by Tahir Shah
A fog of llama dung smoke hung over Puno. We were soon out of the town, climbing up the escarpment. Higher and higher, above the silent waters of Lake Titicaca, onto the Altiplano itself. Pancake flat and the color of Brazil nuts, it extended forever like East Africa’s Great Rift. The first blend of clouds was stirring, brewed afresh in the limitless sky. Llamas were grazing in small groups, their petulant faces searching for food. Thesiger would have been proud of me, I thought, for making the most of animal transport.
Manuel tugged at the male’s reins. Despite his pretence of machismo he was a kind-hearted man. He told me that his grandfather or great-grandfather, he wasn’t sure which, had worked for Hiram Bingham. He’d been a muleteer in the 1911 season when Machu Picchu was rediscovered.
“Señor Bingham was a good man,” explained Manuel, as we trudged along. “He gave his men good food... American food. And the mules were not beaten. But...” he said, pausing to pee, ‘señor Bingham claimed he found Machu Picchu.”
Manuel scratched his head with a broken fingernail. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “You see, the local people – they had never lost Machu Picchu.”
As we walked along, Julia dragging her feet beside me, I began to understand the fascination for the llama. Camels and men have a mutual loathing for one another, but llamas are different. I put the peculiar bond down to shared height. A llama, which usually stands as tall as a man, will swivel its head and peer at you on the level – psychopathically. I got the feeling that if she had arms, Julia might throw them around me one minute, but stab me in the back the next.
I bragged to Manuel that I had a sixteen-inch, nickel-coated Alaskan moose knife, brought along in case one of the team went lame and hunger set in. He was unimpressed, and used the opportunity to harangue me.
He said that llamas are man’s greatest friend. They keep the people of the Andes alive. Their coats are used for wool, for rugs and for ropes; their meat is eaten, their fat is used to make candles, and their dung is burned on stoves. Slipping me a sideways glance, the old llamateer added that some deranged people even dried their fetuses and made soup.
Eventually, I spied a lake stretching out to the north, its surface shining like watered steel. Known as Lago Umayo, it’s unconnected with Titicaca. On a high promontory in the western quarter were dotted a number of strange cylindrical towers, built from smooth-sided blocks of stone.
“Bienvenido, welcome to Sillustani,” said Manuel.
The chullpas, round-sided towers, are thought to have been constructed by the Aymara-speaking Colla tribe, between the 14th and 16th centuries. Shortly before the Conquistador invasion, the Collas were overthrown by the Incas. Their most celebrated families had been buried in communal tombs, in funereal towers. Some rise up as high as fifty feet, overlooking the pristine waters of Lake Umayo.
Leaving Manuel to tend the llamas, I made my way up to the tallest of the chullpas. The ground was rocky, the grass long and flaxen. The tower’s stone blocks were flush together like mosaics, its funerary contents ransacked by huaqueros, grave robbers, centuries before. It was here, from these great towers, that Héctor said the Birdmen had flown. With the right wind, and a wide canopy of textile as a wing, I could see no reason why a man might not have glided from the greatest chullpa, safely down to the margin of the lake. He might have sacrificed some cloth, breathed its smoke to make him bold, thrust his arms sideways, and jumped. As a messenger he would have been in the air, aloft, if only for a few seconds, to deliver a message to the gods. Perhaps death would await him on landing; maybe that was the point – a suicide flight.
Despite Héctor’s certainty, I have found no written sources to connect Sillustani to the Birdmen. To the experts, the chullpas were merely towers where an ancient people interred their dead. But then again, I pondered, rubbing a hand over the curious masonry, perhaps the Birdmen never existed at all.
History is abundant with tower-jumping episodes. Medieval Europe saw hundreds of respectable young men with home-made wings, or billowing robes, hurl themselves from towers, in their desperation to fly. No one is sure why, but tower-jumping was to medieval man as great a craze as bungee-jumping has been in recent years.
