A relatively new Peruvian phenomenon are strikes, or los paros. If the strike lasts a longer than a day or so, then it´s called la huelga. In any case, the people of Peru have only recently begun to implement strikes as a form of protest. Usually the strikes revolve around transportation, which can make getting from town to town difficult for locals and tourists alike. (Such a bitch when you´re trying to get to Maccu Pichu, ya know . . . )

Apparently, when the transportation strikes first began,  the protesters would hide on the edges of highways and throw big rocks at passing traffic. But, after several busses were hit with rocks and subsequently fell off of sheer roadside cliffs, killing everyone on board, they´ve re-vamped their stategies. Now they block the roads with huge rocks or cut down giant eucalyptus trees to stop the flow of traffic. I´ve heard also about riots and fighting in the streets of Cusco on occasion.

So far, the strikes have not directly affected me, as I usually stay close home. The strangest thing of all about the strikes are that, believe it or not, they are actually scheduled events. This is very helpful and considerate of los paros in my opinion, because at least it gives people a chance to make alternative arrangements.  Most of the time we find out the day before about an impending strike from Ulreke´s, the local ex-pat cafe.

One day when we went to Ulreke´s for breakfast, we noticed that there weren´t very many vendors set up in the market, which is usually packed. There was a military truck parked in the town square filled with soldiers in full riot gear, guns and sheilds ready. Although there were children scrambling all over the hood of the truck, there was an unsettledness in the air.

Ulreke, the cafe owner, came to take our order. She informed us in a very matter-of-fact way that the neighboring city of Calca was demanding Pisac´s solidarity in their strike over a land dispute with the jungle provinces. Any shop or vendor caught doing business by any of Calca´s protesters were promised to receive broken store windows and smashed stalls and merchandise. Ulreke just shrugged her shoulders and said, ¨If los paros show up, then we´ll just lock the doors and the shutters and we´ll have a party.¨

And about 25 Calca protesters did show up that day, brandishing broomsticks and chanting in the streets. No broken windows or looted market stalls to speak of – in fact, most of the vendors kept right on selling their food and wares. 

Today there was supposed to be a strike, but it was cancelled. There´s talk that it may happen on Wednesday instead, but everyone just kind of shrugs their shoulders and says, ¨who knows?¨ I´ve noticed a bit of a lackadaisical attitude in local people and tourists alike regarding the strikes. The issue at stake this time is a bigger one: the people are angry about possible government privitization of water. With such a bigger issue looming on the table, it will be interesting to see if strike days remain business as usual.

Yesterday was the ultimate day for Carnival in Pisac. The whole town goes up to the terrace ruins and has a giant party while watching groups of traditional dancers from the entire Sacred Valley vie for the title of first place. The caretaker of our house, a local Peruvian, said that for sure, yesterday would be a free day. This sounds familiar . . . I’ve heard this story before . . . just last week . . . and was told by the guards that it wasn’t true.

“No matter that Turistico Control told me that there are no free days, ever?” I asked.

He reassured me that the day in question would indeed be a free day. I was still skeptical. I went to the local bakery for my daily Coca-Cola in a glass bottle and carne empanada fix. Conception, the girl who works there and knows me as a regular customer, asked me why I wasn’t up at the ruins. “It’s free today,” she said, “because of Carnival.”

So, Heather and Maria and I decided to splurge the US $3.00 for cab fare up to the top of the ruins since it was already well past noon. On the way up, I decided to ask our driver about it.

“No,” he said. “There are no free days. If you are Peruvian, it’s free. Don’t you have a ticket?”

We explained that we did not. Then our cab driver did something unexpected, fun and truly adventurous. “OK,” he said, “Hide your faces and your hair.” He spoke in fast Spanish. I could only understand the gist of what he was saying, but I got the idea that he was going to help us sneak in.

He stopped the car when we got close to the control station. He motioned for us to put the hoods of our raincoats on and duck down together in the backseat. He gave me a newspaper and motioned for me to put it over my face and hair. Then he hit the gas. We went a little way and then he said, “OK!”

We made it! He snuck us past Turistico Control! He then explained that if we walked down the other side of the mountain toward the market after exploring the ruins that the guards at the other gate would stop us and ask for our tickets. So, he offered (for an additional fee, of course) to wait two hours for us at the top of the mountain and then take us back down into town. The total fee would for the three of us for this scheme would be the same as one regular ticket, so we said yes and thanked our driver graciously.

