an Incan name. Since an Incan man found the cross, they community figured he must be Christ too. The crosses atop houses are accompanied by ceramic bulls and other offerings, showing prowess and ties to animal worship. The tradition of the local religion was never erased, it was just incorporated into Christianity. Or more likely, Christianity was incorporated into the local beliefs. For one Christian holiday in the sacred valley, three separate baby Jesus’ are carried in procession from different villages in the mountains to the main square of a centrally located town for display. They could not choose which village would have the honor of bearing the child, so they decided instead to bear three.

Yoshi, Jonas and I decided to visit Graham’s site before leaving the Sacred Valley. Graham was sick in bed; We left him to Yoshi’s Simpsons episodes and followed one of the site workers to the main square of Ollyantaytambo. From there we took a collectivo, a minivan converted into a public bus. Since it was Sunday, there were very few collectivos running. We paid our two soles for the ride and climbed into the side seats of the van. The van rapidly filled with Indians traveling to different towns throughout the valley. Things became more and more crammed as we stopped alongside the road for pedestrians, until the van, meant to seat 12, held over 20. As bags and kids and old women filled the car, the smell of corn, woodsmoke and llama wool overtook the air. We stopped to take in the passengers of a broken-down collectivo that was smoking on the side of the road, and the car became almost unbearable. I saw Yoshi squashed halfway onto one of the side seats in the front, nestled between the bosom of one old woman and the squirming child of another. He looked slightly yellow. Jonas’ legs were crammed into a tiny space in the back and soon he lost feeling. I hosted an old woman on my lap, where she leaned and chatted in Quechua to the women in the other seats.

After what seemed an eternity, we arrived at the site. Our guide, a young man from the village who was working with Graham on the site, leaned through and around the faces to signal to us that we had arrived. Exiting required an immense amount of dedication and persistence, both of which we had. We stretched our legs and limped down the road to the site, which was set alongside the lovely rolling river that runs through the Sacred Valley. I once asked Graham if it was possible to swim there; he laughed and called it the cleanest-looking dirty river anywhere - raw sewage goes directly into the river from a multitude of villages. Above us, the white peaks of the Andes flirted with the sky and stretched their long torsos along the valley.

The campsite was ideal. Graham had made sure to design everything with sustainability and green building in mind – the small kitchen’s walls were made of plastic pop bottles full of water, which provide heat during the night. He hopes eventually to make a Living Machine slightly downriver from the site, where sewage waste will be naturally cleansed and converted into clean water through a complicated system of plant life. The site and the idea are good ones, but funding and logistics are always considerable barriers in small time NGO projects like this one. Graham has already been working on this project for over two years; the reality of creating something lasting is far deeper and more difficult than one believes while sitting in a coffee shop in Portland. The rub lies in the gulf – the Grand Canyon of difference in culture, priority, needs, assumptions. We can sit at home by the fire with our lattes on a rainy night in the US and imagine up the perfect “third world solution” (as we Americans love to call simple change in poor countries), but the reality of success is another thing. Graham told us of a large and well funded NGO in the area whose main goal was to create new cooking systems for the indigenous population. At the moment they use wood fires with little to no ventilation, creating serious respiratory problems. The NGO designed and built multiple small stoves with chimneys in local homes. Unfortunately, the design did not mesh with the materials and was not properly developed – a small house burned down as a result and a family lost their home. Graham is taking his project slowly and surely – he struck me as someone who thinks well before he acts. His western pragmatism and observation skills have served him well; he learned what was necessary before proceeding. Now it is all left to patience and perseverance. I silently wished him luck.

On the way back from the site in the same collectivo, we quickly made our way to the back of the semi-empty van. A mile later, we were glad we had made that choice. The collectivo slowed to pick up a massive group of school children and their mothers on their way to the market in a town down the valley. The van filled with around 25-30 people, all squashed in semi-seated contortions. As we awaited the hubbub to quiet and everyone to find a half square inch to sit, an old woman and her husband walked up to our window. Initially, they spoke in Spanish, welcoming us to the valley. They were apparently very happy to see tourists using the obviously uncomfortable public transport and grinned and pushed a cup of liquid in the window. I was relieved to see that it was beer and we politely took a small swig. “No no! Drink it all! It’s Peruvian!” We finished the beer and smiled, handing the cup back through the window. The old man grabbed my arm and began rattling off a question to Jonas. Jonas looked as perplexed as I was and told the old man that he was sorry, he did not speak Quechua. The old man just smiled, pointed at me, grabbed my arm and repeated the same rapid fire question in Quechua. Jonas, in some mysterious male undercurrent, understood somehow that the old man was offering something for me and shook his head at him, smiling. “No no.” The old man laughed and the minivan roared off, its inhabitants squealing and wrestling with the excitement of a ride to town.

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