At five in the morning we realize painfully that nothing is direct despite all the promises (yeah, Lonely Planet got this one smack right), we have to disembark in Puno, and wait three hours for the connection. Buying the “not-direct” bus ticket would have cost us 15+20 soles to La Paz, with the same buses anyway. But our trials haven’t ended yet, after Puno the bus makes a two-hour detour towards Copacabana, where lots of our fellow travelers get off, and spend some time sorting out the luggage. At the Bolivian border we have to switch buses yet again. The border crossing is a super-serious affair, unlike anywhere in Central America, we have to leave our backpacks on the bus (they will be taken over the border some other way), and start walking around the site, visiting at least eight offices en route: passport-checking, stamping, stamp-checking, immigration, another stamp-checking, next immigration, customs and finally an independent checkpoint where all they asked was “Todo bien?” and waved us on. Apart from fighting against unemployment, there seems little logic in the system of checkpoints and papers, bored men in their sweaty uniforms sitting in fly-infested rooms nonchalantly filing immigration forms and custom declarations, if you mix up your passport number with your partners birth date no one will notice. Customs is pretty strict too, with an Interpol (!) guy separately checking our documents, and the local police strip-searching anyone under 30 or with a lock of Rasta hair. The political pressure from the North is present at all times. A present and clear danger.
The road winds along the famous shore of Lake Titicaca, snow-covered peaks loom in the background, the water is cobalt blue and the vegetation is shriveled to a yellowish-brown mass. All around hoses made from red clay abound, the fields are speckled with donkeys, sheep and cattle, the women wear colorful, multi-layered clothes and round hats, their children run around barefoot. La Paz is a breathtaking sight, imagine a huge, dry valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains up to 20.000 ft in altitude, all but filled to the brim with half-finished brick hoses of the same design. It is no surprise that our bus stops finally smack in the middle of the tourist district, touts and cabdrivers converge on the unsuspecting groups of foreigners; quietly slipping away we have no time for anything, after tomorrow we have to be in Brazil.

We decide to distance ourselves a bit from the crowd, so we move down a bit to another valley. Minute houses hide under the rocky, barren peaks, typical of the region. The walls of the houses and animal shelters are built from stones or dried bricks cut straight from the pasture. The roof is thatch, the smoke finds its way out the windows, rye is cultivated in the backyard, guinea-pigs rule the porch and the alpaca herds are guarded by heavy, woolly dogs resembling Caucasian Shepherds. We greet the family from behind the stone fence, but the children flee and the valley stays silent. Not many visitors around here. Finally an old, paper-skinned man comes out meekly, and we ask him if we can pitch our tents near his fence. He nods silently and smiles, probably didn’t understand our Spanish. We heartily say thanks, he keeps on nodding and smiling, and limps back to his house. It is subzero again the whole night, the lamas huddle together close to the house, their frosty wool glowing in the moonlight while the valleys finely echo the sounds of a fiesta not far away. What a totally different world…

We are up early, the sun has barely painted the highest mountains pink when we join the spiraling file of Peruvians, and by 10 am we reach Mawayani. Since no other food is available, the lama stew topped with boiled potatoes sounds just like our choice for breakfast. The buses leave every ten minutes, packed with returning pilgrims, we fold ourselves onto one and soon we are in Cuzco. We visit the main market, where a bowl of super-fresh ceviche (fresh seafood or fish with vegetables, vinegar and spices, a national dish here as well) costs near nothing. Inside a music shop we are tempted to try every Peruvian music instrument we can lay our hands on, and later we stumble upon the Plaza de las Armas, where a microbus stops in front of a flashy pizzeria, two security guards with shotguns jump out, and the German tourist group is ushered to the safety of the restaurant serving European cuisine. Not having much reason to stay, we head for La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. Since we are in a hurry, we buy the 120 sol tickets for the “direct” shuttle.

