All In One Boat

If summer is a time to travel it is also a time to read. For me combining the two is a great way to focus attention on the places visited, the food tasted and people met but also on the stories told and written, either in the distant past or the continuing present. Peru, in the summer of 2009, was such an opportunity. Our two guides had strong ties to the pre-Conquest communities they came from, one Quechuan, Lucio, from the highlands, the other, Rodolfo, an Ese’Eja from the rivers and jungles of the Tambopata river.

We spent several days with Lucio in and around Cuzco. In a matter of fact voice he told what the capital of the Inca empire must have been like before the Spaniards came, and guided us around its stupendous remnants. Enormous stoneworks still stood in place in Saksaywaman where his ancestors had welcomed the winter solstice, ensuring the sun would begin to lengthen its daily visit and bring life to the people. Lucio had read much in archeology and history and though Quechuan speaking was equally fluent and proud of his Spanish; a Quechuan-Peruvian as we might hyphenate him, enlarging the good and diminishing the bad from all threads of his ancestry. One of the last visits with him was to the tomb beneath “The Church of the Triumph,” where he made sure we saw the crypt where the ashes of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (who died in Cordoba, Spain) are said to be resting, and that we understood his stature in Cuzcan culture.
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