In his History of Britain, Milton records the fate of Oliver of Malmesbury who fixed wings to his hands and feet in about 1070 AD and leapt from a tower. He’s said to have flown for more than a furlong before crashing to the ground. He lived but was maimed. Another famous jumper was the Marquis of Bacqueville. He announced that he would fly from his riverside mansion in Paris’s rue des Saints-Pères, and land in the Tuileries Gardens. A great crowd gathered. The Marquis jumped with wings attached to his arms and legs. He didn’t make it as far as the gardens. But, fortunately for him, he landed on a washerwoman’s barge and only broke a leg.
Giovanni Battista Danti, a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, jumped from a tower too. He’s said to have glided over Lake Trasimeno in 1490. A few years later, in 1501, another Italian adventurer called John Damian was taken in as a physician to the royal household of Scottish King James IV. While at the castle he practised alchemy and made a celebrated flight. Bishop Lesley, in his History of Scotland (published in 1578), wrote: “He causet make ane pair of wings of fedderis... he flew of the castell wall of Striveling, but shortlie he fell to the ground and brak his thee bare.”
The early 16th century saw dozens of tower-jumping episodes. It was a time not long after the chullpas of Sillustani were built. For all we know, the Birdmen were jumping at Sillustani at the same time as their tower-jumping cousins in Europe were plunging to their deaths.
While the llamas grazed, I paced around the ruins. Manuel pulled a few coca leaves from a pouch and started to chew them. He was lying on a great slab of trachyte, gazing up at the turbulent mass of clouds.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“About what?”
“Do you think once, long ago, men jumped from these towers and flew?”
I had expected Manuel to laugh at the question. Instead, he put a coca leaf on his tongue and closed his eyes.
“They may have jumped, and they may have flown,” he said. “But why did they wish to fly?”
“As messengers from one world to the next?”
“Of course,” he replied. “They wanted to reach the real world, to leave the illusion.”
“This is an illusion?”
Manuel sucked at the quid of coca in his cheek. “Look around you,” he said, his eyes still closed. “None of it exists at all.”
“That’s a question of philosophy.”
“To reach the real world you must die first,” said the llamateer. “Jump from the chullpa and even with the best wings you’re likely to die,” I added.
“There are other ways to die, other ways to fly.”
“How?”
“In your head, in your thoughts,” said Manuel. “You mean by taking coca?”
“No, not coca.” Manuel let out a breathless chuckle. “Stronger stuff than coca.”
“What about by inhaling the smoke of llama wool?”
“No, mucho más fuerte, much stronger.”
“What could be stronger than llama-wool smoke?”
SEVEN
Festival of Blood
The Israeli couple sitting opposite me on the bus from Puno to Arequipa were locked in a passionate embrace. Their bodies were contorted around each other in a double helix, the sound of their mouths sucking, like Japanese blowfish. The Andean ladies with pigtails and multiple skirts did their best, like me, to avert their gaze. They slurped at cups of orange jelly, soaked up the blaring salsa music, and giggled spontaneously at bumps in the road. And there were many bumps, for the dirt road from Puno to Arequipa is one of the roughest on the continent.
Every twenty minutes the bus driver would slow his vehicle, sound the Klaxon, and grind to an uneasy halt. The entire contingent of old women with bundles on their backs, students and dancers, theologians and salesmen in threadbare suits, would tro
upe out. All were searching for the same thing – pots of orange jelly. Their demand for it was seemingly insatiable. The man sitting beside me asked whether I might keep an eye on his cardboard box, full of live guinea pigs. As he scrambled for the door, desperate for jelly, he twisted his nose towards the Israeli sweethearts. In the unwritten lore of the Andes, such people were not to be trusted.
Peruvian bus journeys are always eventful. Whereas in other countries a long ride in a disintegrating bus is a vile prospect, in Peru it’s something to relish. Like children ecstatic for a fairground ride, customers fight each other to be the first aboard. They clutch their tickets with anticipation, thrilled at the idea of a jolting, dust-choking, twelve-hour trip.
Part of the hysteria was due to the date. It was the 27th of July – the day before Peru’s day of independence. Everyone was hurrying back to their villages in time for the fiesta.
Digging a white plastic spoon into his sixth tub of phosphorescent jelly, the man thanked me for looking after his cuy so ably. The cunning Israeli guinea pig thieves, he hinted, had been thwarted.