Although spending a day at colorful Qoyllurrit’y has a strong effect on even the toughest traveler, staying there all through the ten days is probably a spiritual experience only for ethnography professionals or Quechua priests. The 24/7, monotone, slightly under toned melodies, the continuous explosion of fireworks and the impossible crowd is still OK, but the conflict between consumerism and nature is a different story. Of course, there is no waste-disposal system available; everyone throws everything in the direction they happen to face. The public toilets (a hole in the ground with some plastic-wrapped poles around it) are fed into the crystal-clean stream running from the glacier, while a few meters downstream housewives wash their laundry. Carcasses of animals recently slaughtered lie scattered around the tents while every rock crevice is filled with used sanitary paper. In the case of over 10.000 persons this means a serious threat to the water system and the environment, an issue no one seems to address. And on top of all this, there is the recent addition: the “foreigners’ corner”, a cordoned area complete with armchairs, showers and security guards, where every second tent has a diesel generator running and blond teens order their hamburgers from the private cook. However, this is how the world works, in a few years tourist agencies will be advertising 220 US$ packages to one of the most authentic festivals in Peru. The original culture won’t have a chance.

Our dancing friends take us to another mayordomo, and he explains us what he knows about the event. By the end of the 18th century, the indigenous tribes of the Andes saw Jesus with a lamb in the valleys, and also on the cross. The sightings were verified by Spanish priests as well, and everyone talked about a holy light, Qoyllurrit’y in Kechua (their local language), meaning: snow star, the glitter of snow. A regular pilgrimage was organized, with the official name: Señor de Qoyllurrit’y. Originally young people wanting to become a shaman climbed the glacier late in the night, spent the night there and in the morning cut chunks of ice from it and took them back to camp. These ice blocks, shining yellow in the early morning sun, represented the holy “starlight”. Before all this, during the Inca Empire this place was probably used for human sacrifices. The pilgrimage grew in popularity after the sixties, it was when the customs took their final form, and only in the recent years have foreigners as tourists actually made it here. Nowadays in information age it doesn’t take decades for the travelling community to discover a new destination, amongst the tens of thousands of participants we met quite a few foreign visitors, and a crew from some private television and the BBC as well. But back to the festival. The traditional participants are the dancers, with names like Chunchos, Q´apaq Qollas, Japos or Pabluchas. The ukukus are a separate category, they are the representatives of civil security, maintaining order with whistles, whips and shouting, and will actually give a few whiplashes to anyone misbehaved, but he haven’t seen anything like that, only some friendly whipping of each others’ feet.

The schedule changes little during the day, the whole valley is ringed by colorful processions moving at a slow pace, each has it’s own band, usually a big drum and some brass and a flute made from an aluminum water pipe, the melody never changes, throbbing, lively, shrill pentatonic notes jumping around in the crisp mountain air, by the second day it becomes a bit boring. The big crowd is always around the chapel, inside lies an imprint of the body of Christ. Typically Latin American: a colorful mixture of customs, the original religion and local culture. Something like a painting in one of Cuzco’s cathedrals depicting the Last Supper, the table heavily loaded with food and drinks, with a whole roasted guinea-pig lying in the middle, four charred legs pointed to the sky. The success of Catholicism was always based on the flexibility they used to mould original beliefs with present dogmas. The jaguar-figure dancing around paintings of St. Peter, the lama sacrifice made before a wooden cross (a chicken in Maya culture), the integration of the names of ancient gods into local superstitions, all this acted as a booster on the number of believers. As a result came the stronger influence in politics and power. But alas, this was not even a very original idea. From the ancient Greeks through the Romans to the Mongol Empire, success always depended on the “escape routes” the losers were allowed to use to keep elements or even foundations of their original religion.

