Peru called to me because an expert mountain man I’d discovered via social media had horses and could lead me into seriously wild backcountry. We planned to trek together with one pack animal between us.
On day five, we would reach remote Waqra Pukará, the mysterious “horned” pre-Incan archaeological site I’d read about online. Traveling by car from my base in Urubamba, not far from Cuzco, I would reach Huayqui, the isolated village in the Andes where my guide lives, in 4½ hours. All I could think of was the experience on horseback that lay ahead. No thought was in my mind that I would want to bridge the divide between myself and the people I would meet at my destination.
Narrow dirt roads lead to the central plaza where I first encountered Edward Rimachi Yanqui, my guide with the wonderful name. From inside a relatively luxurious “tourist” vehicle that suddenly seemed invasive, I saw that horses in front of an opening in a rough wall were already saddled. I recognized there would be little time for rest or becoming acquainted with the person I was to spend the next seven days with in some of the highest ranges on the globe.
Introductions were made. Edward believed a robust, lengthy hug was important on first meetings in order to convey a sense of how one wanted the relationship to develop. He gave me a warmer embrace than I could have anticipated.
My trekking partner was finishing loading gear onto the pack horse. As my awareness sharpened, the extreme impoverishment of the village I’d come to find myself in, juxtaposed against the staggering beauty of the emerald-green Andes, was surreal. A dimension I had not anticipated was coming into focus. As the world went on regardless of despair or delight, I wanted to know the lives of the inhabitants in this pueblo beyond time.
The children were those who approached me, invited me by their smiles into their make-believe games, or sat next to me on the stone wall outside the passageway leading to Edward's lodgings.
In 2021, according to the World Food Programme, 51% of the population of Peru suffered from moderate to severe nutritional insecurity. Among young people, particularly in rural areas, malnutrition and anemia continues to rise and is one of the main public health problems among those under 5.
In Huayqui, families till the sod and harvest the corn, potatoes, fava beans and vegetables they consume. Occasionally chicken or guinea pig, an Andean rodent recognized for its nutritional value, augment protein in the diet. While, relative to other parts of Peru and Latin America, Huayqui's children are not starving, Edward Rimachi Yanqui plans to donate a portion of his future earnings from his guided horseback adventures to increase the amount of food students currently receive from a government-funded school lunch program.
Fast forward seven days.
Edward’s mother was preparing dinner in her humble kitchen, a space where the walls, floor and ceiling were made of sand and soil. Pots and pans hung from nails over the stove, which was gas-fed via a rubber tube attached to a canister beneath a counter top. A small dog peered sweetly across the stoop of an aperture that passed for a doorway, and from a rectangular hole in the wall that passed for a window was visible an enormous bull tethered to a post in a rutted courtyard.
The previous night I had slept in a joyless hostel. Edward had delivered a thermos of boiled water and chamomile tea bag, along with steamed rice, potatoes and alpaca meat in a plastic container. On this evening, however, I was to be initiated into wider company.
Ana is a neighbor of Edward’s mother. I’d met her the previous morning on the grassy plaza where a van, newly arrived from a larger town, had been offloading furniture to eager customers. Ana had been affronted because I was taking snapshots with my phone. When she learned I was a painter of women, however, she beamed and quickly vanished into her house around the corner to comb her hair and put on a bit of makeup. “Now that we are friends, please take my picture” she said.
Meeting Ana recalibrated my understanding of what a resident of a hamlet about as far from everything that was familiar to me could be like. We sat next to each other on a bench at a rustic table as Edward’s mother prepared a favorite traditional soup.
Ana was a retired sociology teacher. For 35 years, she had worked in Puno, the gateway town to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake on the planet that straddles southeastern Peru and Bolivia. Ana and I fell into easy conversation. She made me feel comfortable and welcomed into this gloomy chamber that I’d initially been apprehensive about entering. Ana was educated and bilingual, speaking Castellano (Spanish) and Runasimi, the mellifluous language of the Inca that the conquistadors had named Quechua. Reaching to place toasted corn kernels into my hand as a gesture of sisterhood, she noticed I was badly burned in the location where my skin had been most exposed as I held my reins on the mountain trails. She asked Edward’s mother to cut a section of aloe vera cactus and proceeded to tenderly massage its soothing fluids onto my wound. “How do you say ‘thank you’ in Runasimi?,” I asked. Looking directly into my eyes, “munakuyki,” Ana said, “te quiero.” I realized Ana was telling me with total sincerity that I had become dear to her.
Edward’s mom, a reserved woman who had hitherto been silent, was ladling hot broth into bowls. Ice was thoroughly broken as I glanced up at her and said, “munakuyki sopa de quinoa,” “I love you, quinoa soup!”
Ana had been the catalyst for communal belly laughter. It was welcome release, and she knew it.
The disadvantaged hostel I was the sole guest of for two nights had the advantage of a balcony that overlooked a side road from Huayqui’s main plaza. From this position I gained a sense of pueblo life unobserved by the villagers. As I had witnessed in the cordilleras, in late evening, people anticipated the time needed to reach shelter for themselves and their animals, and headed for safe haven on schedule.
The central highlands of Peru are rugged and challenging whether on foot or horseback. High altitudes have a purity of light whose intensity and beauty never leaves you. In order to grasp it, you really have to encounter it firsthand, scaling the topography yourself, seeing the shifting silhouettes across the landscape throughout the day. In retrospect, my journey was more radical than I realized even in the moment. In some ways it seems like a dream or mirage, and I am still processing the experience.
Exposure to other ways of being forces us to challenge our perceptions of what “civilization” means and reconsider fundamental assumptions we may have about what it signifies to live in this world. Horsemanship can teach us effortless ease and to be masters of our movement, behavior, thoughts and emotions without the emphasis on book learning.
While all this may sound romantic, the quest promises to test my resolve, internal resources and sense of humor to the limit. When the breeze is still, there are minuscule biting gnats where the cabin will be, all drinking water must be purified, a truck delivers dry goods for sale just twice weekly, produce will need to be gathered from the fields and eggs from the coop for food, there is no clothes washer or dishwasher, no refrigeration except for a communal unit in the neighborhood, there is no heat, no air conditioning and no electrical fan. Edward takes on work away from home periodically. On those occasions, I will be entirely disconnected from wider influences with only my thoughts to inspire me.
Sometimes you must accept that your heart knows what to do. The things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. Before night unwinds around me, when the sun is in the west, the shadow of the mountain, Waqra Pukará, will blanket me, holding me fast in its enchanting presence, joining its spirit to mine.
Jada Griffin is a graduate of Sotheby’s Institute Of Art in London, a designer and internationally sold painter who owned her own art gallery in Portland, Oregon, for a decade. She lives and works in Santa Fe and is currently writing a book based on her ongoing experiences in Peru. For more information visit www.avant-garde-art.com or email her at soul@avant-garde-art.com.