He slapped his hand in mine.
“My name is Manolo,” he said. “We are brothers. Come with me to my village, come to celebrate!”
I explained that I was en route to Arequipa, where I had heard a man was building a glider of traditional Incan design. A throwaway remark, made by a backpacker in Cusco, was gnawing away at my mind. After Arequipa, I was heading up the coast to Nazca, to inspect the desert lines. I was searching for Birdmen, I said.
Manolo seemed displeased by my choice of destination.
“Come to my village,” he urged again. “Come and see Yawar... we have caught the condor!”
At first I didn’t understand what the man was going on about. I feared that the excitement of the bus ride, and so much jelly, had taken a heavy toll on his sanity. But then, as he told me more about the planned celebrations, I realized my good fortune. Yawar was something not to be missed at any price. No other festival in the Americas is as significant to the folklore of flight.
Thanking Manolo for his invitation, I accepted. When he leapt from the bus at the small town of Pati, with his box of cuy cradled in his arms, I too descended.
The village itself was reached after hours of hitching rides. Manolo helped me into the back of a lorry carrying melons. As we fishtailed our way north, up a narrow track, he told me about his guinea pigs.
“They’re the finest cuy in all Peru,” he said. “I bought them from a campesino, a farm worker, near Puno. We’ll snap their necks, marinate them overnight, and fry them on a hot griddle,” Manolo rubbed his palms together indicating great heat. “Cuy chactado,” he said. “It’s my family’s favorite.”
The melon truck dropped us on the outskirts of a small mining community. We must have made an incongruous couple: Manolo with his guinea pigs, and me staggering under so much luggage.
Festivities were well under way. The main street was criss-crossed with banners. An inexhaustible supply of old men lounged on their verandas swigging chicha, in honor of their ancestors. Their wives were snapping the fragile necks of cay, slicing potatoes and preparing estofado, a thick chicken stew. The early evening air was live with music: the sound of flutes, trumpets, drums and, of course, the sound of quenas.
Manolo took me to his house and introduced his family. His wife, four children, two aunts and grandmother shared the modest three-room shack. No one appeared surprised that a stranger had been invited at the last minute. The best chair was dusted down and placed in the shade for my comfort. Refreshments were brought out. Then Manolo quizzed his wife about the Yawar. When she had reported the details, he touched a hand to his heart and thanked God.
“Te lo dije, I told you!” he exclaimed. “A magnificent condor has been lured by the fresh horse meat. We haven’t caught one for three years, and so there was great anticipation.”
Manolo gulped his drink. Like everyone in the village, he could hardly contain his excitement.
Yawar Fiesta, “Festival of Blood”, has been practised for at least four hundred years in southern Peru. The festival is as popular now as ever, an indication that political correctness hasn’t yet reached the Andes. A celebration, held in small towns and villages on the Altiplano, it honors the condor, the king of all birds.
Each year the ritual is the same. First a team of hunters go high into the hills in search of a condor. They abstain from cigarettes and drink as the great birds have a keen sense of smell. When they have come to a spot frequented by condors, they slaughter a pony by strangling it. Offerings are sprinkled around its body. The hunters pray to God to send down a condor. Then they hide among the surrounding rocks, and wait. Sometimes, days pass before a condor lands to feast on the pony’s flesh. All the while the hunters chant prayers and fill their minds with pure thoughts.
Some years no condor descends, and the hunters return to their village with their egos bruised. In a good year, if the condor lands, it gorges itself on the fresh horse meat. With a full gizzard, the bird attempts to fly. But having eaten too much it’s unable to take off. Choosing their moment, the hunters strike. Throwing a poncho over the bird, they trap it, and tie its feet together. They would never harm it, for to do so would be an act of sacrilege. Overwhelmed with joy, the hunters embrace their quarry, and toast its health with chicha. They return homeward, with the bird wrapped tight in a blanket.
As the party returns to the village, trumpets resound, celebrating the capture of the condor. It’s taken away and plied with more food and chicha. By the day of independence it’s ready for the extraordinary festival.