We didn’t sleep much; notwithstanding our weariness the tramping music of the valley wakes up early. At one in the morning the first group of pilgrims set off towards the glacier, we join another group a few hours later. Although the difference in altitude is only a few hundred feet, it takes us two hours of strained walking to get to the ice river. From here it is another hour through ice and rock hard snow to the peak, towering 20.000 feet above the surrounding mountains. The horizon to the East is rules by the huge mass of Apu Ausangate, the rays of the sun paint the sky a light lilac color. Stiff, aching and fighting nausea we make our way down. No responsible mountain guide would start out on this trip without crampons, ice pick and rope, but the locals do it in their traditional robes, with impossible head ornaments and jewelry. Back at the bottom of the glacier the ukukus and the masked dancers organize a sled race, followed by a huge snowball fight, out here everyone is a bit more relaxed. On the way back we meet a group from San Salvador called Virgen del Rosario. Their long, red dresses and huge feathered hats look spectacular as they dance on downwards. They invite us to their fiesta in October, and assure us that it is much bigger and more original than this one. In the valley later we meet one of the mayordomos, and have a great chat about European communism, Cuban socialism and international leftist ideas. He gets real excited about the subject, as it turns out he lives near Lake Titicaca, right over the Bolivian border, where everyone knows about Evo Morales dating Venezuelan Hugo Chavez. We choose our words carefully, rewarded by a kind invitation to a bowl of chiché (a fermented drink made from corn beer and several plants) and some sort of dried cheese. He suggests we take pictures of the different dresses of certain tribes at the fiesta. He goes out and returns with some families, and we start making pictures. Not much later a group of foreign tourists see us, and demand where we bought the permit to do this. We tell them with glee that we bought the last one. Meanwhile the mayordomo and the organizing leaves, everybody just wants to have a look at their own photos and show it to everyone in the valley. We give up, and join the crowd watching the manly games of the ukukus: the nominee has to run before a wall of whip-toting colleagues, trying not to fall.

The pilgrims on our bus throw sweets, plastic dolls and matchbox cars out the window, to be picked up by screaming, undernourished children in dirty clothes. The typical Latin-American “ladino – indígena” difference is strong here too, the rich city dwellers of mixed indigenous and European descent “help” the poor folks in the name of religion. The lollipops break into thousands of fragments on the roadside, and the children fight each other to collect as much as possible. The houses up here are built from adobe, and rice, wheat and chick-pea are grown on the ancient Inca strips in the mountainside. The only tree around surprisingly is the eucalyptus, introduced not so long ago. In Mawayani the traffic jam is incredible, horses, trucks, pedestrians, everybody moving at once in a big cloud of dust, while we make our way up the mountain behind walls of relentless hawkers. The altitude is tough, we are 13.000 feet ASL and even the smallest gradient costs us way too much breath and muscle power. Surprisingly, there are as many people coming down the mountain than going up, no rules exist, most people arrive only for a day. The official poster informs us that the festivity lasts from May 14 – 24, but nothing else. After four hours of heavy climbing and dodging Calvary stations, tent camps, vendors and sleeping pilgrims we arrive. The valley is stocked to the brim with tents, tarps, people and animals. Soothsaying parrots and monkeys, counterfeit dollar bills, open-air restaurants and shops abound everywhere, it takes us another hour to make to Chinaq’ara on the far side. After erecting our tent beside a friendly family we just sit around, wheeze and watch the scenery. We are well above 15000 feet, the air cuts like glass, the sun burns our exposed skin. Fireworks go off on a regular basis, the bang echoing between the valley walls as if trying to escape. Dozens of bands play their version (mostly a bit false) of Peruvian folklore, and the crowd continues to surge from beneath into the valley, some dancing, some singing, praying; with bags tied around their backs containing blankets, food or a painting of a saint from back home. We buy some fried alpaca ribs with potatoes (who knew that potato comes originally from Peru, and up to this day there are at least 4000 varieties cultivated in the country?) and go for a short sleep. The majority of the locals are too poor to buy a tent, they build a two-feet-high half-circle from stones, cover it with blue plastic and climb under it in small groups. But most of them don’t even sleep, instead keep chewing at coca leaves while dancing and singing all night. There is no day and no night, street lamps shine 24 hours and the music and dancing just keeps going.

According to locals, no entrance fee whatsoever is needed for the festival, anyone who wants to visit should take a cab (2 Sol) to Coliseo Cevrado, where lines of buses wait to take the thousands of pilgrims to village Mawayani for a meager 15 Soles. The trip takes 3 hours. It is worth noting, that the 2004 Lonely Planet Peru contains a lot of misinformation about the event. The station is called Coliseo Cerrado, the date is in June, the area is Ausangate, the first village Tinqui and the packs are hauled up the mountain on mules. The truth is different: the station is called Coliseo Cevrado, the date is different every year, the name of the mountain is Chinaq, the last village is a half-hour bus drive from Tinqui and there were no mules around. That is, if they haven’t lied to us in biology classes and mules can have offspring. These are horses all right, so anyone who wrote the guide book must have been either very careless or has never visited the pilgrimage. Unfortunately many tourist agencies in Cuzco base their information on LP, and even so, only two out of eight could give any information about the event, and even they knew only about Coliseo Cevrado, and nothing more. Of course, on the internet there are some companies offering packages to visit Qoyllurrit’y, but for an unbelievable price considering the actual expenses.

