Going Native (by Lawrs)

Our friend Jean Jacques Decoster, proprietor of El Centro Tinku,

invited us for a romp around the campo in his 1980 Toyota Land Cruiser last Sunday.  We enthusiastically accepted his gracious offer and met him and his friend Alex in the San Blas Plaza at 9AM.

Jean Jacques named his antique vehicle El Ganso (The Goose), because of its remarkable resemblance to the color of goose poop.  El Ganso is beautifully preserved, and fit six of us (plus Q'ori the golden retriever) in relative comfort, considering the vehicle was designed for safaris and enduring rhinoceros attacks.  Lucky Krista got to sit in the front with JJ the whole day, while I was relegated to the rear where I was able to experience, firsthand, just how much the science of motor vehicle suspension has advanced in the last thirty years.

The first part of the day was an all pavement jaunt to the town of Huarocondo, about an hour away.  Jean Jacques, if you haven't guessed, is originally from France.  He has a restaurant in El Centro Tinku that has some of the most creative, delicious, and beautifully presented food in Cusco.  A day spent with JJ will have at least some focus on food, and the the town of Huarocondo is famous for its tamales and Lechon, a baked concoction that resembles a cross between fried pork rinds and pulled pork.  Pigs are roasted in an oven until the meat is falling off the bone, and then hacked up and served in rough, juicy bits covered in crispy skin [thanks for the clarification Jean Jacques!].  In combination with my olive tamale,  it tasted pretty darn good.

  

From Huarocondo we headed down, down, down towards the sacred valley on a dirt track that we had seen a month ago from the train back from Machu Picchu.  One of the many things that I adore about trains is their inability to negotiate steep grades, forcing them to go meandering through the landscape in search of navigable terrain.  The canyon that the train tracks ascend is as narrow as it is visually stunning.  Cliffs of red and brown are punctuated by patches of brilliant green vegetation and cactus beginning to bloom with red and yellow flowers.  The Toyota performed flawlessly, aside from the fact that the interior ceiling could have used some more padding.  This road was no place for wimpy cars.

Jean Jacques was taking us to a little known ruin that is in its infancy of rediscovery.  We parked the car and walked 1/4 of a mile along the Machu Picchu railroad tracks until we came to the stairs in the picture above.  The ruins are in and around a cave that looks rather ordinary from below.  As we approached the entrance to the cave we could see some roughly hewn niches in the stone walls on either side, with a mound of amorphous granite partially blocking the entrance.  As we made our way past the block of bedrock and around to its back side, our breath was taken away by what we saw.

A three-part ceremonial altar looked out from the mouth of the cave at the sheer cliffs across the valley.  The quality of the stone work was tremendously refined and detailed.  And as a bonus, my three girls fit perfectly into the niches.

Another huge niche and shelf were carved, as if by lasers, into the west wall of the cave. 

Mommy, or mummy?

 

Our host Jean Jacques, Q'Ori and Sophia.

JJ and  Q at the base of the cliffs above the cave.

A flower at the mouth of the cave.

After an hour or so around the ruins we reboarded El Ganso for the ride down to Ollantaytambo for lunch.  Hearts Cafe is the personal project of a retired British nutiritionist who donates all of her profits to rural communities in the area.  As a bonus to the philanthropic mission of her enterprise, the food at Hearts Cafe happens to be really delicious too.

On the way back to town we stopped at a gorgeous piece of land that JJ has bought and hopes to build on soon.  It sits just above the Urubamba valley floor in a tiny community at the foot of a ridge topped with jagged spires.  The terrain here is spectacular and the scale is hard to fathom.  The photograph below was taken from an elevation of 8000 feet, and the peaks above are close to 16,000 feet.

We were all pretty tired by the time we were heading back to the city, but nothing says it better than the look on the faces Sophia and Q'ori...

 

We were treated to a beautiful, dark sky as we crested the pass back into Cusco.   We had luckily dodged the rain and only felt the first few drops on our head as we stuck the key in the front door of our house.  It's amazing to think that such extraordinary sites like the cave are so close to the city where we live.  JJ told me I could ride my bike on the same road we took following the train tracks from Cusco, arriving in around four hours in Ollantaytambo.  I can't wait to give it a try.