There are alternate ways to get to the top of this mountain after all!

The verdict is still out as to whether Turistico Control really was open and checking tickets or not. We wouldn’t know, because we were hiding in the backseat of the cab. But I really don’t care.

My little friends who live down the road still pop out from the pigpen occasionally and scream, “Ho-o-o-ola!!” in a low growl. Sometimes, they can be mean, and try to act like they are going to hit me with their tiny fists, but of course, they never do. I surmise that some day soon when they are a bit older that they might be troublemakers. But for now, I just try to do what little I can as a transient foreigner in the neighborhood and keep them from punching or throwing things me. I greet them with humor and smiles always.

“Mis amigos! Hola!!” I called out when I saw the two of them on my way into town yesterday.

“No-o-o-o!” the little one cried as he stuck out his fist when I got near.

“Hey,” I said calmly, stretching my palm out flat toward him in an effort to gently correct his behavior. “No. Pare,” I said, which means ‘stop.’ He’s so tiny that as I did this, I had to bend my body down toward him.

He put his fist down and his gaze fixated on my necklace. “Daime esto,” he said as he pointed to it, which means ‘Give me that.’

I sighed with a little smile. “Creo que tu nombre es Daime, Daime,” I said, which means, ‘I think your name is Gimme, Gimme.’

Pisac sits at 9,800 feet above sea level. The stars here are amazing, bright and they seem so close you could almost reach out and touch them. Peru is an amazing place in general and because of that, full of folk-lore about mysterious happenings. The energy here is certainly strong, just about anyone here can feel it. Numerous New-Age Westerners have settled here for just that reason. But, you don’t have to be into New Age stuff to notice the lights flashing in the sky.

“It can be whatever you want it to be,” says my friend Javier.

Javier officially explains that the quick flashes that sometimes light up the night sky are from lightning in the jungle, which is only about fifty miles away just across the tall mountains of the Sacred Valley, where Pisac sits. The flashes appear to be heat lightning to me. There’s never any accompanying thunder, but I don´t think there ever is with heat lightning. Anyway, the weather here isn´t the humid kind that usually causes heat lightning.

“No,” another American friend who’s lived here for over a year says, “That’s not heat lightning. I have my theories, but that is not lightning.”

Whether the flashes are lightning or not remains to be seen. But what I do know is that the other night, as we lay out on the front patio, looking at the stars, we saw a  moving point of light that did not appear to be an aircraft. It zoomed across the sky, grew in size about ten times bigger than it was with a warm, steady glow and then went back to it’s original size as a small point of light. Then it disappeared.

Airplane? I don’t know. I’ve never seen an airplane do anything like that. It was a completely clear night. Matt laid in bed a few nights ago with a torn knee muscle, alone in the house, waiting for my friends and I to return. When I got home, he said he’d heard a strange, sustained humming noise for about 30 seconds that seemed to envelop the entire house.

“My knee hurt. The dogs were going crazy. I wasn’t about to get up and investigate,” he said.

I guess these things can be whatever we want them to be.

This entire week is Carnival in Pisac and the surrounding areas of Cusco and the Sacred Valley. Basically that means that all the local people close down their shops, drink alot of beer, the market is closed and/or relocated up the street and the plaza is emptied. Everybody has been getting ready for this festival for several months. It’s summer/rainy season now and this is sort of like the culmination of the summer vacation.

There are endless groups of traditional dancers all competing for the prize of dancing at the top of the ruins in Pisac. The groups range from little kids, teenagers all the way to older people. The kids who aren’t dancing run around the village with buckets of water balloons.

These epic water balloon fights have been going on all summer. The boys are tagging the girls they like. The girls retaliate. Gangs of children and teenagers have roamed the streets for the last two months and the fury of the battles has been escalating daily. Now some adults are even in on it. Every shop in town has been stocking squirt guns, confetti, extra shaving cream and this foamy stuff that´s kind of like silly string. People who can´t afford accoutrement for their battles use creative solutions like dirt, powered chalk or anything else they can find.

Last night, after dinner at Momma Chicken´s, we went up to the square in town to watch the dancing. We found a ragtag group of kids who were having some fun tagging one another. In general, the kids don´t search out tourists for targets in their war of mischeif, but we´ve lived here all summer long and we´ve decided we want to be part of the town, so we invited some action. There was another group of tourists hanging out and playing with the kids, so we joined them and soon . . . it was on.