Yesterday the trip took a bit too long, early in the morning we started off from San Pedro la Laguna on the infamous chicken bus towards the capital. Transferring in San José, Costa Rica, we noted the airport is way cleaner and more modern than many European airports we know, everything is flitter-glitter, the shops offer products you see only in Austrian souvenir malls and the prices of the restaurants we dared not convert into Euros. After killing some time by gaping at the shop windows, we departed into the blue sky above the country, and in a few hours the flat Pacific coast of Peru spilled out under us. Here they spell it: Perú. After the quality kitsch atmosphere of Costa Rica we expected something small and dusty. But no way, there is glass and chrome everywhere, free WiFi and non-smoking signs (South America, vow!) everywhere around the airport in Lima. The air outside is stuffy, hot and humid. The well-know travelling trance clouds our minds while we buy the bus tickets towards Cuzco, and in no time we are catching our breath at altitudes exceeding 10.000 feet. On first sight Cuzco is not too pretty; the outskirts could be anywhere in North Africa or Central Asia were it not for clean and sharp Spanish words bouncing in the air everywhere. A quick money change (the currency here is called the Nuevo Sol), and we walk outside to the bus station at the entrance amidst heaps of taxiamigo shouts. Half a Sol takes us to the San Pedro station in town, where we start looking for some locals we contacted on the internet (LP Thorntree, williamtrek) but there is no one around at the agreed time, and they haven’t answered to any of our recent emails. Well, our first lesson on promises made in Peru. The locals are all preparing for one of the largest festivals around, the Qoyllurrit’y event. We eventually find accommodation near the San Pedro church at Hospedaje El Paraíso (if you want to pay budget then steer clear of anything suggested in Lonely Planet) for a whopping 5 Sol per person (decent rooms, hot water, kind staff) and take off to the city. Now, we will probably get a serious e-stoning for this opinion, but downtown Cuzco is absolutely nothing special. We could well be in Madrid centre or pedestrian Seville right now, there are clean, cobblestoned streets everywhere lined by huge, earth-red churches and cathedrals, and one can hardly move in the crowd flowing on the streets of the main square, also mocked as Gringo town. Touts and aggressive agents abound everywhere; the waiters of the restaurant practically block your path and shove huge menus in your hand disregarding your backpack and polite “No, gracias”. Everywhere the password is Machu Pichu, Inca Trail and adventure travel, it is so grossly unoriginal that we are even more confirmed in our decision not to visit these sites at all. Bad luck, we were born too late in the century…
Fleeing from Gringo town, we make our way towards the Central Market, where we eat a complete menu (hot soup, great guinea-pig mains, drinks and dessert) for 2 Sols. As most travelers in Peru find out after some time, the guinea-pig is a big favorite, but not in the pet way, rather as a traditional culinary delight reaching back to Inca times, tasting much like rabbit. On the market real Peru shows a bit from Herself, whole donkey heads, alpaca intestines and coca leaves abound, together with great fresh licuados and inexpensive snacks. On the dark streets away from the touristic bustle the locals are friendlier than most places in Central America, they start a conversation in almost any situation, or simply walk up to you and ask where you came from, welcome to Peru. Most of them just stop us for a warning, this part of the city is unsafe, we should watch out for our belongings. We buy some vegetables, fruits, dry bread, and a bit surprisingly, realize that no one wants to short-change or cheat us. If we round up the amount and want to leave half a Sol at the stall, they will shout or send some child running after us with the change, and they always measure a bit more on the scales. Gracious and honest people, we feel so good. Outside Gringo town no one wants to sell us anything with force, they ask us politely once and then carry on. After dark we decide to end our stroll and head back to our Hospedaje, where we shiver under double blankets the whole night