A walk in Cusco....

So yesterday I met up with a German girl I met on the airport in Lima when I arrived in Peru. She is working as a volounteer in a orphanage 4 hours away (by bus) from Cusco. She was here during the weekend with another German girl that is doing here internship as a dentist in the same village.

Had a great walk and day in Cusco. Did not enter Sassy Woman....(never remember the right quecha word for that archeological heritage). But we were outside the ruines, constructed as a puma. Ate a choclo with cheese (non sweet maize) and avokado (totally different from the ones in Europe) on our way back down. A lovely time. Thanks!

Para mis hermanas peruanas...

Just because you are you....two songs I really enjoy that you have introduced me to. Mucias gracias!

Jarabe de Palo - Dipende



La Sarita - Carnaval

Inca, water, earth....

Music by Sol y Luna, Atahualpa.

Not far from Cusco is Moray. It’s a place where the Incas used to experiment with agriculture on different altitudes. It’s build like circles and is said to be a very energetic place (for those of us who believes in energy fields in nature).

So growing such as maize on 200 meters more on each terrace, it was possible to note that the corn on high altitude became sweet, but small. Therefore the ideal growth for maize would be somewhere in the middle of the laboratory terraces, that is why so much maize is grown in Urubamba where the altitude is ideal.

Although today, it’s very hard to make out the ideal place for crops since we have the issue of climate change. It makes it also difficult to decide what crops to grow regarding to the weather of the first twelve months the coming year. By observing the twelve first days of August, the Incas could foretell the coming years’ climate. For instance, if raining the first of August, it would be a damp January. If the sun was shining the forth of August, the coming year of April would be dry and warm. If it was a windy the 6th of August, the coming June would become windy, and so on…

My Spanish teacher tells me that “cusquenas” (people from Cusco) generally are both Catholics and pagan believers. Therefore their traditions are both bound to pachamama (mother earth) and Christ. For instance do all the mountains have a cross on top. Another one is that August used to be celebrated to honour mother earth and therefore citizen of today still decorate their houses with yellow flowers during this month. This is also seen on some altars during Sundays.

The Incas was very advanced in water technology. Their way of leading water down to town is still working. In each street there were a fresh-water channel running outside the houses. You could still see the channels, but the water is hard to keep clean today since there are much more waste in the world. But my Spanish teacher told me that in Cusco the municipality has began to work for improved water sewage.

Chocolate and Spa

Today I was so happy! I found this little chocolate shop with Peruvian goodies, from Cusco, Arequipa and San Martin. Bought an organic chocolate bar from the Amazonas, very cool!

In the shop I also found the Inca flag to sew on my bag. Then there were a lot of coffee, piscu and products of coco leaves. In Peru tea on coca leaves are used to take away altitude problems as well as it is good for digestion (and prolly a lot of other things as well). Within these pics you can see a lot of different uses for the leaves. For a cup you take 7 or 8 leaves and let it stir for some minutes. Taste like nettle/green tea.

I also learnt today that the coca leaves are used as prayers for mother earth. Three leaves for wishes of good, letting it go by the wind…

Continuing to check out the Inca spa a bit further down on Av. El Sol (one of the main streets in Cusco), I found the beautiful puma murial and which on the other side was a fountain and waterfall under the sun symbol.

Pisac

Yesterday I went to Pisac and Sacred Valley with some Swedish dudes I met on the Spanish School it was a lovely day and amazing to see. Here are some selective pics.

"La historia de Juan"

I like the way that the Spanish school teaches in. Its very varied and fun. Yesterday we had to listen to Juanes “la storia de Juan” and then try to fill in gaps with verbs in different tenses. 

It made me think of the song that my dear friend J. was playing for me, also very beautiful.

Calle Suecia

So I wake up and am ready to hit (/eager to get to) the school. Outside it has been raining and thundering the whole night (and not someone showering, as I once thought half-awake…). My shoes are still drying on the windowsill since the day before. Clouds are grey and in the horizon is fog and rain hovering over the mountains. I begin my day with slowly resting an hour before breakfast and yoga. Finally my body and mind seems to adapt to the time difference. It’s said to take as many days as hours of change (so in Sweden/Peru case it is 6 hours/days). 

