Ghost stories, Incas, cakes and fakes
La laa la laa la laaaaaaaaa….
Cusco is treating yours truly quite well. I’m still having my bouts of “What the hell am I doing?” but they’re lessening a bit here and there. I’m feeling a bit guilty for not having gotten my act together and done some sort of volunteering, but there’s still some thought organizing going on, self-esteem building, etc. etc. Typical Tina-business, but oh how I love the self-help. : ) It’s funny, amongst my friends here I’m the only one down with the auto-ayuda literature, movies, and other such media. No matter, because I continue in my endeavors, which currently find me amidst a book called “The Cinderella Complex” (oldie, but with some good concepts), an abundance of Paulo Coehlo (my dictionary is a constant accompaniment, as all of these books are in Español!) and sharing Garden State with my two newest Peruvian friends: Nano (my “brother” here in my home stay) and Dany (my two-time Spanish teacher at San Blas). I’m also starting to do a massive repeat of positive-thought songs (think Jason Mraz, Brett Dennen). “Darlin’ do not fear what you don’t really know…” Fantastic counsel! One that opposes much of my upbringing, certainly. : )
Although I long for the day where I can do my own grocery shopping again and live in a space I can truly call my own, I made the right decision to do a home stay. This correctness has manifested itself in the form of cakes and ghost stories. Interestingly enough, the mom here in my house has a side business of making cakes. Woo hoo! People that can appreciate the goodness of dessert, that’s right, my kind of people. That’s not to say that we eat a lot of dessert here in the house, but it makes me happy to just have the sugar nearby. (I sound like an addict! Well, true enough.) Anyhew, I got to watch the skillful mother/son team as they put together a Power Rangers cake and a Spiderman cake. (It always warms my heart to see a straight man in the kitchen…gay men tend to warm my heart eternally, regardless of their location. ;) ) They also made some fantastic wedding cakes over the weekend with the Peruvian version of that weird putty cake stuff that makes cakes look ridiculously perfect. I sat at the table while Nano rolled out, measured, and decorated the cake with that strange, gummy substance all the while keeping me company with—yes, more ghost stories. This kid is full of stories, I swear there’s an endless amount! He always asks me if he’s told me his story, and when I recount the story he’s told, he’ll be like, “Oh, no, no, no, I meant this story,” and he’ll continue with yet another new tale. Apparently there are elves that guard ancient Inkan gold here in Cusco and the surrounding area (they’re even green!—lucky charms anyone?). If a person actually sees one (Nano and the rest of the family has friends that have had elf-encounters) they’re struck with a malady.
And with all the bloody history of Cusco, I am told that there is a plethora of ghosts, phantoms and spirits. One of the stories Nano told me yesterday (one from one of his friends) was that his friend’s girlfriend got pregnant, and they decided to have an abortion. The night after the procedure, his friend woke up to the feeling of someone pulling at his hand—an icy, persistent grip. After pushing the hand away a few times, he looked up to see the ghost of a little girl standing next to his bed with the ghost of a priest laying on the floor. They suppose the little girl must have been his daughter… Nano also tells me that with so many ancient, ancient colonial homes in Cusco, there are a great deal of histories involved in different houses. Horrible histories of death, torture and murder and due to all this violence, there are a lot of haunted houses (especially around the plaza de armas). He has one friend whose sister was possessed by a spirit and had two personalities. Another friend (or maybe it was even that same sister) was in her room when a ghost came in and locked her into the room. There are stories of cats playing with invisible persons, items moving or floating to new locations, peoples’ souls leaving their bodies… I get so excited every time he tells me new stories I can hardly stand it! That’s not to say I believe everything, but being agnostic I don’t discount all of his stories either. He tells me that the only reason I’m a disbeliever is because I haven’t had any experiences myself, which certainly is true. It’s easy enough to be a non-believer when I’ve never seen anything supernatural myself. And let me say that it’s especially easy to be a non-believer during the day, but at night, when I’m going to sleep, I find it to be a bit more challenging to keep my distance from the possibility of truth. Why is everything scarier in the dark? Last night I regressed back to the days of childhood where I felt like monsters could grab me from under my bed…except this time there were no monsters, but thoughts of evil spirits that might come to try to possess me. Not the most relaxing thoughts while trying to fall asleep. I finally had to turn on the TV and fall asleep to the comforts of my old friend the Disney Channel, letting “Freaky Friday” in Spanish lull me to sleep. Television—the adult’s nightlight.
Peru, and especially Cusco, continues to have ongoing archaeological discoveries, most often made by ordinary people. When doing construction, it’s not particularly uncommon to uncover some sort of Inkan artifact. Hidden gold…sometimes guarded by elves, sometimes dug up by your every day man. Nano also tells me that people can die when digging up gold because of gases in the air. I’m not sure if these are the kind of noxious gases that are found in mines or if people suppose them to be booby traps or curses, but I find all of the stories endlessly fascinating. I just can’t get enough! Nano says that all of these maladies from ghosts, elves, and such are the reason that there are shamans and brujas (witches) here in Cusco. (When I asked how these people know how to cure, I was told that they’re instructed by angels—these people can talk to dead people, have their spirit leave their body, and can see the past, present and future.) Oh yeah, and Nano told me, from what he knows about palm reading, that I will have one marriage and I’ll live to be old. The ripe old age of 60-something! That’s so not old…but these things you can usually pay the shaman to change. I find myself caught in between disbelief, the desire to believe, and then the desire to not believe, in that particular order.
