Off on the next adventure, this time with a bunch of Peruvian classmates for our anthropology class project to develop a community-based project in San Juan de Tarucani -- a small rural town about four hours away from Arequipa on a truly terrible dirt highway.  We bumped along behind El Misti into the altoandino or highlands area to an altitude of 4210 meters above sea level, passing brilliantly white salt flats along the way.  Here is where it´s too high to grow crops and where the alpaca and llama roam, offering the primary... only, in most cases... means of subsistence. 

We arrived in town on a Friday with some of the many people who have left San Juan de Tarucani to go live and work in the big city of Arequipa.  There are people who go back and forth every week, returning to take care of their alpacas.  The tiny town square was eye-squintingly sunny and curious kids immediately welcomed us!

Welcome to my dream world, where you walk a few blocks and the town just ends, leaving you in the middle of a plain stretching out towards hills encircling the town.  No lights (electricity for some from solar panels), no cars (bikes, motorcycles),  and the best part: absolutely silent.  250 people who all know each other and in many ways maintain a traditional way of life.  THIS is why I came to Perú.

The view from the municipality building on the plaza... What was really neat was how people welcomed us into everything going on that weekend, like community workshops, and were very ready to answer our questions.  Goal for the weekend: ask a lot of them.  My partner Mayra and I went exploring, field notebooks in hand, to talk to the doctor in tiny clinic and the director of the one school in town.

At the school there´s only about 10 kids in each grade, and they learn fun things like knitting, wood carving, and mechanics besides the usual subjects.  At the health clinic, they get a few births and deaths a year, but have a most healthy population (although the local diet consists of hot soup with alpaca meat and a plate of alpaca, potatoes, and rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... no joke.)  We noticed walking around how everyone says hi and good morning or afternoon, which I really liked after the somewhat more reserved big city lifestyle!

A neat tradition that I see in Arequipa, as well-- when people build another story on their houses, they have ¨godparents¨ or friends who help celebrate with them, who pour champagne or chicha from the roof and put a cross of flowers on the new level as a blessing.  You see these all over the place!

This is what I was talking about: walking down the street when suddenly it just ends two blocks from the plaza and you´re in... yup, the middle of nowhere.

This little girl Analí was sooo cute, she learned my name super fast and kept calling, CATI CATI CATI whenever she saw me.  Reminds me of Mexico... niños everywhere are just wonderful.  She was already wearing the traditional skirt and wool leggings that the women here wear.  We shacked up for the two nights in the icebox of a motel that the town has for visitors on the plaza (tile floors = very cold).  It wasn´t exactly 5 stars but we bundled up with four blankets, a sleeping bag, layers of socks and five sweaters apiece and actually managed to sleep!

Exploring the bofedales, where water springs up from the ground over a large area and the alpacas have a nice hydrated place to mill about.  The local population uses all of the alpaca meat, their hides, everything.  Our little friends accompanied us for an impromptu dance party in a truly beautiful setting and then we hit up the ruins of the old church, next to town.

Next up was a really neat opportunity the following day to attend a community workshop organized by a Peruvian non-profit that works in rural development.  We sat in as the local alpaca ranchers shared what they thought were significant challenges to their work, the potential natural resource assets in the area, and what needs to happen to fix the most pressing problems.  I really liked how the facilitators included everyone to get a representative set of ideas from the community.  Scribbling furiously we got it all down before it was time to join in the shared (very typical) lunch!

<---- One of many new fruits I´ve discovered in Perú -- granadilla -- the seeds are sweet!

Women here sit on the corners knitting and talking with their children.  The men often congregate outside for conversations as well.  There was an interesting separation along gender lines that we observed during the weekend.

The boys in my group (absolutely hysterical individuals) decided to go fishing for tiny little trout in the bofedales before we joined up with new little friends in the Plaza, and then headed to the local store for dinner.  Edith, about our age, who worked there, gave us alpaca soup and fried egg sandwiches if we paid her a couple soles.  (This was not an expensive travel weekend, at all.)