One girl in the group had a little lamb tied up by a string. She dragged that poor lamb all over the plaza while she bombed other kids with cream and dirt. It could barely keep up with her, it´s little back feet skidding all over the rocks in a scramble as it tried in vain to keep up. Her companions, other than the lamb, were about five little boys. Between the lot of them, they had one can of shaving cream. Every one of them had at least two pockets full of specially prepared fine grit dirt.

Soon I was running around the plaza, trying to escape from the gang of kids. They finally got me – and got me good. I took several handfuls of dirt on my face and hat and I must have been laughing, because a good bit of it landed in my mouth. I didn´t have anything to throw at them . . . . except my bag of leftover chicken from dinner at Momma Chicken´s. That´s when I got an idea . . .

I love chicken skin so much that it´s become a tradition that everyone else gives me theirs at dinner, but I just couldn´t eat all of it, so there was a big, greasy, savory mess of it along with chicken bones in a plastic bag that I planned on taking home to the dogs. The kids saw the bag. They didn´t know what was in it, but they knew it must be nasty. I pulled out the bag and they all scattered.

I stood calmly in the middle of the square, spitting dirt and smiling, and I reached in an pulled out a big slimy piece of chicken skin. I zeroed in on my child target, letting out a whoop and ran. He was a fast lil´ booger, but I finally caught him and grabbed the cuff of his shirt. I tried to stuff the chicken skin down his front, but he was smart and held the front of his shirt tight.

He was about to get away, so in a last ditch effort to retaliate, I just went for it in any way I could. Two of his friend had caught up with us by that time and were starting in throwing dirt on my face again and trying to pull me away. I slapped that piece of roasted chicken skin right on the back of that kid´s head and smeared it in for a good ten seconds before his friends finally helped free him.

Good. Clean. Fun.

Well, this post isn’t really about sneaking into the ruins, so much as it’s about going on a free day, so I’ve decided to post this entry along with the Sneaking Into The Pisac Ruins saga. So, this week is Carnival here in Pisac. I’ve heard through the local grapevine that the ruins are free today. Perfect timing as my friend Heather has just arrived today for a two-week visit.

There are two legitimate entrances to the ruins. One is just off the square in the middle of town at the foot of the mountain. From there, the walk up is about one and a half hours. The second entrance is via taxi about 9 kilometers out of town on the road. We all decided to head up to the entrance to the ruins at the bottom of the mountain in town. I wasn’t even sure if Heather, who just landed in Peru after traveling for two days, could make it up to the top because of altitude issues. Turns out that altitude would not be the issue.

We honestly believed that today was a free day because of Carnival – that’s what everyone in town has been saying. So, we were surprised when we got stopped at Turistico Control office and the guard asked for our tickets. “But I thought today was a free day at the ruins because of Carnival!” I said.

¨It’s free to come to the market in Pisac,” the guard said. “But there are never any free days at the ruins! Never!” he yelled.

I was confused by his comment because every day is free to go to the open-air market in the town square. But, Heather and the rest of us were winded from our short hike anyway, so we just went to Ulreke’s and had a few beers. We ran into a couple of other longer-term tourist friends there and asked them what they’d been doing all day.

“Well,” Jake replied, “We got caught up at the ruins without a ticket because we thought today was a free day and they threatened to take us to jail.”

¨What?” I asked. (I don’t even think there is a jail in Pisac.)

“Yeah,” said Sienna, Jake’s girlfriend, “We didn’t have any money on us and we told them that, so they made us give something for collateral and come back with money later. I tried to give them my necklace, but they wouldn’t take it. They wanted my fancy water bottle instead. Eventually, we returned and they let us pay two for the price of one.”

Aha! So, there are no free days, but you can barter with them . . .

Matt and his friends decided to go up to the ruins today – via the alternate route that we successfully took before.

I think Turistico Control is onto us local extended-stay visitors to Pisac because Matt and his friends came home unexpectedly early. They were stopped about halfway up the mountain by a ranger with a walkie-talkie who asked them for their tickets. Matt pretended like he didn’t speak Spanish and they simply turned around after repeated questioning by the security officer and came home.

They said they thought it was strange that as they hopped over the Royal Inka’s fence that some Peruvian kids in a car going by on the road screamed, “Busted!!“

Daily the “Daime Propina” kids continue their ritual of asking us for a tip while their pants are down around their ankles. Matt had a couple of friends in town visiting for a few weeks. One of them, our friend Hardy, pulled out a two sole coin one day and said, “Today when he jumps out and shakes his thing at me, I’m gonna tell him to come and get his tip.”