Outside of the mysterious world of the paranormal, I have been doing a bit of sight-seeing, non-Lonely Planet style. Last week I went to the ruins of Tipon, which is the sight of ancient Inka fountains and water canals. Nobody really knows where the water comes from, maybe a glacier in some distant glacier or a lake somewhere. But the water is sacred and the sight is said to have a lot of energy. (Non-believer here—sometimes I really want to believe, but then I question whether what I felt is really a placebo or of it’s in fact real.) I went with my friend Zoey, a classmate from Holland (all of my classmates are from Holland!) and we ended up talking to two taxi drivers who had been waiting for their clients since early, early that morning. They were doing an ancient ritual with a shaman somewhere higher up in the mountain, a sight we gals decided not to venture off to. As is typical, they asked about our boyfriends and then some old man made some comment about us being pretty in Quechua and if he were younger…and I just couldn’t hold it anymore. This taxi driver got a piece of my mind on the way Peruvian men whistle and comment at women in the street. Not cool! He said that it wasn’t meant to be offensive and that he liked to think the girls like it. I asked him if he knew of any girls that actually like it and he sort of tried to redirect the conversation but oh I was not having that. We left on respectful terms and you know, I was happy to at least having been able to talk to one of the offenders (as I personally think of them) in earnest. Maybe he’ll have a doubt the next time he thinks about whistling at some girl. I can hope! (And I will, thank you.)
Cusco is treating yours truly quite well. I’m still having my bouts of “What the hell am I doing?” but they’re lessening a bit here and there. I’m feeling a bit guilty for not having gotten my act together and done some sort of volunteering, but there’s still some thought organizing going on, self-esteem building, etc. etc. Typical Tina-business, but oh how I love the self-help. : ) It’s funny, amongst my friends here I’m the only one down with the auto-ayuda literature, movies, and other such media. No matter, because I continue in my endeavors, which currently find me amidst a book called “The Cinderella Complex” (oldie, but with some good concepts), an abundance of Paulo Coehlo (my dictionary is a constant accompaniment, as all of these books are in Español!) and sharing Garden State with my two newest Peruvian friends: Nano (my “brother” here in my home stay) and Dany (my two-time Spanish teacher at San Blas). I’m also starting to do a massive repeat of positive-thought songs (think Jason Mraz, Brett Dennen). “Darlin’ do not fear what you don’t really know…” Fantastic counsel! One that opposes much of my upbringing, certainly. : )
Although I long for the day where I can do my own grocery shopping again and live in a space I can truly call my own, I made the right decision to do a home stay. This correctness has manifested itself in the form of cakes and ghost stories. Interestingly enough, the mom here in my house has a side business of making cakes. Woo hoo! People that can appreciate the goodness of dessert, that’s right, my kind of people. That’s not to say that we eat a lot of dessert here in the house, but it makes me happy to just have the sugar nearby. (I sound like an addict! Well, true enough.) Anyhew, I got to watch the skillful mother/son team as they put together a Power Rangers cake and a Spiderman cake. (It always warms my heart to see a straight man in the kitchen…gay men tend to warm my heart eternally, regardless of their location. ;) ) They also made some fantastic wedding cakes over the weekend with the Peruvian version of that weird putty cake stuff that makes cakes look ridiculously perfect. I sat at the table while Nano rolled out, measured, and decorated the cake with that strange, gummy substance all the while keeping me company with—yes, more ghost stories. This kid is full of stories, I swear there’s an endless amount! He always asks me if he’s told me his story, and when I recount the story he’s told, he’ll be like, “Oh, no, no, no, I meant this story,” and he’ll continue with yet another new tale. Apparently there are elves that guard ancient Inkan gold here in Cusco and the surrounding area (they’re even green!—lucky charms anyone?). If a person actually sees one (Nano and the rest of the family has friends that have had elf-encounters) they’re struck with a malady.
