Cusco is a beautiful concept. It is a city whose time has come and gone, trampled under the hordes of tourists that have descended on it. Its main plaza is beautiful, although somewhat barren in that all the trees have been cut down. Everything and everyone spends everyday trying to make money off of the tourists in Cusco. Even the churches charge tourist prices to enter. They are probably the most beautiful churches in Peru, but I wait until Sunday and attend services with the regular folk to get in for free. I understand the need to charge foreigners money but I loathe the experience of it. In an effort to find something else, Juana and I go to a Pachamama (Mother Earth) ceremony outside of town. At the top of the mountain, we meet Cindy, a woman who embodies what it would take for us at almost sixty to cross over the divide, to make us travelers and not just tourists in Peru. At sixty three, Cindy amazes us. Her brain is perched high onto her long, slender frame. With her little wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose, she looks like a suffragist. She tells us she is on a vision quest and has climbed the mountain to find the ceremony. She has pushed through brambles and vines, lost and found the dirt path that led to the top of the mountain where the ceremony is in its slow process unwinding. We had nearly given up when a taxi came along and was willing to drive up a rutted road with no regard to how the cab”s suspension would be affected. The cab driver keeps calling me “Mami” and it is a touching tribute and a clue to how important Pachamama is to Peruvians. I feel validated as a female in a way that I never do in the United States. Cindy, it turns out, has walked all the way from Cusco, up past the people’s church and the drunken festival that is taking place, past the Inca ruins. “Once I invest a certain amount of energy,” she says, “I can’t let go until I get there.”
The ceremony reminds me of the seventies, which is why I am there, to rethink how I was and to remind myself that it was many decades ago and although the time shines in my mind as bright, formative and special, I am now somewhat old and it hurts to sit cross legged on the cold ground. Cindy lives with that time still much more alive in her mind and her body, it is as if she never had to leave it. Juana has her immediately pegged as an aristocrat of sorts. Cindy tells us she is from Kansas, throwing us off track. Yet, I am fascinated by her. She seems right there, a mountain goat or ethereal, a fairy dancing on a pinhead. The contrast fascinates me. She seems to possess vast reservoirs of intelligence and experience. She is wearing a cap that says, “Water is Life,” and it turns out that this was the sentence that came to her during an Ayahusaca ritural. That’s the shaman led journey where you ingest a concoction of potent drugs that make you vomit first and then trip out to a conclusion of hopeful visions, hopefully summarized in one sentence. She says that she did the Ayahusaca ritual four times but it was never as powerful as the first. She tells us she is planning the potential gathering of likeminded healers and professionals for Peru and how only here in the clear, untainted light do the Apu (Andes) mountains breathe. That was another one of her visions, the mountains breathing. I try and think of one sentence that I could emblazon on a tee shirt or a cap, one shining sentence to guide me. “I am worried about health care” or “Pension reform is bad” are the only things that come to mind. I feel jaded next to Cindy. I feel like she is good for Peru in a way that I will probably never be. I am glad she has her life’s work and that I can follow it on her blog.
Meanwhile, on the mountaintop, we watch as the fire pit is dug. Everything that will benefit from immolation will then placed within to go back to Pachamama, Mother Earth. The shaman looks cute with fluffy, dangling balls of colored wool attached to his pointed woven hat. Shamans should look smart or cute. The fire pit is a long time coming as men struggle with the cold, hard Earth. A coterie of older shamans have nested down at one edge of the circle, laying down their blankets, assembling their beads, bowls, rattles, feathers. A basket of coca leaves is passed around, each person taking four leaves that were to be arranged in one hand, the leaves splayed and overlapping. Someone in the distance is raking the steaming Earth where potatoes are being roasted for the ceremony. The bounty of Peru - the carbohydrate powerhouse that has kept the multitudes alive. Juana, meanwhile, seems to be channeling her sixties self talking to Cindy. She seems to have come alive in a way I haven’t seen in a while. When the brew is passed around in what looks like a gasoline can, she seems eager for her turn.
“I’m not drinking whatever is in there,” I whisper.
Juana looks at me with contempt.
The Medicine Man begins to shake the rattle and the ceremony begins. There is a lot of chanting and the brew is passed around again. Then we stand and go to the shamans with our splayed coca leaves to receive a blessing. When it is my turn, I stoop on my haunches, knees aching, before a wizened old man whose lines circumvent his face like the lattitudes and longitudes of the globe. I offer my coca leaves, he smiles and I receive my quick blessing.
We walk back down to Cusco with Cindy. Her energy is boundless.
“How do you feel?” I ask Juana.
With her greenish eyes swirling, she says, “Very good.”
Yet she has to sleep off the Pachamama ceremony and then some.
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