Andahuaylillas and Huacarpay

A couple of Sundays ago Sarah and I went on a little jaunt to Andahuaylillas and Huacarpay – try saying those names five times quickly! The pronunciations, for those who are interested, in my best New Zealand accent, are something like Arn-dar-war-li-yas and wa-ka-pai.

It’s about an hour by local bus from downtown Cusco to Andahuaylillas, a small town that sits alongside the main road to Puno and Lake Titicaca. The town was originally founded in 1572, as part of the Spanish plan to round up the native population and resettle them in more easily controllable villages. It was then, and still is an agricultural centre for the surrounding district. The men farm the Peruvian staples of maize, potatoes and barley, while the women, even more hard-working, run the household – which here probably means looking after cows and pigs and chickens, baking bread and making cheese, weaving textiles, washing clothes by hand, tending to a large, rowdy parcel of children – as well as helping their husbands on the farm.

But Sarah and I did not visit Andahuaylillas to see cows or pigs or peasants toiling in the fields, though it is always interesting to see how people lead their lives. The spotlight shines on this little town, for us and for several busloads of tourists every single day, because of the town’s church. It is, in a word, magnificent. So magnificent, in fact, that it has been described by such travel aficionados as TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet and such knowledgeable institutions as the Smithsonian, as the ‘Sistine Chapel of the Americas’.

The front exterior of the church is currently obscured by scaffolding, as its multi-coloured frescoes are restored, but I still managed to squeeze between the poles to grab a couple of shots of its colourful adornment. The interior of this church is simply breathtaking – no photos are allowed, so you’ll just have to believe me and take these exterior shots as a miniscule indication of the awesomeness that lies within.

Built in the early sixteenth century, the church is Baroque in design and dedicated to St Peter the Apostle. Scenes from St Peter’s life are illustrated in a sequence of enormous paintings that decorate the walls, along with many stunning frescoes that date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and a huge altar, intricate wooden carvings and ornate pictures frames that are completely enveloped in lustrous gold leaf. With the support of the World Monuments Fund, the church is being conserved and its wonders protected from the ravages of time and bugs.

But the church is not Andahuaylillas’s only treasure. Very close to the church lies a quaint little museum, containing much more ancient riches. As well as some dusty displays with fascinating information about Inca customs, there are mummies and skulls excavated from a local Inca site. These exhibits are mesmerising – you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled on to the set of the Indiana Jones movie The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and perhaps this is where screenwriter David Koepp got his inspiration! The Inca tradition of skull manipulation, practised in the belief that enlarging certain parts of the skull would enhance motor function and creativity, has left us with craniums that look like they’ve come from alien beings.

We found Anduahuaylillas a quiet little town as we wandered its mostly empty streets. What people we encountered were friendly enough – a couple even spoke English and one, an old woman, demanded a fee for letting me take her photo – ah, but what a face! I may hate the wrinkles developing on my own visage but I love to photograph them on others. 

Many of the people we saw were accompanied by the ubiquitous donkey, the favoured beast of burden here, and were heading to the fields for a day’s labour. It was planting time so the paddocks needed to be ploughed, and the town’s one tractor was keeping very busy.

We also saw a lot of crosses on roof tops, some with bulls, some without - a traditional ornament in this region (see my previous blog: There’s a bull on my roof for more information on this phenomenon). And we had a delicious, though expensive lunch in the one restaurant that was open – tourist prices!

After a 10-minute bus ride back in the direction of Cusco, we alighted at the run-down little settlement of Huacarpay. Many of its buildings were damaged, some literally falling apart at the seams, others in a state of total collapse. I don’t know why this was – perhaps from an earthquake or maybe due to severe flooding from the nearby lake – which was the reason we stopped here. Huacarpay is most famous for its lake and surrounding wetlands, which, supposedly, have 60 resident species of birds and another 50 that visit in the right season. Obviously, this was not the right season as all – and I do mean ALL – the birds had gone on holiday! The autumnal colours of the reeds were still beautiful though and we had a pleasant stroll along the lake’s edge. We’ll go back in the rainy season to see if the birds are back.

My, what big knockers!

Urubamba church

Cusco has a lot of big knockers. So do many of the other towns I’ve visited in Peru.

Typically, they are found on the doors of large old constructions, like municipal buildings and churches.

Door knockers are, of course, attached to doors so that people outside can let those inside know they’re there. But most of the large knockers here are purely ornamental – some are placed so high on the door that only a giant could possibly reach them. And most are very ornate, with grotesque faces, naked cupids, and fantastical creatures. 

Here is a sampling ...

A church in Sucre, Bolivia

Another Sucre church door

                                        

Cusco cathedral

 

In Potosi

Another Cusco building

                                        

A church in Potosi

Bolivia days 6 and 7: a mountain of silver

The bus left Uyuni at 9.30 for the 5½ hour journey to Potosí. At first, it was a narrow gravel road up ad over the hills behind Uyuni, close to which the roadside was absolutely littered with rubbish. Our first stop was at a small mining settlement to drop off and pick up locals, who stood in the aisle. From the green colour of the hillside, I presume they were mining copper. Just down the hill from that settlement we drove on to a new tarsealed road – though we kept having to detour round places where they were inserting hug drains under the road – so, no one had thought of that before they built the road?