And with all the bloody history of Cusco, I am told that there is a plethora of ghosts, phantoms and spirits. One of the stories Nano told me yesterday (one from one of his friends) was that his friend’s girlfriend got pregnant, and they decided to have an abortion. The night after the procedure, his friend woke up to the feeling of someone pulling at his hand—an icy, persistent grip. After pushing the hand away a few times, he looked up to see the ghost of a little girl standing next to his bed with the ghost of a priest laying on the floor. They suppose the little girl must have been his daughter… Nano also tells me that with so many ancient, ancient colonial homes in Cusco, there are a great deal of histories involved in different houses. Horrible histories of death, torture and murder and due to all this violence, there are a lot of haunted houses (especially around the plaza de armas). He has one friend whose sister was possessed by a spirit and had two personalities. Another friend (or maybe it was even that same sister) was in her room when a ghost came in and locked her into the room. There are stories of cats playing with invisible persons, items moving or floating to new locations, peoples’ souls leaving their bodies… I get so excited every time he tells me new stories I can hardly stand it! That’s not to say I believe everything, but being agnostic I don’t discount all of his stories either. He tells me that the only reason I’m a disbeliever is because I haven’t had any experiences myself, which certainly is true. It’s easy enough to be a non-believer when I’ve never seen anything supernatural myself. And let me say that it’s especially easy to be a non-believer during the day, but at night, when I’m going to sleep, I find it to be a bit more challenging to keep my distance from the possibility of truth. Why is everything scarier in the dark? Last night I regressed back to the days of childhood where I felt like monsters could grab me from under my bed…except this time there were no monsters, but thoughts of evil spirits that might come to try to possess me. Not the most relaxing thoughts while trying to fall asleep. I finally had to turn on the TV and fall asleep to the comforts of my old friend the Disney Channel, letting “Freaky Friday” in Spanish lull me to sleep. Television—the adult’s nightlight.
Peru, and especially Cusco, continues to have ongoing archaeological discoveries, most often made by ordinary people. When doing construction, it’s not particularly uncommon to uncover some sort of Inkan artifact. Hidden gold…sometimes guarded by elves, sometimes dug up by your every day man. Nano also tells me that people can die when digging up gold because of gases in the air. I’m not sure if these are the kind of noxious gases that are found in mines or if people suppose them to be booby traps or curses, but I find all of the stories endlessly fascinating. I just can’t get enough! Nano says that all of these maladies from ghosts, elves, and such are the reason that there are shamans and brujas (witches) here in Cusco. (When I asked how these people know how to cure, I was told that they’re instructed by angels—these people can talk to dead people, have their spirit leave their body, and can see the past, present and future.) Oh yeah, and Nano told me, from what he knows about palm reading, that I will have one marriage and I’ll live to be old. The ripe old age of 60-something! That’s so not old…but these things you can usually pay the shaman to change. I find myself caught in between disbelief, the desire to believe, and then the desire to not believe, in that particular order.
Outside of the mysterious world of the paranormal, I have been doing a bit of sight-seeing, non-Lonely Planet style. Last week I went to the ruins of Tipon, which is the sight of ancient Inka fountains and water canals. Nobody really knows where the water comes from, maybe a glacier in some distant glacier or a lake somewhere. But the water is sacred and the sight is said to have a lot of energy. (Non-believer here—sometimes I really want to believe, but then I question whether what I felt is really a placebo or of it’s in fact real.) I went with my friend Zoey, a classmate from Holland (all of my classmates are from Holland!) and we ended up talking to two taxi drivers who had been waiting for their clients since early, early that morning. They were doing an ancient ritual with a shaman somewhere higher up in the mountain, a sight we gals decided not to venture off to. As is typical, they asked about our boyfriends and then some old man made some comment about us being pretty in Quechua and if he were younger…and I just couldn’t hold it anymore. This taxi driver got a piece of my mind on the way Peruvian men whistle and comment at women in the street. Not cool! He said that it wasn’t meant to be offensive and that he liked to think the girls like it. I asked him if he knew of any girls that actually like it and he sort of tried to redirect the conversation but oh I was not having that. We left on respectful terms and you know, I was happy to at least having been able to talk to one of the offenders (as I personally think of them) in earnest. Maybe he’ll have a doubt the next time he thinks about whistling at some girl. I can hope! (And I will, thank you.)
This past Sunday, Zoey and I went with three other German girls from our school to do some more sight-seeing. We went to Las Salineras, this (Inkan?) sight of salt pools. There are the salt plains in Bolivia, which I imagine I will end up visiting, but this is different. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of these little pools of salt stacked into the hillside.
By the way the little stream running through all of it is, in fact, quite salty.
After hitting up Las Salineras we went to Moray, a definitively Inkan site of concentric circular terraces that were once used for farming purposes. The unique thing about these terraces is that each terrace supposedly has a different climate and grows a different kind of crop. They’re not in use anymore, but it’s supposed to be one of the best examples of Inkan agriculture.
Our day of sight-seeing was perfect, with gorgeous sunny weather, a nice breeze, hardly any other tourists, and a taxi ride we thought at times was going to dump us over the side of the mountain. Overall, though, very tranquil.
Will I ever get tired of seeing more and more Inkan ruins? I’m just not sure, because I still love it. And I love Cusco. Originally, this is where I had wanted to come, and you know what, it turns out I was right. This is where I want to be. So, at least for the moment, I am planning on doing my travels with friends from home for a few months, maybe spend some more time in Argentina, then come back to Cusco to pass the rest of my time in SA. Ah, having a plan again. Always makes me feel better!
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