Cheryl Katz

Especially when home is San Diego.

Here’s the big difference between DC and SD.  In DC, when you get out of the shower, you pretty much stay damp all day, because even sopping wet, you are less humid than the air.

In San Diego, you’re dry in 15 minutes.  (My glasses de-fogged in less than two seconds upon opening the bathroom door.)

DC has a charm that tries to reel me in every time I visit, and I’m going to miss the Capitol City.  But I’m happy to be back home.

Not too long before we left for Perú, I made two decisions.  One was to try my best to live as Jewishly as I am able to, most notably by keeping as many laws of kashrut as I am able to do.  The second, as a logical (to me) outgrowth of that, was to become vegetarian.

Let me ’splain.  In November I was reading about the reasons and details of kashrut and what it all boiled down to was a controversial little phrase called “the sanctity of life.”  (This does not mean what you think it means, but this is a topic for another day.)  To lay out a long path quickly, I recognized that I am not comfortable with the idea that my life should be recklessly and wastefully sustained through the sacrifice of another life.  The easiest way for me to reconcile my feelings with dietary needs was to eliminate animal protein entirely.

…And then we left for Perú.  Where (un)surprisingly, there is secret meat in everything.  We ordered an innocuous dish called “fried cheese” and lo, rolled inside was a secret swatch of ham.  This was merely the first night, a few hours after we’d landed in Lima, but it worked out to be a good predictor of how the rest of the trip would be.  Needless to say, I was bound to reality by the nature of being a busy traveler in a completely foreign country, and I relaxed both my efforts to attempt to keep kosher and my vegetarianism.  I merely avoided treif and meat consumption as often as I could.

But a funny thing happened during our travels.  I got my first frank look at a country that has a healthy relationship with its meat farming industry (if you can call it that.)  There are farms literally everywhere in Perú, and on those farms are grown a variety of products, terraced into the mountainsides, and fallow land grazed by… cows, pigs, sheep, llamas, alpacas, etc.  Much of the meat people eat in Perú is raised by actual people, on actual pasture land, not on mechanical feedlots with a heaping side of antibiotics.  They say happy cows come from California, but this is just not true.  The cows looked happier and the milk tasted better in Perú.

Spending three weeks in a place where a) people on average eat far less meat than Americans do and b) the animals are farmed responsibly and cared for in a way that honors their life and minimizes their suffering, I couldn’t help but take away that a healthy food system is a goal that we should have.  A healthy food system is something that should be supported.  It’s my responsibility to model ethical meat consumption by minimizing the frequency and quantity of meat in my diet and sourcing those animal proteins I do consume from ethical farms.

Which brings us back to kashrut, the basis of which is to be mindful of the animal lives we take in the name of human sustenance. I think that my chosen dietary path falls neatly into the laws of kashrut, and the rest is my symbolic journey to create a Jewish life where I didn’t have one before.  I can give up shellfish, I can commit to separating milk from my animal proteins, I can absolutely live without pork products and guinea pigs.  (The extent to which my home is kosher is yet to be determined by a frank discussion with my husband, who… likes him some treif as well as the next non-religious Jew.)

Beyond ethical living, keeping kosher becomes a way in which my life changes because I am becoming Jewish.  I can’t and wouldn’t want to live my same life after conversion; what would be the point?  I should always look to change my life for the better, not least because I am adopting a new culture.

Hello from your (totally ready to come home) Peruano correspondents!

It’s been a while since we sent an update. We were alternately in places with bad, slow connections or completely without Internet for a while, we have a couple queued up, so I hope no one objects to us sending these in rapid succession.

As of our last email, we had just arrived in Cusco — the old Inca capital. We spent about 5 days in Cusco, Machu Picchu and the surrounding area, known as the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

Machu Picchu in particular is a huge, nearly perfectly preserved city that’s awe-inspiring to behold. All of the original stone-cut walls are still standing as they were left about 500 years ago, when ostensibly all the able-bodied men and warriors went off  to fight the Spanish Conquistadores, and the women probably became the supply chain.  For those keeping track, remaining in the citadel would have been religious offiicials of the weak and bookish type, and other non-able-bodied citizens.  That said, the city was abandoned after the conquest, likely because no one who remained inside it were physically able to maintain it or tend the enormous mountainside terrace farms to support the remaining inhabitants.

Anyway, I digress… The walls are still standing as left at that time, now with all the advancing jungle growth cut back so that you can SEE said walls.  The most amazing parts of Machu Picchu (and any remaining Inca structures in Peru, if you can find them) are the ones built for specific religious purposes.  The temple spaces of may different varieties were always built from precisely hand-cut stones that fit together without mortar.  (Also, *hand cut* because there were no metal tools hard enough to cut stone at that time.  Usually the stone finishing was done with Hematite, the hardest stone available.)

Rinse and repeat at the other Inca sites we saw:  The Sacred Valley, Moray, Saqsayhuaman, Pisaq, etc.

After about 5 days, we were totally Inca-ed out. Don’t get me wrong — they’re incredibly impressive, probably moreso than I’ve been able to communicate here. But once you’ve seen a couple of these sites, they start getting pretty redundant, and all the tour guides rehash the same structural and historical information.

What’s more impressive than the buildings is the terraforming done by the Incas and their predecessors. An absurd percentage of the mountainsides in Peru have terraces. (You’ve probably seen this even in my earliest pictures of pre-Inca communities far from the Inca centers of Cusco and Machu Picchu.) These often are more than simple reshaping of the mountains, rather they could include careful choices of soils, stones and angles to maximize growing potential.  (For example, the soil in the terraces at Machu Picchu’s mountaintop farms was brought up from the river bed a thousand meters below.)