My Spanish school in Cusco is situated on a very long, steep road (or so it feels when walking on this altitude). After finally getting there, even more steps are awaiting. But then, what a beautiful panoramic view to see!

The road is called “calle de suecia” and so named by either Swedish people once occupying this street, or by the (less likeable version for me) by the Spanish word “la suciedad”, which means dirt…apparently the road used to be very narrow, dark and people throwing waste all around there and so shouted "suicedad"... 

Anyways, if you think it is the first option, its pretty cool… Although I still wonder why the Swedes once came all this way… I mean North America I know, but Peru? Why and who came here? Was it because of gold? Archaeology? Would be interesting to know…

2011-02-21
So today I have heard a third version of the naming... Its said to have lived a Swedish queen on this street during the second world war. She was just 28 years old and to honour her, the people in Cusco named the street "calle suecia".

Learning is now...

I have been listening to this song all morning. Nice lyrics...

Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl - "When" from her album

"give me that slow knowing smile" (2009).

Cusco

Hey people,

I have now arrived in Cusco. People are very nice here and I have settled in with a great "peruvian mother" and her two daughters in my age. There is also an american girl that will stay in the house for a week and is also studying Spanish here. Yesterday the school offered a guided tour in the city and here are some photos that I took. Enjoy.

Discovering Lima…

Yesterday I met with the organisation I will be working with. It was situated very nicely close to the Agricultural University. After taking part of a morning meeting, I met a woman, originally from Japan, she offered to bring me downtown to see the famous church, catacombs, plaza mayor and china town.

We took a bus and went for an hours ride. Imagine that the whole city of Lima (8 millions) is almost as many people as it is in the whole Sweden (9 millions). So I don’t think I would have seen as much as I did if it were not to be for my great new friend (who by the way is doing research of indigenous people close to Pucallpa). So I am very grateful for that, it was a lovely time together. And I actually felt pretty ok walking around in the city centre and to take the bus. People were very helpful and it was much calmer than what I imagined it to be after reading all the stories in guidebooks….

But it was a bit entertaining to try to find some stamps in the city. Many streets had a theme, like one street had a lot of religious shops, another one was filled with printing offices and then again there where the stamps street. Not for postcards, but for stamping letter in beautiful patterns and figures. But after a few “por aqui…” we ended up in the public post office. One postmark was 5 soles and 5 cents. The postcard was 1 soles. In Swedish crowns I think it is a total of more than 20sek…. And it took around two weeks to get to Europe. So I do not think I will write many postcards. I will try to keep you in the loop from internet.

My friend from Japan and I calculated that a 10 minutes phone call from a land line in Peru to home would equal one postcard. So I do enjoy the existence of Internet.

On my way….

As you might have notice, I do not like to write about too much about things to come, since I do not know that they actually will come. Instead I try to live each moment fully, so that when I write about them, it makes up a beautiful story.

For my master thesis I got the opportunity to do my research in Peru. I have talked to so many good and nice people, everyone trying to aid me in my work to succeeding. The timeframe is very short and I am at the moment learning Spanish.

Before I came to Peru, I was living close to my mum in a one room flat. It was a bit isolated, but helped me to focus in preparing everything before departure to Latin America. The housing agency was extremely helpful, as the local library, the travel agency, language coordinator and on the airport everything went really smooth. Thank you everyone.

Also spend some great nights at my paternal aunt’s place close to Malmö. Beautiful time with family, and I really enjoyed to walk by the beach! I grew up very close to the sea (one of the meanings of the name for this blog), so I feel very drawn to it.

Ethnobotanist James Wong

Yesterday I watched James Wong's telly show about growing your own drugs. He is an ethnobotanist and tells us how we could use nature and our gardens to make remedies and infusions. Here is a teaser....

Check out Mr. Wong more by reading interviews made by the Telegraph and here by Horticultureweek.

(Related to this subject, check out the Society of Ethnobiology, the International Society of Ethnobiology and the Institute for EthnoMedicine.)