There were occasional grazing vicuna and herds of llamas; there are road signs here that warn of llamas crossing. The bus was hot, as the windows wouldn’t open and there was no other form of ventilation – it gradually got more stuffy and smelly! But, on the plus side, there were trees outside! They were shrubby specimens for the most part, but some quite large willows and poplars were sucking life-giving water from alongside small streams.

The courtyard at my hotel

There was a short stop about half way, for much biscuit eating by tourists and locals alike, and some squatting by locals. Then, onwards again. I snoozed on and off, woke up to take photos of a big mining town, and then we arrived at our destination, another big mining town, Potosí, where 60% of the 160,000 population still earn a living from mining. The earth has been good to these people.

The guide, Juan Carlos, looked like a smaller version of Javier Bardem – he’s probably married with 6 kids! He delivered me, and a Swiss couple, to our hotel, where I had a small room – but it was comfortable enough. I went out for a 2-hour walk around, and got some food, then chilled for the rest of the evening.

We – me, the guide and the Swiss couple – spent the next morning seeing the highlights of Potosí. As the couple spoke Spanish, Juan Carlos gave his spiel in Spanish, slowly, and I’m proud to say I understood about 90% of it! I may not yet be able to speak the language well, but my comprehension is definitely improving. We began by driving around the inner city, the Spanish colonial part – the indigenous population were forced to live elsewhere, even had their own churches to worship at – Catholicism was obligatory. There are 38 churches in the city, only 5 of which are still used – the others are museums, a theatre, or simply closed.

One of the 38 churches

Another beautiful church

 

We then headed through the mining neighbourhoods, where tiny shops sell everything the miners need, from safety helmets and gumboots, to coca and dynamite. The Cerro Rico mountain, from which silver has been mined for over a thousand years, dominates Potosí and, although the quality of the silver that remains is poor, it is still mined, by hand.

Guide Juan Carlos with coca leaves and dynamite, mining essentials!

First, we bought small bags of coca leaves to give to the miners in exchange for their permission to take photographs. The same little shop also sold dynamite! We then went further up the mountain to see the action. It was quiet that day as many people were still enjoying time off for the Todos Santos (Day of the Dead) festival, but we visited two small mines and went a short way inside one – we weren’t suited up for a long walk inside like some tourist groups were, but even a short way was enough to get an idea of how dark, claustrophobic and airless it was. The miners work all day without a break for eating or drinking, so chewing coca leaves keeps them going. The first miner we saw had his left cheek totally stuffed with coca and his eyes looked red and a bit dazed. The second was coca-less, so full of smiles at receiving his gift.

Left cheek stuffed with coca leaves

Happy to get a bag of coca

The average life span of these miners is just 55 – then they die of lung disease, if they haven’t already been killed or incapacitated in accidents. Apparently, many lose the little fingers of both hands as the tunnels are so narrow that they scrape their hands against the sides when wheeling our barrow-loads of rock weighing between 80 and 100 kgs. There is no health system in Bolivia, unless you have a government job, so people have to pay for hospital visits, and there is no unemployment benefit or old-age pension. The mines are worked by co-operatives or private companies – mostly co-operatives, so perhaps the miners help each other through tough times, if they can. Understandably, young men no longer want to follow their fathers into the mines, but there is no other industry in Potosí.

Some of the mines on the mountain

Women are not allowed to work in the mines, as it’s considered bad luck, but they do work outside. There was an old woman outside the first mine we visited; it was her job to keep count of the output of each member of the co-operative, so she had to live in a small adobe hut outside the entrance. There was water but no electricity or toilet – in fact, faeces and various other rubbish littered the ground all around. Two pigs wandered the site, I saw a sheep further down the mountain and, of course, there were dogs everywhere. A grim existence by anyone’s standards!

We went further up the mountain to a church, which has nothing to do with the miners and is, in fact, now the home of a family who help maintain the various telecommunications antennae that surround it. Our guide said the miners don’t worship Christ but, rather, the devil – understandable given the hellish conditions they work in.

From the mountain we went back down to the city, to a church and the university and a small market, before being dropped back at the hotel. I bought a t-shirt on the walk back – I had thought I might get something in silver from Potosí but the guide said all the silver is exported.

Potosi's main plaza

I had a few biscuits for lunch and put my feet up for an hour, then wandered down through the city streets to meet the Swiss couple at the former Mint House, now a museum. The tour there took 1½ hours and was fascinating. There were former mint machines and coins, an art gallery housing religious artworks from the now-closed churches, minerals from around the world, and a couple of rooms of archaeological remains, as well as lots of silver – and police. Their main job was telling tourists who hadn’t paid the extra fee to stop taking photos! Another interesting day!

At the Mint House

Spanish colonial house in the inner city