As we sat on one of the high hills watching the sunset over a very tranquil pueblo, I asked my classmate Aldo why he thought so many people have left these towns all over Perú and are migrating to the cities.  This is a trend that has been going on for decades, changing Perú from a mostly rural population to a mostly urban one.  He explained to me how lack of government investment in the rural, isolated parts of the country and a dearth of work opportunities lead more and more young people to migrate to the cities like Arequipa and Lima.  There, they encounter a very different, rushed way of life as well as discrimination at times because they are from the country, considered less modern, speak Quechua, or have darker skin.  However, the employment and technology that the city has to offer draws many people who otherwise would earn an average of $150 a year like their alpaca-raising parents, since the middle men always make off like bandits when it comes to alpaca wool. 

It was interesting although frustrating to have the conversation, because more and more I see how the traditional, Quechua-speaking, nature-based rural way of life in Perú is devalued compared to a more ¨modern¨ city-dwelling, American-TV-show-watching existence.  I find myself very drawn to these places where the influence of our pop culture, especially, hasn´t quite... as much... made it out here.

In the Plaza for the daily late-afternoon volleyball game.  Volleyball is HUGE in Perú.  (People ask me to play since they think I´m good, since I´m from the States, at which point I tell them that they´re quite mistaken and those women on TV are not made of the same stuff as I am when it comes to coordination-requiring sports.)  Can you get enough of the knit hats the little ones wear here?? And their traditional clothing (looks like what women wear in Puno) of pollera skirts, sweaters, wool mantas or shawls, plus an extra head covering for the cold and a bowler hat, didn´t stop these chicas from playing a very good game!

There was a cross on the hill... as there is always a cross or Jesus figure on the highest points around the cities in Perú (and many Latin American countries).  My Quechua-speaking classmates explained to me how traditionally, the hills were the apus, or gods to people who lived in Perú.  People went up to the hills, their gods, to pray.  When the Spanish missionaries had been down here for a while they came under pressure to show they were getting some good evangelization work done.  So they put Catholic religious symbols on the very apus themselves, and people going to their hills seemed like they were going to the cross.  This sincretized tradition of going up to the hills on religious festivals continues and there´s a famous pilgrimage in Perú where a church was built on the mountain and people nowadays go to the church... but then still up to the top of the mountain as their final pilgrimage destination.

On our last of three days in San Juan de Tarucani we managed to get up at 5 am and bundle up big time to go on a hike with two guys our age from town.  They took us to see ancient cave drawings a few hours´ walk away.  On the way we were regaled by unceasing stories of the area by one of the guides, John, whose grandmother had related to him legends and fables in Quechua when he was young.  He told us how the town came to be, about how the fox came to have white patches and the condor a bare neck, about gold hidden in the ground and dead people who are condemned to walk the hills at night.  We discussed the medicinal properties of local plants as we went, which ones give you give good luck, etc.  I have never had a more continually fascinating morning. 

Walking up to a local alpaca farm... the animals were quite curious about why we had come to visit!

John told us how these figures, painted on a large rock, are pointing up to the highest point on the cliff above, where as the story goes the condor and the fox joined forces to rescue God from the people hunting him.  There were other symbols, crosses and a puma´s head, on another rock nearby.  The joining of  Quechua (nature-based) and Christian forces was pretty darn neat.

So were the cactus fruits the guys showed me how to eat on the way home... never thought I could dig a spiny little thing out of the ground, bite off the non-spiny end, take out the seeds, and enjoy.  Lots of firsts!

Our new friends showed us how the water bubbles up in ponds in the bofedales, making the ground so squishy in some places you can jump up and down on it and it moves like a trampoline!  We said goodbye to the llamas, alpacas, and friendly townspeople, and headed home.  A very cool weekend, and happily not the last, in San Juan de Tarucani.