Life As Canvas

Alone on the hotel terrace, I sit nursing the little thunderstorm of rocky love in my heart. I can see the Pacific Ocean, a great churning mass of slow changes over time. It’s misty out, the sun is setting, and the waves look stone grey against the light clouds behind them. Near the horizon moves the silhouette of a local man fishing in a traditional boat made of reeds. It’s curved up in the front, making it look like an elf shoe. He goes out on this ocean, the same as it was centuries ago, to find dinner in the same kind of boat his ancestors used, though judging by his cumbersome maneuvering, a kayak would be more practical. But it’s simpler than that. The way he’s fishing is just the way it’s done around here, and has been done for generations. I ask myself what kinds of complications and troubles of the heart this man has. From here on my terrace looking out to his horizon, it just looks so simple.

Peru is overwhelmingly full of things to do and see, from jungle to desert, ocean and high mountains, all of it scattered with ancient walls and palaces belonging to the ancestors of the Inca who still live here. Today the Inca hassle you with their taxi offers and order you to enter their restaurants (Adelante! Adelante!). As a gringo, it gets tiring fending off their pleas. But when I look beyond the things placed in front of me to those who still fish and farm, to the friendly man who sold me an Inca Cola in the Colca Canyon, a man who lives in a village of 5 people and farms cactus for the pigment it produces, these lives seem so much simpler and, in ways, more authentic than my own.

I’m going to leave Peru for Ecuador in a few days, meandering up the coastline until the border and then following the Panamerica Highway to some new Gringo Paradise. Ecuador’s currency is the dollar. I fear that farther north this simplicity will be harder to find.

A teenage girl and her mother, in traditional dress, appeared across the street from Jack’s Cafe, where a collection of tourists were buying souvenirs as they waited to get in.

The mother and daughter wore brightly colored shirts and sweaters, pink on red on yellow, with the typical Inca skirt to below the knee, sandals and felt hats. They were undeniably beautiful, their black hair shined in perfect braids and through some quality of their skin they radiated health. The girl’s face was twisted into a typical teenage expression. One that seemed to say “When will we get this over with so I can go home and listen to Shakira?” Her fingers lightly grazed the llama’s fur while her mother assessed the situation.

The Americans across the street bought belts from an old woman weaving on the corner and laughed loudly when the father of the family tried on a sweater from a persistent man in a sun faded windbreaker.

They looked happy in their clean khakis and running shoes. The girl stared at them absently, her face blank, her hand still stroking the llama. None of the laughing foreigners across the street were getting out their cameras, so the mother moved on, feeding the llama grasses. Keeping her gaze behind her, the girl followed.

I imagined she had done this since she was a little girl, going into town with momma and the family llama, all dressed up in their most colorful things. The things the tourists would want to have as their own. They would pay for photos while the girl and her mother would hold the llama and smile. This would be the image the tourists would take home to show their friends. Beautiful, colorful, traditional, smiling Peru. And this image would cause their friends to dream up an exotic world of dark braids and woven blankets.

Then the girl and her mother would move to the next tourist plaza and the next, exchanging fantastic dreams for coins until their pockets would become heavy. They would walk the llama back home and start dinner, maybe turn on the TV. This is only speculation. But I never see the most colorful mothers and daughters with their llamas on the less-touristy side of town where Peruvians fill up the streets, not a gringo in sight.

On that side of town men yell discount prices into loudspeakers and llama-kebabs sizzle tempting smoke into the crowd. Peruvians peruse the markets and the vendors on wheels for a new bootleg DVD or some fresh meat and vegetables just off the truck where passers-by will see skinned cow heads and various other parts watiting to be schlepped into a market stall.

This is by far my favorite part of town. Though Cuzco is beautiful and full of history on the polished touisty side, with palaces from the Incas and churches from the Inquisition, it also has its fair share of pizza places and Chinese food and expensive boutiques with European flair and prices.

The teenage girl and her mother catch my attention – they are wholly interesting to me as a tourist but they are not the authentic Peru that pulses and heaves, yells and laughs and smiles on the other side of town.

Some girls in the street with their baby lambs or goats (so soft) charge for photos. Also accept soda as a gift.