Manolo drank all evening and by midnight he was very drank indeed. He had made sure the cuy were marinated in his secret sauce, and that his wife had pressed his best clothes for the next day. I suggested we go to sleep. Fighting to stand upright, he smacked his hands together.
“How can a man sleep,” he roared, “when there is still chicha to be drunk?”
The central square was packed with people even before the band arrived. No one wanted to miss out on the best seating or, worse still, to miss the main spectacle. They all knew that the Yawai Fiesta comes at most only once a year. I heard the crackle of maize roasting on low charcoal stalls, and saw hawkers with barrows of pastries, ripe oranges, and skewers of beef heart ready to be sold. On every wall children were in position, their short legs dangling down, gob-stoppers rattling in their mouths. The old women, dressed in their finery, were fanning themselves with their bowlers. Laughter rang through the plaza like the click of castanets.
Manolo wasn’t going to let the temperature or a hangover spoil his fun. It was a baking afternoon, in the high 80s, but he wanted everyone to see him in his best clothes. The flaps of his collar stuck out over a green mohair sweater, on top of which he wore a woolen peacoat. Beads of perspiration merged into droplets on his forehead, before cascading down his face. He greeted old friends, bragged about the cuy he’d brought from Puno, and drank toasts to the Festival of Blood.
From the distance came the piercing sound of a piccolo. Then the thunder of a bass drum, trumpets, and cymbals cracking like gunfire. The bandsmen in their tight woolen caps and matching ponchos swaggered towards the plaza. A hundred feet kicked the dust as they danced, hips hula-hooping and hands clapping, as they heralded the arrival of the show.
Following behind the musicians were a mass of revellers, coaxed into hysteria by a cocktail of adrenaline and drink. Among them, its immense ten-foot wings held outstretched, its beak bound with twine, was the condor. Black in color, with an ivory ruff and blush pink head, the bird was guest of honor. With the horde pressed into the far corner of the plaza, the serious business of Yawar could commence.
A young bull, unable to move in its tiny pen, was readied for la corrida de toros, the fight. A sackcloth saddle was fixed to its back as hands taunted it through the bars. When the saddle was tight, the condor was harnessed to the bull’s back. Facing forwards, its feet were sewn into the
cloth.
Only then, as the band’s cacophony ranted around us, did the free-for-all begin. The gate to the pen was hauled aside and the bucking-bronco ran wild. On its back, writhing like a phantom from the limits of Hell, was the condor. As the bull lunged through the plaza, the bird’s tremendous wings heaved up and down, desperate for flight, its beak tearing into the beast’s back. Would-be matadors, their courage bolstered by drink, stumbled into the square, only to be stampeded one by one. In the frenzy of wings and hooves, bovine and bird blended into a single creature from Greek mythology. Neither seemed to cherish the performance, a fusion of two traditions. The bull symbolizes the power of the Conquistadors, and the condor the might of a proud native people.
When the fantasy was at an end, the animals were cut apart. A bowl of chicha was placed at the condor’s beak, and the bull was pushed back into its enclosure. A group of mauled matadors swapped tales of their bravery, and tight-fitting shoes danced once again in the plaza’s dust. Then, with the band romping triumphantly through the streets, the bird was dragged to the edge of the village. Twisting its neck back in horror as it glimpsed the crowd, the condor thrust its mighty wings and soared up into the steel-blue sky.
Another cramped long distance bus whirred west towards Arequipa. Up on the roof a herd of sheep were balancing alongside the bags, their feet trussed, their faces rapt with alarm. They bleated, but no one was listening. Below, in the cabin, a demonic figure with gritted teeth crooned over the controls. Like a schoolboy piloting a make-believe Zero fighter, he mimicked the clatter of gunfire. The bus swerved left, then right and left again, the driver spinning the wheel recklessly through his muscular hands.
In the belly of the bus a little girl had spewed orange jelly down the aisle. The man beside me, a clone of Manolo, slapped his knee. Was he angry at the pools of amber vomit? With the glint of a gold tooth, he laughed at my question. A child is el fruto de la inocencia, the fruit of innocence, he said.