But that day was different. As we walked by, we didn’t see the children anywhere at first. Then, we saw the little one, fully clothed, hiding in the bushes, watching us as though he did not want to be seen. Although his eyes were dry, he looked like he’d been crying for quite some time. He saw us and didn’t say a word, not even the customary scream of  “Hola!” He just looked at us with a tear-streaked face and great big eyes.

“Aww,” Hardy said. “He looks really sad.”

And ever since that day, they’ve never spoken the word ‘propina’ again.

There’s a bend in the dirt road that leads to our house, right at the point where a mostly clear little fast-rushing mountain stream merges with the Urubamba River. In this crux where the two rivers meet sits a little mud brick house. Almost all the buildings in Peru are constructed of mud brick, mine included, but this one is a bit more primitive. There are no windows, just flour sacks covering the space where glass might normally be and they have no electricity and most likely no running water. The most modern feature of the place is a wooden front door with a padlock.

The family who lives there raises pigs. They have two cute little boys, who are always smeared with grime. One is about five and the other might be two and can barely talk; I sometimes see him still with a pacifier in his mouth. Both of the kids run around all the time unsupervised. This is normal in Peru, and honestly, I think it’s actually really great that kids are able to roam free in nature and play in this country without the need for constant monitoring. So, these two little kids are always running around in the dirt, playing in the rivers, hiding in the bushes and grasses along the road and sometimes it’s their job to chase down errant pigs. I even see the little one sometimes with a stick, herding pigs bigger than he is back home from their daily grazing.

These kids wear the same clothes every day. The little one can’t seem to keep his pants around his waist; they are always falling down. In fact, a lot of the time, these kids wear no clothing at all. It’s not uncommon to see them running around naked. Even if the kids are nowhere to be seen, they seem to know exactly when we are walking by. They will suddenly pop out from behind a bush, or open the corrugated metal door of the adjacent family pigpen and stick their heads out and scream, “Hola!”

“Hola!” we reply.

“Ho-o-ola!” the little one will yell again.

“Hola!” we reply again.

Then the little one, barely even to say the words properly, began to say something quite perplexing and at first, kind of annoying and even slightly alarming. “Daime propina!” he yelled one day as we walked past.

Daime propina?!  Did I really hear that correctly?

“Did he really just say, ‘Give me a tip?!’” I asked Matt.

We ignored him. But after that first day, he and his older brother too, began to say it every single day as we walked past, whether they were clothed or not. Some days when they are naked down by the river, they will shake their little ding-dongs at us and scream it – “Daime propina!”

We’ve learned to laugh only in private as we don’t want to encourage them. We’ve run the gamut of emotions about this whole phenomenon. At first, we were really annoyed, but now, we’ve learned to just accept it and walk on.

Matt and I and some friends recently made it up to the Pisac Ruins by an alternative – and free – route.

First, I must say that I don’t necessarily think that sneaking into any Peruvian ruins without paying is honorable. However, as I am living here for at least four months, I do believe that paying once is fair and then occasionally going again without paying is fine. That is because I am living here, connecting with the people here and spending my money here.

The last time I was in Peru, in 2005, I visited the Pisac ruins. And I learned then that they are very serious about tourists paying for the priveledge to view the ruins. A friend told me the price for visiting the ruins and said, “Make sure you don’t pay more than that – sometimes they try to gouge tourists at the control center.” So, when I got to the control center and the lady at the gate in the road quoted me a much higher price, I refused to pay it and proceeded to try to walk past the gate and on up the road to the mountain.

She didn’t like that very much. She put the arm of the gate down and called security. Then she and I got into a bit of a screaming match over the price. Thankfully, a taxi driver I knew from Cusco just happened to pull up right then and he helped straighten out the ‘misunderstanding.’ It was explained to me that my friend must be wrong and that her price was the correct one. I paid it and went on. That was then . . .

So, this time, when my friends suggested an alternate route, I was skeptical, but willing to go for it anyway. We walked toward the Royal Inka and found the path at the bottom of the mountain – and climbed straight up for about an hour and a half. We had to stop quite alot. The altitude here (9,800 feet) can really kick one’s ass. My friends were concerned that I might pass out and fall off the mountain at one point because they said my cheeks were ‘bright, bright red.’

We finally made it up and enjoyed a day at the top of the mountain, checking out the ruins. I was surprised that we didn’t get caught, to be honest.