Probably the most impressive example of these terraces was the Moray site — giant rings of terraces. While there are some different theories, the most widely accepted is that these were early bio-engineering laboratories where the Incas carefully bred potatoes, corn and other crops for certain attributes.  The terrace levels were designed to recreate alternate growing climates, such as colder and warmer terraces, ones with more and less exposure to water and sun, etc.  They were able to grow Coca plants, a staple for the high-elevation communities, which usually was grown much lower, closer to the jungles.

In addition to seeing Inca sites, we had the opportunity to get a closer look at the traditional process of textile production, in particular in Chincero. This is what I (Cheryl) had been personally looking forward to for the entire trip to date.  As I’d looked and asked where textile tools or fibers could be purchased in every town we visited and been told that they were basically not available at all, it was mind-numbing fiber-crafter heaven to go to Chinchero to see the processes of spinning, weaving and natural dyeing of fibers demonstrated.  Even if I’d come away with no physical items to show for my time there, seeing the finished products (the best handicrafts we saw in all of Peru) would have been enough.  But no.  Our tour guide assisted me in speaking to the Chinchero residents about where I could get  a spindle and some fiber so that I could spin on my own, and I was sold an Andean spindle complete with a small lump of raw wool and some mid-spinning yarn already wound on.

This may not sound exciting to any of you, but those of you who knew I had a spinning wheel in my office will probably at least have some idea of how thrilling this was for me.  I may have already died a happy woman, too happy to notice I died.

Finally, this email would not be complete without a brief description of our luxury Machu Picchu experience. Machu Picchu is only accessible in two ways: by train and by foot. With a two-year old there was no way we were going to able to handle the mulitple day Inca Trail hike, so it was definitely the train. We decided to go with the high end option, the Hiram Bingham train, for our once in a lifetime experience. Like the Andean Explorer we wrote about previously, this is run by the Orient-Express company.

They take it to the next level. They greeted us with champagne and then on board, the multi-course lunch included unlimited drinks (generally tired of the national drink of Pisco Sour, we stuck with wine). About 3 hours later, we were at the Machu Picchu train station. Our hotel met us and picked up our bags and we were off on a guided tour of the citadel. Another two hours of hiking through this amazing place and it was time for high-tea. In true British style, this included an absurd assortment of sandwiches (sans crust), scones and petit-fours. After stuffing ourselves, it was over to our hotel, the Inkaterra.

At the Inkaterra, we continued to experience top-tier service — probably best exemplified by their checkout procedure. Rather than the typical model of dragging your bags to the front desk and then checking them until you’re really leaving, at the Inkaterra, you leave them in your room and they deliver them directly to the train station for you.

OK — that’s it for now…but be sure to read our next email, where we come face-to-face with Jaguars, Caimen and Capybarra — oh my!

Excited to be home soon, but starting to miss Peru already,
Cheryl, Ben & Sami

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cinediva

Amigos y amigas,

Since our last update, we visited Lake Titicaca’s fabulous islands on a boat-driven side trip.

It was probably the most fascinating part of our trip so far.  We started by visited the floating islands of the Uros.  Hundreds of years ago, the Uros, beset by enemy tribes, retreated to the lake and built themselves islands using the reeds.  Essentially, these people spend the bulk of their lives on big floating boats (eating, sleeping, cooking, fishing, working handcrafts.)  They were quite friendly and welcoming, and Sami found a perfect playmate in Salenia, born just 11 days before Sami was born.  (It’s amazing how different Peruvian children are at even the same age, but there will be more discussion of this at another time.)

From there we spent a night in a family’s home on la Isla Amantani and briefly visited Isla Taquile.  These are both beautiful/peaceful places with no cars or other moving vehicles. In fact, there are no horses and only a few donkeys to carry heavy items up and down the exceptionally steep paths.  They’re slowly getting more technology (electricity, wheelbarrows, running water) but essentially, this is still like stepping back in time 100 years or more.

As a complete contrast, we followed this with a trip on the Andean Explorer — a luxury train line run by the Orient Express company.  This was a 10 hour trip that included drinks in the observation car, a three-course lunch and high tea.  There we had a pleasant chat about education, children and politics with a mismatched set of lovely Brit retirees – one English, one Scottish – which made for a colorful afternoon.

We’re now in Cusco, which will be our home base for the next 5 days.  Cusco is the ancient Inca capital but also appears to be the most modern & cosmopolitian city in Peru.

In other news, I’d like to propose a moment of silence in memory of my digital camera, who died peacefully in her sleep last night after a full and devoted lifetime of service documenting my daily whatnot.  Farewell, loyal friend.  Her place has been taken by a hard-won replacement in the rough and tumble digital camera marketplaces of Avenida El Sol in downtown Cusco.  She has big shoes to fill.

Also, a moment of silence for the poor household pet Ben had for lunch today.  The noble Cuy did its best to preserve its little rodent life, but Ben’s dietary adventurousness prevailed.  However, Cuy had his last revenge:  he arrived chowing down on a red-hot chili pepper, and was way more food than even Ben could consume in one sitting.  Ben was defeated.  Ben 1.  Cuy 1.

Best to everyone back home — we’ll drop another update after our side-trip to Machu Picchu this weekend.

Será continuado…

Cheryl, Ben y Sami

Buenos dias, damas y caballeros!

For those who don’t know, Ben and I have taken a very brave trip to Peru with Sami in tow. We’re having a great time, eating well, and haven’t succumbed to elevation sickness (thus far) after our journey from Lima to Arequipa today. And our español is getting a very good workout.

We’re not spending a ton of time online, but I’m uploading pictures as often as I can. If you want to see snapshots of what we’ve been up to, you can find them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cinediva

What? You want them to have Titles and Captions? Tough luck I’ll get to those when I can. Until then, comment away and discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll try to fill in the gaps later.

Please feel free to share with anyone who may be interested!